Issue 3:1 | Fiction | Jo Neace Krause

What I Know About the Real Killer

Jo Neace Krause

First of all I don't talk. I don't even look at people. I walk out of my apartment, get in my car and drive towards work downtown. I work in one of those tall gleaming modern buildings that looks like it's made of glass or aluminum where the high clouds shine on its surface like a moving weather pattern shown on television, or like a man's face changing as he thinks. I don't even listen to tapes as I drive. I'm thinking, ticking, always thinking.

Even when they tied the yellow tape around the house where the murdered woman lived, two doors down from me, I just asked one or two questions. Looked horrified and got out. I didn't show much curiosity. It's normal to be above it. And I'm above it all. I'm a .research engineer. My profession, my years at graduate school, the hard work I've gone through, all that makes women in general odious to me. And, murdered ones are especially odious. They actually believe all this life's struggle is for them! Like those little smartass hitchhikers alone out on the highway, on the edge of the city, their bright faces racing at my windshield, smug, knowing, thinking a little wormy guy like me would just love to have someone beautiful like them sit in my car. I pull my car over, reach over, open the door and let her in.

There she sits, demure, haughty. Young, slender legs crossed. "Aren't you uncomfortable hitchhiking?" I ask. "I'm very concerned."

The last one grinned as if she were really a prize. "Well, I think I make the people who pick me up more uncomfortable than I am."

"Really," I say.

We ride along after this with our mouths closed, both of us slightly smirking.

"I want to get out at the crossroads, up by the ...," and she pointed to a gas station. I just flew past like a streak. "Hey," she said.

"Hey," I grin at her.

"Look, I wanted out there. I don't want to play games."

"What's wrong with games?" I ask, grinning. Already I have cleared the street that leads in by the river, into the highway along the Niagara.

"Did you know the Niagara is not a real river?" I asked. "It's just a long drooling spill over the lip of Lake Erie."

We look at the rushing river below. The waters tumbling over the rocks remind me of something violent, Satan wrestling with the angels, his dark coattails sailing about, the white angel struggling.

"I don't care. I want you to pull over and let me out of here this minute," she demands. She is wearing shorts and a white blouse of some kind. She's so slender, pretty little boobs. I keep grinning at her. I love these games.

"Oh, we're on the New York Thruway." I laugh, "I can't turn around here, must drive to the right exit. What exit should we take? Not that one, it's too small. Not that one it's too large. Ah, here's one, a road that branches off into several other roads. Here's one now!"

She refuses to look at me. Refuses to answer me. That makes me mad. I don't like people who won't speak to me. Starts me getting angry, my mind jumping around. I'll show her what it means to treat me like a piece shit.

"I want someone to see some beautiful countryside with me." I tell her, still sounding benign, still sweet. I keep glancing from the dusty road back to her face. She is holding on to the door handle, clutching it with her small clean fingers to ease her weight as we go fast over the bumps.

"I bet you didn't even know this road existed, did you? Even though you've lived here for how long? Eighteen years! Twenty years! Eighteen years is a long time to live. I mean . . . without knowing what roads exist. Maybe you think roads are just out there to take you where you want to go, and never where you don't want to go, huh?"

"I'm taking quick glances at her. Her lips are narrowed and shut. She looks straight ahead. Has a little pouty-ass mouth that I'm going to slap, slap, slap five, six times. Quick, quick, quick, harder and harder!

"Stop this car, you hear me!" she screams. "Stop it, or I'm going to climb in the back seat and jump out the door."

"Oh, come on. I'll stop. I'm from California, you see. I don't get back to Buffalo often. Hey, I'm going to turn around in a second. I just wanted someone to see the rock quarry with me. It's seventy feet deep. You know?"

I put on the brakes and she reaches for the door. But my car doors don't open from the inside, unless you know where the secret button is. And only I know that.

"Go on, scream." I tell her, "Who's going to hear you way out in this dump?"

Her hands claw at the door handle. I grab her then, turn her around and slap her hard across the mouth. She stiffens with shock. I hit her several more times, and in a wild panic she begins to fight back. Her frightened breathing. Her wild horrified eyes are before me. In a few minutes I say she'll be a dead body, then you'll see her dropping down, down ,down into the cold, deep bottom of that quarry, among the drowned clutter of junk cars and trucks.

At work I hurried with my paper under my arm. The story of the missing woman from my neighborhood interests me. I go into my office and open up the paper. They have arrested her husband. His round ugly startled face stares out like a moon. What else can the cops do?

