Silence Relaimed the Night

All things considered, Dan Stevenson would have felt much better if he didn't have a bullet hole in his shoulder. It didn't bother him as much as it did ten days ago, but needless to say, it was still far from pleasant.

He tossed his keys on the table and turned the deadbolt as he closed the apartment door. There was a muffled click as the stubborn tumbler fell into place. He shuffled into the kitchen, opened a beer, and sat down. The morning paper, unread, lay on the table where he put it some twelve hours ago, when he left for work. He loosened his tie and untucked his shirt, allowing his ample gut to flop, unhindered, over his belt.

Dan was a homicide detective with the Rawlings Police Department and had been for going on six years. For the last four months he and most of the other people down at homicide had been on the trail of a serial killer. Up to this point there had been ten killings--all of the victims were women. The bodies were found in a variety of places: dumpsters, along roadsides, one was even found inside an abandoned car behind a Seven-Eleven. One of the bodies, interestingly enough, had gun powder burns on the hands, indicating the victim had recently fired a handgun of some kind.

All of the bodies were naked, hands bound together behind the back and then tied to the ankles with yellow nylon rope. In every case, the bodies were either wet, caked with mud and lime, or, judging from the matting of body hair and the patches of dried dirt, recently had been. Results of the autopsies showed water in the lungs of the victims. All of the victims died of either drowning or bleeding. Deep gashes had been made on the insides of the arms, from the crease of the elbow to the wrist. The instrument used to make the incision was razor sharp. Nothing as delicate as a scalpel, it was a much heavier blade, but almost as sharp. Based on the bruises on the wrists and ankles, the victims were stripped, then bound. The cuts were then made, and then the victims were, apparently, put in some sort of water container.

Dan took the bullet to the shoulder two weeks ago. He told anyone who asked that it was the result of a hunting accident, which, in a round about way, wasn't that much of a lie. It wasn't a bad wound, a .22 bullet passed through the deltoid muscle of his left shoulder without hitting bone or anything vital. It hurt like a son of a bitch and it bled a lot, but it wasn't life threatening. The injury made work a little more difficult, but what the hell, that's life, right? You've got to do what you've got to do, if you'll pardon the phrase. After finishing the job at hand, which was a whole lot more trouble than it started out to be, he managed to temporarily stop the bleeding with a scrap of cloth torn off of his undershirt. Dan made it back to his apartment and called a doctor acquaintance of his. Dr. Appleton, after taking into consideration Dan's kind offer not to notify the state medical board about Appleton's tiny little drug habit and not to release to the press certain surveillance photos in Dan's possession of the good doctor parading around the house in his wife's underwear, cleaned and dressed the wound. Free of charge, of course. Dan spent the week with his arm in a sling, but against the advice of his physician, no longer bothered with it. The sling was far too impractical.

Dan groaned as he stood up from the table. He gently rubbed his injured shoulder and then proceeded to wash down five aspirin with the last of his beer. He showered and got a change of clothes. Standing in his living room, Dan pulled on his brown leather jacket. His hair, still wet from the shower, dripped down the back of his neck. He checked the left interior pocket of his jacket to make sure his length of nylon rope was there. It was. He picked his carpet knife up off of the coffee table and put it in the right interior pocket. Dan felt no remorse for what he did. He preferred to think of himself as a cleansing and disinfecting agent, at least that's what the voices told him. He was sort of like Pine-Sol with a knife. Dan zipped up his jacket and left the apartment. Tonight, like so many nights before, he had work to do. And it was time to go clean up some filth.

He sat in the bus station for the better part of two hours. The sky was clear and in the light of the not-quite-full moon, he could see the early fall breeze playing gently over the arms of the lawn ornament windmill in the yard across the street. He stood looking out the window for quite some time, watching the lazy rotation of the windmill and listening to it squeak in protest with each rotation.

Why doesn't somebody oil that damn thing? he thought as the steady squeaking, which at first had a sort of calming, hypnotic effect, slowly gnawed away at him more and more. With each revolution, it made a sort of double squeaking noise: Squeaksqueak. Squeaksqueak. Squeaksqueak.

It was nearly 8:30 when the young woman stepped off of the bus and he knew instantly that she was going to have to die. She was in her late teens or early twenties. She was well dressed and carrying a guitar case and an overnight bag. No doubt a college girl coming home to visit her parents for the weekend.

