Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

“This isn’t exactly your killer’s style is it?” Captain Donovan said.

Murphy turned around. “Not exactly.”

“Is he trying to send a message by torching a gay bar?”

“I don’t know, Captain. When I catch him I’ll ask him.”

“So far the newsies don’t have a clue that this might be the work of our serial killer. Let’s keep it that way.” The captain unfolded a stick of gum and pushed it into his mouth. After a couple of chews, he said, “That means keeping your trap shut around your little reporter girlfriend.”

Murphy wanted to explain that Kirsten wasn’t his girlfriend. That he had only talked to her about the serial killer out of desperation. That perhaps if Donovan had given him a task force when he first asked for one six months ago, maybe they would have caught this guy and they would not now be standing in the shadow of a burned-out building watching scores of roasted bodies being hauled out. But he was too exhausted and too beat down. So he just said, “Yes, sir.”

“You sure it was him?” Donovan asked.

Murphy nodded.

“That mark on the door might not be connected to the fire,” Donovan said. “Some kid could have done that months ago. Maybe he calls himself the Log because he has a big crank. Maybe a disgruntled patron set the place on fire, somebody pissed off about getting a bad blow job through a glory hole.”

Murphy shook his head. “It was him. He’s feeding on the shock value, trying to one-up himself every time now.”

“If the media finds out about this, there’ll be chaos. Heads will roll.”

“There’s no way to keep this quiet.”

Donovan’s face tightened. “Then you better find him, and quick. Because we’re about to have every gay-rights group and every newspaper and TV station in the country camped out at our front door.”

“Just like Katrina.”

The homicide commander smacked his gum for a minute. “I heard on the radio they’re predicting this storm is going right through the Florida Straits, maybe clip Miami, then come barreling into the gulf.”

“What’s that going to mean for the task force?” Murphy asked.

“You’ll be shut down,” the captain said. “Once the mayor pulls the trigger on the evacuation plan, everyone-including detectives-is going on hurricane duty.”

Murphy nodded toward the still-smoldering building. “What about the killer?”

“Maybe he’ll fucking drown,” Donovan said as he walked away.

Murphy sat down on the curb, wishing he had a cigarette, thinking what a bad idea it had been to quit. The Red Door fire was almost beyond comprehension. His original body count had been off by three. The crime lab had counted seventy-one dead.

As if he didn’t have enough problems already trying to keep his job, trying not to strangle his mother, trying to catch a serial killer, now he had seventy-one more bodies dumped on him. Likely, the worst mass murder in U.S. history, outside of 9/11, and it was his pile of shit to roll around in.

“I saw who did this.”

The voice came from behind. Murphy sprang to his feet and turned around. He was looking down at a guy with a face so weathered he could just as easily have been seventy as fifty, with long gray hair tied in a ponytail and wearing the trademark red-and-white-striped shirt of a Lucky Dog vendor.

Murphy looked past the man and spotted his hot-dog cart parked at the corner of Royal Street. The distinctive carts were a French Quarter icon, a bright red grill, a drink cooler, and a red and yellow umbrella, all set on top of a fiberglass base molded into the shape of a six-foot hot dog.

“What did you say?” Murphy asked.

“I think I saw who set the bar on fire.”

Friday, August 3, 8:25 AM

The killer limps into the connecting hallway between the two rooms of his apartment. His bedroom is in front, closest to the street. The kitchen is in back, and there is a tiny bathroom off the hall. The low-slung, shoe box-shaped apartment is built beneath the high side of Mother’s one-and-a-half-story house on South Saint Patrick Street.

The killer’s hip hurts, but the pain in his right knee is worse. He barely slept last night.

That fool and his Lucky Dog cart. The killer had barely taken two steps when he smashed into the cart. The pain wasn’t that bad at first, but by the time he reached Canal Street, he was hobbling.

In the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink, he finds an old bottle of aspirin. He pops four into his mouth and gulps them down with two handfuls of water from the tap. As he closes the medicine cabinet, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and wonders about the hot-dog vendor.

How good of a look at me did he get?

Even if the Lucky Dog man couldn’t describe him, staying to watch the fire had been a mistake. Had he walked away, as he intended, the cop would not have noticed him. Which means he would not have had to run. Had he not run, he would not have slammed into the hot-dog cart.

No more mistakes, he promises himself.

He leaves the bathroom and limps into his bedroom. On the far side is a sliding glass door, the only entrance to his apartment. He pulls open the door and steps outside. The pain in his knee grows as he lurches to the end of the short driveway and stoops to pick up Mother’s newspaper. As he turns back, he shoots a glance at the concrete steps leading to the veranda that stretches across the front of Mother’s house, a house to which he-her only child-does not have a key.

He hurries back inside his apartment.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he opens the newspaper and scans the headlines. There is nothing about the fire. At first, he is outraged. Then he realizes the fire was probably after the newspaper’s deadline.

The killer grabs the TV remote and switches on the television. He flips to Channel 15, which plays continuous rebroadcasts of the latest WWL-TV newscast. The fire is the lead story. The gray-haired male anchor, whose solemn face is buried beneath a thick layer of makeup, calls it the Inferno in the French Quarter.

“A six-alarm fire, which investigators are calling intentionally set, began about midnight last night in the French Quarter and killed as many as sixty people, according to fire and police officials.

“Witnesses say that within seconds, fire engulfed the Red Door Lounge on the top floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. Patrons at the popular gay and lesbian nightspot who tried to escape the blaze found the fire exit chained shut, which made escape nearly impossible. About twenty people did manage to get out of the burning building by flinging themselves from windows or squeezing through the partially blocked fire exit.

“WWL’s Jim Hitchcock is on the scene. Jim, what can you tell us?”

The screen cuts to a reporter on the street, who prattles on about the devastating death toll and how shocked everyone is in the tight-knit French Quarter community, especially its gay and lesbian members.

It turns the killer’s stomach to see such fawning respect given to those abominations.

The camera shot widens and shifts slightly, showing the reporter on the right of the screen.

The killer is shocked to see that standing beside the reporter is the hot-dog vendor, his Lucky Dog cart visible in the background.

The news anchor’s voice cuts in. “In a WWL exclusive, reporter Jim Hitchcock is talking to a man who may have seen who started the fire at the Red Door Lounge, a fire that killed at least sixty people. Jim

…”

“Thanks, Bob,” the reporter says into the camera. “I’m here on Iberville Street at the scene of this deadly six-alarm fire with Frank Smith, a Lucky Dog vendor who works in the French Quarter and who says he saw a man running from the scene of the fire moments after it started.”