| Writing Samples - Novels "Riverbend" Chapter Five- The Barn |
Chapter 5. The Barn Second show in a second-run theater, somewhere in Iowa: Tom Cruise as a rogue detective out to stop the nation’s worst serial killer in a half-century did over two hundred million before coming here. America loves its serial killers. In the last row where it’s always dark, a diehard pops open his days-old paper, panning for light under the dim glow of rusted first-generation high-hats in the black and moldy cottage cheese ceiling far above, long since a safety hazard. Only one headline catches his eye: RIVERBEND KILLER FINALLY STOPPED Murder Victim Victim of Intended Victim? “Catchy,” the reader mutters to himself. “This guy should be writing beer commercials.” SEATTLE—Prostitutes were spotted in record numbers last week as word leaked that the area's most infamous serial killer may finally be dead, ironically the victim of his most recent quarry, according to the King County Sheriffs Department. Sheriffs’ spokeswoman Sondra Veere was quick to point out that the man, Ralph Waldo Sittenfeld, 42, of Tacoma Heights, has not been positively linked to any of the 27 murders attributed to the so-called Riverbend Killer. However, she seemed “fairly certain” he would be by week’s end. “’Fairly certain,’” the reader burlesques. And: “Someone needs to play catch up.” He didn’t expect to find anything new in the news. Just killing Time. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Leslie Francis Moore, lead agent of the bureau’s new elite Target Active Serial Killers (TASK) force, and the profiler assigned to this case, declined comment other than to say DNA tests were being run. “Run against what?” comes a whispery laugh. “Somebody knows something I don’t?” He runs his finger down the list on Page Three. A pause to reflect, a shake of the head, positive I.D. Imaginary lines are drawn through 11, 17, 20-22 and 25. “Copycats,” he gripes. If you can’t be original, don’t bother. That’s what his grandfather taught him—just before he hanged himself. It wasn’t much, but it stayed with him like finding the body. Numbers 12 and 13, Marjorie Moore and Melissa Ann Moore, get a nod, even though the numbering is off. A related headline reads: County Sheriffs Embarrassed by Killer Car. A photo of the brown Monte Carlo in the impound yard shows an unreservedly unhappy Bondini walking away in the foreground. This gets a laugh and, with only column fillers left, the paper goes down. There’s a small crowd tonight; mostly teens and young couples, a few farmworkers—and one mismatch: a few rows down, an old guy, weathered from four decades of alcohol and five packs a day, with a kid, fifteen-sixteen, three earrings, an attempt at a pale moustache under black-dye hair, green camo’s and some ugly-assed OJ boots. Could be anyone’s runaway. But he’s not. “What have we here?” The Reader wishes he could hear what they’re saying with all that gesturing towards the back. The lobby? Across the street? California? Japan? The old one nods, hands over some money. Ah, the snack bar. The Kid figures he’s developed a pretty cold I’m-no-one-to-fuck-with face and turns it on anyone who dares look. He feels The Power, throwing it freely from four rows down. Doesn’t hear, “You’re mad-doggin’ the wrong junkyard pitbull, kid,” and seriously misreads the smile behind it. “What the fuck you grinnin’ at, ya old faggot,” the kid snarls, then laughs. He can smell a cop a long city block off. And, here in the country? Shit. Fucker stands out like a cow in a Cadillac shop. No cop can touch him, he’s thinking; not with his fake I.D. and Grampa takin’ me out to the ninety-nine cent show of a weeknight. He’s got it all down, ready to run. No one gets over on him, not anymore. Just look. Just dare to. The Reader does, halcyon smile never leaving his lips. The kid’s on his turf, now. Deceptively inert eyes let the punk pass then turn to the next paper, dated four days later. Things have progressed. SEATTLE—Police got an unexpected break yesterday in the ongoing Riverbend Killer investigation— one they probably didn’t want. A computer wire search of known felons has turned up indications that the man identified as Ralph Waldo Sittenfeld, 42, of Tacoma Heights, found murdered along the Black River just south of Seattle last week, and at first thought to be the Riverbend Killer, is in fact one Henry David Merfinridge, 39, of Phoenix, AZ. According to police in Butte, Montana, Merfinridge is a principal suspect in the murders of nine young women over the past six months, all suspected prostitutes, in an area spanning Idaho, Montana and North Dakota, where, according to