Killer (13 page)

Thus deprived, he became angry at the smallest things, although he kept his anger—and all feelings—bottled up inside. The other workers in the kitchen had long since given up trying to make conversation with him, which was fine, but it only increased his isolation, his desperate need to be paid attention. He didn’t care to listen to the mindless kitchen blather about sports or women or their fucking cheap-ass bosses, anyway. He didn’t want to
listen
, he wanted to be
heard.
But not by the crude, ignorant kitchen staff—by his Angel, who was crumbling before his eyes.

So he lost himself in his Bible, and began to branch out in his reading—to the worlds of Poe, Doyle, and a dozen or more mystery writers. They engrossed him and took his mind off his discontent in the hours when he was able. But eventually the books weren’t enough, either. His life was a story in itself, greater than all the books in the world, greater, even, than his Bible.

And then, as he had found before in his young life, just when he was at his most desperate, a miracle arrived.

Caitlin
, her name was, a pretty high school senior who took a waitress job at the truck stop after he’d been there two years. And the moment he saw her, his breath caught in his fifteen year-old throat.

She was his Angel—her skin perfect pale porcelain, her face the same Mona Lisa oval. Her hair and eyes were the wrong color but those could be changed. Even if he didn’t transform her as he had the Witch, hair could be dyed, and he had read that some people wore colored contact lenses. Maybe, at the age of fifteen, he had found someone who could be with him.
Really
with him. The idea of sharing his stories and going to special places with a living, breathing Angel was a thrilling prospect—thrilling to the point of terror. He had never been with a girl; never really even considered it a possibility. Until now.

Caitlin was popular at the truck stop right from the start—full of laughter and vulgar talk with the kitchen crew and the truckers who flirted with her. She was stupid and common but he didn’t care. Once she came to know how special and powerful he was, she would be his.

So one night, when the kitchen staff took a cigarette break in the parking lot, he made his first, fumbling effort to talk to the girl Caitlin.

And she looked right through him like he didn’t exist, then flicked her cigarette away, turned her back on him, and walked away without a word.

He watched her go and the rage came boiling up from the pit of his stomach with such ferocity that he nearly vomited.

To her, he was nothing. He could see it in her face the moment he spoke. It was clear from her blank stare that she had never noticed him, never thought of him. She probably didn’t even know his name. To her, he was just the weird, quiet kid who lived in the rat-hole out back and sweated over the steaming dishes in the grimiest, noisiest part of the kitchen; his sparse adolescent beard patched with acne from the greasy steam bath of the dishwashing tub. He was less than an appliance to her. Less than an insect.

After that night, her daily laughter and flirting sent him into a dizzy, spiraling rage that became harder and harder to hold back.

So he began to plan. He figured it would take about three months to prepare and to do it right. He started by reading more books. True crime stories, more mystery novels, books about police investigation—and he studied the techniques described in them. Then he waited. Watched. Learned her habits, her routine. Since no one paid him any attention, no one noticed him watching.

When he was ready, he broke into the local mortuary and stole some embalming supplies, taking only what he absolutely needed, leaving no trace of his burglary. He found a place to dig, an empty field not far from an antebellum graveyard—now a tourist site, of all things—on the outskirts of town, near the interstate. He dug carefully, first cutting and carefully lifting away the layer of topsoil, keeping the wild growth of weeds intact so he could seamlessly conceal the grave afterward.

He followed the waxing and waning of the moon in the local paper and then, when she finished her late shift on a new-moon Thursday night, he came up behind her as she passed his shed on the way to her car, and he hit her once behind her right ear with a heavy, padded steel pipe, rendering her unconscious but also un-bloodied and unmarked. He carried her five yards to his shed, where he had split open and spread plastic trash bags around carefully. He covered her mouth with several bands of duct tape to mute the screams, and removed the head and hands with a large serrated butcher’s knife he borrowed from the kitchen. He did his embalming work on the head and hands, dyed the hair, and placed the china blue ovals under the eyelids. He applied makeup—very little, since it was young and already resembled the Angel. Then he wrapped the body in the trash bags and drove it in the truck stop’s battered delivery van to the gravesite and buried it, topping the grave with the top layer of soil and thick weeds with meticulous care. Then he returned to his shed, and his new Angel.

