Jack Daniels Six Pack (17 page)

“Jack? I’m Matthew. I’ll be your Lunch Mates agent.”

He was even cuter than Frank. Blond, baby blue eyes, a model’s square jaw. I wondered if the Gingerbread Man had actually killed me, and I’d died and gone to hunk heaven.

I stood and took his hand. It was soft and dry, making me even more aware of how unkempt my hands were. I’d never broken the habit of biting my nails. It seemed so much easier than clipping them.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“I love that sweater. It brings out your eyes.”

“A recent purchase. The sweater, not the eyes.”

Chuckles on both our parts. He led me through the carpeted hallways of Lunch Mates. It resembled any other office, with generic artwork on the walls and the obligatory Habitrail of cubicles where employees pecked away on computers between coffee breaks. It could have even been my workplace, except it was brighter and everyone looked happy.

We made small talk about the weather and current news events, and then I was led into a corner office complete with view, fireplace, and a decor that made it look like a cozy den. We sat across from each other in two deep suede chairs, our knees almost touching. He reached over on the table next to us and picked up a leather binder.

“What we’re going to do, Jack, is have you answer a few questions about yourself and make a data sheet like this one.”

Matthew held up a glossy piece of paper with a picture of a woman in the upper right-hand corner. It almost looked like a resume.

“This data sheet will be given to men who would be a likely match for you. I’ll also give you data sheets of men . . . it is a man you’d like to meet, correct?”

“Yes. I’ve decided to give heterosexuality one more shot.”

He gave me a million-dollar smile, and I flashed my five-buck grin right back. The Vicodin guide to better living through chemistry.

“So . . . if you and a man choose each other, we pick a place and set the date. If you’d prefer, you can fill out the data sheet yourself, but I like asking the questions because then I have a better idea of personality and compatibility.”

“Ask away.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms, held the pose until I realized I looked too defensive, then set my hands in my lap and crossed my legs. That was awkward as well, but I stayed that way rather than shift again so soon.

“You mentioned you were a police officer. For how long?”

“Twenty-three years. I’m a lieutenant. Violent Crimes.”

“Tell me about your job. Do you enjoy it?”

I took a moment too long to answer. Did I enjoy it? How could I enjoy Violent Crimes? I dealt with the worst element of society, I witnessed atrocities that regular people couldn’t even comprehend, I was overworked, underpaid, and socially retarded. But I still kept plugging away. Did I actually enjoy it?

“I like getting the job done.” I crossed my arms in the defensive position again.

“Have you ever been married?”

“Yes. I was divorced fifteen years ago.”

“Children?”

“Not that I know of.”

Pleasant laugh. “Education?”

“Northwestern. Bachelor of Arts.”

“What was your major?”

What the hell was my major? “Political science.”

“Do you have any hobbies?”

Was insomnia a hobby? “I play pool. I like to read, when I have the time.”

He paused frequently to write things down. I reviewed in my mind what I’d said so far and was less than impressed. I was coming off like the most boring person to ever walk the earth. Unless I wanted to get hooked up with someone who was comatose, I needed to spice up my answers.

“I got into a fight the other day. Bar fight. See the bruises?”

I pointed to my face and grinned. My painkiller high had overtaken my better judgment.

“And the other day I got shot. A maniac broke into my apartment.”

“My goodness. Where were you shot?”

“My leg. It goes with the job. Maybe you saw me on the news yesterday.”

And from there it went downhill. I talked about my acts of heroism. I talked about being a great kisser. The interview ended after I let him feel my muscle.

Then he led me to another room where he took my picture and my money; a chunk large enough to knock me out of my good mood. Before I had a chance to reconsider, I was handed a sheaf of men’s data sheets, patted on the shoulder, and walked to the door.

