JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (33 page)

Rachael drove around the downtown area for several minutes, noting all of this.

The main strip was seedy, sporting the majority of the bars, pool halls, and the X-rated bookstores and peepshows. All of the shops and restaurants were on the bottom floor of large buildings that spanned ten stories or more. The tallest buildings were in the center of the downtown district, and Rachael could make out corporate logos in some of them advertising phone companies and financial institutions. There were several apartment buildings peppered around the downtown district, and as she drove around she saw a residential section, populated mainly by duplexes and more apartment buildings. Further south were lower class neighborhoods sporting small homes. She doubled back and headed north to the downtown area, her mind searching for a link. It was quite feasible that their killer had lived very close to here. He had to have lived within at least a few minutes of where he had picked up Alice and Howard. If that was the case, where did he spend his days? Did he perhaps work downtown as well?

She had tucked that thought in the back of her mind and caught Interstate 31

heading north, out of town. The onramp was right off the main drag, Lincolnway West, and she saw how easy it would have been for him to pick his victims up, perhaps drive a few blocks south to his house or apartment with the prospect of sex, kill them, then pack them back in his car and drive through the downtown district to catch the Interstate. She made a note to check the on-ramps in the residential areas surrounding downtown. She headed out of town and within thirty minutes found herself parking in the little grove off the side of the road where he surely must have parked—she saw how concealed it was in the darkness—and trotted through the woods with her flashlight. She stopped fifty yards into the woods. It was cold, her breath misting in front of her as she exhaled. She checked her stopwatch. From the moment she'd left the downtown area and gotten on the freeway it had taken twenty minutes.

As she drove back downtown she turned this little experiment over in her mind.

What she wanted to do now was wait until perhaps well after midnight and make a similar run, although this time from the residential areas surrounding downtown, and drive straight out here. The reason was obvious: if he had abducted his victims around seven-thirty in the evening, he surely didn't set off to dispose of the bodies until well after midnight. She quickly nixed this idea. He would have been too smart for that. He would know that there would be a heavy police presence in the downtown area at this time, setting up sobriety checkpoints, and just being on the general lookout for the usual crimes that went with a lot of drinking and the other things peepshows and the like spawned.

There was no doubt that their killer had been careful, that she was sure of. But then, both Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim had disappeared on weeknights, and it was more plausible for him to have killed and disposed of his victims on the same night. Made sense. Police presence wouldn't be as heavy. It also gave her more insight to who their killer might be as well.

She parked her rental car in the parking lot and set off back to the university district. Assuming she was right in her deductions, he had to work some kind of job that was out of the norm of most means of employment. Howard Manheim disappeared on a Tuesday night, Alice Henderson on a Thursday. This indicated that if he spent the entire night killing them, doing God knows what with their dead bodies afterward, then driving them out to the woods later that night to dispose of them, theoretically he was awake well into the morning. From her reading on the subject of serial killers, she knew that this entire act would keep him high and sustained until the wee hours of the morning, after which he probably sacked out and slept. He would have woken up feeling fulfilled and refreshed. It was the only methodology she could think of that could account for the long time gap between murders; if he had a normal nine-to-five job, he surely could have called in sick to his job the following day. But no, she was 99 percent certain that he didn't have a normal nine-to-five job, that his employment might have been sporadic, or perhaps a graveyard shift somewhere. Or maybe ... ?

She was stepping onto the street, heading toward the main drag as these thoughts went through her mind. She was concentrating on them so much that she almost didn't notice the college kids until they almost collided with her. She pulled back, startled, and they did likewise. “Excuse me,” she said, stepping around them. It was a group of three guys and three girls, all dressed in heavy lettermen jackets and blue jeans, hoods pulled over their heads against the bitter cold. One of them, a pretty blonde girl, smiled at her in acknowledgement as they passed her. Rachael continued on her destination and had almost put the college kids out of her mind when it hit her.

She stopped and looked back at the college kids, who were retreating into the doorway of a pool hall just past the parking garage. Their laughter drifted back to her.

Rachael stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching as they went into the pool hall, then she looked out at the foot traffic on the street and noticed more of them.

College kids. All of them either heading toward the pool hall, the bar across the street, or the coffee shop on the corner of Grand and Central. Or leaving those spots toward the parking garage or toward their apartments.

A sudden thought occurred to her. A tall, gangly kid of twenty walked past her, head bent down in concentration. She stopped him by tugging at his jacket. “Excuse me,”

she said. “Are you a student?"

He stopped, startled, his eyes growing wide from behind the coke bottle thick glasses that straddled his face. “Yeah, er ... why?"

“What school do you go to?"

The kid looked puzzled, but answered her. “University of Indiana."

“How far is it from here?"

The kid shrugged and pointed in the direction she was heading. “About five miles that way."

“Thanks.” She headed in that direction, paying no heed to the puzzled look of the college student, intent only on following this new lead which burned at her nerves.

Chapter 21

March 26, 1998, 8:38 p.m.

Los Angeles, Ca

Channel One.

A woman in her mid-forties with short black hair and a plump ass is taking it missionary position from a man with a walrus mustache. The wet sounds of fucking emanate from the speakers amid their moans of passion and the squeaks of the bedsprings. Charley changed the channel on the video booth's television.

Channel Two
.

A gorgeous blonde with waist length hair, augmented tits the size of basketballs, and bee-stung lips is taking it doggy style from a muscular man with long blonde hair.

The sound of her ass slapping the man's pelvis creates a calm susurration in Charley's senses as he imagines himself as the long-haired man plowing into her. Charley's penis grows in his trousers.

Channel Three
.

