With the bloody handkerchief zipped in a plastic bag, all of what will follow is clear in his mind, as if the script is already written, as if he need merely follow the directions.
When he first began to kill, he did so as a means to the twin ends of money and power. Those were the two things he thought he wanted, and killing was an occasionally useful technique for acquiring them. He was not surprised to discover that it did not bother him to kill, he’d somehow All the Flowers Are Dying
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expected as much, but what he had not anticipated was the pleasure and satisfaction that accompanied the act. It brought excitement and a sense of accomplishment beyond anything attainable by other means.
It is hard to say with certainty just when he turned the corner, coming to the realization that money and power were secondary, that killing itself was its own reward. But he suspects it’s around the time that he bought the knife.
He holds the knife, grips it in his hand. It looks like any other bowie-type hunting knife, but he paid over two hundred dollars for it, and he can feel the value in its balance and the way it fits his hand. It was hand-crafted by a man named Randall, something of a legend among the makers and collectors of bench-made knives.
He’s used it several times since he bought it. It’s always served its purpose admirably. And on each occasion he’s cleaned it afterward, scrubbing every trace of blood from its surface. It’s stainless steel, of course, and impregnable, but blood could find its way into the seam of blade and hilt, so he’s taken the additional precaution of soaking his knife overnight in a dilute Clorox solution. No blood, no DNA, nothing to implicate the knife or its owner in any of the several killings it has occasioned.
Now, knowing he’s soon to use it again, and knowing the how and why of it, he feels the stirrings of excitement.
That night and the following day he drives around Richmond, getting his bearings. He learns where the prostitutes gather. There’s no easier quarry, and he’s taken prostitutes before—off the street, in a massage parlor—when the hunger for killing has demanded quick satisfaction, and there’s been no time to make the act something special. One of them scarcely seemed surprised by her imminent fate, and he wondered if she and her sisters didn’t expect to end that way, wondered if serial murder might rank as an occupational illness, like black lung disease for coal miners.
He comes close to selecting a prostitute the first night, a slender thing dressed for success in red hot pants and a skimpy halter top. All he has to do is stop the car. She’ll get in, and the moment he pulls away from the curb her fate will be sealed. She’ll be the first unfortunate victim of the man with the bloody nose.
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But he needs to know more. The course is clear, but the particulars need to be determined. One has to plan.
He learns much that he needs to know. He learns the name and address of the man with the bloody nose, and he discovers more about him through some diligent Internet research. A husband and father, Preston Applewhite has been leading an essentially blameless life. How ironic, then that he should abduct, sodomize, and murder a string of equally blameless boys.
Because he has come to see that a prostitute is not a good choice. So many of them are infected with one thing or another that it’s unappealing to contemplate close contact with them and their bodily fluids. And what if the whore he picks is a surrogate police officer?
More to the point, there’s insufficient outrage attendant upon a whore’s death. That fellow in Oregon had needed to kill a couple of dozen of them before anybody noticed, and even then the police didn’t lose sleep hunting for him.
Then, driving slowly past the scene of yesterday’s inspiration, he sees another basketball game in progress. But the players are boys. Kids, really, wearing gym shorts. Half the boys sport singlets, while the others have bare chests. No hair on those chests, no five o’clock shadow on those cheeks. Youth, innocence.
Kill a prostitute and nobody will notice. But kill a child?
Once he’d written this:
I have killed both men and women. Killing men, I would say, provides me with more of a sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, for sheer pleasure, there’s nothing like killing an attractive woman.
And a boy? He looks at the basketball players and is unable to perceive them as sexually desirable. Still, there’s undeniable excitement at the thought of harvesting one of them. He can fake the sexual aspect, can press a suitably shaped object into service as a surrogate penis. He needn’t experience lust himself in order to stage a convincing lust murder.
In the end, he surprises himself.
It’s several days later that he finds his victim, by which time he’s pur-All the Flowers Are Dying
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chased several items. Most of them—tape, a blanket, a garden spade, a rubber mallet—are from the local Wal-Mart, but there are two more expensive articles, an automobile and a computer. The car’s a Japanese import the same size and shape as the one Preston Applewhite drives, while the computer’s a laptop, a bargain-priced IBM clone. He buys the car anonymously for cash from a private owner—it’s been hit, it needs body work and has probably suffered damage to the frame. But it’s fine for his purposes, and it’s cheap.
He’s found a place near the high school where some boys wait to hitch rides, and he manages to spot a boy standing all by himself, his thumb extended. He looks to be thirteen or fourteen. Too young to drive, at any rate.
He stops the car, lets the boy in. He’s a good-looking young man, his hair blond, his face and forearms lightly tanned. There’s downy hair on his arms, and his face is as smooth as a girl’s.
Is the boy a hustler? That’s possible, hitchhiking is a time-honored way for boys to arrange liaisons with older men. This one seems innocent, however.
He chats with the boy, asks him about sports, about school. “How about girls?” he says. “You like girls?” I like men better, the boy might say, but he doesn’t, he says girls are okay. He is, by all indications, entirely oblivious to what’s going on.
At a stop sign, he brings the car to a halt and points to the floor on the passenger side. “There’s a glove there,” he says. “Can you reach it?” The boy bends forward, looking for the glove that isn’t there, and he swings the rubber mallet in an easy arc and hits the boy solidly on the back of the skull. Hard enough to kill him? No, but hard enough to knock him out. In no time at all the boy’s hands are taped behind his back, and another piece of duct tape covers his mouth.
Five minutes later they’re at the preselected killing ground.
And, he discovers, there’s no need to employ a surrogate penis. His own is more than equal to the task. The boy’s skin is as soft and smooth as a woman’s, and his helplessness, his utter vulnerability, is exciting. He hasn’t thought to bring a condom, an absurd oversight resulting from his assumption that the boy wouldn’t arouse him. Never assume, he reminds himself. Never take anything for granted. Prepare for all contingencies.
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So he takes his pleasure with the boy, but stops short of orgasm. And takes up the knife, the beautiful knife that Randall made.
After the knife, a scissors, to snip a lock of hair. After the scissors, the garden spade. Not to dig the grave, he did that ahead of time, anticipating a need for it, but to fill it in. The killing ground’s an abandoned farm, west of the city and just beyond the Southside Speedway. Its own private family cemetery is off to the side of the ruined old farmhouse. The grave-stones are so badly weathered you can’t make out the inscriptions, and now there’s one new grave among the other dozen or so, and he fills it in and presses the sod in place over it. Right now it’s a fresh grave, but soon it will be indistinguishable from the others.