C.O.Y.O.T.E. (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) representative Alicia LeConte, prostitution is decidedly not a boom business. Butte police say they don’t know how Merfinridge was able to find nine prostitutes in this area in such a short time, but they are certain he is the Tri-State Shooter they’ve been tracking. (Please turn to Page 13) “Tri-State Shooter. Christ. They need the beer guy.” He follows directions to page thirteen. Tri-State Shooter Found Dead—Continued from Page One Using DMV records and trace evidence recovered from a 1978 Monte Carlo thought to have been used in the murder of Merfinridge, and later found in the King County impound yard (see related article), Sheriffs quickly traced the older Chevrolet to Sittenfeld. Armed with a search warrant, a Sheriffs Department Rapid Response (SWAT) Team swarmed Sittenfeld’ s house in Tacoma Heights, late yesterday afternoon. What they found was both surprising and disturbing. “I’m on pins and needles,” he says. But it’s better than he thinks. In a story which continues to offer one bizarre twist after another, K-9 dogs led police to a mound of freshly turned soil behind a crawlspace opening in Sittenfeld’s basement. Excavation of the site divulged a grisly denouement: Sittenfeld’s mostly decomposed body. Police say Merfinridge left Montana sometime in August for the Sea-Tac area and apparently “lucked” onto Sittenfeld, a drywall installer who was “the spitting image of the Tri-State Shooter.” Merfinridge then murdered Sittenfeld, buried him in his own basement and, posing as Sittenfeld’s brother, planned to continue his murder spree into Washington State. “So, now he’s the Quad-State Killer. Tough break, Montana.” Area residents said Merfinridge did indeed bear a striking resemblance to Sittenfeld. Both men were of average height, blond and slim with “prominent noses and jutting foreheads,” according to an elderly neighbor. When asked where Sittenfeld was, Merfinridge told the man, who has asked not to be identified, that Sittenfeld had been forced to return “back East to care for their ailing mother.” The neighbor confirmed that Sittenfeld’s mother had lived in Boston, though he had thought she was deceased. The elderly man said he accepted Merfinridge’s explanation, however, because, “Henry David (Merfinridge) was the spitting image of Ralph Waldo (Sittenfeld), and who would name two people in such a similarly odd fashion if it wasn’t the same mother?” Police agreed. The photo of Merfinridge from a bad check beef in his home state of Georgia doesn’t ring a bell. Neither does Sittenfeld’s blurry DMV picture or a location shot of the elderly neighbor, identified as Earnest Gore in the caption despite his text request for anonymity. Scanning the background stuff on Montana—victims, cops, maps—the Reader makes a mental note of Sheriff Red Stimson’s name, his county and his role in the drama. “Might have to pay you a visit someday, Red,” the Reader vows. “Shake things up a bit.” Myriad prospects come to mind. And, how it all makes sense, now! Les, back on the case, a body in the woods at Riverbend, some second-rate serial killer; and brothers killing brothers who aren’t brothers at all, and killers killing killers. He thinks: It really is a perfect world, isn’t it? The airheads are right. You just have to sit back and let it all happen around you, then step in and do your part when it’s your turn. So, be prepared! The Call can come at any moment. And the little punk’s coming back now, stuffing popcorn, dropping some. “Sloppy,” the Reader thinks aloud. “Not a good quality in your line of work, kid.” Then he leans back to enjoy the show, happy with how the evening will turn out—just like the movie: Someone gets caught. The lights dim. There will be no previews for the late show. Poor Little Farm Girl doesn’t fit in around here and wants it known. The hair’s too blonde, the roots too dark; seven piercings on display, and a few more. Makes her feel grown up. She can’t wait. Her Momma died a few years back—three, she thinks, though it could be four—and Daddy hasn’t picked her up at work in over a year. It’s okay, she always says, hitchhiking makes her feel “free.” Every night after the snack bar, one of the local boys is usually waiting outside the theater to trade some herb for sex. She thinks it’s fair. Sex is her currency, her weapon, her addiction. Already. Tonight, the boys are off somewhere; probably down at the reservoir drinking beer, thinking about skinny dipping on a warm night. She’s swum with all of them—once, all together. It was the only time she ever got more dick than she knew what to do with. She felt degraded and liberated at the same time. It was