She was perfect.

The rage and the restless discontent were gone, and soon also was the decayed former Angel—the transformed Witch—which he cut into small pieces and destroyed, night by night, piece by piece, in the heavy industrial garbage disposer in the kitchen.

The new Angel’s voice was clear and sweet once more. Once more he was listened to, once more he was loved, and once more he was at peace. Peace that passes understanding. She brought his ecstatic feeling to new heights.

Even though physically she was new, she was still the same Angel—the one who had soothed him since he was five years old. The only one who knew everything about him. The only one who loved him and praised him and recognized his extraordinary power.

He would have to leave West Virginia soon, but not too soon. He waited until the searches and the public prayer vigils ended (if only they knew!). And when the locals started speculating that the pretty, flirtatious Caitlin Stubbs had simply run off with a trucker, he knew it was time to leave.

But while he waited, there came another, surprisingly powerful source of immense pleasure as a result of his transformation of the girl. It happened four days after he changed her. He was heading into the convenience store across the highway from the truck stop when he saw it: his Angel’s picture on the front page of the local newspaper, inside a vending machine. Trembling with excitement, he dropped a quarter into the machine’s slot and took two copies of the paper and returned to his shed and read and re-read the article about the missing girl Caitlin.

His pride and power swelled up in him as never before. His story was being told—being read by hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Of course, no one knew it was
his
story, but it was enough just to see the barest facts about the story in print. And the picture of her…of his Angel. It was HE
who put that picture there. His work was immortalized, and it filled him with a delighted grandeur almost as enthralling as the Angel herself.

Day after day, he bought the papers and followed the stories and read every word dozens of times. He saw the reporter’s byline on each article and thought about calling him, but of course he knew that was idiotic. Nevertheless, he indulged in the thrilling fantasy of talking to him over and over. He hated that some of the facts were omitted from the articles—some were even outright wrong. There was, of course, no mention of the grave, since no one had found it. And there were vague, titillating allusions to a possible sexual assault, which offended him. He wanted his story told
right.
He could set the record straight, he could tell his whole story…he had to. But he had no one but the Angel to tell it to. And, of course, she already knew.

Over time, the news articles went from the front page to the second, and then reduced to a sprinkling of occasional small items in the back of the paper. Finally, when the articles ceased altogether and things went back to normal in the small town, he bought a fake driver’s license from a Mexican trucker who trafficked in such things. He quit his job at the truck stop, caught a ride with an old rigger from the Midwest—his heavy, soft suitcase in hand—and rode all the way to Kansas City with his new Angel and his first published stories.

According to the license in his pocket he was now twenty. And when the Mexican asked what name he wanted on the license he didn’t hesitate. He chose the name of the hero of his favorite Bible story: the brave young leader of the Israelites—the righteous ruler, the warrior-poet, the bold lover—the boy who killed the giant, then cut off the giant’s head to prove his victory, and was made king.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I wake the morning after beating Sallie Fun and find a note under my hotel door from the front desk. There is a package waiting for me. I call to have it sent up, along with breakfast. I wash up and when I come out of the bathroom someone knocks on my door. I put on the hotel robe and a waiter pushes a breakfast cart in and hands me a box. I open it and find slacks and a shirt, still with the tags on, and a note from Nicki:
“Guessed at your size, hope it’s ok. Here’s Dr. Abrams’ address. He’ll meet us at ten-thirty a.m.”

I eat my breakfast and cut the plastic tags off the clothes with the bread knife from the room service cart. Nicki’s good taste extends to men’s clothes as well as women’s: gray Zegna slacks and a sky blue Paul Smith shirt with a combined price tag that’s half my mortgage. I put the clothes on and look in the mirror. I look a lot better.

