As ScoutMasterBates, he surfs the net looking for porn sites, and they don’t prove terribly elusive. It’s only a matter of days before his mailbox begins to fill up with porn spam, and by visiting the sites that promise young male models, that talk of man-boy love, he increasingly becomes the target of purveyors of kiddy porn. “All models over eighteen (wink!
wink!)” one site declares.
He downloads porn, pays for it with a credit card that can’t be traced back to him. Weeks ago he was in a restaurant, where he saw a patron at another table pay her check with a credit card and walk off without her receipt. He got to it before the waitress, passing the table on an unnecessary trip to the men’s room, palming and pocketing the yellow scrap of All the Flowers Are Dying
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paper. It shows her account number and expiration date, and that’s all he needs for small online purchases. In a month or two she’ll go over her statement and, if she notices, call her credit card company to complain.
But he’ll be done with her account by then.
Back in Richmond, he sets about getting access to Applewhite’s house and car and office.
That turns out to be easy. Applewhite’s a monthly client at the parking garage around the corner from his office. He goes there himself, inquires about rates and hours and access, and finds questions to ask until the attendant’s attention is diverted, at which time he snatches Applewhite’s keys off the numbered hook. He needs a full set for his girlfriend, he tells a locksmith, and the man grins and says he’s a trusting man, that he’s been married eighteen years himself and his wife still doesn’t have a key to his car.
A single key opens the door and the trunk. There are other keys on the ring as well, and he has them all duplicated, knowing one will be a house key and another a key to the office. Inside of an hour he makes another visit to the parking garage, where it’s a simple matter to put Applewhite’s keys on a table, where they might have fallen if dislodged from the hook.
Late at night, long after the lights have been turned off in the Applewhite home, he lets himself into the unlocked garage and opens the trunk of the car. He has an old army blanket with him, purchased at the Salvation Army store in York, and he spreads it out in Applewhite’s trunk, rubs it here and there in the trunk’s interior, takes it out and returns it to its plastic bag.
Two days later he exchanges cars, picking up the dark Camry, leaving the beige Tempo in the storage shed. He starts cruising when school lets out and soon picks up an older, more knowledgeable boy than Jeffrey Willis. Scott Sawyer is fifteen, with knowing eyes and a crooked smile.
His T-shirt is too small, the worn blue jeans provocatively tight on his thighs and buttocks. When he gets in the Camry, he drapes an arm over the seatback and tries to look seductive.
The effect is comical, but he doesn’t laugh.
I think you’ll find something interesting in the glove compartment, he tells the boy. And, at the right moment, he swings the rubber mallet.
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Lawrence Block
There’s a failed country club north and west of the city, off Creighton Road on the way to Old Cold Harbor. The property’s for sale, and the sign to that effect has been there long enough to have served for drive-by target practice. The nine-hole golf course is all weeds, the greens neglected, the fairways overgrown. Earlier he scouted the place, picked a spot. Halfway there the youth comes to, tries to scream through the duct tape, tries to free his hands, thrashes around within the confines of his seat belt.
He tells him to stop it, and when the thrashing continues he takes up the rubber mallet and hits the boy hard on the knee. The thrashing stops.
Out on the golf course, he drives into the rough bordering the fifth hole, hauls the boy out of the car and drags him deep into the woods. He immobilizes the boy by smashing his kneecaps with the spade, strips him, and positions him appropriately, then dons a condom and rapes him.
The younger boy, Jeffrey Willis, was more appealing. Softer, smaller, his innocence more palpable. Too, there was the novelty of sex with a male. But for all that the experience with Scott Sawyer is savagely exciting, and there’s no need to hold back his climax. Straining for it, he reaches down, picks up the knife—how sweetly it fits his hand—and strikes, and strikes again.
He wraps the body in a blanket, the one that’s been in the trunk of Applewhite’s car, where it could pick up fibers from the trunk lining and leave fibers of its own. Every contact involves the transfer of fibers, that’s why he did what he did with the blanket, and why he jettisoned the clothes he wore when he killed the Willis boy. He’ll do the same with these clothes, everything down to the sneakers on his feet. They’ll pick up fibers, they’ll carry grass stains and soil residue, and none of that will matter because they’ll wind up in a clothing donation box in Pennsylvania and no crime lab will ever look at them.
He starts to dig a grave, but it’s getting dark and he’s tired, and the ground underneath is a maze of tree roots, impossible to dig in. Besides, he’s going to want this body to be found.
He snips a lock of hair, tucks it into a glassine envelope. He stashes it in the trunk of the Camry, along with the tools he’ll need for his next visit to Richmond.
He leaves the body shrouded in the army blanket, piles loose brush over All the Flowers Are Dying
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it, and heads for the storage shed, where he switches the Camry for the Tempo. He takes I-64, then I-81. The condom he used, its end knotted to secure its contents, is on the seat beside him; when he’s crossed the state line into Maryland he lowers the window, tosses it, and drives on.
After two more weeks he’s had enough of York. He’s paid up through the end of the month, so he keeps the keys to leave himself the option of returning, but erases all traces of his occupancy so that he need not come back. He drives to Richmond and begins setting the stage, dressing the sets.
By now the cheap laptop contains on its hard drive a description of the second murder. He’s still somewhat vague concerning the location of the killing ground and dump site, but does call it a golf course, and he downloads and saves on his hard drive a MapQuest close-up map of the failed country club. There are also two drafts of an essay in which he, as Applewhite, expounds on the morality of murder, justifying his actions through a line of