Who would know? Who would know that the very guy in California who invented underwater search lights would be responsible for all these young bodies floating under the ice of the Niagara River? Thinking about the bodies spurs me on with my research you might say.

I've been doing this for years. I pick my highways. I pick my girls. IÔm very, very picky about my pick-ups. Ha, ha, ha! Sometimes when the company has me travel, sends me out on a new highway, that's when the thrill starts to collect itself again in me, like a long, long piece of jazz rising in the puckering cells deep in the body. Inside me all night, all day . . . music to kill by, you might say. Ha, ha, ha! I like that.

Again I take the newspaper and go into my office. I have my own private office and toilet. I take the newspaper in there and open it to the murdered woman's husband. As interest grows in the story, his face grows with it. His face takes up half the page now, round and dumb . . . pimples . . . acne . . . suspect. Something's missing in him. Everyone wants him dead, wants him to get the needle. When his body relaxes in death, they too relax. They will feel good. We're all the same when you come down to it, we loners and the masses. We are all waiting to be thrilled, waiting for love, waiting to kill.

His wife, however, was a little different for me. Since she lived two doors down, it was she who found me. I'd see her out every morning walking their big shaggy dog. We ignored each other. Even when her dog broke lose that one morning and came bouncing up towards me, I didn't turn, just went for my car. Then I remembered it was Christmas and there was no work. I turned and saw her walking up towards the loose dog. I took its leash and held it, waited for her. That's when I noticed something. She had been crying. Looked sulky, and offended, like some of the women when I had them under my control making them say things they never knew they could say.

"Thanks for holding him," the woman said. I was looking straight in her face and suspecting some weakness now.

"Sure. Well, after all it's Christmas," I smiled, a little sadly. "You live down the block huh? We're neighbors, but I'm usually too busy to notice people; too busy for anything, and then all of a sudden, what do you know, it's Christmas."

She had taken the leash and sat down on the bench under the tree with that tear-filled look puffing out her cheeks.

"Hey, is something wrong?" I asked her softly, stepping closer.

"My husband," she said in a low voice.

"A little fight, perhaps?" I pried. I knew exactly what to say. "Too bad, the holidays cause such unexpected tension."

"He's gone fishing!" she said. We had a fight and the son of a bitch--oh, excuse my French--he insisted on going fishing, and when I wouldn't go, he took off alone."

"And where is that? I mean, did he go to the ocean?"

"Oh, he's down at the bay somewhere. I don't know, and I don't care."

"Really? Why don't you follow him?"

"Follow him? Why?" she lifted her large brown eyes to me in a slow startled interest.

"Maybe he's not there? Maybe he didn't go fishing? Maybe we should go look?"

A serious, wondering thought reflected in her face, like cloud over the face of a building. "You mean, you would drive me? All the way to bay?"

"Why not? What more do I have to do? I'm alone, my family lives a thousand miles away," I tell her.

So we drove. She chattered the whole way. Why hadn't we noticed each other before? She couldn't think why. Had I heard her and her husband fighting? Did I think any of the neighbors heard her? Did people talk about them on the block? They fought all the time. Money. Always money. And, he had a girlfriend. Yes, he was screwing around, and wanted to leave her. And, she was pregnant. Could I tell she was pregnant? Did it really show? Her husband had hated her protruding body. He just didn't want to sleep with some ugly fat pig he said.

Did she really look like a pig, she wanted to know, to me? Did I think she looked like a pig? We sailed over the throughway, the road was almost empty of traffic.

I confess I get silly at times. I'm not always a totally serious serial killer and rapist. Sometimes I act silly. For example, when she asked if I thought she looked like a pig, I began to cut the wheel back and forth so she rocked in her seat a little, and she looked at me.

"What does this remind you of?" I asked, "This car jerking back and forth? Isn't it exactly like the hindquarters of some nasty little pig wiggling and boring into the hot nasty flesh of some sow?"

She looked at me in unbelieving wonder.

Then I began to make little piggy sounds with my lips. Oink. Oink. Oink.

The space between us went hard, really silent. I continued to cut the wheel in little jerks. Although I didn't look over at her, I knew she knew, knew now she was in trouble. She knew. I could see her hands flutter, reach to pull her coat around her body, that instinctive protective move they all make soon as they know.

"What's the matter, oink, oink?" I asked. And her eyes grew wide in revulsion.

