No one is moved to do so.
“We’re going to witness the end of a man’s life. The process will be as painless as we know how to make it, but even so you’re going to watch a man make the transition from life to death. If that’s more than you care to see, let me know now. All right. If you discover when the time comes that you don’t want to watch, close your eyes. That sounds obvious, but sometimes people forget that they have the option.” There’s more, but he tunes it out. The clock, after all, is ticking, and he has more to remember . . .
With the bloody handkerchief zipped in a plastic bag, all of what will follow is clear in his mind, as if the script is already written, as if he need merely follow the directions.
When he first began to kill, he did so as a means to the twin ends of money and power. Those were the two things he thought he wanted, and killing was an occasionally useful technique for acquiring them. He was not surprised to discover that it did not bother him to kill, he’d somehow All the Flowers Are Dying
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expected as much, but what he had not anticipated was the pleasure and satisfaction that accompanied the act. It brought excitement and a sense of accomplishment beyond anything attainable by other means.
It is hard to say with certainty just when he turned the corner, coming to the realization that money and power were secondary, that killing itself was its own reward. But he suspects it’s around the time that he bought the knife.
He holds the knife, grips it in his hand. It looks like any other bowie-type hunting knife, but he paid over two hundred dollars for it, and he can feel the value in its balance and the way it fits his hand. It was hand-crafted by a man named Randall, something of a legend among the makers and collectors of bench-made knives.
He’s used it several times since he bought it. It’s always served its purpose admirably. And on each occasion he’s cleaned it afterward, scrubbing every trace of blood from its surface. It’s stainless steel, of course, and impregnable, but blood could find its way into the seam of blade and hilt, so he’s taken the additional precaution of soaking his knife overnight in a dilute Clorox solution. No blood, no DNA, nothing to implicate the knife or its owner in any of the several killings it has occasioned.
Now, knowing he’s soon to use it again, and knowing the how and why of it, he feels the stirrings of excitement.
That night and the following day he drives around Richmond, getting his bearings. He learns where the prostitutes gather. There’s no easier quarry, and he’s taken prostitutes before—off the street, in a massage parlor —when the hunger for killing has demanded quick satisfaction, and there’s been no time to make the act something special. One of them scarcely seemed surprised by her imminent fate, and he wondered if she and her sisters didn’t expect to end that way, wondered if serial murder might rank as an occupational illness, like black lung disease for coal miners.
He comes close to selecting a prostitute the first night, a slender thing dressed for success in red hot pants and a skimpy halter top. All he has to do is stop the car. She’ll get in, and the moment he pulls away from the curb her fate will be sealed. She’ll be the first unfortunate victim of the man with the bloody nose.
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But he needs to know more. The course is clear, but the particulars need to be determined. One has to plan.
He learns much that he needs to know. He learns the name and address of the man with the bloody nose, and he discovers more about him through some diligent Internet research. A husband and father, Preston Applewhite has been leading an essentially blameless life. How ironic, then that he should abduct, sodomize, and murder a string of equally blameless boys.
Because he has come to see that a prostitute is not a good choice. So many of them are infected with one thing or another that it’s unappealing to contemplate close contact with them and their bodily fluids. And what if the whore he picks is a surrogate police officer?
More to the point, there’s insufficient outrage attendant upon a whore’s death. That fellow in Oregon had needed to kill a couple of dozen of them before anybody noticed, and even then the police didn’t lose sleep hunting for him.
Then, driving slowly past the scene of yesterday’s inspiration, he sees another basketball game in progress. But the players are boys. Kids, really, wearing gym shorts. Half the boys sport singlets, while the others have bare chests. No hair on those chests, no five o’clock shadow on those cheeks. Youth, innocence.
Kill a prostitute and nobody will notice. But kill a child?
Once he’d written this:
I have killed both men and women. Killing men, I would say, provides me with more of a sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, for sheer pleasure, there’s nothing like killing an attractive woman.
And a boy? He looks at the basketball players and is unable to perceive them as sexually desirable. Still, there’s undeniable excitement at the thought of harvesting one of them. He can fake the sexual aspect, can press a suitably shaped object into service as a surrogate penis. He needn’t experience lust himself in order to stage a convincing lust murder.
In the end, he surprises himself.
It’s several days later that he finds his victim, by which time he’s pur-All the Flowers Are Dying
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chased several items. Most of them—tape, a blanket, a garden spade, a rubber mallet—are from the local Wal-Mart, but there are two more expensive articles, an automobile and a computer. The car’s a Japanese import the same size and shape as the one Preston Applewhite drives, while the computer’s a laptop, a bargain-priced IBM clone. He buys the car anonymously for cash from a private owner—it’s been hit, it needs body work and has probably suffered damage to the frame. But it’s fine for his purposes, and it’s cheap.
He’s found a place near the high school where some boys wait to hitch rides, and he manages to spot a boy standing all by himself, his thumb extended. He looks to be thirteen or fourteen. Too young to drive, at any rate.
