The long, brown cardboard box rested in the corner of the cluttered office. The schematic printed in crisp black ink on one side of the box was obscured by a white label which read 442B. His back to the box and facing a wall of windows, Detective Robert Diaz of the Indiana state police in Warsaw spoke softly into the phone.
"Hi, honey it's me," Robert paused, staring vacantly through the glass into the office before him. "Everything's fine. I'll be home in about twenty minutes. Is Jessica sleeping already?...Yeah, it is late. Are you going to wait up for me?...Good, good. I love you, girl...bye."
Robert gently placed the receiver back in its cradle and with his left hand reached to turn off his desk light. For a single moment, he sat in the semi-darkness of his office before he rose from his chair to go home.
**
Jimmy committed the murder when he was twenty-two years old. He awoke as from a dream, drenched in sweat and with a raging hard on, in a seedy strip joint. In his hand was a knife, wet with blood from the young woman lying on the floor in front of him. The club vibrated with the steady beat of bass music; on stage a girl swung her bikini top over her head with one hand and held onto the stage pole with the other. Bright, multi-colored strobe lights shattered Jimmy's vision. In the dark corner, Jimmy looked down at the lifelike figure on the floor; blood seeped from the holes in her chest. Her breasts were hacked, but she still smiled at Jimmy and her long blonde hair fanned softly around her feminine features. Trembling, Jimmy let the knife slip from his fingers as he glanced up. No one had noticed that she was dead, yet. Jimmy shoved his hands in his pockets and walked from the corner toward the door.
"Have a good night!" the man in the cheap tuxedo at the front door called cheerfully. Jimmy didn't answer.
The air was cold on his skin as he entered the brisk October night. Walking down the concrete steps, looking for his car in the dark parking lot, the only thought on his mind was to run, to escape from the dark reality he had created. He spun the tires of his '84 Reliant as he left the parking lot, the club, and North Webster.
At home in Millersburg, he crashed immediately onto his bed and slept deeply. During the night, images swam through his head like minnows in shallow water. Quick and fleeting scenes of his youth collided with images of the present night. The leggy blonde on stage climbing the pole with her legs spread melted strangely into his little sister at three, showing his younger brother her vagina on the bedroom floor. Jimmy had hit him hard and drug him from the room, yelling at him never to do that again. The curious little five-year old had not understood what he had done wrong and Jimmy had been too embarrassed to explain. He saw the woman he had killed, rubbing her soft breast in his face while he sat on the couch, then leaning back to smile coyly at him. Her face turned into his mother's mad face, slapping him while she held him on the ground. He saw himself at sixteen, ass fucking the cheerleader a year older than him but that image turned into the red-headed stripper rubbing her naked ass all over his body while he sat on his hands. The sexual energy grew inside Jimmy and he woke up suddenly at 2:30 ejaculating all over his bed. By the light of his alarm clock he could see his clothes laying on the floor, but he could not remember how they got there.
At first light he crawled out of bed, threw on his clothes, and, grabbing his cigarettes and heavy jacket, stepped out into the crisp morning air. The smoke invigorated his lungs; Jimmy inhaled deeply, then choked as the events of last night became real in the light of day. He fell to the concrete of his patio and sat there, no longer interested in smoking. Instead he merely watched the smoke curl from the cigarette, wrapping around the black crusted blood on his trembling fingers. Jimmy had no concept of time as he sat there; he was oblivious to the cold that slowly began to seep into his bones and the snow that began to flutter down and cover his body. When his cigarette burned down to his fingers, he did not feel it.
The phone rang, breaking into his reverie at 12:30. Jimmy rose quickly; he knew it was his girlfriend, Angie, and even now he moved quickly to answer her call.
"Hello," he said in a broken whisper, then cleared his throat and repeated himself in a clearer voice. "Hello. Angie?"
"Hi honey! Something wrong?" The sound of Angie's voice was broken periodically by interference on her phone. Jimmy could tell that she was driving by the sound of her engine over the static.
"No." He was silent, staring out the window and wondering when it had started to snow. The snow that covered his body began to melt, dripping in clumps onto the carpet. It wetted the blood on his hands, making them slick so that the phone began to slip. He caught it between his shoulder and ear and lifted his hands to look at them curiously. The blood began to run down his hands to his arms. "Ohhh," he looked frantically around for something to wipe them on.
"What's wrong?" Angie's voice startled Jimmy; he had forgotten she was on the phone.
"Nothing!"
"Are you sure?" Angie asked, concerned. "You don't sound too happy."
"I'm fine!" Jimmy was insistent. "Goddamnit! Hold on Ange, I... left the back door wide open." He dropped the phone on the couch and rushed to the kitchen for a paper towel. With a wad of towel in his grasp, he slowly walked to the sliding glass door and stood absently watching the snow fall. Angie's protest arose faintly from the couch, then stopped with a barely audible click when she hung up. The towel worked in Jimmy's hand as an eerie calm stole over his mind, his thought moving on an irreversible track, a solution to the problem he had created.
When he left the house, the Reliant was parked on the wrong side of the street but the ticket on the window did not faze Jimmy from his plan. He pulled the wet paper from its place between the wiper and the glass and crumpled it into his pocket. The tires of the car spun in the wet snow as he drove toward the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
An hour later, at home again, Jimmy reflexively checked his machine for messages. There were two; the first was from his grandmother, but Jimmy erased this in disgust. The other was from Angie. Jimmy hesitated and then pushed the play button.
"Honey, what's wrong?" Angie's worried voice artificially came into the room. "Why did you leave me hanging earlier? Please call me. We need to talk. I love you, bye."