She was pretty, but then again, weren't they all? Her long, brown hair fell gracefully over her shoulders. She walked over to one of the benches and set her luggage down. He was close enough now to hear the guitar ring inside the case as she set it on the bench. She reached into the pocket of her short black leather jacket and produced her ticket stub. She looked at it for a moment, checked the big clock on the wall, and then looked again at the ticket. It was then that Dan got his first good look at her face. Her eyes were very dark and her chin almost came to a point. She had high cheek bones and was wearing just a touch too much makeup. Dan felt something inside himself stir.

Squeaksqueak. Squeaksqueak.

The young woman sighed and stuffed the ticket back into her pocket. She slung the strap of the overnight bag over her shoulder again, grabbed her guitar case, and walked over to the ticket counter. Dan casually followed a half dozen steps behind, close enough to listen, but not close enough to intrude.

"Can I help you?" the lady behind the ticket counter asked as the young woman approached.

"Yeah, is the bus to St. Louis going to be leaving on time?"

The chubby woman ran her right index finger down a chart in front of her.

"They're running a little late. They'll be arriving here from Bloomington at about 9:20. They'll be departing for St. Louis at about 9:40."

The young woman checked her watch impatiently. "All right," she said. "Thanks." She turned and started to walk away.

"Miss?" the lady behind the counter called after her. The young woman turned.

"Yes?"

"There's a little coffee shop next door. It's a little more comfortable waiting over there than it is in here. They have wonderful apple pie and you can get breakfast anytime."

The plump lady behind the counter smiled as she spoke. As she did so, her pudgy cheeks and saggy jowls made her take on a visage that was almost cartoon in nature.

The young woman forced a smile. "Thanks."

She turned toward the door and checked the clock on the wall once again. Dan, who was already growing slightly short of breath with excitement, felt his heart nearly leap out of his chest as the young woman brushed past him on her way to the door and he caught scent of her perfume. He felt a thin sheen of perspiration break out on his forehead. He took a deep breath, and wiped it away with his forearm.

Squeaksqueak. Squeaksqueak.

He watched out the window as the young woman entered the coffee shop next door. He waited in the bus station for another five minutes before going outside to wait for his prey in the shadows between the coffee shop and the bus station.

Dan had been squatting beside the dumpster for so long that his feet were starting to go to sleep. She had been in the coffee shop for almost forty minutes. She had to be coming out soon.

Unless she met someone in the coffee shop and in going to stay the night and head for St. Louis in the morning. Or maybe she got her coffee to go and went up the street to the drug store to get a newspaper or a magazine and she's heading back to the bus station down the other side of the block. Or maybe—

At last his fears were put to rest as the young woman emerged from around the corner of the coffee shop, still nibbling on a toasted bagel. Dan had this part down to a science. He'd done it so many times it was like a reflex action. He rose slowly to his feet and stepped out of the shadows.

"Ma'am?" he called, shuffling after her, holding his police badge out in front of him. "Rawlings Police Department. Can I talk to you for a minute?"

The young woman jumped and turned to face Stevenson.

Careful, he thought. This one's skittish.

She checked her watch uneasily. "I have a bus to catch."

Stevenson nodded understandingly. "This will just take a minute. I just have a couple of questions for you."

He reached into his back pocket and produced a notepad and pen. He opened the notepad and smiled as he looked up at her. Was she going to swallow the bait, or was she going to spit it out? He slowly took a step forward. She didn't move away. Instead, she sighed and set her guitar case down on the sidewalk. "All right," she said. "But I'm in kind of a hurry."

Swallowed.

"I understand. I'll be quick."

Dan took another step forward.

Squeaksqueak. Squeaksqueak.

"We've had reports of a suspicious male hanging around this area. I was wondering if you--"

Dan slammed his elbow into the young woman's temple. She made a surprised whoop and fell to the ground like a stone.

Almost too easy, Dan thought as he instantly dragged the woman into the shadows and then into his car. Almost too easy.

An hour and a half later, Dan Stevenson, sore shoulder and all, was doing the part he liked best--watching. He had no idea what her name was and didn't care. There she was, bound as he had bound so many before her, attempting to keep her head above the three feet of water in the stone lined root cellar in the basement. He had been bringing them out here to the country to what used to be his parents' place for quite some time now. His parents, bless their souls, had died years ago and left the house to him in their will.

He sat on the steps leading down to the root cellar and silently watched the tableau unfold before him. He loved the way her long brown hair, now wet, was matted to her face and neck. She coughed and gasped as the water turned an increasingly deeper shade of red. At least she wasn't begging him to let her go. God, how he hated to hear them beg. The only thing that broke the perfect silence of the scene was rumble of the furnace and the screaming which had been going on for right at six minutes now. He figured the screaming would come to an end in about another five minutes, or so. It varied. The furnace clicked off.

Eventually the screaming stopped, too. And silence reclaimed the night.