heaven. Too bad she never found out how much she hates men. Poor Little Farm Girl, thumb out, Daddy at home, alone. He’ll sleep through it. A knocking lime-green pickup slows up and pulls off, gliding silently over the hardpack alongside the pavement. She doesn’t recognize the old Chevy from around here, because it’s not. “Need a ride?” the skinny Granpa behind the wheel asks. She’s never seen him either, but she remembers the kid from the snack stand. His hair is so cool; he is so sexy. She thought so the second he came up and asked for a small popcorn and she told him how she usually walked home after the show but didn’t think anyone’d be there for her tonight. Then she gave him a free medium Dew. He took the hint—right back to his faux Pappy. “It’s awful late,” the Old One advises. “Not safe out, even around here.” “Girl can’t be too safe,” she agrees. But she doesn’t mean it. Danger’s half the fun; safe’s none. “Smart girl,” they nod; say they’ll “just drive on, then.” Real homey, from “up around Conners.” She’s never heard of it; never, because it doesn’t exist. “No,” she stops them, as if just then reconsidering, “it’s kinda cold out, tonight,” and climbs in with a shiver to prove her point; knowing her tight little top will second the motion. “Luke,” the old man says his name is, laying the cornpone on thick. “An’ this here’s Li’l Luke.” “Shit.” The kid hates the Name Game. He wants to be Smash or Knifer, Cut’n’Loose or HangDoggie D. Anything but Luke. And Little Luke? Christ’a’Mighty! But he does his part—the shy look-over, the cautious smile—thinking how she’s smalltown pretty and would probably go off with them just for some regular smoke. And she probably would. “Wanna get high?” he asks. “Sure,” she answers. Always. He presents the fattie he had waiting behind his other ear and smiles. In the spirit of cooperation, she punches the lighter in with her big toe—sandals already on the floor—and giggles. He asks how old she is. “Fifteen,” she says, proudly; a badge of honor. “Sixteen, soon?” Gramps wonders, leaning up to look around. “No, just turned,” she says with even more pride. And turns her already full body on The Kid. Two of a kind, she thinks, happy to meet one of her own in this godforsaken shithole of a nothing hometown. “Wanna get a room?” he asks, making sure to sound uncertain. “Sure,” she says with no incertitude at all. She’s already had everyone her age and 20 years older in the county at least twice; a few younger, but mostly as a favor to someone. She had VD once—they still call it VD around here— and herpes too; but she hasn’t had an outbreak in a month. Then she had that kidney thing, but sulpha drugs cleared it up. The clap was stubborner. She thought she had AIDS once, but it was just a bad flu. Had Buddy John beat up Teddy Joe for givin’ it to her, then said she was sorry she didn’t have it after all soon as she found out; forget it Buddy John was the one gave her herpes. In the end, she’s proud of her medical rap sheet. The dash lighter pops. He torches up and passes it over. She takes a deep hit, leaning back to blow whispered smoke in his ear: “What about your grampa? He don’t like to watch or nothin’.” Not that it would matter, but it’s the principle of the thing; she’s at least got to ask. If she only knew what Granpa likes. “Naw,” Little Luke chuckles, all downhome. Granpa’s trained him well. “He cain’t even git it up no more.” They share a cruel laugh. Gramps gives an appropriate snort out the window, thinking how quickly his teen liege took to The Life, and how sometimes it’s almost too easy. And just about then, as they pass under the last light at the edge of town, she chips in with: “I know a place. Won’t cost you a room, neither.” She loves pushing the envelope, breaking the rules, bein’ alive! That won’t last. Granpa pushes his grubby little .38 to her eye. “P-please, m-mister. P-please d-d-d-don’t.” She can’t believe she’s been this stupid. She knew she might end up like this someday; just not so soon, and not in some damn old barn! Poor Little Farm Girl doesn’t feel so grown up, now. Daddy! The Old Killer runs a craggy finger through her down, then scrubs the small tattoo above—a happy cartoon mouse holding a little red rose—with some lardy saliva to see if it comes off. It doesn’t; it’s real. Real as this. “Plea...ea...ea..ease. I’ll do whatev—“ Granpa punches straight down. Short, jerky sobs form a blood bubble from her nose that pops red on Crest Extra-White teeth. A familiar metallic taste fills her mouth and makes her think of Daddy again, of all those years and all he did to her. She never minded. It gave her a reason to hate him more, and this awful place called Home. A