The Killing Vision (12 page)

Then some detective came on, detailing what the
police had managed to find out so far.  It wasn’t much, he admitted, and he was
asking for any help the public could give, any tips or leads that might bear
following up.  The guy looked to be in his early forties, with thick dark hair
and a mustache.  His face was worn and haggard.  Joel liked him at once; there
was a sincerity to his voice, a grit in his demeanor that meant business.  His
name flashed on the screen:  Michael Halloran.  Joel scrambled to find a pen on
the end table beside the recliner, and he scrawled Halloran’s name down on his
napkin.

When he looked up again, the tape of the conference
was over and the TV was showing a picture of the Santos girl.  She was a
pretty, black-haired child, her dark eyes shining in happiness and innocence,
and Joel immediately knew she was probably dead.  There was no flash of
visions, no alarming voices or smells.  It was just a sudden knowledge, like
knowing he’d left the mail on the kitchen table or knowing that he would look
outside his window and see the cable truck sitting in the driveway.  He just
knew
.

Before him, his dinner began to congeal, untouched.

* * *

All evening Joel was restless and anxious, turning
over in his head what little he knew.  Even when he finally was in bed, his
mind refused to turn off.  It was like some damned blaring radio that had no
volume control and was stuck on the same station.

And then, just before midnight, it hit him.  He
would go see the mayor at his office.  He would drop by City Hall on the
pretext of following up on the new cable hookup, just to see if they were
satisfied with the work he and Wade had done at the house.

And he would shake the mayor’s hand.

* * *

11:55 PM

Sometimes on nights like this, he
would go outside and stand naked in the yard, feeling the velvety touch of the
summer night air on his bare skin.  He would listen to the drone of insects,
the occasional call of a whippoorwill, the soft hooting of an owl.  He would
feel the tickle of the grass beneath his feet, its surface wet with dew.  He
would sniff the heavy scents of earth and roses and, in the spring, cherry
blossoms.  Occasionally, when it was raining, he would stand in the downpour,
letting the shower wash him clean and innocent as a newborn baby.

But tonight he had a mission, and
he did not remain outside.

In a dark, dusty corner, buried
beneath a mound of moldering junk was a rusting Maytag chest freezer.  He had
found it back in the winter, and on a whim, he’d plugged it in and was
surprised to discover that it still worked.  It was then that a plan had begun
to fester in his mind.

He began with experiments on
animals— stray dogs and cats mostly.  He strangled them, then wrapped their
bodies in old sheets before hiding them in the freezer.  Even with the
thermostat set a little above freezing, they remained remarkably preserved for
several weeks.  And when spring came and the river began to thaw, he took them
there to dump them in the water.  He took only one a day; he did not want to
risk someone noticing a cluster of dead animals floating downstream all at
once.

He knew then that it was time to
go forward.  He had thought about it for a couple of years.  How he would do
it.  What it would feel like.  He just didn’t know who it would be.  Not until
that day in April when Sarah Jo caught his attention.

He’d seen her one afternoon as
she passed the water treatment plant down by the river.  He’d been there scouting
out new places to fish, and he’d stopped to take a leak in the bushes.  He
heard her before he saw her; she was singing, some song by Miranda Lambert.  He
hid behind a tree as she passed by on the dirt road, swinging an instrument
case in her fist as she walked.  Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail,
which bounced with her steps, and her jeans fit tightly around her buttocks,
molded to them.  He watched her until she disappeared.  She never even knew he
was there.

The next day he waited in the same
spot, and she came by again at just about the same time.  Again he watched her,
and again she didn’t see him.

For a week he hid in the bushes
and watched her every afternoon, planning everything he would do.  And the
night before he did it, he lay sleepless and sweating on top of his bed, his
heart hammering with excitement, fondling the leather gloves he planned to use
on her.

In the end, it had not gone as
smoothly as he had hoped.  For one thing, it had been raining; for another,
Sarah Jo was a fighter.  He had squeezed and squeezed her throat, but she
refused to succumb.  His rain-slick gloves couldn’t get a good enough grip on
her neck, and the more she struggled, the harder it became to hold her.  He
finally wrestled her to the ground and kept his knee on her back while he
pulled out his pocket knife.  She was screaming in terror, flailing her hands
blindly at him.  He held up her head by her hair and sliced her throat open. 
The screams stopped with a gurgle.

He truly had not wanted it to end
like that.  Cutting her made the whole ordeal almost pointless.  He had ruined
her.  Now, however, it was too late.

At first he had worried about the
blood.  There was so much of it.  But that night, after several hours of heavy
rain, the river overflowed its banks there at the low spot by the treatment
plant, and any traces of Sarah Jo’s blood on the ground had been washed away
with the muddy water.  His clothes were another matter; in the end he drove to
the lake and burned them in a barbecue pit at a public picnic area.

Once he was home, he worked
feverishly through the evening while the lightning flashed outside and the
thunder shook the walls.  He had so much to do, and he was terrified of being
caught.

The first thing he did was to
carefully remove Sarah Jo’s shoes, then her jeans and panties.  The sight of
her nakedness sent a ripple of excitement through him, and it took every ounce
of his mental strength to keep himself from tearing into her.  The second thing
he did was to take the sawed-off end of an old shovel handle (which was roughly
the same diameter as an erect penis) and insert it firmly in her vagina.  It
was a difficult procedure; she was small and her flesh was dry.

With that done, he placed her
into the freezer, positioning her carefully and covering her with a sheet, then
lowered the lid.  He piled the junk back on top of the freezer and left it for
the night, taking her things with him.  He would burn them later.  The
instrument case with the clarinet inside would be more of a problem; for the
moment he hid it in the trunk of the car.

