Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

I didn’t want my brother in my head, so why was I so desperately trying to get into his? It was a setup. I knew it. I could feel it. He was positioning me in some kind of a play in a game that wasn’t even mine.

I started to slide out of the booth just as the waitress came around. She was thin-lipped, frizzy-headed, bony-shouldered, and small-breasted, yet somehow exuded sensuality.

“Get you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Was there any possibility Collie was telling the truth? He seemed to believe it, but what kind of proof was that? He was at least as nuts as everyone else on death row, and that was a heap of crazy.

I slid back into the booth and knew I had to make a decision. Read the files or burn them. Stay or book. Give in or get the hell out. I’d gone this far for reasons I didn’t understand. Maybe I should head back out west. Maybe I should pull the job with Butch. Maybe I could show up at Kimmy and Chub’s front door and invite myself in. Had I come home to flame out like my brother?

“Fuck,” I said.

“What’s that?”

The waitress was watching me. She didn’t seem bored waiting. A hint of talcum powder trailed across her cleavage. She probed a bad back tooth with her tongue and winced but didn’t stop.

“Sorry. Give me a Dewar’s and Coke. A lot of ice.”

“You okay, man?”

“Sure.”

She tilted her head back toward the bar. “Flo over there wants you to buy her a dirty martini.”

I could guess who Flo was. “And why would she expect me to do that?”

The waitress shrugged. “It’ll make her more friendly to you, you know?”

“I’ve got all the friends I can handle.”

“The guys like her. Some of them anyway.”

“Not tonight.”

“Okay, man.”

I spent the next forty-five minutes reading and slowly getting drunk. My stomach was empty by now, and the liquor hit me harder than it should have. It didn’t slow me down. I kept knocking them back, hoping to disconnect. The pages flashed before me. Facts, dates, blood-spatter patterns, interviews. I knew the picture but details kept adding color and texture. More than I wanted to know.

The reports were about as cool and dry as they came. There wasn’t a hint of emotion anywhere, not even in my brother’s confession. He’d told the cops the same thing that he’d told me. There was no reason. He explained what he’d done that night step by step. How he’d moved from one victim to the next. He named the seven. He didn’t name Rebecca Clarke. She’d been completely left out. No one seemed to care.

The victims soon emptied of whatever personality I’d instilled them with. Paul Coleman. Sarah Coleman. Tom Coleman. Neal Coleman. Suzy Coleman. Doug Schuller. Mrs. Howard.

He said he hadn’t known any of them prior to that night. He’d had no grudges with any of them. He didn’t even know their names. He’d never seen them before. He’d chosen his victims completely at random. He’d driven around town until he felt the urge to kill and then he’d climbed out of his car and headed off on foot. When he was finished with one he’d proceeded to the next. He hadn’t done a thing to hide his crimes. He hadn’t muffled the gunshots. The noise awoke other vacationers in the trailer park, who’d called the police. Collie had been long gone by the time they arrived.

Why go on a spree and end it of your own accord? Why not go out in a blaze? Had his rage really been vented? Had he been angry at all? The papers described him as coldhearted, methodical, meticulous.

Collie hadn’t taken the stand. He’d never attempted to explain himself in court. His attorneys hadn’t bothered to dispute the Becky Clarke snuff. They figured he was already up for seven charges of murder so an eighth didn’t matter. They were adamant on a plea of insanity. It was a bold and stupid play, but they were strapped-Collie refused to recant his confession. Still, they should have homed in on that dispute and made it the central theme of their case. If they could cast doubt on that one killing, then they might shake the D.A.’s case a little. Becky Clarke had been strangled with a sash of some kind. They hadn’t pulled anyThe019 fibers. Collie had used a blade and a gun and his fists to commit his other murders. When the cops arrested him they found the gun unloaded on the bar where he’d put it.

So where were the knife and the sash? Why would he toss those and not the pistol?

The whole fucking thing was ridiculous.

I went through the paperwork again. I had the feeling I’d missed something. I dug around and came up with one of the forensics sheets. I scanned it, and most of the terminology didn’t mean anything to me.

And then there it was. No one had made a big deal out of it.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

Saliva. They’d found dried saliva on each victim’s forehead. No one suggested what it might mean. They only dealt in facts.

But I knew. Collie had kissed each of them on the forehead before, or after, he’d murdered them.

Every one of them except Rebecca Clarke. There’d been no saliva found on her.

I shut the folders and shoved them away from me. I sat back and listened to the juke crooning and droning. I kept seeing Scooter bolting across Kimmy’s front lawn. I thought about Chub playing it on the straight and narrow, running a completely legit garage. I saw my brother press his lips to the old woman’s brow an instant before he beat her to death.

No matter how I tried, that night didn’t piece together right. Where had Collie gotten the S &W.38 and the knife? He was a Rand. Rands didn’t use guns. It had been a clean drop. No serial numbers. Had he already been armed in the Elbow Room? I tried to picture it. If he’d been on the verge of going mad dog, why not start here, in this kind of crowd? Why drive around first? It seemed to me that he would’ve been cooling off then. Or had he run into one of his cronies and purchased the weapons then? There didn’t seem to be enough time. Collie had left the Elbow Room at eleven P.M., and the murders began about twenty minutes later. He returned before closing at two A.M. and announced he was a murderer and someone should call the cops.

I didn’t see him rushing around looking to buy a piece. It wasn’t his way. But neither was knifing an old woman. Not until that night.

Where and when had he picked up the weapons? If it had been days or weeks before, then how could anyone consider his rampage a spur-of-the-moment occurrence? There were at least a couple of names I was familiar with who might have sold Collie an untraceable piece. I decided I’d pay them a visit.

A shadow crossed my table. I looked up and Flo was standing there, watching me.

The whiskey-and-hamburger smell had given way to tequila and bland salsa. Her lips appeared to be even more unnatural as she hit a pose beneath the weak barroom lighting. She had on a pair of diamond stud earrings that looked like the real thing.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “You look just like your brother. With that same white streak in your hair.”

That got my attention. I drew the files back toward me in a display of something like protection. Then I took a final pull of my drink. When I finished I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stared at her. “What do you know about my brother?”

“It’s a compliment. Hep width=;s a nice-looking man. Looks like your uncle. That Grey. He still comes in here sometimes. Handsome. A touch of class. He knows how to treat a woman.” Without any invitation she slid into the other side of the booth. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little company? I can see that you’re lonely. A young man like you, hurting so bad.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting that, lady.” I held the file close, like it contained a catalog of all my own sins. “I’m merry. I’m full of mirth.”