Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Perhaps that was the most guilty-seeming thing he did. Maybe innocent people break down and confess just to get out of the cinder-block room. Maybe, whether you’re guilty or innocent, you just can’t win once the police decide to come after you. Certainly, that was Kafka’s take, and he believed it so strongly he wouldn’t even publish the stories he wrote about it. He even willed that the unpublished stories were to be burned upon his death. He was afraid the authorities could still get at him once he was in the grave.

In fact, it was only after the police decided that Bill was their man that new “evidence” magically appeared to seal the case. Initial searches yielded nothing, but later searches came up with items that had been “missed”.

Once again, the police really missed the opportunity to close this case for good, to shut Bill up for all time. All the cops had to do was do their job according to the rules. They had no lawful reason to stop and question Bill, let alone to arrest him. But, once they had him in their sights, they were afraid to let him go. Despite all their profiles and researches to the contrary, the cops were afraid that this killer would suddenly stop killing and would destroy all possible evidence.

To this day the Riverside cops and prosecutor just don’t understand what a serial killer is all about. They don’t get that, once they suspected Bill, all they had to do was give him enough rope, watch from a distance, and he would try to kill again. Then they’d have him with his hand in the cookie jar.

That is, if he’s really the killer.

Cheryl was giggling so hard, she was on the verge of peeing her pants. Her friend Judy, the store manager, was laughing so loudly, customers in the Circle K at that late hour were sure the two girls were on drugs. It just couldn’t be legal for any two people to be having that much fun.

Down behind the front counter by the cash register, Cheryl had a one-gallon plastic bucket full of water. In the water she was soaking a tampon that shed dipped in blood from a package of hamburger meat. The instant the tampon had hit the water it mushroomed and started to disintegrate. Now Judy was plucking the tampon from the water and dangling it, holding it out of Cheryl’s reach as the younger girl jumped at it. Reddish water was flying everywhere, and, when Judy swung the tampon, it went flying too, out of her grasp—KERPLOP!—landing on the window top of the ice cream freezer.

Judy and Cheryl laughed all the harder.

The experiment was a bust. Cheryl had been hoping she could save a used tampon from her next period, moisten it, and briefly reinsert it to kind of wring out some of the blood back inside her before she had sex with Bill, and have him think that he’d drawn the blood in the process of tearing her hymen.

But, clearly, a tampon was not going to work.

Now she was left with the possibility of squirting a basterful of chicken or beef blood into her, or ketchup even, but what if Bill tasted her like she hoped he would?

“How about—while he’s in you, you reach down there and scratch yourself and bleed for real?” suggested Judy.

“Youch!” replied Cheryl. “Besides, at some point he’ll see the scratch and know that’s what bled.”

“Okay, okay, then I’ve got it—prick your finger with a tack, and then rub it on him when you’re getting him all worked up.”

“A prick, for a prick’s prick?” Cheryl laughed.

“Bill is not a prick,” said Judy, “he’s one terrific guy.”

“Except for this virgin business. What is the big deal anyway? A girl who’s doing it for the first time is lousy at it.”

“And a girl who’s too good at it is a whore.”

“Why are men so fucked up, huh?”

“Who cares—just be glad you got one.”

“You’re so hot for him, you take him.”

“Maybe I will.”

Cheryl dagger-eyed Judy. “Don’t you dare,” said Cheryl.

It was late—Cheryl had overstayed her shift to play around with the tampon. Bill would be home and Bill would be worried about why she was late. He liked to keep tabs on her, liked to know for certain where she’d be when and when shed be where. Right now he’d be reading in bed, and, as soon as he heard her key in the lock, he’d shut off his reading light and pretend to be asleep. Cheryl could see the light go off from under the front door of their apartment. It was just one of his little games.

Later, as soon as Cheryl shut off her light and tucked herself in to the sofa, Bill would masturbate. She was certain he wanted her to hear it, but if she surprised him by creeping into his room during his self-abuse, he would roll over and make a snoring sound. Sometimes she waited until she heard him come, and then she’d go to his door and smell it in the air. That got her excited. Then she’d return to her sofa and diddle herself.

More games.

Cheryl longed for a normal sex life with this man, but she was intrigued by what they had. Older men definitely had more complex sexuality than the teenagers she knew—all her peers wanted to do was fuck.

“I better get home,” Cheryl said to Judy.

“lf he calls I’ll tell him you left a while ago but you were gonna stop for gas.”

“No, he checks the gas gauge.”

“Really?”

“G’night.”

Cheryl headed out.

It was odd—some nights Bill insisted on dropping Cheryl off at work and picking her up after, and sometimes he’d call at the last minute and ask if Cheryl could hitch a ride with Judy—but he never seemed to have any real rhyme or reason for it either way. He was always possessed by some premonition of an earthquake or robbery or some disaster that would befall Cheryl without his protection, and he liked to terrify her and make her take his advice by warning her of his worry, but it really seemed like even he knew he was making it all up just to divert everyone’s attention from some secret agenda he had going.

Tonight Cheryl hadn’t heard from Bill at all, and that was definitely odd. If she didn’t know better, Cheryl would have believed that Bill was cheating on her.

In fact, at that very moment, high in the not-so-high Ortega Mountains behind Lake Elsinore, in a kind of canyon within a canyon, hidden from sight above and below, at a place that would always be for him “Tranquility Garden”, Bill Suff was alone with Carol Lynn Miller and Cheryl was most definitely not on his mind.

Earlier in the evening, Carol had missed her drug connection. Actually, she’d been at the rendezvous point on time and ready to score, but her dealer hadn’t shown, no doubt wisely aware that Carol wouldn’t have the cash to consummate the transaction.

Carol was angry at first, angry at the no-show, but then she decided it was some sort of a sign, that all the forces of nature and even the drug dealers of the world were unifying to tell her she couldn’t afford her addiction anymore. She was financially and emotionally bankrupt, bereft. She needed to get whole, she needed to get clean.

In response, she decided she’d go cold turkey—after all, she was already more than a few hours into it, and it wasn’t really so bad.

Unfortunately, per usual, resolve turned to challenge.

Who was that motherfucking dealer to decide for her when she would kick or not?

She’d show him, she’d show them all. Carol would take her life back her way, in her own damn time. If she wanted to hook and she wanted to fix, that was her business, her life.