Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

The car is a dark sedan, several years old and beat-up. A Chevrolet, he thinks. It backs up. Two men are in the front seat. They are looking at his house. The passenger glances down at the end of the narrow driveway, empty now since Mother left. The number 127 is painted on the curb. That’s the address for Mother’s house.

The killer’s apartment, crammed underneath the second story of her bungalow, has its own address, 129 South Saint Patrick. That number is affixed to the outside wall, to the right of the glass door and above the black metal mailbox.

The men in the car are police officers. He is sure of that. A surge of panic wells up in his chest. Why are they here? His work has been flawless. He has left no clues that could have led them here. Still, they are here.

The car stops at the end of the driveway. The passenger looks down at some papers in his hand. Then both front doors open and the men step out. Both are young and fit, probably in their late twenties. They are wearing jeans and dark blue nylon jackets with the star and crescent seal of the New Orleans Police Department on the front. They stare at Mother’s front door. Neither seems bothered by the steady rain. The passenger nods to the empty driveway. The killer hears him say, “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.”

The driver says, “Let’s check it anyway.”

The killer backs away from the door.

Outside, the men cross the driveway. Neither has pulled a gun. This can’t be a raid, the killer thinks. They are here to talk to Mother about something. A traffic ticket, perhaps? It can’t be that simple. Mother never drives anywhere except to the grocery store, and that’s less than a mile down Canal Street.

These fit young men do not look like traffic cops. They are not here for Mother. The killer can feel that in his bones. They are here for him.

But why just two of them? No dark vans with blacked-out windows? No SWAT team? Just two detectives, junior detectives by the look of them. The killer reaches behind him and turns off the TV.

The men knock on Mother’s door. The knocking is signature police, sharp and demanding. When no one answers, they knock again. Then he hears them talking on the covered porch. He can’t quite make out their words. A moment later, he hears their boots descending Mother’s steps. They approach his door. Bang! Bang! Bang! Three sharp, demanding knocks on the glass.

The killer remains frozen. The detectives have no reason to suspect anyone is home, not with the storm coming and the driveway empty. Mother makes him park on the street. The driveway is for her Buick. Last night, the street was full, so he turned right at the next block, on Cleveland Avenue, and parked a few spaces from the corner.

“This is one twenty-nine,” one voice says. “The registration lists one twenty-seven.”

“It’s a double,” the second voice answers. “Probably the same owner.”

The knocks come again: Bang! Bang! Bang! They sound like gunshots. The killer cringes in the dark. Outside his door there is no overhang. He knows the detectives are getting wet. After a moment, one of them says, “Fuck it. No one’s home.”

He hears them walk away. The car doors slam shut. The motor cranks. The killer creeps back to the glass and peeks out just in time to see the sedan’s taillights disappear past the four-foot red brick wall that separates Mother’s small yard from the neighbor’s property.

Will they be back?

The killer’s eyes sweep his apartment. There are many things here that link him to the deaths of the sodomites and the harlots. His typewriter, his bag of cable ties, his bottle of ether. Several rolls of duct tape. And in the bottom of the linen closet, his collection of souvenirs. It is foolish to keep anything. He knows that. But he can’t help himself. Sometimes in between the killings, during the long, dark nights, he will get up, turn on the bathroom light, and look at his keepsakes. They are reminders of his work.

No one will find them. God is protecting him.

But God only helps those who help themselves.

He has to deal with Kiesha Guidry, that skinny little biting black bitch. With the storm coming, he has to do something with her right now. She will not live much longer in that box, especially if the hurricane knocks the house down around her.

If he wants to make a statement, he must hurry.

When Murphy ducked into the Homicide office at five o’clock, it was raining buckets outside. As he stripped off his raincoat, he was trying to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t going to find the mayor’s daughter or the serial killer before the storm hit. That meant Kiesha Guidry was going to be dead when they found her, if she wasn’t dead already.

Today had been his last chance, and he had failed. He was out of leads and out of ideas.

For the last several hours, Murphy had followed up on the divorce files from the clerk of court. With Marcy Edwards dead, there were only two women left on his list who bore any resemblance to the killer’s most recent victims.

According to the divorce petitions, one woman lived in a house in Gentilly; the other one lived in an apartment uptown. Murphy had cruised both addresses, looking for anyone who stood out, anyone who might be watching. Then he knocked on both doors. Not surprisingly, with a storm about to flatten the city, no one was home.

But the addresses listed in the divorce files did not match those on the women’s driver’s licenses. That gave Murphy two more places to look. Again, though, he came up empty. There were no suspicious characters lurking around either address, nor had anyone answered his knock.

Everyone who could get out of town had already left.

He had four more divorce files in his briefcase and driver’s-license photos to go with three of them. But none of those women looked anything like Carol Sue Spencer or Sandra Jackson. He had no photo for the fourth woman. Her file listed an address in New Orleans East. Murphy went there first. For all he knew, she might look exactly like the other victims. But the house was abandoned, with smashed windows and a broken back door.

Four of the five addresses he had for the remaining three women-from court records and driver’s licenses-looked lived-in, but no one answered when he knocked. The fifth address was a vacant apartment. State law required drivers to update their licenses within ten days of moving to a new address, but no one obeyed that. Murphy still had not changed the address on his license after he moved out of Kirsten’s house more than a year ago.

He was almost relieved no one had been home. Knocking on those doors had felt foolish. What was he going to say if one of the women answered?

Hello, I’m a policeman and I’m here to warn you that you may be the next victim of the serial killer. The reason I think that is because you share certain characteristics with a woman I strangled two nights ago.

Maybe something less dramatic.

Murphy realized that his odds of stumbling across the killer while both of them were staking out the same woman’s house were astronomical, but he also realized that those six names were the only leads he had.

Timing is everything.

That worn-out cliche kept spinning through Murphy’s head. Just because he had not found the killer didn’t mean the killer wasn’t stalking one of the women whose files Murphy was carrying inside his briefcase. All he knew for sure was that they had not been stalking the same woman at the same time.

In a perfect world, Murphy would put a pair of detectives on each occupied address and hope the killer showed up at one of them. In the real world, he couldn’t do that. He had to find the killer on his own and make sure the man never saw the inside of an interrogation room.