The next day when he was sure he
would be alone for awhile, he went back to her.  Her skin was pale and blotchy
and a bit of blood and other fluids had leaked from her torn throat and pooled
into pink ice at the bottom of the freezer, but otherwise, she was perfect.  He
wrenched the wooden handle from her, and saw with breathless excitement that
she stayed open, molded to the shape of the wood, just as he had hoped.  From a
small metal box on a high shelf, he pulled out a vinyl dildo and worked it into
her while he touched himself.  He did not take long; he was too excited.

He used her several more times
over the next few weeks, but the thrill soon began to wear thin.  For one
thing, the fact that her throat had been cut detracted from her beauty; she was
spoiled.  At first he tried hiding her throat with an old scarf or a corner of
the sheet, but it didn’t help; he
knew
the cut was there, and soon it was all he thought about while he was with her. 
For another thing, he was terrified of being caught, of someone opening the
forgotten freezer and finding her there.

So one night in the middle of
June, he took her out for the last time.  He looked her over for any loose
hairs or threads that might be attached, then took his pocketknife and
carefully scraped underneath her fingernails.  If someone found her downriver,
he wanted to be sure they would not be able to connect her with him.

He took her down to the same spot
at the river where he had dumped the animals.  For a terrifying moment, he was
sure she wouldn’t float, that she would sink to the bottom into the muck and
someone would find her the next morning.  But she did float.  He covered her
with loose branches and set her adrift, watching as the pile moved away from
him in the moonlight, agonizingly slow.

He waited anxiously for the next
few days, listening to the news for any word that her body had been found, but
there was nothing.  He began to breathe easier.  Maybe she had drifted on down
to the next county; maybe she would
never
be found.

But a week later during the
Fourth of July fireworks those kids had stumbled upon her.  Again he was
terrified, sure that she would be linked to him, and he had braced himself for
the arrival of the cops at his door.  But there had been nothing so far.  They
were all perplexed.  Although they had mounted a massive search of the
shoreline on both sides of the river for more than a mile, they had been unable
to find where he had dumped her.  Their investigation seemed to have stalled.

Then, on Saturday, when he had
been on his way to the park to have another look at the river landing, he saw
Carmelita.  She was walking along the deserted drive into the park, her long
black hair trailing in the breeze, her hips moving seductively with her every
step.  He pulled up beside her.  She noticed him and smiled.  He asked her
where she was going.  To the park, she said.  What a coincidence, he told her,
so am I; I’ll give you a ride.  My name is Carmelita, she said when he asked,
her tongue dancing across the syllables like a dream.  That’s beautiful, he
said.  She didn’t seem to notice when he slipped on his gloves.  Then, just
inside the park gate, right beneath the sign that said
$500 FINE FOR LITTERING
, he
turned and grabbed her throat.  She was dead in just a couple of minutes.

Again he anxiously monitored the
details of the investigation into her disappearance, but as before, he had been
extremely careful.  There had been no witnesses.  No leads.  No trace of her.

And now he opened the lid of the
freezer and peered down into her angelic face.  This was the second night he
had visited her, and it almost seemed as if she became more beautiful each
time.

“I’m here,” he whispered. 
“There’s no need to be afraid.”

Tuesday, July 10

9:40 AM

For the first time in five years, Joel called in
sick.  He had not had much sleep last night; his mind had been too busy turning
over what he would say to the mayor when he saw him today.  So, when his alarm
clock blared on at 6:00, he fumbled for the snooze and smacked it.  And then
again.  And again.  Finally, at seven, he called Wade.  Half an hour later when
Wade pulled into the driveway, Joel expected him to come to the door to check
on him.  He didn’t, though; just climbed into the cable truck and drove away,
barely giving the house a glance.  Joel watched him from the front window and
was relieved.

When Wade was gone, Joel took a shower, then sat at
the kitchen table with his coffee and a cigarette.  His heart was pounding
dully but insistently.  He had a few Lortabs from a visit to the dentist last
year; he briefly considered taking half of one to calm himself.  Then he
thought better of it.  This was one time when he wanted his senses sharp and
unimpeded.  He dressed in his cleanest uniform and ran a brush through his
hair. 

“Mayor Carver?” he said to the mirror.  “I’m Joel
Roberts from Cable-Com.  Just wanted to make sure you were happy with our work
yesterday.”  He extended his hand, trying to look natural as he did it.  He had
no idea what he would do or say after he took the mayor’s hand.  He only hoped
he could stay in control of himself.

Outside, he looked at Wade’s truck sitting beside
his Explorer in the morning sun.  He wondered if he should get in it, feel the
wheel and the seats, see if he could pick up anything on his brother and what
he had done all weekend.  But he couldn’t bring himself to do that.  Part of it
he suspected; the rest he didn’t want to know.

In town he parked as close to City Hall as he could
get.  The city was still swarming with reporters, and they seemed to have all
camped out on the City Hall lawn.  He weaved his way through them, stepped
through a metal detecting device, and entered the lobby of the building.

The mayor’s office was directly in front of him.  He
cleared his throat and headed toward the door.  His heart was hammering and his
hands were shaking, and he cursed himself for not breaking off just a bit of a
Lortab to take the edge off things.

Larry Carver’s receptionist was a young blonde, and
Joel wondered if she’d ever seen the sling in the mayor’s basement.  She looked
up at him and smiled.  “May I help you?”

“I’m Joel Roberts.  I’d like to see the mayor.”

She nodded, the smile never leaving her face, though
it seemed to have grown cold.  “What did you need to see him about, Mr.
Roberts?”