Two women, a blonde and a brunette with shapely figures and large breasts, dressed in black leather bondage gear. A man dressed in similar gear is fucking one of the girls in the ass while the second girl inserts a double-headed dildo in her vagina. The second head of the dildo teams up with the real thing buried in the girl's ass as his rough hands slap her butt.

Channel Four
.

An oriental woman with full red lips is engulfing a large cock, taking its engorged length in her mouth.

Charley felt warm, realizing he had held his breath for a moment. He felt his heart beat faster as his excitement grew. His cock was rock hard in his pants. His eyes were riveted on the screen as the woman's head bobbed up and down the immense cock.

Charley shifted his buttocks on the plastic seat in the video booth. He was in one of twenty video booths in Ken's Adult Video and Books in Highland Park. He had just put five dollars worth of tokens in the booth's coin slot and was trying to find a suitable video currently playing on the store's video system. He had come here tonight because mother was getting on his nerves—nothing new there, mother got on his nerves every goddamned day. Usually he just stayed in his room and watched videos while she ranted and raved in the living room. But tonight she had been especially annoying. He couldn't turn up the volume on his television because she would simply pound on the door to his room and scream at him to turn it down. She would sit outside in the living room, pleading for him to come out and pray with her, or to sit up with her and watch TV. He'd tell her he was really tired and was going to bed, and just as he would get in the mood and put in a porn video she would start in on him again. He very well couldn't turn up the volume to
that
—she would know what he was doing in there, and she would start nattering at him that he would go blind if he kept doing that, or that it would fall off, or he would go to hell. After ten minutes of trying to watch sexual action amid his mother's ranting and raving above the sound affects that helped put him in the mood, he had turned the tape off with a snort of disgust, put on his jacket and shoes and headed out of the house. He ignored his mother as he brushed past her, telling her that he was going out for awhile in response to her “where do you think you're going now? It's late!” He got into his truck and headed out of the neighborhood toward Highland Park.

And now he was here at Ken's Adult Video and Book Emporium, trying to get into the mood again.

He was leery about jacking off in the privacy of the video booth. He had heard that they installed surveillance cameras in these booths and that sometimes police stings were made. He didn't want to get busted on an indecent exposure charge. He just wanted to immerse himself in pure, unadulterated lust in peace for the next ten minutes.

The oriental woman sucking the immense cock brought the man off with a hearty ejaculation of semen that splashed on her face. She licked it up, smearing it across her lips. Charley's breathing grew strained, his skin grew tingly as he watched. With a trembling hand, he changed the channel.

Channel Five
.

Two well-built males romp it up under God's blue sky. One is on his hands and knees taking it up the rear from the other, his muscles rippling. Charley noted with bated breath that the man getting fucked had an incredible hard-on. He watched mesmerized for a minute, breath held. He exhaled as both men reached climax, semen landing on flesh and the wet, green grass.

Channel Six
.

A woman is tied to a bed, arms and legs spread wide. She is blindfolded, a rubber-ball gag stuffed into her mouth and tied into place by a strip of leather. Two men dressed in bondage gear and black leather masks with eyeholes are swarming over her, one teasing her between her legs with his hand, the other brandishing a whip. Her cries are those of pain and rapture.

Charley's breathing grew faster, more urgent.

He flipped through the channels faster.

The middle aged woman was now taking it doggy style, screaming in ecstasy ...

the woman with the basketball size tits was squeezing her lover's cock between her man-made assets, urging him on with feral eyes ... mingled cries of passion created a soundtrack as a cock spurted semen over a smooth, white female ass ... a double penetration scene as the oriental woman from the oral sex reel rocked in double tandem as a third cock made its way toward her open and waiting mouth ... ?

His breathing grew harsher, his skin tingled
... ?

...as two male tongues entwined with each other, male fingers moving across male chests ... ?

...
his cock so hard that it hurt
... ?

...and a female face pressed into the flowery folds of another woman, her finger reaching down to softly part ... ?

Charley rose to his feet and exited the booth, his breath held as he pushed through the double barroom-style doors of the video arcade and went past the movie display racks, the magazines, the sex toys, and out into the street.

He paused for a moment outside of Ken's Video and Books Emporium. Foot traffic on Highland Park Avenue was sparse compared to what it normally was. This section of the street was filled with topless bars and X-rated video stores, along with bars, restaurants, and fast food joints. The night air was cool, a promise of rain in the forecast.

Charley pulled his jacket tight around his body and started walking toward the parking lot.

He walked past a pair of prostitutes who were sharing a cigarette on the outer edges of the parking lot. In the darkness it was hard to tell what the prostitutes looked like but they were dressed identically: skimpy tops with small suede jackets covering their shoulders, tight mini-skirts revealing skinny legs and high heels. One of them called out to him as he entered the parking lot. “Hey, baby! Lookin’ for a good time?"

He imagined himself plowing his cock into her, hands wrapped around her throat,
throttling her as he fucked her, her eyes bulging out of their sockets
... ?

“What's the matter, lover?” Her voice was a catcall, mocking and seductive at the same time. “Gotta go home to your mama?” They laughed.

He drew the knife across her throat, severing her larynx and carotid artery, blood
spraying him, splashing his face. He drew the knife in deeper, cutting into the thyroid
gland and hitting bone
... ?

He shut their laughter out with the slam of the front door of his truck. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, his emotions roiling. His cock was still hard, begging for release. He looked out the window toward the prostitutes, noticing they had turned their attention away from him and had resumed trying to get business from the johns that cruised the street. His mouth turned into a grimace. His hands gripped the wheel tight as their catcall echoed in his mind.
What's the matter lover? Gotta go home to mama
?

Charley started the truck and backed out of the parking slot, his need building. He cruised slowly toward the exit where the prostitutes were positioned, the need coursing through him, begging for release.