Authors: Jack Ketchum
Joyride (17 page)
People have asked me, do I outline. The answer is no. I scrapbook. And then I sort of…collage.
Like many other writers I’m a pack rat when it comes to ideas. Give me a few square feet of bulletin board space and I’m happy. I’ll fill ‘er up with yellow post-a-notes, pushpinned three by five cards, cocktail napkins, matchbook covers and news clippings, I’ll fill it in no time at all. Phone bills, invitations to weddings—even a check can get lost on my desk. But ideas never do.
For me writing’s like working a jigsaw puzzle. One piece alone won’t get you far. But a bunch of pieces together—ah! then you’ve got a picture. I’ll sit on an idea for years. Literally years. Then one day it seems to fit together with something. And that seems to fit with something else and pretty soon all these pieces start to look a whole lot like a novel.
I sat on the central notion for JOYRIDE more than a year and a half. I wasn’t worried. It wasn’t going anywhere. I had it hidden away in the best place possible—right under everybody else’s noses.
I was stealing.
From Emil Zola no less.
Early on in LA BETE HUMAINE Zola has a character standing in a railway yard who witnesses two people murder a man through the window of a passing train. The guy has always wanted to kill somebody himself but hasn’t
dared, he can’t quite seem to get himself over that edge—though he’s just come within inches of killing his girlfriend. And seeing the murder, he decides he’s got to get to know these people.
From there, Zola goes one way and I go another. If you haven’t read it his way by the by, I highly urge you to.
The key to my own direction came when I finally figured out who my particular bad guy was—my murderous observer. In this case, observing from a mountain, not a train yard. Again I pulled the material right out of the old scrapbook where it’d been sitting all the time. My bad guy was going to be a composite of two real-life bad guys, Howard Unruh and Thomas Eugene Braun—a pair of distinguished lunatics I noted many years ago in Jay Robert Nash’s BLOODLETTERS AND BADMEN. Where I also found the original source material for my novel THE GIRL NEXT DOOR.
Thanks, Jay.
Braun and his buddy Leonard Maine went on an interstate killing spree in 1967 for no apparent reason, seemingly just for the fun of it. For my purposes it was convenient to leave Maine out of it and concentrate on Braun. I grafted his exploits onto the perhaps even stranger personality of Howard Unruh.
Howard kept a list of enemies. He’d get pissed off at one of the neighbors and enter each petty grievance in his diary with the word RETAL next to the person’s name—RETAL for retaliation, naturally. He built a huge fence around his house. He got quieter and quieter. Then one day in 1949 he lost it completely. In twelve minutes he killed thirteen people along the quiet little streets of Camden, New Jersey, shooting up the whole damn neighborhood with his 9mm German Luger.
Nestled between these two personalities and linked only by pistols and rabid looniness was my bad guy. I had him take these two people who had committed a killing in sheer desperation (she an abused ex-wife, he her lover—both of them totally at their wits’ end and trying to ward off a vicious ex-husband from whom in every way the justice system has failed to protect them) for the scariest ride of their lives through his own private Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood of paranoia, true evil and sudden death.
The bloody interstate ride became a ride through Vermont and New Hampshire—not Washington, Oregon and California as in Tom Braun’s actual story. I know these states far better than the ones he drove through and I was able to visit some old friends in the meantime while rustling up the color and research.
Call it one of fiction’s perks.
I spent ten days there collecting place names and route names, driving until I felt comfortable I knew the times and distances involved in their journey. I found places like Foxfire, Black Mountain Inn, Avery’s General Store and the Chapel of St. John of the Mountains. I found and then climbed the mountain where the ex-husband’s murder would occur. I had me a good time.
And then the final piece fell into place when I found a handle on the cop, Rule, who’s always hot on their trail. Though never quite hot enough.