"Why you! You're . . ." She didn't say it, just looked at me with that wide-eyed fear, the click of the trap in their head that springs the eyes wide. I could almost hear it!

We were approaching the beach where it suddenly became chill, the wind was churning the water. The little boats along the piers were lifting and rocking. A cold rain began to hit the windshield, closing us in..

"I don't think your old man is here. I don't see anyone fishing in water like this!"

She leaned in for a better view of the water. I eased the car forward until I felt the tires bump against the guardrail. I saw her feet arrange themselves in anticipation of opening the door and jumping out.

"What's wrong?" she asked, turning to me. "This fucking door won't open. I can't get it to move. It's stuck or something.

"You just hold on," I said to her. "Sit tight, I've got some questions I want to ask you."

She stared at me, feeling the unyielding door. Then, in a kind of surrendering way, let go as if she would do her best to answer any questions

"Have you noticed me before?" I wanted to know.

"No." she said, looking straight ahead to the wintry sea.

"And why not? Don't you think I'm attractive?"

"I don't look at men."

"But you looked at me this morning. Why's that? "

"I didn't look at you."

I slap her across the mouth. I don't like women contradicting me.

"You looked at me.! I saw your eyes sweep over my dick. You wanted to have sex with me, didn't you? Tell me how I looked when you first saw me. Tell me what went on in your mind. Talk! Tell me! What did you see when you saw me with the dog?"

I made to hit her again, and she started babbling, "I saw a very handsome man, well dressed in a suit. Someone who looked nice. Nice looking."

"And then what? What!"

"Well, someone I could never have."

That pleased me very much.

"But now you have me."

I made her say that again.

"Someone out of my reach, beyond me. I'm not in your class. You know that, I'm sure. I'm not well educated. My husband is not as good as you. He's a little slow somehow. Not interested in much. But, you? You look like the brainy type."

I liked that too, I knew she was telling the truth, so I wanted to know more.

How could you tell I was the brainy type? What about me looks brainy?"

"I don't know. Don't have the words. It is a look. Just a look."

"You mean a kind of light. I have a light in my eyes."

"Not just your eyes. It's all over, the entire manner. And I was flattered you would even speak to me, even consider holding my dog."

"Yes, I understand that would be the case. But, what else? Would you want to have sex with a man like me?"

"Oh, that was out of the question! I just pushed that back."

"Why was that?"

"Well, I'm not good enough for a man like you, like I said, so I just don't think about it."

"But you think about other men? Don't you? You think about having sex with others. You're a bitch, aren't you?"

"Yes," she said. "But I go for the lower types. Not men like you."

I believed her. I could see she was smart enough to understand her position in the world. She didn't know all the inventions I had to my name, knew nothing about me, except that I had made it beyond people like her, climbed way ahead of her and entrapped her. She was entrapped by a superior mind. She knew now how inferior she was, and was right to confess this inferiority. I could have made her walk into the water and drown herself for the betterment of mankind, but that would have taken too many risks. For there was the coast guard ship off in the distance sailing around. Using tax money from people like me to protect any trashy little nobody like her from peril. Up and down. Up and down, the boat sailed as I strangled her. She hardly resisted for I had hypnotized her so well with fear. She still couldn't believe this was happening to her. Still believed it was a dream.

I needed then to get rid of her. Sometimes the bowels break. And the smell of them! I needed to get her out of there, wrap her up like a package, and tie her securely. Yes, grab some canvas from the trunk, wrap her up in that. After all, it was Christmas time and packages were appropriate.

Everyone is talking about it. Trying to figure out how the husband could have been so stupid as to dump her like that, in a bay and say he was only fishing there. Fishing on Christmas Day! In choppy waters like that! Who does he think he's fooling? Ha, ha, ha! Everyone laughs. Everyone hates him. But I don't talk about it with people. That's what a really weak mind would do, hang around being mouthy. I'm not like that. I'm way out ahead of them.

However, I might just go to his trial, watch him squirm around trying to express his innocence. You might see me there. I'll not be obvious, however. Not a hair out of place. Very expensive clothes and shoes. Everything about me very subdued. You won't see me acting like an ordinary criminal, passing notes across to the attorneys and such like, or trying to get the attention of the press. I'll be calm, maybe reading. Very handsome man. Right in the back. I'll take a seat where I will not be looking around or speaking to anyone, but waiting, just waiting.

Perhaps for you.