Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (3 page)

The pickup turned off the busy thoroughfare
at the next block and stopped. Leaning over onto the passenger
side, the driver opened the door, beckoning Tracie through the
downpour to come over to his truck. Eager to earn whatever money
she could and thinking that he was looking for what she was
offering, Tracie went to him without hesitation. This was looking
better than she had expected. It had taken less than ten minutes
for her to get picked up.

"Hi! Wanna go for a ride and have some drinks
with me?" He spoke slowly, as if feeling his way. He flashed her a
wide smile as he gawked at her young body with puppy dog eyes that
seemed to droop ever so slightly on his durably boyish face, and
motioned for her to get inside. Pale and soft-spoken, he could have
passed for the actor John Ritter from a distance, and close up he
somewhat resembled a popular local television news reporter.
Outwardly he looked innocuous enough, and Tracie settled quickly
into the seat beside him.

Tracie noticed that he seemed easygoing,
cool, and relaxed as he put the truck in motion. But the traits
that she believed she observed were deceiving, and she would
realize only too late that she had misinterpreted them. His
apparent congeniality was, in reality, calculating
cold-bloodedness, and even though considerably streetwise at
sixteen, Tracie was still too naive to see the evil that lurked
behind his mask. Although flashes of the tales she had heard about
the bondage and dominance freak kept returning, she really didn't
want to worry that he might be the same man that the other girls
had warned her about. So what if his pickup was similar to the
bondage freak's? Hell, there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands
of small blue trucks in the Portland area. Why worry that this one
was
his
? Besides, he seemed like a nice enough guy, and she
was desperate for the money.

"My name's Steve," said the man quietly,
biting the nails of his left hand as he steered the pickup with his
right. As they turned around in the parking lot of Bob's Big Boy,
Tracie noticed that he not only chewed on his fingernails, he bit
them to the quick. Aware that she was watching him, he quickly took
his hand away from his mouth. He pulled back onto the side street,
but remained silent. Aside from the cars that zoomed in front of
them while they waited at the stop sign, the only sound that came
from inside the pickup's cab was the windshield wipers slapping
back and forth at the ever-blowing Oregon rain. At the first break
in the seemingly never-ending stream of traffic, he turned right
onto 82nd Avenue and headed south toward Oregon City, a Portland
suburb.

It was a nice pickup. It had a stick shift,
and the interior was a vinyl grayish blue color. Tracie noticed
that it didn't have a sliding back window, like many pickups have.
It appeared very clean, at least on the surface, and it seemed to
her that the owner was very particular. As they drove along,
Trade's attention was momentarily drawn to the ignition switch,
where she was mesmerized by the swinging of a black plastic swivel
hook that dangled from his key chain. For some strange reason, it
was a minor detail that she would not forget.

Tracie brought herself out of the trance and
introduced herself to make idle conversation, making a spurious
attempt at returning Steve's smile, if that was his name. Instinct
told her it wasn't, but it didn't really matter. Unless her johns
impressed her in some way, she nearly always forgot their names
anyway. Tracie peered straight ahead, waiting for the man to say
something, anything. But he never uttered a sound.

Not wanting to make her date feel like he was
being unduly scrutinized, Tracie tried not to look directly at him
while he drove. But she could feel his eyes alternating between her
and the road, moving up and down her sleek body as he studied her.
Normally she wouldn't have found that annoying. Guys did it all the
time. But in this instance, because of what she'd heard about the
bondage and dominance freak in the blue pickup, a coldness consumed
her entire body from the inside out. She shivered involuntarily and
knew that sudden fear had inserted its icy finger inside her chest.
Could it be him?

The man suddenly seemed detached and aloof to
her and was all-consumed by the deep mental state he was in.
Although she had no way of knowing it, her temporary companion was
planning and mentally rehearsing a violent scenario he would
eventually force her to play out with him.

