'He's leaving his nice fat blood trails all over the Midwest all of a sudden. Mutilated corpses. The
'Guess who.'
'Yeah. Some detective finally got him. They found him in Chicago, down in a fucking sewer.'
'So that's all ancient history. How come you gotta reclassify all the SAUCOG stuff? Nobody's ever gonna get that bilge downgraded. Not in this lifetime.' The aide shrugged in response.
'Some cop poking around. Colonel says clean the fucker. It never existed.' He fed a code through his desktop keyboard and accessed ultra-top secret storage.
'I just work here.'
1
Columbia, Missouri
The Show-Me Motor Lodge was a busy operation on the outskirts of Columbia, a prosperous college town in the American heartland. Conway Seymour out of Pine Bluff, Arkansas—self-employed according to the register— spent a couple of easy days there on R and R. All 469 pounds of him kicked back on a Show-Me king-size Beautyrest, mother naked most of the time, his lips wrapped around a quart of Wild Turkey when he wasn't eating.
The maid ignored the DO NOT DISTURB sign as was her custom, and tried to open the door. The policy of the Show-Me was make whatever noise was necessary to get the guests on their feet again by eight A.M. or thereabouts, so the staff could take care of business: cleaning, readying the rooms, emptying out the disarrayed beds for the next lot of paying customers. Hostelries, like restaurants, didn't care for folks who dawdled. They took up space and they interfered with the flow of business.
To be sure, at six feet seven inches and the better part of a quarter-ton, Mr. Conway Seymour took up space. But until the maid tried to open Room 366 with her passkey he was just another sleeping bod to be evicted. The lock clicked open but she couldn't budge the door. Some wiseguy had jammed furniture up against the door or something. Well, she thought, I'll handle that.
'
The idea was to roust the slumberers. The vacationers or conventioneers who'd had a few too many the night before. She'd teach them to shove a chair under her doorknob.
She waited for the door to open and some frazzled housewife or bleary-eyed Joe to growl 'Didn't you see the sign on the door?' But there was no reply. She banged again. This time she heard a huge, deep basso profundo rumble out at her.
'GO AWAY.'
'Yes, sir,' she said, with mock politeness. 'Do you want some fresh towels?' Drag it out and make sure he can't go back to sleep.
'GO AWAY.' Something about the voice made her flesh crawl, and she was not easily frightened. The maid shrugged and rolled her cart down the sidewalk to Room 367, where she was able to admit herself and go about her business, the first order of which was to turn up the TV nice and loud.
But neither loud television sets nor screeching maids disturbed Mr. Seymour. When he sensed that she had removed herself from the door, his eyes blinked shut and he fell instantly into a deep, untroubled sleep. His flawless inner clock registered 0758 inside his subconscious, as it monitored his vital signs, and such externals as ambient temperature—whatever might constitute a possible threat to his welfare.
What would the maid's scream have sounded like had she been able to see the sleeping man, much less his dream, as he fantasized about a pleasureful kill? The massive hulk registered as Mr. Seymour, nude, an immense hairy mound of muscle covered in ugly truck tires of rubbery fat, obscene pink johnson stiffly erect as he remembered the last 'live one' he'd consumed, slept without covers, comfortably cool in the frigid Show-Me Motor Lodge air conditioning. His fearsome mouth, the mouth of a human shark, gaped open in the blubbery rictus of a wet grin, and contorted his dimpled, baby face into a mask of hatred.
Every detail of the kill and the mutilation was replayed inside the depths of his dream. If only the maid could have seen what was inside the mind of the sleeping man in Room 366. Behind that door she so desperately wanted to enter, a bestial monster lay. The heart-eater slept now. And in his sleep he dove down into underwater Corpse City, breast-stroking through the junkyard of glass-walled coffins.
The desk clerk and the manager would both recall Mr. Seymour, the 'big heavyset gentleman' who'd been a guest for a couple of days. He had slept several hours past checkout the second day, finally pulling pants and shirt and shoes on, and driving to the nearest fast-food joint, a KFC, and immediately returning to the room where he devoured a twenty-one-piece bucket of chicken, three quarts of potato salad, and a six-pack of cold Cokes iced down in the motel bathroom sink. He killed the last of the Wild Turkey for dessert, and tidied up the room for the maid.
As a going-away present in memory of her special wakeup service, he took his giant fighting bowie knife and slit open the pillows, defecated in them, repacked the feathers and sealed them with duct tape before returning them to their pillowcases. He also slit the bottom of the mattress open and urinated in it, more out of principle than for effect, cleaning himself with the bottom of the drapes. He figured the room would start stinking real good in a few hours. With that bizarre activity completed, he showered, shaved, dressed in his three-piece business suit and tie, and took his key to the front desk.
Mr. Conway Seymour of Pine Bluff paid and thanked the desk clerk, got back in his car, and drove to the self- service gas station across the highway from the Show-Me. There, he ceased to exist, and another 'real big guy' materialized to pay for the gas with his credit card. The Visa/MasterCard Merchant Center recorded that the purchase was made by one Paul Grose of Little Rock, Arkansas.
The unusual aspect of this transaction was the date of the purchase.
According to authorities, cardholder Paul Grose, otherwise unconnected to the individual who had used his card, had been missing for over two weeks when the card was used. The scrawled signature on the receipt duplicate did not match that of the missing man.
When the driver of the vehicle pulled back out onto the highway, a Mr. Vernon Jones of Valdosta, Georgia was now behind the wheel. A huge, meaty hand flung the wallet of the missing Mr. Grose over the side of the first creek he crossed. The driver discarded I.D.s the way the average person throws away used facial tissues.
He drove four to six miles over the speed limit, picking up speed a bit as the evening darkened and the prevalence of truckers forced the stream of traffic to move a bit quicker. Booneville, where he'd spent some terrible time once-some twenty-five years ago—was far behind him, both literally and figuratively. He had made his way through Overton, Sweet Springs, Concordia, Odessa, and Grain Valley, as the night swallowed him.
It was dark by the time he reached the outskirts of Blue Springs, Missouri, where he topped off the tank out of habit, paid cash, urinated on the seat of the men's urinal and then across the sink, for no particular reason.
Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, at age forty-one or forty-two, the records varied, had taken more human lives than any other person in modern history—some said he'd taken a life for every pound of his weight. As is often the case the myth did not match the horror of the reality. Personally, he'd quit keeping a tally in the mid-sixties, but he was certain the count was well over five hundred.
Daniel Bunkowski, a.k.a. 'Chaingang,' headhunter of mercenaries, executioner extraordinaire, butcher and heart-taker, was the worst serial killer of the twentieth century. In legal wheels and with his choice of disposable identities, he drove through the bright lights of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, crossed the river into Kansas City,