I needed a backstory for him which would explain the strange overall kindness of his attitude toward these two captive killers. The guy’s a cop after all and they murdered somebody. I got that by taking him into therapy. Unusual for a cop because he’s not there because of job stress or because he or his partner shot anybody or they
themselves got shot, nothing like that, he’s actually sneaking to therapy when he goes because other cops might not think much of his reasons for attending.
Rule feels very guilty. He’s recently ended a relationship with a woman and her young daughter which has been very important to all of them for years. He feels he’s committed a kind of metaphoric murder of his own. That in his own way he too can be called a destroyer of lives. Throughout the book he’s trying to work on this, sometimes with the therapist and sometimes all by himself—while tracking a woman who inexplicably constantly tends to remind him of his woman, the one he’s lost.
Now that piece of the puzzle—the psychotherapy part—god knows where that came from. Of course I personally have never been there.
I guess I just made that part up.
I mean, there’s nothing like that in my scrapbook.
Really.
“Vegetables are more serious than men and more sensitive to frost.”
—Francis Picabia
WEED SPECIES: In ecology. An invasive species, also called an invasive exotic, is an organism that is intentionally or accidentally introduced to an area where it is not native, and where it successfully invades and disturbs natural ecosystems, displacing native species. The term is most often applied to, but not limited to, plants. See also kudzu, water hyacinth, zebra mussel, Burmese python, ecotourism, sociopath.
About an hour after she was sure her parents were asleep upstairs Sherry turned down the television and walked over to the couch and undressed her for Owen’s camcorder. Pulled the sweatpants and panties down slowly over her legs and then lifted the Batman T-shirt over her head and unhooked the white training bra and slid it off her shoulders and down her arms. Finally she placed the dishrag soaked in halothane over her sleeping sister’s face.
The Halcion in Talia’s Christmas daiquiris had taken at last and now all that remained was to see that she did not wake up again. She had plenty of experience with halothane from the veterinary clinic though at the clinic she delivered it vaporized with oxygen through a mask and not by hand so she would have to be careful. She didn’t want to kill her little sister god knows. Only keep her out of it for however much time it would take for Owen to rape her.
Talia was a blonde like Sherry but at thirteen her pubic hair was still nearly as fine and white as the hair along her arms and her pale skin reflected back the green and red Christmas tree lights as though she were decorated for the holidays in glowing stop-and-go pastels. The green was nearly the same soft color as the dresses Sherry had just a week ago picked out for her bridesmaids.
It had been no easy week, planning both the wedding
and the rape. Owen was useless throughout all of it. But her wedding reception was dinner for 120 at the fabulous Monk’s Inn. Quail stuffed with crabmeat. And Talia’s virginity was her Christmas present to Owen—her virginity and the camcorder. She needed to get both wedding and rape exactly right.
“Push your hair back so I can see your face. Suck her breasts,” he said.
She smiled for the camera. The nipple tasted salty at first and was very soft and smooth and then it puckered. She moved her tongue around the areola and smiled again.
“Now put your finger inside her. That’s right. Now put two.”
“Shit. She’s got her period.”
“She does?”
She lifted away the halothane rag. Not too much, she thought. Careful.
“Yeah, she does.”
Owen shrugged. “She’s gonna bleed anyway, right? Suck your fingers.”
“That’s disgusting, Owen.”
“Just do it.”
She guessed that blood was blood. She’d tasted her own now and then. She sucked them slowly while Owen came in for a close-up.
“Taste good?”
“Mmmmm,” she lied.
“Go down on her. Get her all wet for me.”
“She’s got her period, Owen.”
“So?”
“She’s already wet.”
“So? Get her wetter.”
“That’s really disgusting.”
Sherry thought about it. What if her sister woke up and saw what she was doing? Jesus.
“Okay, all right, just hold on a sec.”
She adjusted the rag so that it was about an inch above Talia’s mouth and nose and held it there for a few moments. She got down on her knees and lifted her sister’s left leg and set it down so that her foot rested lightly on the polished hardwood floor.