good hate which sustained her in all the nothingness that was her life here, fueling her rebellion and sending her on night rides to the reservoir with the Iowa Badd Boyz. Now she knows: They weren’t so bad; this is bad. Poor Little Farm Girl looks to her Young Killer for deliverance; but he’s already had his. Her wetness still with him. It had been so good! How could it have ended this way? Eyes closed, he’s lost in memories of those two young housewives from New Mexico with the dyed-green pubic hair. What a surprise that had been! A lost-bet dare between girlfriends. It ended up in his pocket. Those girls from down Nachez, with they pretty green snatches, he kept singing while the Old One howled the night away; carving them up after he’d defiled their dead bodies with his rancid sex fluids in that field by— Bang! The shot seems awfully loud. It brings the Kid right back, suddenly vulnerable in his nakedness. “Someone might come,” he warns. “Yeah, me,” the Old Killer cackles, and sets his smoking .38 aside. Poor dead farm girl. “Hey, fellahs. What’s up?” The voice is low, calm. And new. Gramps goes for the .38 without looking. He doesn’t make it. The roar from the big bore .44 Taurus makes their two-inch Detective Special sound like a girl’s gun—louder than anything The Kid’s ever heard. A heavy hollow-point catches the old death-fucker in the chest and blows a hole out his back nearly big as his head. It slows him down substantially. But he’ll keep scratching for his rusting Smith & Wesson. What else can he do? Young Punk Kid recognizes that smiley faggot from the movies! but doesn’t move. That’s a big gun. Who the fuck is he?! “You boys having fun, tonight?” The man from the last row sounds like he is, with his smoking magnum. “Sir, uh...” Blank. The Kid wishes he’d kept shut coming up the aisle; he never would’ve said a word! if he’d known it would lead to this. Now, he searches for any lie that might save his useless life. “I didn’t do nothin’,” he tries. “I just...I...” “Just what?” the man says. “Sat over there and played with that sorry little wingnut’a yours while this sorry old bastard did all the dirty work?” “It...it is k-kinda...k...k...kinda small. But m...may...m...maybe it’ll grow some when I g...get older.” “You’re not gonna get any older, stupid.” He shoves his barrel through thick, stinking air at the dead girl’s motionless body. “You and Gramps don’t know it’s wrong to kill innocent people?” “He...he...he ain’t...really...my...g...gran...grampa.” “Gee, how’d I ever guess that?” Punk Kid shrugs. He doesn’t know; doesn’t have a clue. Sixteen suddenly feels like six. He wants his Daddy, now. Too bad he killed him four years ago after setting fire to the church. He’s been running ever since. It’s a lifestyle, now. Like that old hippie couple he met in another barn, once. Peace signs on their bus and they blew up a bank and killed a guard. No remorse. It’s the only part he understood. Granpa’s almost to his gun now; just any other old man hoping to stick around a little longer and live out his last years in peace. His fingertips graze the chipped brown wooden grip and he smiles. Freedom is a breath away. The second shot takes off half his head. It’s louder than the first, somehow—the expectation. The kid shakes visibly. “Wh...what...kinda cop...are...you!” The old one’s Executioner snorts at the irony and shakes his head over the dead girl. “Tits has only two ‘T’s by the way. You ignorant country fucks. One at the beginning, one at the end.” Dropout Kid looks over. Titts, his phony PawPaw wrote on her in her own blood—just after he ripped out the little gold ring for a souvenir. After. Blood ran but she felt nothing. They laughed. It’s not so funny, now. “O...Okay. S...sorry,” the Kid says, trying for sincerity as best he can. He wishes he could reverse time, play it again, so he wouldn’t be here. Or just run away, like usual. But this time he knows he’s up against it—and a wall of hay, too. Pressing back to feel the needles in his back, to know he’s still here and it hasn’t ended yet. To think he still has a chance. “Look at you, you’re a mess,” the one still standing says. Tough Kid hadn’t even realized he shit himself. Looking down now, that tight choking feeling threatening to close his throat. “And I’ll bet you two thought you were real professionals,” the man in control says. If there’s one thing he hates beyond hope, it’s ineptitude. The kid shrugs, helpless. Darting thoughts search his infected, desperate memories. There must be some way out of this! He eyes the door—the .44—knows he’d never make it. Maybe a bribe; that usually works. Even the hardest bastards jump for a chance at Young. “I