I was silent during the cab ride home. Gradually the painkiller wore off and my leg began to throb again. Even worse than the pain was the growing sense of humiliation. I felt like I’d won the Kentucky Derby for horses’ asses. I’m sure that when I left, Matthew had a firm opinion on why I needed a dating service in the first place. To add injury to insult, I was out almost eight hundred bucks, and all I had to show for it was a list of men who Matthew thought would be compatible with the idiot I’d become.

I put the Vicodin in the medicine cabinet and took four aspirin. My cell phone rang, and I flipped it to my face, half hoping it was my surveillance team calling to say the Gingerbread Man was standing behind me with a gun. I would have let him shoot me.

“Jack? Herb. I know you’re resting, but you’ll want to hear this. We’ve got a positive ID on the second girl. Her roommate called in. Are you up to move on it?”

“I’m up. I’ll see you in ten.”

I called my team and told them the news. Much as the job was wearing me down, it did help me to forget my life, which was what I needed at that moment.

Clearheaded, I managed to start my car on the third try. During the drive I tried to shake the image of being the last kid picked for a backyard football game.

I couldn’t.

Chapter 23

H
E KNOWS WHAT JACK IS DOING.
All those lies. All those insults. She’s trying to flush him out. Force him to make a mistake. It’s a clever move on Jack’s part, and even helps her save face after the pain she suffered the other night.

But it still burns. The city isn’t likely to tremble in fear if they have an image of the Gingerbread Man being cowardly. He has to correct that image, and make Jack pay for the lies. It’s all about power. That’s all it has always been about.

He knew he was different at a very young age, after he tied up the family cat with yarn and poked at it with a stick until its insides oozed out. Father beat him with a studded belt when he found out, demanding to know how he could do such a horrible thing.

But it isn’t horrible to him. It’s exciting. Thrilling. The fact that he knows it’s wrong makes it even more so.

Throughout adolescence he continues to pull the legs off frogs, and throw lit matches at his sister, and call people up and say he’s going to kill them. Because it’s fun.

Sometimes he tries to determine why he is the way he is. Throughout his life he’s never felt anything. Certainly no love for anyone other than himself. No guilt, no empathy, no passion, no pity, no happiness. It’s a sad thing not to know how to laugh, when everyone around you is laughing. Humans could have been a completely different species, for all that he understands their interactions, their society, their culture.

As he grows, he learns how to fake emotions so he doesn’t stand out. He’s a spectator in a strange world, a chameleon that can blend into the scenery but is never truly part of it.

Until he learns to feel something, by killing the cat.

It’s enthralling to kill the cat. It makes his heart pound and his palms sweat. The feeble escape attempts of the cat are genuinely amusing, and Charles laughs for the very first time. And when the cat finally dies, when it’s lying there inside out with its blood turning the ground to mud, he feels something more than amusement. He feels sexual arousal.

Why does the death of a simple kitty cat bring out all of this in him? Charles has only one answer—power. Power over life and death. Power over suffering. Suddenly, he can feel. The blind can see and the deaf can hear and he knows what his purpose is.

All of these people, with their silly relationships and their bullshit lives, are only here for his amusement. He isn’t less than they are. He is more. More intelligent. More evolved. More powerful. He embraces the feeling like a miracle drug.

As he gets older, he learns to hide his obsession from others. Neighborhood pets disappear, but it rarely leads back to him. He has a little place, out in the woods, where he takes the animals. Where no one will hear the screeching. Where he can bury them when he’s finished.

Fantasy often accompanies his mutilations. He imagines himself the ruler of the world, with all creatures trembling before his might. Like Satan on a throne of bones, torturing the meek, laughing at their pain. Dragging it on, sometimes for days, keeping the animal alive.

Or sometimes the animals represent people. His classmates. His teachers.

Father.

It’s invigorating to pretend that the dog he’s tied up and castrating is his father.

From what he’s read about serial killers like himself, there are several features they all share. Kind of like a big fraternity, everyone conforming to a basic set of rules.

Most apply to him as well.

Fantasy plays a big part in recreational murder; in fact the stalking and the planning and the dwelling on it are almost as much fun as actually ending someone’s life.