She tasted like blood and there was a musky odor down there that she didn’t like.
Owen had moved in for a close-up again. She only licked her cunt for a little while. And not too deeply. You could only go so far.
“Okay, your turn,” she said. “She’s ready.”
She could see that
he
was certainly ready even before she unzipped him and pulled down his jeans and boxers.
“You want a blow job first?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Let me do the halothane again. Just to be sure.”
“Okay.”
She held the rag above her sister’s nose again a while and then reached for the camera and Owen handed it to her. She put the eyepiece to her eye and framed Owen climbing on top of her and held it steady.
“Merry Christmas, sweets,” she said.
He grinned into the camcorder and slid inside.
There wasn’t as much blood as she remembered from her own first time and she knew that Owen was happy. He’d always wanted a virgin and at nineteen Sherry definitely was not a candidate. Which had disappointed him. Now he was getting one. Up her cunt and up her ass and back
again. But he’d only been doing it to her for a little while all things considered when he suddenly pulled out of her and she could see from his face that something was very wrong.
Her sister lurched once and then twice and the second time she vomited. It spewed down over her breasts and stomach and splattered Owen’s leg and pooled in her open mouth.
Jesus fucking Christ!
he said. Goddammit, she thought. Too many drinks and too much dinner—at the clinic the animals were not supposed to eat or drink for at least eight hours before anesthesia. But she knew what to do now from the clinic too.
She put the camera down on the plush velvet chair. Felt a burst of adrenaline. Talia was in trouble. They were in trouble.
“Grab her by the feet. By the ankles. Hold her upside down.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said again.
“We’ve got to clear her throat, Owen. Hold her up!”
And then she was on her knees scraping at the stuff with her fingers. There was a lot of it and it rolled down over her sister’s forehead into her hair and the odor was like rancid cheese but she kept at it and pressed her head to Talia’s chest to listen for a heartbeat and at first she heard one and then she didn’t.
“She’s not breathing. You’ve got to do CPR.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“You’re the one who dosed her with that shit!”
“And you’re the one who wanted to fuck her. Just do it, dammit. Get her down on the floor. Now, fast!”
She watched him straddle her.
“I don’t know how…” He was practically whining. Not like him.
“I do. Tilt her head back. That’s right. Now you pinch her nose and blow into her mouth until her chest rises, about two seconds. You do two breaths like that. Then if she still isn’t breathing you put your hands down on her chest, right between the nipples and you press fifteen times. About two inches, no more or you’ll break something. If she still isn’t breathing you do it all over again.”
“Can’t you at least wash her face or something?”
“She’s fucking dying for chrissake! Get going! I’ve got to dump the halothane and the rag and call 911. When I’m done I’ll bring you in a washcloth, all right?”
She waited until she was sure he was going to go through with it. Until she saw him cover her mouth with his own and breathe and saw her sister’s chest rise. Then she went about her business. Made the call to 911. It wasn’t at all hard to fake an element of panic. Her heart was still racing. When she hung up she poured the halothane down the drain and ran the water and rinsed and capped the bottle and bagged the bottle and the rag and took them out with the garbage.
She was careful not to let the door slam behind her. She didn’t want to wake her parents yet. The ambulance’s siren could do that. She didn’t want to explain this more often than she needed to.
In the kitchen she was finally calm. She wet a dish towel and took that and a roll of Scott paper towels out to Owen. He was working on her chest.
“Anything?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing.”
She looked down at her sister.
“Put your clothes on. Wipe your face. We’ve got to get her dressed. We’ll mop up some of this stuff with her sweats and T-shirt so it looks like she was wearing them when she puked and then we’ve got to agree on a very simple story.”
“Sherry?”
“Yeah?
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I mean, it wasn’t like some of the other girls, you know? Talia was your little sister.”
She knelt down beside him and dabbed at his face with the dishcloth.
“I know,” she said. “It’s okay, Owen. I still love you. I know.”