could do you!” he swears for all to hear. “Every night if you want! I’m good. I’m really good! And you can do me all the time! I can take it! I even like it, sometimes!” And sometimes, he does. “Christ.” The Killer scowls and raises his Taurus. The shot sounds louder yet, pointed right at him like it is. But this one isn’t intended to kill, just to make a point. It’s made. The bullet blows every bit of his maleness off. He screams, losing his head. Lots of “Oh God!”s and “Oh dear God no!”s, just like he heard from women across five states. He never thought he’d hear it out of his own mouth. Folly of Youth. “No!” Mad that he can’t stop what he knows is coming, he promises this new God he suddenly finds crowding his heart that he will live a better life from this moment on, if he can just be spared. But he knows the truth: If he gets out of this, he’ll go right back to his old ways; probably kill even more to make up for his temporary lapse. He suspects this new God knows it too, but hopes He doesn’t. “Pl....pl...ple...please, sir. Pl...pl...ple...please!” He doesn’t care if he sounds like she did, like some pitiful girl about to die. He just wants mercy. He’ll get none. “You two make me sick,” the man with the big revolver says. “Wh...why?” the kid chokes out between sobs. “We ain’t s...so bad! Just n...normal people gone a l...little o... off.” Must be a new definition of normalcy, one this Killer hasn’t heard. “DNA everywhere. Semen, blood, feces. Vaginal fluids on you, in your hair. You came in her, didn’t you?” The kid nods, but has no clue what any of this means. “You probably pissed in here somewhere too, didn’t you?” Another nod. Once on the wall and once on the steps, more for irreverence than relief. “And what was this, lunch?” Standing over the remains of a sandwich in the dirt. “You were gonna leave it here, right?” The Kid shrugs. Why not? “Hair, fibers, footprints. Hay and dirt on your clothes. Those are the same shoes you wear every day, aren’t they?” He doesn’t have to look to know the kid nods. “Tire tracks, gas and oil leaking out, coolant; mud from here on your truck, on the floormats, the seats. How’d you ever expect to get away with this?” The kid manages only, “Have...been.” “Well, it’s a miracle, kid. A fucking miracle.” “You...you...” The Kid can barely speak now, the shock is so great, the bleeding so prolific, the pain so unbearably deep, coursing his body like bad drugs. Like those Angel Trumpets in Florida last year. Tears fall under muted whimpers. “Dish it out but can’t take it, huh?” his Killer says, not about to hide his contempt—and shoots the Kid again. The Kid cries out; he can’t stop it! Any of it. And another part of his body is gone—this time his shoulder—along with his favorite tattoo: the Grim Reaper holding a dripping, severed head with The Kid’s face. He designed it himself. What goes around... “What are you DOING?!” he suddenly hears himself screaming in piercing, straight-as-an-unbroken-line-to- forever disbelief, reeling, only his adolescent meanness keeping him even remotely conscious. The answer is simple: “Sending a message.” “To WHO?!” “To someone...who will understand it.” It’s the complete calm that is so truly, deeply frightening. “You’re the most fucked-up’dest cop I ever saw,” he swears. And a last, futile “WHO ARE YOU?!” echoes like an empty canyon calling back to him from his own beyond. “Okay, kid.” What can it hurt at this point? “Think.” The Dying Kid tries. It’s all but impossible. His Killer helps. “I knew where you were going, what you were up to; identified your victim before you did; waited for you outside the theater; followed you here. THINK!” A first flash of emotion. Slipping away on a ebbing tide of wakefulness, watching the shores of This World receding—numb and floating— the kid struggles against the cold currents of his own immediate and unquestioned destiny to pull himself back in for one last grasp. He can’t check out leaving a final great mystery like this unsolved. A second later, his eyes go wide. “Oh sweet Jesus!” A look of purest fear crosses his face. Now, he knows: “You’re one of us.” It brings a scornful laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself, kid. We don’t even shit in the same hole.” “THEN WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!” He can take no more. Even the crying has stopped. He just wants to know. And to end it. He’s about to get his wish. “Well kid, they call me...” The young killer looks up expectantly, but sees only the flash. So close he doesn’t hear it this time as the big slug splits the air, and his forehead, brains and half his skull out the back. The sentence is finished: “Riverbend.” |