Sensing her apparent unease, the man seemed
to emerge from the depths of his mind. He casually reached into a
small box he kept on the floor and brought out a cassette tape,
which he popped into the stereo. Tracie was glad to hear the music,
even if it was an old album of the Rolling Stones from the
seventies. It brought forth a sense of calm in the young trollop,
temporarily allaying her apprehension, and served to help break the
ice between them as they drove on. A few miles later the man
wheeled the pickup into the parking lot of a Denny's restaurant
across the street from Clackamas Town Center, a mega-shopping mall
on 82nd Avenue, and cut the engine as he brought it to an abrupt
halt.

"I could use a drink," he said, his voice
empty and seemingly directed only at himself. Reaching behind the
long bench seat, he brought out a paper bag. Next he took out a
plastic container of orange juice, the individual one-serving size,
and a small bottle of vodka like those served on airlines. It
seemed to Tracie that he came prepared, but for what, she did not
know.

He drank some of the orange juice, apparently
to make room in the container for the vodka. After pouring the
liquor into the juice, he replaced the plastic lid and shook it
vigorously. When it was mixed to his satisfaction, he took a long,
steady draw, consuming half of the inebriating liquid before coming
up for air.

"Want some?" He handed the drink to Tracie
without waiting for her to respond. As she sipped the crudely made
screwdriver, he mixed another one for himself, this time pouring in
two bottles of the vodka. He drank it quickly and didn't have to
wait very long for the alcohol's warming and exhilarating influence
to overwhelm him. Alcohol somehow always made him feel sharp and
well defined. Even though it was a falsity, it placed him a cut
above the rest in his own mind.

"Let me see your feet," he bluntly
demanded.

"What?" His demand struck Tracie as strange.
This must be the guy, she thought, her body growing numb with fear
again.

"Take off your shoes. I want to see your
feet."

Nervously Tracie did as he asked, and she
noticed that the man's breathing increased considerably. He seemed
to be getting excited, aroused. She decided there was no need for
her to worry too much, at least not yet. After all, they were in a
busy public parking lot. The guy would have to be crazy to try
anything there.

"Put your feet in my lap," he said. When she
complied, he began massaging them. She could feel the stiffening
inside his pants, and she knew that he was turned on by her feet.
At one point he made another demand, telling her to put the bottoms
of her feet together. He continued massaging them, breathing
heavier as Tracie wondered what he had in mind. He suddenly stopped
the foot massage and mixed another drink.

"Here, have another one." He pushed the drink
toward Tracie.

"No. I don't usually drink these." Her voice
was light and trivial and trailed off into silence.

"Come on. Just drink it. One more," he
insisted.

"No," she firmly refused, her tone heavier
now. She promptly followed up her rejection with a faked smile.
Hadn't the other girls said that the bondage freak had a thing
about feet? The thought frightened her again, but she somehow
managed to shake off the fear almost as quickly as it had come.
Like most people, she convinced herself that bad things only
happened to others. It could never happen to her.

"Okay, then. Let's carry on with the
business. You know, I've only got forty dollars and some more
vodka," he stated matter-of-factly. "That's all I can offer you for
tonight."

Tracie was disappointed, but she tried hard
not to show it. Forty dollars was quite a bit shy of the type of
money she had been hoping for. Her standard fee was more than that
just for straight sex; she charged even more for extras such as
fetishes or anal entry but often less for fellatio. She might have
turned his offer down if they had talked business before she got
inside his truck. But she decided that $40 was better than nothing,
and she was out of the wind and the rain. She reluctantly decided
to carry on with the "date" and secretly hoped for the best.

"What do you have in mind for forty dollars?"
she asked, somewhat smugly. "Straight sex? A blow job?"

"I don't know," he lied, smiling at her like
a shark. "I really hadn't thought about it. I'm just looking for
some company, someone to spend a little time with." He confidently
placed his hand on the inner thigh of her left leg and gently
stroked it back and forth with the tips of his fingers. It made
Tracie's flesh crawl. "We could drive around for a while and just
drink. I know of a perfect place where we can go and do it. It's
out in Molalla, a very private place."