Janine was the third of the other girls before he met Sherry and the one he liked best and Owen found out her name in the usual way. He showed her the knife and asked her. Then he went through her pocketbook for her wallet and her driver’s license to confirm that what she said was true. She was Janine Edmundson of 1152 Lakeshore Road and she had dirty-blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
It was Christmastime then too and one thirty in the morning. He was coming home from a party. Not one of the boring seasonal parties they threw at his accounting firm but a good one. Jimmie Gilford was an old college buddy and he knew his drinks and he knew his women. But Owen hadn’t scored for some reason despite his
Bay-watch
good looks. He had been
not quite right
all night somehow. His timing was off. He couldn’t close the deal. So when he saw the girl step off the bus headed for the Walmart parking lot he waited for the light to change and turned off Mariah Carey singing
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Let Nothing You Dismay
on the CD player and pulled in alongside her and stopped the car, got out of it and smiled and said hello and then he showed her the knife.
You scream and I’ll cut you he said. I’ll cut your face. Get in the car. Get in back.
He used the knife on her panties and unbuttoned her
blouse and cut away her bra and fucked her and then fucked her up the ass and then fucked her cunt again and he had her talk to him all the while. He told her to say Merry Christmas I’m a bitch I’m a cunt I’m a dirty little whore I love you this is my Christmas present to you lover I hate my boyfriend I’m a cheating fucking lying cunt.
What’s your name? he asked her and she told him and that was when he checked the license. How old are you? he asked her. Where do you go to school?
He told her what he would do to her if she screamed or if she talked about this afterward because if he read about it in the newspapers he knew exactly where she lived and knew her high school too for that matter. He’d slit her fucking throat. He asked, did she believe him? She did.
He held the blade of the knife against her throat while he went down on her and she tasted good. By now she tasted like him. He got her out of the car and made her kneel on the tarmac dusted with snow and suck his cock and pinched her nose and grabbed the back of her head and pushed it in far and deep and then held it in there until he could tell she was about to vomit. She was making these sounds. He released her and let her breathe for a moment and lick the spittle off her chin and then he did it again.
She was crying naturally. Her makeup was all runny. He told her to clean herself up for chrissake, to clean the crap out of her eyes and she did. He got her back into the car again because they were too exposed out there in the lot and fucked her up the ass until he came. Then he made her suck his cock again. She didn’t want to do that
this time and tried to squirm away but he pressed the point of the knife against the side of her throat so that she damn well did what she was told. The tip of his cock was still very sensitive to the touch and it felt just wonderful.
You’re a good girl Janine he said. I’m gonna let you live. For now anyway. But you better not tell anybody. I better not hear about it. I’m gonna walk you to your car. Then you’re gonna sit there until I walk back to mine. I’m gonna drive away and you’re gonna sit there and not start the car until you count to one hundred. If you don’t count to one hundred I’ll know, believe me I will. And I’ll come back and slit your fucking throat, do you understand? Do you understand? Good.
He walked her to the car. How you doing in school? he said. As and Bs she told him. That’s good, he said. You need an education. You need to go to college. Trust me I know.
A month later he met Sherry at another party hosted by another friend. This time his looks and easy charm didn’t fail him. They hit it off right away. She was beautiful. A blonde just like he was. When they got to his apartment even before she kissed him she opened her purse and took out a pair of police-issue handcuffs that were exactly the same as his.
He knew immediately it was love.
“How would you feel if I wanted to rape a girl?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she said. “Go right ahead.”
For her birthday Owen gave her a three hundred-dollar dress, a gold bracelet and a big expensive teddy bear. For
his birthday she gave him a Rolex watch and a hand-made gift certificate that read
Upon presentation of this certificate Sherry Lydia Jefferson will perform sick perverted acts upon and for the person of Owen Philip Delassandro. These acts to be chosen by the recipient. Valid for one month. Love, Sherry.
Within the month he proposed to her.