D. Gilles - Colder Than Death

I couldn’t bear to do that. So I just stared. And cried.

“Closure,” I thought to myself. Is that what this is? I finally found out what happened to her, but it wasn’t over. I knew who, but before I got closure I needed to know why. As I stared at Alyssa’s face, truly looking as if she were sleeping, my thoughts turned to the only person I could help at this stage: Quilla.

I wondered if Nolan had gotten to her yet.

“Go ahead and touch her,” said Nolan, his voice causing me to almost jump out of my shoes.

I turned around. He had a gun in his hand, pointed at my head. I wanted to kill him so bad I was shaking.

“Her cheeks just had a treatment, let’s see… three days ago. Alyssa’s day at the beauty shop is Tuesday.”

“You sonofabitch!” I screamed.

“Don’t go screaming so late, Del. It’s late. The girls are sleeping.”

“Do you have Quilla?”

“Don’t worry about her.” He shook his head back. “Boy oh boy, Del. Imagine my surprise when I come in the house and find the back door open. I figure I’m being broken into. I’m saying to myself that it’s a good thing I had to come back for my glasses, I’m gonna nail the burglar. And imagine my surprise when I hear footsteps upstairs.” He shook his head again. “And how do you think I felt when I saw it’s you.”

“Where do you have Quilla?”

“She’s sleeping now.”

“Where? I looked all over the house.”

“Right in here,” said Nolan calmly. “By the way, Del, put your hands in the air. I know you probably hate me right now and would like to kill me, but I don’t want to kill you up here and make a mess. The girls like neatness and beauty. So, raise your hands slowly.”

I did what he told me, then with the gun still pointed at my head he walked to a door in the corner of the room with a deadbolt, undid it and turned on the light to reveal a tiny room with bed in it.

“Go ahead,” Nolan said, stepping back from the doorway. “Move slowly. Take a look. I’m not a mean person.”

I walked to the doorway of the room and looked inside. Sleeping on a single bed was Quilla. She was tied to the bed with two leather straps. She breathed evenly. I detected a slight snore. I guessed that Nolan had her drugged.

“What’s the deal, Nolan, is she next?” I asked.

“She’s not here to get away from her folks.” Nolan laughed. “Alright, let’s go. Downstairs. C’mon.”

“Why?” I stood my ground.

“Why what?”

“Why Quilla? Why Alyssa? Why all of them? Jesus. Your wife?”

“How’d you know she was my wife?”

“I saw her picture on the fireplace. Why, Nolan?”

“With regard to Patricia, it was a matter of not wanting her to leave me. No matter how much I begged her to stay, she wouldn’t, so one night I got this crazy idea and, well, there was never anymore talk from her again about leaving me.” He turned off the light in the room Quilla was in, then closed the door. “There’s no sense dragging this out, Del. Move.”

Nolan nudged me in the back with his gun, almost knocking me down the stairs. “Why is she in that room?”

“She’s too skinny. Needs some fattening up. The best preservation is done with bodies who have some meat on them. That’s why I’ve always had such a hard time making them damn anorexics look good. I never kill them right away. I want them to look just right when they die, especially their faces, since that’s the area of the body I’m primarily interested in. The girls I pick usually need to be a tad fleshier, considering all the experimentation and work I do on their faces, so I fatten them up a little.”

I was getting sick to my stomach as we walked through the den, into the dining room, then past the kitchen and out the back door, but I was compelled to keep asking questions.

“Wasn’t it taking a big risk to leave them alive? Didn’t they try to escape?”

“They’re not alive for long. A week tops. And I let them think I won’t be hurting them. A real trust thing happens quickly. By the time they’re ready to die I think it’s fair to say we’ve bonded. And when they die they feel no pain. I give them an injection. Puts them to sleep. That’s when I begin the embalming.”

“Tell me you wait until they’re dead.”

He shook his head. “Del, you know from basic embalming classes that the ideal body state for more perfect preservation is as soon after death as possible. Keep walking.”

“I can’t see,” I said. “It’s pitch black out here.”

“Your eyes will adjust in a few seconds. Move in a straight line. There’s nothing in my back yard to bump into.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“You’ve got to die, Del.” The words stung. I was feeling scared in a way I’d never experienced before. He had murdered five women and was ready to kill a sixth. I knew he would have no qualms about killing me.

“You could do this to me, Nolan, after all these years?”

“This really pains me, Del, because I like you a lot. This might sound corny, but you were like a son to me. I enjoyed teaching you the trade when you first started with us. But you know the truth now. What I am supposed to do, let you live if you promise you won’t tell?”

I said nothing. The only thing running through my head was how he was going to do it. “How?” I asked.

“Hold on a second,” he said as we stopped by a small shed about twenty yards from the rear of his house. I assumed it was where he kept his power mower. “Open the door.” I tugged at the door and it creaked open. “Now step back and get down on the ground spread-eagled.” I did. Quickly, Nolan reached into the shed and came back with a shovel. “Alright. Get up and keep walking.”

“What are you gonna do with the shovel, Nolan?”

“I’m not gonna do anything with it. But you’re gonna dig a hole, then you’re gonna lay in it, then I’m gonna cover you up.”

“You’re gonna bury me alive?”

“Hell no. That’d be cruel. You’ll be dead before the first pile of dirt gets dumped on you. Veer to the left.”

I veered to the left. My eyes were now adjusted to the dark. Whether Nolan lived on a cul de sac or a dead end, what concerned me most was the gully about fifty yards behind his house that we were headed to. If his plan was to kill me and hide my body in a shallow grave in the gully he could rest assured I would never be found.

“Are there any other bodies buried back here, Nolan? People who stumbled onto your little secret?”

“Matter of fact, there are two.”

“My God,” I thought to myself.

“Two girls who didn’t work out. One from about eight or nine years ago, and another from, oh, about fifteen.”

The time frame piqued my interest.

“You killed Alyssa fifteen years ago,” I said. “Why did you need another girl?”

“Alyssa was my second choice. The first one was sick. I didn’t know it until I started working on her.”

“She was going to be dead because you were gonna kill her. So what if she was sick?”

“I wanted perfection. Keeping a body a long time means starting with a body in perfect condition. That’s why I never went for the older ones.”

“What about Brandy Parker? Why didn’t you bury her in the gully with the other two?”

“That was a miscalculation,” he said. “Once a year, on the anniversary of the death of my great grandfather, Angus Oberfuolner, I go to the cemetery to pay respects, just as my father and his father did. Nine years ago it was Brandy Parker’s misfortune to be there on the day I went. She had come to the cemetery to make tracings of old headstones. Somehow she had made her way to the Section where my family’s plot is located. She was there, making a tracing, when I arrived. At first, the idea of her being my next challenge hadn’t even entered my mind. I was at the cemetery to do my annual duty. It was something that I took seriously. I’d been mulling over the fact that finding another girl was something I had to start thinking about again…and that meant planning. When you kidnap someone it has to be thought out for weeks, sometimes months in advance. Why do you think I was able to get away with taking Virginia and Alyssa and the others? Planning, Del. Meticulous planning. With Brandy Parker I acted spontaneously, but only because everything seemed to be in my favor…everything fell into place.”