Lost Echoes

22

He sat in the dark and smoked and drank and thought about things, came to a solid and firm conclusion. It wasn’t that he had to really consider it. He knew it. Though he did think about it from time to time, and it was this: He wasn’t a serial killer. He was Code Name: William. That’s who he was when he killed, and he did it because he wanted to. But he didn’t have to. He had the power and the control and he could stop at any time, and because of that, he wasn’t a serial killer.

Murderer. Not serial killer. That was a horrible thing. Someone driven by some inner demon, and he wasn’t that way. Not in the least. He didn’t mind murder, but he loathed any kind of loss of control.

He often went months without killing. Sometimes years.

He had been more active in the last two years than before, but it wasn’t a frenzy, as serial killers often ended up doing. He wasn’t driven, and he was being careful. Real careful. And he was making sure Code Name James was being careful as well.

He’d have to watch James, but so far, no big deal.

There hadn’t even been anything much in the news. And over the years not one of the crimes had been connected. He’d have thought there would at least be that. Someone saying, “Maybe these are linked, because…” Well, not because he and James—and he liked to think of his partner as James and himself as William when he considered the murders—had done anything to give them that lead, but because the authorities might just put together the fact that in the East Texas area there had been a half dozen unexplained murders in the last eight years.

Of course, there were a few others the authorities didn’t know about.

He remembered the first time. Couldn’t believe he did it. A young girl, and he was twelve. She was in the park, and he came there, and there were just the two of them. She must have been nine, maybe ten. He was sporting a black eye from where his old man had corrected him.

It really pissed him, that black eye. He hadn’t done anything. Not really. Nothing for his old man to get mad like that. Had put his hand down on his cigarette pack, crushing some smokes. That was it, and his old man had beaten him like a tambourine.

And there he was, banged up, and there was the little girl, looking clean in her dress and smiling, her hair back in a bow, and she looked so goddamn happy out there on the merry-go-round, pushing it with her foot, going around and around, laughing, not thinking about any kind of punch in the eye, just maybe birthday parties and hugs and presents and a fine future.

He watched her for a while.

No one else was in the park. He walked down there and grabbed at the merry-go-round, and ended up on it, dragging a foot, slowing it down.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “I’m playing.”

Playtime was over pretty quick after that. He stopped the merry-go-round and dragged her off of it and down to the creek, her screaming like a wildcat, and there he hit her with a rock, tried to do some things to her, but wasn’t sure how. He got her panties off and left her, and when they found her the same day, just before nightfall, he saw her father on the television, blank eyed and lost, and it made him feel…odd. Not sad. Kind of good inside. He had managed to kill someone and wound someone else, as if by ricochet.

A week later he read the mother hanged herself.

Two for him. None for the other guys, and there was still one wounded as well. Out of commission for the human race team.

So he was actually at two and half.

No one ever suspected him.

He went for years not killing again.

Thought about it, but didn’t do it. Even then, as a kid, he was cautious. When he was sixteen he caught his old man not looking, out in the carport, bent over a dismantled motor he had on some greasy cardboad. He picked up a wrench, said, “Hey, Pops.”

When his father turned, he hit him across the mouth with the wrench, making blood and teeth fly. The old man went down and tried to get up, and he hit him again. When he ran away, the old man was holding the back of his head with one hand, cursing at him, spitting blood and teeth. And the curses were like the joyful song the sirens sang.

It made him happy. He laughed as he ran. Never looked back.

He got out of his chair, went to the bedroom, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled back his socks and underwear. There was a little box back there. It was a watchcase. He opened the case. The watch, which had been given to him long ago by a girlfriend he dumped shortly thereafter, was still in the case. It was fastened to a cardboard slide, and he slipped that out. Behind it was a single pearl earring.

He had taken it when James wasn’t looking. He told James not to take souvenirs, and that was right. You shouldn’t. James shouldn’t because he might get sloppy. But this one pearl earring from long ago, what could it matter now? Who would look here and find it? He had taken it off a young woman whose body had yet to be found, her and her boyfriend. Out there in the wild, eaten by ants and the like. Sometimes he thought about going out there to see what might remain. But it had been so long ago and he had been so strong, not going out there, it was best to hold to the plan.

Don’t get sloppy.

He took the earring out of the box and ran his thumb and forefinger over it. He thought about the ear it had been fastened to. Small, with the aroma of cheap perfume.

He sniffed the pearl. The perfume was long gone, of course. He put it in his mouth and rolled his tongue around it, then took it out and let it lie in the palm of his hand so that he could stare at it, think of her ear. A small, delicate thing.

After a moment he replaced the earring in the box, returned the cardboard and the watch, closed the box, put it in the drawer, and closed it up.

He leaned on the dresser and took a deep breath.

For some, this would be too much. They couldn’t control themselves. It would make them want to kill again.

And he would.

But he would not be a slave to passion.

He would wait until he was ready.

He wasn’t going to be pushed around by anything. People. Fate. Urges.

Not him.

He was a rock.

A goddamn mountain.

He could kill again if he decided to, but if he thought he should stop, he would stop.

That’s just the kind of guy he was.