The One Percenters (2 page)

Other people came calling, too. You wouldn’t believe the attention you get when a serial killer bumps off your wife. Not just friends and family, but media, book publishers, religious zealots, psychiatrists. The world is full of people with little taste and less class. I guess we can’t all be like my Jill. She made up for my many flaws and then some. And that’s saying a lot, I assure you.

I now know what empty feels like. Empty is eating the last cookie in the box. Suddenly it’s gone, and you’re not sure you’ll ever get out to the store again.

You’re left with memories of the chocolate flavor, but your stomach is soon growling again, and that’s all that really matters. I wanted my wife back. Get your own damn wife, Jeffrey!

I wanted to drive to the prison and slay him with my own hands, but that’s not the right thing to do, is it.

I suppose I should have moved, right there and then, to a state that has the death penalty, just in case lightning should strike twice. But I didn’t.

I said earlier that you have to be good to commit nine murders. As it turned out, Simons was downright lucky as well. According to the newspapers, he left quite a trail and the cops had a good idea of the murderer’s profile after Number Three bought the farm (a fat accountant by the name of Mary Peters).

When they apprehended Simons, there was some controversy concerning the length of time it had taken to pinpoint the culprit. Considering the death spree lasted barely three months, there must have been a hell of a lot of misread evidence in the early cases for anyone to complain about “find-time,” as the papers labeled it.

I’m not a detective, but I think three months is pretty damn good. These things often stretch out over years and involve the cooperation of several precincts.

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Personally, I think the media was disappointed at having lost a hot scoop so quickly. Their questioning of police method was probably just a desperate attempt to rekindle public interest in the case.

In the end, though, they had such an abundance of evidence against Simons for murders one through five that the rest became an afterthought. Come to think of it, the police didn’t spend all that much time at the site of Jill’s murder— or so I’ve heard—and hardly appeared the meticulous group of investigators one views on late-night “real detective” shows. I guess six through nine were just tack-on sentences in the pragmatic minds of the cops.

Nine murders. I remember thinking
at least
the guy got his money’s worth before he was caught
.

I know that sounds insensitive, especially considering my closeness to the case, but sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

It’s funny, the things that crossed my mind those days. Shock can do funny things to a man’s thinking.

I guess it’s a physical defense. If you don’t buy that theory, drink water and shit ice, because you are one cold fucker. Anyway, I don’t remember asking your opinion.

I took to drinking after Jill’s murder. I had always been a wine guy, zinfandel and then merlot as I aged, but I found myself holding the whiskey bottle on a daily basis. It gets the job done quicker, and it doesn’t leave that nappy feeling in your throat if you overindulge, which I did frequently. Alcohol can be your best friend.

A draining and dangerous friend, though, the one who is constantly borrowing money and secretly banging your wife on the side. You don’t admit it to yourself, but you know what’s going on. You keep quiet, of course, as long as he keeps making you feel oh so good—keeps making you forget.

My mailman started delivering the mail to my door. I know that he meant well by it. He was a nice man who walked with a limp on the left side. His name was Tom Jefferson—I kid you not. He was a tall man with one of those brushy mustaches that is so full, it interferes with the bearer’s speech and makes him
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sound like he’s speaking through a towel.

Tom would come to the door, junk mail and solicitations in hand, and greet me with a courteous though not overly cheerful, “Afternoon, Mr. Caine.” I’d just nod my head and reach for the mail through my torn screen door. I wish I had Jill’s gun when that mutt tore through the screen. Tom would go on and on for a while. One afternoon, I invited Tom in and served him coffee. As he drank, I said nothing and let him small-talk away. Eventually he ran out of comments on the weather, and we sat there in awkward silence. The very next day, my mail started coming to the box again. I guess he took the hint. It was worth a cup of coffee. Tom’s all right as acquaintances go, but he lives by too many rules, it’s a cinch to tell. His shirt was always over starched, and I never heard him use a contraction. It was always “It is” and “Can not” and “We have.” Silly man. I wanted to stick a catalogue up his ass. The big one with all the riding mowers and circular saws. Just the one I imagine he most hates delivering.

I quit work too. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that.

I quit work and watched an awful lot of TV. I think I missed conversation. I watched a lot of soap operas, which I suppose must seem a rather strange thing for a grown man to admit. I suppose I just enjoyed seeing people in relationships, even if those relationships were based on shallow, wanton desires. Besides, people on soaps are always pretty, and it felt good to look at pretty faces and asses. Whom are we kidding with this equal opportunity bullshit? Anybody seen by the public should have to pass some type of beauty test. Who wants to be served a burger by some hairy woman with a mustache like Tom’s?

Jill had a very pretty face. I always told her that it reflected her soul so that the whole world would know what a saint she was. Her eyes could only be compared—favorably—to the bubbles that accumulate on the top layer of a bucket of sudsy water—reflective, sparkling, almost iridescent. Her eyes were blue centered with green trim. Deep, honest and thoughtful, they whispered “believe.” But that means fuck-all now.

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Most of the time I was depressed and in an alcoholic stupor. It’s a hell of a mix. I looked like a caricature of a drunk—stubbly face, white undershirt, matted hair—and I certainly played the part well.

I woke up on the couch one morning with crumbs in my ears. I started to get minor bedsores, and realized if I didn’t get up off that damn sofa, I was gonna be in a world of pain. I kept one of the empty whiskey bottles as a reminder never to let myself get into that state of mind again. For a while, it worked. For a while.

After Jill died, I realized there wasn’t much depth to my life. I had few friends and fewer hobbies.

What can I say? Jill was my whole world. I was never very popular in school, and after I found her, I figured my luck-well had been tapped clean. Besides, I didn’t need anybody else. I like to think that Jill felt the same way. All the same, she had plenty of friends. Women who look like her and act like her and think like her usually do.