Most budding serial murderers show evidence of the triad when they’re children; bed-wetting, starting fires, and hurting animals. He lays claim to all three, wetting the bed until his late teens.

There are also stressors and escalation.

A stressor is an event that unleashes or sets off a murder spree. This particular spree in the Gingerbread Man’s career of slaughter can be linked to a very specific occurrence. And as for escalation . . . like any drug, the more you get, the more you need later to feel the same high.

The majority of serial killers were also abused as children, physically or sexually . . .

He didn’t like to think about that.

At age fifteen he gets a job at an animal shelter.

His fantasy world quadruples overnight.

There are plenty of things to do at the shelter to amuse himself. This is where he learns to give injections—too many injections, poisonous injections, eyeball injections; at one point he keeps a log of different things he injects into animals, with descriptions of what happens.

The stressor comes when he gets caught mistreating one of the animals and is immediately fired. His rage is all-encompassing. He continues to visit at night, letting himself in with his keys, but it isn’t enough. He needs more.

So he decides to kill a human.

He picks a girl at school. A freshman. Fat and pimply. He watches her for a week to make sure she doesn’t have any friends.

Then one day at lunch he sits down next to her and asks if she wants to see the puppies where he works.

She does.

Don’t tell anyone, he warns her, or he could lose his job. She promises she’ll keep it quiet, thrilled that someone is actually paying attention to her.

They walk there after school. He tells her they’ll enter the back way, takes her into the alley, and sticks her with an animal sedative.

When the shelter closes for the night, he lets himself in.

After trying unsuccessfully to rouse her, he uses her sexually, and then pulls her into the crematory.

That wakes her up. For a little while, at least.

Three young women disappear from his town that year.

No one ever questions him.

And now, many deaths later, he’s ready for the big time. Headline news. National attention. All the murders that came before were practice, a warm-up for the main event.

After he kills the last whore, the one who started it all, he’ll write a long letter to the media. Explaining what they all had in common. Explaining the reason he leaves the cookies. Making a mockery out of Jack and the CPD.

Promising more deaths someday soon.

It will go down in history as the greatest unsolved case of all time. And with good cause. All of the planning and preparation, the stalking, the plotting, the violence, and the surprise ending will make this the crime of the century. Worth all the time he’s spent hunched down in his truck, following these whores around. Worth all the pain that lousy bitch has caused him, her and all the others like her.

When he was a child, nothing ever made him cry. Not even the time Father made him kneel on tacks and beg for penance.

“You have the devil in you, boy,” Father would say.

Father was right.

Chapter 24

N
OW THAT I WAS VICODIN-FREE,
stairs posed a real problem. The pain was bearable, but the muscle I’d injured was apparently essential for climbing, and it wouldn’t do what I commanded. To get to my office I had to ascend them sideways, like a crab, using both my cane and the handrail.

“We do have an elevator, Lieut,” mentioned more than one of the uniforms who passed me going up or down.

“It’s not the destination so much as how you get there.” I’d grin through my sweat, but after the twentieth stair I began to doubt my own wisdom.

Benedict was waiting for me when I reached my office. “I see you took the stairs. Or are you fresh from the sauna?”

“The leg keeps stiffening up. I need to stretch it.”

“That’s a nice sweater.”

“Just got it. Thanks.”

“Are you wearing perfume?”

“Maybe a touch. Why?”

“No reason. So how’d that lead pan out at Lunch Mates?”

Smart-ass. “Shouldn’t you be eating something about this time of day?”

“That does sound tempting. We’ll stop on the way. I’ll drive, if you don’t mind. And unless you’d like me to carry you on my shoulders, I think we should take advantage of modern technology and use the elevator.”

“If it’s convenient for you, who am I to argue?”

We took the elevator, and Herb’s car, and after a quick stop at the local Burger King drive-thru we headed for Theresa Metcalf’s apartment.

“So, did you join up or not?” Herb asked, finishing off his last bite of burger.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”