Desperate to turn a buck, Tracie voiced no
objections, despite the fact that she didn't have any idea where
Molalla was located. Besides, he seemed to have lost interest in
her feet, relieving her anxiety that he might be the violent foot
fetishist she had heard so much about. The man who called himself
Steve pulled out of the Denny's parking lot and began driving up
Sunny side Road to the on ramp of Interstate 205. From there they
headed south for a few miles, exiting the freeway at the Park
Place/Molalla off ramp, where they left the bright lights and the
perceived safety of the city far behind.

Little was said during the drive, and at one
point Tracie found herself wondering where she was after becoming
disoriented on the dark highway. She saw a few road signs as they
passed, one of which read Clackamas Community College, but none of
them really meant anything to her. Passing the college seemed to be
the point where they left civilization behind, and she suddenly
found herself wishing that she hadn't gone out with this guy. She
was completely lost by now.

Tracie tried to push the fear out of her mind
again, but the darkness and unfamiliar territory caused it to keep
creeping back in. She soon began wondering how long the date would
last, knowing that her boyfriend would be really pissed off if she
came home with only $40. She was beyond the point of backing out
now and, not wanting to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere,
she decided she'd just have to make the best of it and hope that
she would get back to the city in time to turn a few more tricks
before calling it a night. In her youthful naivete, she hardly even
considered that she might not make it back at all. Nobody kills
another person without a strong reason or without being provoked,
she decided.

Some forty-five minutes after picking Tracie
off the busy Portland avenue, the man made a right turn off the
Molalla Forest Road onto a narrow gravel logging spur road. They
were surrounded by heavy forest, making the night pitch-black on
both sides of the road.

"We're almost there," he said as they wound
along the sometimes nearly impassable road that took them farther
and farther up into the hills. True to his word, he soon stopped
the pickup along a gravel turnaround near a Y in the road. It felt
like they had gone to the top of a mountain. Tracie, noticing a
clearing surrounded by trees, momentarily wondered if they were at
a remote campsite.

"Why don't you get completely undressed now,"
he said, his voice not asking, but commanding again. Tracie agreed,
but asked for the money first. When he handed her the $40, she
pulled off her shirt. Her date glared at her youthful breasts,
shimmering beneath the dim illumination of the cab's dome light. In
a hurry to get it over with, she quickly wriggled out of her skirt
and panties and bent her legs beneath her as she turned to face her
date.

"Do you like to be tied up?" he asked. The
abruptness of the question caught Tracie off guard, but she tried
not to let it show even though it scared her. This was the guy, all
right. She no longer had any doubt.

"I really don't get into that," she said
nervously, her voice quavering. Cold dread gripped her insides
again.

"Well, that's the only way I like to do it.
I'll just tie you up and play with your feet, jack off, and that'll
be it."

"Okay, I guess I can handle that," she
stammered. Although bizarre, his fetish seemed simple and harmless
enough. Nonetheless, she shivered when the man reached past her to
get something from inside the glove box. He brought out two nylon
straps, one red and one blue, and a leather strap, all of which
resembled dog collars. Each strap had a silver buckle. Tracie
reluctantly allowed the man to bind her hands, thinking that would
be the extent of the bondage.

"It's too tight," she complained. "I don't
want to do this."

"You agreed to do it, bitch, and that's the
only way you're going to get out of it," he said angrily, his voice
rising. It seemed to Tracie that he had suddenly turned against her
despite her cooperation, much like a pit bull would turn on a
playful child.

Before she fully realized what was happening,
the man pushed Tracie's head down into the seat and climbed over
her, straddling her backside. Utilizing another of the straps, he
swiftly bound her feet at the ankles, cinching the strap so tight
that it felt like it was cutting into her flesh.

She squirmed and tried to kick, wondering
what the hell she had gotten herself into. But her struggling was
of no use. The bindings made it nearly impossible for her to move,
and there was so little room inside the pickup's small cab that she
couldn't even rotate her body a significant distance in any
direction. Tracie was now under his complete control. The man had
executed the act of bondage with exactness and ease due to much
practice, having literally been down that road before. Satisfied
that she was nearly immobilized, he hog-tied Tracie's hands to her
ankles using the third strap.