Rob Lindstrom
May 12, 1989
The third murder was not so easy.
A) The police were looking for him and moving around in the city was dangerous. B) The confusion was getting very bad now. Sometimes he had no idea who or where he was, almost as if he were phasing in and out of a fever dream. C) The thing in his stomach was making him nauseous till the time.
In the bureau he found the same manila envelope with the same photos he had come to dread seeing. They reminded him too much of what he'd done to the two women.
Now there was a new name in the envelope.
Doreen Jackson.
He crumpled it up and threw it in the corner.
He went into the bathroom and barfed.
When he came out he went into the living room and collapsed into the chair.
Sweat beaded his forehead. His teeth were chattering. He was hot and cold. He couldn't decide which.
He kept clamping his hand on his stomach.
The thing inside him kept coiling and uncoiling. He slammed his fist against it.
For a moment it stopped writhing.
He lay back in the chair.
He had brought something with him from his last pass through the kitchen. Now, in the half light of night, streetlights and car lights framing the paper blinds, he raised the butcher knife up to his eyes and looked at it.
He eased the point of it down to his belly.
The thing was writhing again.
You sonofabitch. You! Fucking sonofabitch, he thought.
He pressed the butcher knife against his belly.
An abortion was what he needed.
He tried to find the humour in this, in a man needing an abortion.
It would be so easy-
Just plunge the knife straight in. An abortion.
He tried. Several times.
He couldn't do it.
He started sobbing and he couldn't stop and he ended up puking instead.
Now the thing was working its way up from his stomach into his oesophagus-
Two hours later he dialled information and got the name of an outcall massage parlour.
An hour after that there was a knock on his door.
"Yes?" he said, not getting up.
"You called me. I'm from Pussycats."
"Come in."
He heard the doorknob being turned, the apartment door slowly creaking open.
She stood in silhouette. She was tall, at least six feet, and chunky. She wore hot pants and a halter and a big floppy hat. A huge purse was slung over her shoulder. She smelled of heat and sweat and cigarette smoke and sex and night and cheap wine.
"How come the light ain't on?"
"I prefer the darkness."
"I ain't into no weird shit, babe. I want you to know that up front."
"Just please come in and close the door."
"You don't turn on the light, I'm puttin' an extra five on the tab."
"Fine."
"Wear and tear on the nerves, you know?"
"Please. Just come in and close the door." So she did.
He sat in the chair and smelled her. He found her various aromas erotic.
"You want just a BJ?"
"BJ?"
"Blow job."
"Oh."
"We've got a special on them tonight is why I asked."
"I see." Despite himself, he smiled. My God the world made no sense at all. Prostitution was demeaning enough; now they were selling it at discount prices.
"Can we turn on a light?"
"Not yet."
"It's kind of spooky."
"I know."
"I can see you in the chair there."
"Right."
"You want me to come over and mount you?"
"No, thanks."
"What kind of thing you into, then?"
"I want you to do me a favour."
"What kind of favour?"
"I'll get to that in a minute."
"Will this favour hurt me?"
"No. It'll hurt me."
"Oh," she said, sounding suddenly knowledgeable. "You're one of those guys, huh?"
He laughed. "You really do have a one track mind, don't you?"
She sounded hurt. "It's my job."
"Come over here."
"You promise not to hurt me?"
"I promise."
She came over.
"Why not set your purse down?"
She did so.
"Now kneel down here."
"I need to get paid in advance."
"Here."
He handed her a bill. "What is it?"
"A fifty."
"Really? I can't see in the dark"
"Kneel down."
"I thought you didn't want a BJ."
He smiled. "Your weekend special you mean?"
He was freezing again and burning up.
She knelt down, moved herself between his legs.
She put her hands between his legs, felt his penis. He surprised himself by responding immediately.
Maybe her weekend special on BJ's would be nice after all. He took her hand, guided it up past his cock to his stomach. "Can you feel that?"
"Your belly you mean?"
"What's in my belly."
"What's in your belly?"
"Sssh. Just leave your hand there a minute."
So she did. They didn't say anything for a time.
"God," she said, disgusted. "What is it?"
"I'm not sure."
"It's moving around inside your belly."
"I know."