The sound of pain in Angie's voice made Jimmy collapse on the sofa, his right hand stretching out for the phone. Around the nails on his hand, little bits of dried blood reflected strangely in the dim, early evening light. Jimmy jerked his hand back.
He stripped to his bare skin in the living room and went into the bathroom to take a shower. He stood there, not washing, only letting the steaming water run down his thin body. His gaze was empty until the hot water heater ran dry and the water turned cold. Then his eyes focused on the laminated picture of Cindy Crawford glued to the opposite wall of the shower stall. Shower time was normally masturbation time, but today the picture infuriated him. With a muffled cry he reached to tear at the poster. The glue with which he had placed it there resisted his goal, but soon the picture lay in shredded bits on the wet bathtub. He stood shivering until the last remnant was washed down the drain. Turning off the water and returning to the living room, still dripping wet, he put on his clothes.
Outside the snow had stopped falling, but the temperature had dropped. By the time he forced the door of his car open, the water in his hair had frozen into tiny icicles. Jimmy started the car and then reached back to feel the long cardboard box on the seat behind him. The feel of it in his hands solidified his mission once again and Jimmy turned the car south toward North Webster with his mind set firmly.
**
Robert Diaz started his Chevy Lumina in Warsaw at the same time that Jimmy started his old Reliant in Millersburg. Though he didn't know why, he was returning to the scene of last night's murder.
Robert had moved to the northern Indiana area only a year ago from New York. Murders like the one last night didn't shock him, but instead disappointed him. Warsaw and the surrounding farm community had seemed like a good place to escape from the crime and sickness of the Big Apple. And now it had followed him and his family here. A knot of disgust, an old friend from his days in New York, grew in Robert's gut when he thought about the murder. The young woman had been stabbed six times in the chest. Last night, as he stood over the body, looking down at the tempting smile frozen forever on her young face, he had thought of his seven-year-old daughter. Was there no place in this godforsaken country that they could take her to avoid this sickness? He slammed his fist on the dash, then whipped the steering wheel as he cornered sharply north off of S.R. 30 onto S.R. 13. The Chevy kicked out to the right, but Robert compensated and corrected the car.
The knife found on the scene had been too bloody for fingerprints. The usual suspects, boyfriends, ex-boyfriends and in this case the regular perverts at the club, had turned up nothing. Even though it was only the second day of his investigation, it was unusual for Robert not to have at least a couple of leads. He needed another look. Something had been missed.
"Six times in the chest," he thought aloud. "Someone was angry at her, but who?" Because he didn't know, he turned up the radio in the Chevy to drown out the sound of his empty thoughts.
Robert parked his car in the partially lit parking lot across the street from the club. Even though the club was closed, there were a few cars in the snow covered lot. He saw the dumpster out of the corner of his eye. It was parked behind the back door of Pilcher's Shoes and hidden in the shadows of the building. As far as Robert knew, the dumpster had not been searched. Opening the trunk of his car, he grabbed his flashlight and walked toward the dumpster. After he threw back the lid, Robert regretted not covering his mouth and nose. For a dry goods store, their dumpster sure smelled.
His flashlight revealed that the dumpster was half full. Robert couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but made a mental note to bring a team up the next morning to investigate. He flicked his light off and let the lid fall with a bang.
As he rounded the corner toward the club, Robert saw the glass door sigh shut behind a dark form which quickly disappeared. Instinctively, Robert's hand reached for his shoulder holster and his service pistol. He pulled it out and started across the street, where a Reliant was parked with its lights still on. Robert knew that it hadn't been there just a moment ago. To avoid the glare of the headlights, Robert slipped around the back of the car and, when he was on the far side, pointed his flashlight into it. He froze when he spotted the long cardboard box on the backseat. Just an innocent cardboard box, except that on the outside was a diagram depicting the wonders of that particular brand of high powered rifle. The box was torn open, and empty.
Robert cautiously ran up the steps to the club doors. They weren't forced; someone had left them unlocked and Robert cursed his incompetent crew. He took a deep breath and entered the building, crouching by the wall in the foyer. Before him in the dark, another set of steps arose. On the left a doorway was vaguely visible. Robert listened carefully; there was a rustling sound coming from the room on his left and suddenly a light shone through the doorway. He could hear someone moving away from him. Leaning forward, Robert saw a young man, gun in hand, walking toward the chalked form of the young girl on the floor. A spotlight illuminated the area; it was the only light in the room. The boy turned and faced the stage, still looking down at the chalk line, and then put the rifle under his chin.
"Wait," Robert said entering the room.
The boy jumped and finally looked up. Robert walked slowly forward and stopped at the foot of the stage, about twenty feet from the boy. "Who are you?" the boy called out fearfully.
"Right now, I'm probably your best friend," Robert said in a soft voice, though a current of anger was coursing through his body. How dare he kill that young woman and then take his own life?
"Stay back," the gun was now cocked and at his throat again. "She didn't deserve to die!" the boy yelled and closed his eyes.
"Wait," Robert said again. The boy opened his eyes but did not look at him. His eyes were already dead and staring at the form of the girl that was no longer there on the floor. Then his finger moved on the trigger...
Click!
The boy had not taken the rifle off safety. He moved the gun from his chin and looked down at his hands in disbelief. His face twisted through a strange metamorphosis from anger to terror and he threw the gun away from him, falling back on the purple couch behind him. Robert quickly ran to place himself between the boy and the gun. Head in his hands, the boy's shoulders began to shake while Robert stood watching him.
After a few moments, Robert forced himself to gently ask, "What's your name, son?"
"Jimmy," was the muffled reply.
"All right Jimmy. I need you to come with me." Robert grasped his arm with a strong hand and guided him toward the door.
