Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

The overhead light is off and the painted windows allow only a trickle of outside illumination to seep into the room. With the camera’s infrared function switched on, everything in the viewfinder is green. Through the holes in the pillowcase, Kiesha’s eyes shine like headlamps.

The killer presses the record button and sees the letters REC appear in the viewfinder. A red LED light glows above the lens. Even that slight change in the environment heightens the woman’s fear. He hears her sharp intake of breath through the pillowcase.

He pulls the black ski mask down over his head, then slips the million-volt stun gun from his back pocket. As he steps across the dark room, he presses the trigger. Sparks jump between the prongs, flashing through the room like a bolt of lightning. For an instant he can see her clearly, and he imagines the terror-filled look on the pretty young face beneath the pillowcase. Behind her duct-tape gag, she tries to scream.

“Time to have some fun,” he says, loud enough for the camera’s built-in microphone to pick up the words. Then he jams the stun gun against the woman’s neck and fires it. A giant convulsion racks her body.

Standing behind her, the killer stares at the camera as the woman sags against her bonds, her limbs still twitching from the shock. He knows that behind the mask his eyes, too, are shining. “You said that I am impotent, Mr. Mayor. You said that I can’t get aroused. That I am a homosexual, a sodomite. Now, I will show you who is impotent. When I get through here, you will realize that you are the impotent one, Mr. Mayor. You and your entire police department. You can’t catch me because I am beyond your reach. I am the Lamb of God.”

He shoves the stun gun back into his pocket. Tucked inside his waistband at the small of his back is his KA-BAR combat knife. As the young woman begins to recover from the latest electric blast, the killer slides the knife from its sheath. His eyes have adjusted so that he can see her outline in the dark.

With two quick motions, he cuts the spaghetti straps that hang across her shoulders. Then he peels down the front of her black dress, beneath which she wears a strapless black silk bra. The killer slides the tapered point of the knife between the cups. Then he twists the blade up and out and slices apart the small ribbon of silk that holds them together.

He can hear her gasping through the pillowcase.

To add to her terror, he stabs the knife into the wooden seat between her thighs and leaves it standing there. Her knees clinch together, but when her legs touch the blade, she jerks them apart, but not before the edge nicks the creamy brown skin of her left thigh.

The killer reaches beneath the chair and lifts a plastic bottle of baby oil into the camera’s view. He unscrews the cap and pours the clear liquid across the young woman’s exposed breasts. She twists and strains against her bonds so much that she almost tips the chair over.

With deliberate casualness, he sets the bottle on the floor, then traces his fingertips through the oil, drawing concentric circles on her breasts until he reaches her nipples. He feels no surge of excitement at touching her oiled skin. In fact, if he feels anything at all it is revulsion. But the camera doesn’t know that, nor does she.

In anticipation of what she no doubt thinks is going to be a gruesome rape, the young woman throws herself into a spasm of jerks and twists. They are so violent that he has to wrap his arms around her to keep her from throwing herself and the chair over. Yet he continues to stroke her nipples.

After she exhausts herself, he hooks his left thumb under the tape around her neck and snatches the KA-BAR free from the chair seat with his right hand. Then he slices through the tape and jerks the pillow case off her head.

Like an unblinking eye, the red light above the camera’s lens stares at him through the darkness.

Grinning behind his mask, the killer stares back at his electronic audience. “Guess who?”

Sunday, August 5, 3:10 AM

Murphy sat on his sofa, Glock pistol in one hand, empty whiskey glass in the other. He rocked back and forth, unable to control the buzz saw of thoughts slicing through his brain. He shoved the pistol in his mouth and started to squeeze the trigger.

He had only vague recollections of coming home. The bloody surgical gloves he had worn were in the kitchen trash can, abandoned there when he grabbed a half-full bottle of Knob Creek from the pantry.

That bottle was now empty, sitting on the coffee table beside his empty holster.

Murphy lowered the gun. He had tried half a dozen times to go through with it, to pull the trigger and blow his brains out. Each time he got a little closer, putting just a little bit more pressure on the trigger. His Glock had an eight-pound trigger pull. He figured he was up to six, maybe seven pounds of pressure.

Next time it would go off.

He stared at his pistol, then at the empty whiskey bottle. There was a six-pack of Bud Light in the refrigerator. His throat was dry, like someone had poured cat litter down it. He climbed off the sofa and stumbled into the kitchen. He brought the whole six-pack back with him. He popped open one of the beers and downed half the can in a single gulp. The ice-cold liquid felt good running down his throat.

There was no way out of this. He had murdered a woman, broken into her house in the middle of the night and strangled her.

Dawn was less than three hours away. He had to muster the courage by then to do the right thing.

I need to be dead by the time the sun comes up.

He chugged the rest of the beer and then popped the top on another one.

What the hell had happened? he asked himself. Again and again he flashed back to that scene in the hallway. Marcy Edwards stepping out of the bathroom, the terrified look on her face, the scream.

It had been her screaming that had done it, that had forced his hand. If she had not screamed, he might have been able to talk to her. He could have started with the truth, that he was the detective in charge of the serial-killer task force. Then he could have lied, claiming he was following up on an anonymous tip. Someone had called in the serial killer’s address. He didn’t have enough for a search warrant, but he was desperate to stop more women from being murdered, even if it took an illegal search.

That story might have even flown with PIB.

But Marcy Edwards had screamed. And Murphy had strangled her.

What had happened next existed in his memory as nothing more than a blur of images. He remembered running through the house, looking for children or an infirm parent stuffed in a hospital bed. But the house was empty. He remembered stopping to examine the damage he had done to the back door, thinking how similar it looked to the pry marks on Sandra Jackson’s door. He remembered his plodding steps as he approached the bathroom again.

He remembered Marcy Edwards lying on her back, her nightgown torn open, exactly as he had left her. He remembered being surprised she hadn’t moved. This couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. She was dead.

He was afraid to touch her. But he had to. He rolled her onto her stomach and yanked her nightgown up high enough to expose her buttocks and lower back. He pulled his folding knife from his pocket and flicked it open. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to carve into her flesh.

He remembered what he had done instead. Using the gloved index finger of his left hand, he had traced the letters L-O-G in blood on the cold tile floor. Desperation was what it had been. A panicked man’s attempt to distance himself from the horrible thing he had done.

Then he stumbled out the back door and staggered to his car. He was halfway home before he realized he was driving without headlights. He was lucky a cop hadn’t pulled him over.