Immediately, Scott was on the attack. He continued to kick and jab at Bundy with his jo, forcing him deeper into the briars and brambles, herding him to where he wanted him. Finally, when they were far enough into the woods that he felt they had some privacy, he paused.
For one of America’s greatest serial killers, Ted Bundy did not have a lot of fight in him. He was on his back, pushed up onto his elbows and held his right hand up as a shield. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Scott’s anger and adrenaline pulsed through him. He unleashed a short kick at Bundy’s head. Bundy attempted to ward it off, but only managed to deflect it as it connected with his nose, breaking it. Blood poured from his nostrils and ran down his face.
Scott fell on him, jo held out in front of him. Bundy grabbed the stick, but again the cast got in the way and it slipped from his grasp. Scott pushed the jo against his windpipe and leaned all his weight on it.
Bundy beat against Scott’s arms and shoulders. He kicked and bucked, trying to knock Scott off of him. Scott tightened the grip his legs had around Bundy’s midsection and continued to apply more and more pressure. He lifted his head and turned his face away from the increasingly feeble blows.
The struggle went on for long minutes, but eventually Bundy’s face turned red, then became the color of old bricks, and finally took on a bluish tinge. The light of consciousness went out of his eyes and his arms flopped against the pine needle-covered ground.
Scott did not let up, but instead straddled him higher up, putting his knees on either side of the jo and letting his full weight press down. He stayed in that position for a full five minutes, wanting to make sure the job was done.
Finally, he rolled off and leaned against a tree.
That all happened so fast. Did anyone see us fight by his car?
Scott steadied his breathing and listened to the quiet. He could hear car doors slamming, happy voices carrying, and a radio playing far away.
He sat next to the corpse of Ted Bundy for quite some time.
Eventually, his breath and heart rate returned to normal and he stood. He found that he had a little shimmy in his legs and his hands were shaking as he picked up his jo. He couldn’t tell if that was from fear, exhilaration, exhaustion, or a combination of the three.
He walked out toward the car and saw his backpack sitting on the ground next to the broken mirror from the Beetle. Turning, Scott looked into the woods.
We weren’t as far in as I thought. Someone might see him.
Scott emerged from the cooler temperature of the woods into the glaring sunlight. He grabbed his backpack and kicked the broken mirror under the VW. He walked back into the woods, set his jo and pack down, and grabbed Bundy by the shoulders. He picked up the top half of his body and dragged it further into the cool darkness. After he had half-dragged, half-carried him another fifty feet, he dropped the corpse. He retraced his steps, kicking at the drag marks to erase them as best he could.
I wonder if that woman that was with him will report what happened. Probably not. I’d guess she thinks it might have been a joke between two friends. She will never know how close she came to being murdered.
Scott stood at the edge of the woods and watched the parking lot for a few minutes. All the normal activity of a summer day at the lake played out in front of him, but no one showed any sign of alarm.
He saw a payphone at the edge of the parking lot.
Don’t think it’s safe to hitchhike or call a cab here. That might leave more of a trail. Nothing for it, then, but to walk.
He forced his tired, leaden legs to start moving, away from the lake, the parking lot, and the body of the man who had once been destined to be one of America’s most infamous killers.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Scott walked back to the same motel he had stayed in the night before.
Might as well, my car’s already here.
By the time he made it back, his ankle was once again swollen from too much walking, the Valiant still wouldn’t start, and he hadn’t eaten anything in twenty-four hours.
He checked into another room and gathered up his belongings from inside the car. He stuffed them back in his backpack, and dropped it off inside his new room.
Beyond a poorly-stocked vending machine, there was no food at the motel, so he grabbed his jo, limped over to the IHOP and finally had the pancakes he had been hungering for since he had woken up that morning.
As he poured syrup over his blueberry pancakes and crunched on strips of bacon, he contemplated this adventure.
On the bad side, I had to kill someone. On the good, I don’t know of any other way to have stopped him. He was caught and jailed twice, and he got out both times. I had to do it.
He chewed on a bite of pancakes, then washed it down with a drink of orange juice.
Just about everything that could have gone wrong today, did. But, I still got the job done. And, as far as I know, I got away without a hitch. I guess the woman who was with him could give police a description of me when they find his body, but I don’t know if they’ll ever put two and two together. They had a pretty good police sketch of Ted, and even people who knew him didn’t recognize him from it. All in all, I guess it was a success. So, why do I feel so melancholy? Why do I feel like I lose a little of my own humanity every time I do this?
Scott finished his breakfast for dinner and made his way back to his room. He turned the television to KING 5 and watched the news, but there was nothing about a dead body being found at Lake Sammamish.
The next morning, he arranged for someone else who was checking out to give him a jump, and the Valiant started right up. His first stop was at a garage, where they installed a new battery for him.
The west coast of the United States was a hotbed of bad deeds in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, so Scott knew he would spend a lot of time here over the next few decades. He’d taken care of Ted Bundy, but there was still a Green River Killer, the Hillside Stranglers, and Michael Hollister, the West Coast Strangler in his future.
Before he could get to any of them, though, Scott had his sights set on a less famous but no less-heinous killer—Charles Rodman Campbell. The murders that put him on Scott’s radar wouldn’t happen until 1982, but the crime that started it all was just a few months away.
In December of 1974, Charles Campbell raped a woman by holding a knife to the throat of her infant daughter. It took two years, but eventually he was apprehended and the victim identified him in a police lineup. Both the victim and her neighbor testified against Campbell at his trial, and he was sentenced to forty years.
He ended up being released after serving only five years, due to his sentences running concurrently and because of his good behavior while in prison. Very soon, he returned to the scene of his original crime and killed his original victim, the neighbor, and the daughter when she came home from school.
Charles Campbell was vengeful, but he was not smart, nor a good criminal. He left many obvious clues behind at the scene and he was arrested for the triple murder within a week. He was put to death via hanging in 1994.
To Scott’s way of thinking, the death penalty should have been carried out much earlier. What person, if given the opportunity to stop such a monster, wouldn’t do so?
He wanted to find Campbell and stop him before he came near those victims the first time, if possible.