I leave the hotel and walk three blocks to the address Nicki gave me and ride up to the fifth floor and find a door marked
Dr. B. Abrams, M.D.”
I enter and find Nicki in the waiting room.

“
Much
better,” she smiles when she sees me in my new clothes.

“Yeah, I clean up good.”

She is back in her lawyer uniform—tailored black jacket, cream-colored silk blouse, and conservative black skirt. We say nothing about last night, but I feel the deep stirring again and I know that something has changed in me. The ground has shifted under my feet and some safe center of gravity seems to be slipping away.

“I get the sizes right?”

“Perfect,” I say. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, thank Barney’s for opening at nine-thirty on a weekday.”

“I’ll thank them when I take them back. These clothes cost more than Miley Cyrus tickets.”

“Shut up,” she smiles.

The inner office door opens and a receptionist says Nicki’s name and we follow her back to the office inside.

Dr. Benjamin Abrams rises to greet us when we walk in. He is early sixties, with sparse gray hair combed back, wearing a cable-knit cardigan sweater. His eyes appraise me right away without distance or judgment. He looks me in the eye when he shakes my hand and gestures for Nicki and me to sit.

“I appreciate your meeting us on short notice, Dr. Abrams,” Nicki says.

“Of course,” Abrams says. “You said it was urgent.”

Nicki turns to me. “Jack, I’ve brought Dr. Abrams up to speed on everything except the conversation we had last night. If you’d like, you can go ahead and talk to him with me here or I can wait out in the waiting room while you tell him the rest.”

I shrug. “I don’t mind, either way…”

“I think it would be best if Jack and I were to talk alone. Would you mind?” Abrams says to Nicki.

“Absolutely not,” Nicki says, and she gets up and turns to me. “I’ll be right outside.”

“Okay,” I say, and watch her leave.

Abrams looks at me and smiles. “So, I hear you’re having some troubles.”

I nod and, once again, I tell my strange story, starting with Sheriff Claire Boyle’s knock at my door. Abrams listens, nodding occasionally, his eyes never leaving mine for long, and then he sits very still as I sum it up with the events at St. Stephen.

“Nicki told me we would be trying to work on some things you’ve forgotten. From five years ago, I think she said?”

“Yes. I was drinking heavily for over a year, after the death of my fiancée.”

“How did she die?” he asks.

“She shot herself. I found her.”

Abrams closes his eyes for a second and lifts his head in a slight nod, absorbing this. I have never been in therapy, but now I have a better understanding of its appeal. Here is a man—an understanding, avuncular man listening to me spell out a deeply painful event, and I feel comforted and encouraged to tell him about it because I know he can never tell anyone. He knows little or nothing about me, except what I am telling him. He has no preconceptions, no axe to grind, his job is only to help me.

I talk about finding Sara, and about the fifteen months of drinking that followed, and my lack of memory from that time. He is quiet for a moment after I finish.

“There are a lot of misconceptions about memory,” he says. “We have this idea that our memories are like files in a computer, waiting to be accessed whenever we need them, but it doesn’t work like that. Far from it. Memories are constructed, in much the same way we construct fantasies—in our imaginations. You’re an imaginative fellow, a writer, and I’m sure you’re already aware of the connection between your own memories and the books you write.”

“Yes I am,” I say.

“Memories come to us as distorted versions of what we’ve experienced. Two people can observe the same event and an hour later retell it in completely different ways. They’re not lying, it’s just that their imaginations are reconstructing events differently, and their imaginations are affected by anything and everything—suggestion, fantasy, trauma, their own desires to shape them.

“In your case alcoholism played a part in your amnesia, without question. But that alone doesn’t explain your lack of recall. You show no signs of Korsakoff’s syndrome—amnesia due to alcoholism. People with Korsakoff’s are completely unaware of their memory defect, and they show no sign of concern or worry about it, and that doesn’t appear to be the case here, am I right?”