Reverse Metamorphosis book one of the Irrevocable Change trilogy (30 page)

It would be different with Charlie.

Clay awoke at four in the morning and before
leaving the safety of the warehouse, performed the task of changing
license plates. A set of plates from Iowa replaced the local
plates, just incase the witness’s at the parking garage had thought
to get the numbers as he drove away. Then he opened the trunk,
removed a shiny gray Rayon jacket from a bag, and threw the maroon
sweatshirt in the back seat.

His first stop was to park at the side and
toward the back at an all night fast food restaurant. After buying
a newspaper, he stopped in the bathroom to wash his face and comb
his hair. Looking around, he decided on a booth where he could see
both the black car and the entrance. When a sleepy kid on night
shift appeared he ordered coffee and breakfast. He had read most of
the newspaper the night before, but wanted a reason to keep his
face down with his features out of sight.

After eating breakfast he headed for
Charlie’s work place. He thought it ironic these two men had known
his sister intimately, had touched her entire body inside and out,
knew her full name, her address and God only knows what else; and
he was killing them and didn’t even know their middle or last
names. He judged his contact with them to be just as personal as
their contact with his sister, yet he would have to read their
names in the obituary column to learn who they were and who they
left behind. He was still too early to intercept Charlie on his way
to work, so he drove through the service lane of another fast food
restaurant and bought another large cup of coffee. Twice he had
passed police cars and twice he had gotten butterflies in his
stomach, each time hoping they weren’t looking for his stolen black
Chevelle. Approaching the Clark Oil Refinery he thought of pulling
into the employee parking lot. It would be a safe place to hide
instead of traveling on the roadways. Finding a spot at the back of
the lot was easy and he backed in so he could watch the street and
the entrance to the lot. With some effort he slipped the coat off
and reached in the back seat for the sweatshirt. Now he was ready
for action again.

At six fifteen he left the refinery and drove
toward the parts store where Charlie worked. Six blocks away from
the store he found a parking spot on a side street right at the
corner and waited for Charlie to approach. After an eleven minute
vigil he spotted Charlie’s copper Fairlane coming down the street.
Two other cars were close behind Charlie and Clay fell in behind
them. Charlie would turn in at the street before the parts store,
so Clay passed the three vehicles in front of him, drove on by the
parts store, turned right and turned right again into the asphalt
alley behind the row of stores. There was no one else insight close
enough to cause a problem. Charlie had just parked with four other
cars when Clay pulled up behind his car and rolled down the window
glass. The silencer was on the pistol, in his right hand, on the
seat at his hip.

As Charlie got out of his car he saw Clay
parked behind him, nodded, walked over to his car and said “Hi”,
with a quizzical look on his face.

Clay spoke up, “I was following you and
noticed your license plate is about to fall off.”

Charlie was standing next to Clay’s car and
turned partially around to look at his license plate. “I don’t
see…"

Clay shot him three times in the small of the
back with the .32 cal. automatic and watched him crumple and fall
to the ground; sure he had severed the man’s spinal cord. Getting
out of the car he knelt down over the man who was lying on his side
and moaning loudly. Grabbing him by the hair and pulling his head
around, Clay looked him in the eyes “Greg is dead. I could leave
you like this and let you live paralyzed, for your wife and kid to
look at everyday with loathing and disgust, after I let them know
you’re a rapist. Yeah Charlie, rape is what this is about. You,
Greg and Johnny raped my sister. And now all three of you are
paying a high price for the ass you got.” Charlie’s eyes widened
and his jaw dropped. He was in a state of mental shock because of
what was happening to him so unexpectedly. Clay dropped Charlie’s
head, stood up and used his left foot to roll the man’s upper torso
over onto his back. Clay pointed the gun barrel at Charlie’s right
eye and said “Rot in hell, you filthy bastard,” before pulling the
trigger. Charlie’s upper torso flinched and jerked then relaxed.
Clay crouched down, and fired three more hollow point bullets into
Charlie’s shattered head, changing the angle of entry before each
shot. A puddle of blood had already begun to form on the asphalt
from the exit holes made by the bullet fragments.

Before getting back in the car he looked
around slowly. A hundred and fifty feet away a woman was scurrying
against the wind toward the row of stores, shoulders hunched,
looking straight ahead. No one else was in sight. He pulled away
from the body, drove quickly to the end of the lot, and made a left
turn onto the side street.

“So far, so good” he muttered to himself as
he drove back to the warehouse. Inside the empty shell of a
building he again took off the sweatshirt and put it in the car. He
cleaned out the car, putting the pistol and everything he had
brought with him into the empty sack. Finally, he took a five
gallon can of diesel fuel and a box of wood scraps from the trunk
and placed the wood along with his bag of trash in the front seat
of the car. After pouring the fuel over the interior of the car he
left both doors open, struck a match and ignited the kindling in
the wood box. When he was sure the fire would continue to
accelerate, he put on the coat and left the old building. Without
looking back, he walked quickly toward a bus stop two blocks
away.

Switching buses to get back to the train
station where his car was parked took over two hours and at a
quarter past ten he pulled into the parking lot at the health club.
After a long and strenuous workout he joined an aerobics class and
finished the session with half an hour in the lap pool. Then after
a hot shower and a shave he soaked in the hot tub while watching
T.V. The time was approaching two o’clock so there were no news
reports being televised. By then he was hungry and when he left the
club he went by Tony’s bar for a beer and a sandwich.

“You don’t happen to know anything about two
guys getting killed last night and this morning, do you?” Tony
asked with a knowing grin on his big face.

“Should I?” Clay queried while grinning and
trying to eat a huge thick ham sandwich.