She tried to acquaint me with them on several occasions so that we could all go out as a unit, but I resisted. I felt they were
her
friends,
her
independence.

She didn’t need me horning in on that out of self-pity.

There’s nothing worse than a slob husband who leeches onto his wife’s social life.

There was another reason I kept my distance.

One of her friends in particular was especially attractive. Jessica Solsberg. Jessicas are almost always beautiful—kind of like the anti-Marge. Miss Solsberg is the only woman I can recall ever looking at with a sexual eye after I met Jill. It wasn’t intentional, and of course I would
never
have fooled around with her or anyone else. I knew what I had in my wife. Mine was the one for which that Commandment was written.

Jill had Jess over occasionally to tan in the yard. Jessica would wear a turquoise bikini—always the turquoise bikini. Jill wore red. I made sure I happened to be repairing the roof or mowing the lawn or otherwise engaged outdoors on those days. Hey, you can’t blame me for being a man. Jill was the angel, not me. Yin, yang, right? Anyway, I never cheated on her, like I said—not so much as a kiss or a pat on the bottom.

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If I had been married to Jessica, you can bet shine-to-shit that I’d have been checking out Jill from head to ass. Just a natural thing is all, the desire to kiss, to touch, and to tie up. But, hell, I don’t have to explain myself to anyone, especially you, Doctor. And it felt good to get the tingles when I saw Jess laying out.

Turquoise still warms my loins.

I experimented with suicide. I downed a few pills, but I knew they wouldn’t be enough to do the trick.

I tried the razor routine, but couldn’t bring myself to break the skin. In the end, I found that I’m not very good at committing suicide. If I had really meant it, I suppose I’d have gone straight for the gun, but it’s not as easy as you might think. You have to give those people a certain credit for their persistence.

Death is one hell of a scary concept. You have to be hurting pretty badly to off yourself, especially if you believe in a heaven-and-hell type god. I happen not to.

Funny. . I feel I almost have to offer an apology for that.

“Atheist” is right up there with “terrorist” in our society.

Mother used to tell me that a religion is a cult dressed in a pretty little hat.

Anyway, God—or at least the belief in Him—

wasn’t what stopped me; I just got yellow. Besides, I didn’t think it right that I should die before Mr. Simons.

Thinking of that made me want to live to see the man rot away. Rot. A. Way.

I kept myself in excellent shape for a bit after my suicide adventures, trying to up my life force to outlive him—one of the stages of murder recovery, I suppose.

I toned my muscles up nicely, and my back seemed to straighten itself without my effort. Eventually, though, I slipped backwards and gained twenty pounds to the fifteen I had lost. In the end, I regained my love for cheeseburgers. Life is all about progress and regression, and when the former loses out to the latter, you can be sure that before too long, birds will be using your headstone for a hopper. We are all carcasses waiting to happen, and that’s strangely reassuring to me.

I wish I could tell you that my meeting Jill came at a dramatic moment—changing her tire in the rain, an encounter at the Grand Canyon, etc. Sorry to say,
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it didn’t. Life rarely works the way the movies make it seem. She was wearing a fuzzy, orange shirt. It had a V-neck and ran all the way down to her thighs. Man, did she look incredible. We were in a stationery store; I had gone in for cigarettes. I later gave up smoking altogether (for a while), but at that point in time, I hadn’t even worked my way down to lights. Giving up cigarettes is a lot like giving up eating or breathing, or like losing your best friend. You feel like you’ll die if you don’t get another drag, and sooner or later you become jealous of everybody you see with a butt in their hand.

Dangerous as smoking is, the chances that
any one
smoker will die from it are not all that great, considering. So there they stand, those damn smokers, puffing away, most likely without retaliatory measures awaiting from the man in the black cloak. And you get very jealous. Most especially, you get jealous of smoking athletes. These people smoke a pack-plus daily and still run six-minute miles like nobody’s business. I mean, what’s
that
about? I halfway hope to develop diabetes or something like that just so I can smoke and smoke and smoke to my heart’s content. You can’t die twice, and you only live once.

Jill was standing in the card aisle looking at Mother’s Day cards. I was on my way out when I noticed her. I was twenty-two, and had never before approached a woman I didn’t know. Most of my dates had come as a result of friendships gone awry. Something was different in this case though. I’m not saying it was love at first sight; I don’t believe in such a thing. That’s just the groin talking.

Anyway, it wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t a psychic thing or an issue of fate. I’m also not a new-ager. I don’t name my pets after minerals. I just felt from a practical standpoint that should I get rejected, I could quietly walk away and never see her again. I guess I had never realized that before. Up to that time, I always felt that women held all the power in this life.

Ah, let’s face it, they do.

I just walked over to her and said, “Mother’s Day.

The cards come out earlier every year.”
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Certainly not the wittiest or most profound comment, but it broke the ice, and hey, I was nervous, so fuck off.

“I suppose they do.”

I tried several other openings, but each elicited a similarly curt reply. At the time I thought she was playing the part of a cautiously standoffish woman. I later found out that her mother died when Jill was young. Jill looked at the cards to live vicariously, if only for a moment, and she had been reminiscing when I approached. Her distraction was understandable; I hear her mom was a terrific woman.

“I’m sorry to bother you, really I am. It’s just that I’m new to the city and I don’t know anybody here.

I need someone to show me around, and I. .was hoping you might do that.”

I was afraid of her reaction, and took the desperate and pathetic route.

“I’d pay you, of course.”

Not my finest moment, certainly, but I hoped to sound disarming.

After a brief question/answer period, and to my utter shock, she agreed to my request. (No payment necessary, of course.) I don’t guess I came off as a particularly threatening man. I don’t guess I ever did.