"God." And she jumped up to her feet. "You better see a doctor, babe. No foolin'."
"I need you to help me."
"I can't help you, babe. Not with that. I'm sorry."
"You want to make two hundred dollars?"
"Doin' what?"
"Cutting that thing out of there."
"Are you nuts, babe?"
"All you need to do is make an incision along the top of my belly and I can reach in there and grab the thing."
"This is gettin' too much. I really need to get out of here." She turned and started away.
He jumped up from the chair.
The butcher knife was in his hand.
He put the wooden handle of the knife against her knuckles. "Two hundred dollars. A couple of minutes work. It'll be easy. Really"
"How come you don't do it?"
"You know. I'm squeamish about cutting myself like that."
"God, this is just too weird. I'm sorry but it is."
She turned and started toward the door, stumbling around in the darkness.
Outside the night went on. Cars. Trucks. A distant train. Laughter. He wished he could be a part of it.
He thought of the envelope he'd opened earlier tonight. The one with the girl's name in it.
"Wait," he said.
"I really need to go."
"You didn't tell me your name."
"My name? What's the difference?"
"I'd just like to know."
She paused on her way to the door. Sighed.
He knew what her name was, of course.
He just wanted to hear her say it.
"Doreen Jackson."
She left.
He gave her a full minute and then he followed her.
He didn't want to kill her in the apartment.
Outside the night smelled of violets and dog shit.
She had parked down the block.
She hurried toward her rusted out ancient Mustang.
Teenagers drove by saying, "Hey, babe, you wanna fuck?"
She gave them the finger.
By now he'd caught up with her.
He realised-his feet slap-slapping against the sidewalk- that he wore no shoes.
Just as she reached the car, he caught her and put the knife in her back
"You move, cunt, and I'll kill you right fucking here. You understand?"
His voice had changed. This happened every time. He had never before called a woman a cunt. He could not believe he was doing this now. It was as if the man talking were somebody else and he were merely observing the man.
He forced her to go in the passenger side of the car and he got right in after her.
He made her drive away.
All the time he kept the knife right in her ribs.
"You fucking cunt," he kept saying. "You fucking cunt."
In the moonlight, the rock quarry was silver.
And dusty.
She started coughing immediately.
She knew, of course, why they were here. "You could just let me go."
"Right."
"I won't tell anybody anything. I promise."
He hadn't realised, until he saw her out in the streetlight, that she was at least partly black "Get out of the car."
"No, listen, mister-"
"Out."
She wouldn't go, so he pushed her.
The rock quarry was deserted, pocked with huge shadowed holes. It was like walking on the moon. The sky was black, low; the stars were innumerable and gorgeous.
He felt exhilarated in a way that he knew was madness.
He wanted to scream and come and shit and cry and laugh and murder her and heal her all at the same time.
She walked two steps ahead of him.
He kept pushing her toward the largest cavern.
When they reached the edge of it, he stabbed her in the back of the neck and then he ripped the knife out and started stabbing her along the spine.
Finally, he threw her on the ground and started stabbing her face. Once he noticed how one of her brown eyes had been caught on the point of his knife.
When he was done with her, he raised her brown bloody body as if in sacrifice and hurled her down into the utter blackness of the pit.
And then he fell to the ground, feeling the thing in him twist tight, tighter, and then begin slowly working up his oesophagus and then into his mouth and then…
He lay there, helpless, as the dark snakelike being left him, twisting, twisting, like something newly born leaving the womb.
He was cold then, colder than he'd ever been and he knew he was crying there in the silent silver dust of the quarry, and he became aware of how filthy his hands were with blood and entrails and…
Around dawn he woke up.
A tabby cat walked over to him and stood there staring and the sweet green eyes of the tabby were the first thing he saw this day.
And then he looked at his blood soaked clothes and he remembered everything. The black girl and the thing leaving him and…
He was empty; empty.
Twenty minutes later he went over to the edge of the gravel pit and looked at the broken body below. Sunlight was just starting to move across the corpse. He had ripped her clothes from her and dug out whole parts of her torso. Her arms, at such odd angles, looked as if they'd been broken in the fall.
He went to the Mustang.
Somehow he got out of there.
Twenty minutes later he found a phone booth and called his sister.