“Well when two guys get whacked and the cops
don’t have a single lead I start thinking of you. And take it as a
professional complement from one fella to another.”

“First, yes I did, and second, thank you, I
accept your complement.”

“One of the cops who went to the morgue for
the guy last night said he was ground up like hamburger. And he
said this morning's guy would’ve been crippled for life if the
hitter hadn’t given him a coup de grace; blew the whole back of the
guys head off. The cops can tie them together but don’t know why
somebody had real hard feelings for both of them.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell them.”

“And the escape! Was it planned or was some
of it luck?”

“It was mostly planned. Rolling the wrecker
down the ramp at the posse was impromptu; but it worked.”

“I’ll say it worked. The passenger in the car
was trying to get out of it after he saw the wrecker coming
backwards at him. When the wrecker hit he was outside the car and
the open door hit him, knocked him down, and then the front tire
ran over his damn foot.”

“The foot was luck, his bad luck.”

“Not much of it was luck. You’re good kid,
real good. And if you ever catch me giving your little sister the
eye, just warn me before you whack me.”

Clay reached over and punched Tony on the
shoulder, “Leave my sister alone you big Sicilian Casanova or I’ll
start chasing your old lady.”

“Kid, my old Anna is more woman than a kid
like you could handle, trust me, I know.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right, Anna would end
up giggling and laughing at me and then I’d have to shoot her
too.”

They both laughed, and then Tony invited Clay
to a football game he had been given tickets for on the following
Sunday afternoon.

Clay said his good byes and left the bar
thinking it was a damn good thing Tony didn’t know about the night
Anna spent with him or Tony might tear him apart; and he wasn’t
sure he could shoot Tony to prevent it. But, just as Greg and
Charlie could attest to, no piece of ass is worth dying for.

At home he ate a small serving of food at
supper time with his mom and dad, during which he was grilled by
Margaret about where he had been all night again. He put her off by
saying he had met up with an old high school friend and had ended
up at his apartment instead of coming home late.

“I don’t mean to pry into your personal life,
but I worry about you when you stay out all night and I don’t know
if you’re hurt or something.”

“Mom, Gary and I met in a bar and started
dancing with a couple of girls and it just kind of got later and
later. When we left he invited me to stay over with him instead of
waking you up at two in the morning. And then this morning I went
to the club and spent the day there.”

Walter chimed in then, “Well it certainly
isn’t safe being out on the streets in this town anymore. There
were four more killings last night. One was a family dispute,
another involved a knifing between two friends who got drunk and
started arguing outside a tavern. But the other two are more
bothersome and the police don’t have a clue about them. One young
man was run over by a truck and another young man was gunned down
on his way to work this morning. He was shot in the back and then
executed after he was injured. By God I don’t know what the hell is
happening in this town. We need more policemen and stricter judges
to get these killers off the streets.”

“Calm down Walter, those people were probably
involved in something criminal; drugs, gambling, prostitution or
something. I don’t think just because they were killed it follows
they were honest law abiding citizens.”

“Clayton!” Margaret was surprised at his
opinion and retorted with, “How can you say that? No matter what
they did it is the job of the police and the courts to punish them,
not some killer lurking on the street.”

“I won’t argue the point. But if you wait for
the police to catch them we’ll all die of old age. And as long as
they’re killing each other I’m not as concerned as if innocent
citizens were being killed.”

“Well, I don’t agree with your kind of
thinking, killing is killing and it’s wrong.”

“Walt, we had better change the subject
before I get kicked out of the house.” Clay grinned at both of his
parents and got up from the table and went to the living room. He
was finding living at home more and more difficult. His attitudes
and ideals were constantly slipping out, and they were so radical
in the eyes of his parents he knew with out a doubt the time for
him to move out and be on his own had past. He made up his mind to
be in a house of his own within a year. He would take as many jobs
as possible and be on his own by the following October.

The evening paper was on the coffee table
where Walter had placed it before supper. Clay read the sports page
first and then picked up the “A” section where he read two separate
articles about the two deaths he was interested in. Gregory Robert
Alcott had died in a hit and run accident the police were still
investigating and would only classify as suspicious. Details of the
chase by witnesses at the scene of the accident were described,
including the first car being rammed and disabled on the highway,
and the injury of the passenger in the car at the parking garage.
Clay flipped to the obituary columns and learned the man was
divorced and had no children, but was survived by parents, one
brother and two sisters. “I wonder if the bastard abused them too,”
Clay thought as he read.

Flipping back to page three he read the
article about Charles Elva Rhinholt. The police had classified the
death as a professional style killing. The unarmed man had been
shot in the back and then murdered with shots to the head at point
blank range. Investigators were looking into the man’s background
for ties to organized crime, but had no leads or suspects. No one
had seen the man arrive in the parking lot, and his body was
discovered by an employee of a nearby business when she arrived for
work at ten minutes after seven. Rhinholt was survived by his
mother, a wife and a two year old daughter. As Clay finished
reading the obituary a thought went through his mind, I hope the
recently widowed Mrs. Rhinholt does better picking a new father for
her daughter than she did the first time; not many women get a
second chance without having a crummy ex to deal with.

W
ith the money
donated by Tony’s peers and the bank roll he had been able to save
over the previous year, Clay moved ahead with plans to open an
antique shop.

A real estate agent familiar with the area he
wanted to locate in began the search for a suitable business
location in November 1973. While this process was going on Clay
found a small building to serve as a temporary warehouse and began
buying antiques in earnest, especially furniture. He also purchased
a five year old delivery truck with a twenty foot long cargo bed.
The truck had a power lift gate on the back for loading and
unloading, and boasted a diesel engine for extra power and
longevity. Walter and Margaret tried to be supportive of his plans,
but Clay knew their support was shallow.