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  Pebbles apparently had a pretty sophisticated security system; motion detectors in every room, glass-breakers, and alarm triggers on every door and window. They used a fingerprint reader on every cash register, documenting the I.D and the time of each time it was opened. They had security cameras, too, but only on the back door--apparently where they assumed somebody would more than likely try and break in--and in the tiny office area, installed at the perfect spot to see the in-floor safe. But that was it, nothing out on the dance floors or by the bars. The Police left in no better mood than when they had entered.

  Heather’s mother and father had nothing to add at all. They had talked to their daughter on the phone a week before she was killed and that was the last contact they had had--or ever would have--with her. They were staying at the brother’s house and apparently the police had recommended a therapist because none of the three were doing very well together.

  Minnie liked to conclude every update Ralph gave us with, "Terrible. It’s all just terrible."

  I was feeling pretty good, though. Although now, after all these years, it makes me sick to say it. The Police were making no progress with the case at all, I had caught a few lucky breaks, and was almost one hundred percent certain I was going to get away with it. I back tracked through the entire evening that I killed Heather in my mind and saw nowhere where I might have done something or left something or met somebody who would ultimately give the cops what they needed to find me.

  Jackson never got caught. Why should I? My novel was coming along nicely--the last chapter in particular made me happy--I was living in a quiet town with nice people, I was in damn good shape, and after committing murder I had felt significantly…happier. I was getting better, I thought.

  That Thursday, almost a week after the night I suffocated Heather after our romp in the sheets, they held the funeral. Some of the police who were working on the case were going to attend out of respect and Ralph had asked Herbie if he could join them. Herbie agreed.

  It was just before lunch time and I watched out the window as Ralph, wearing black dress slacks and white shirt with a black tie, got behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile and drove down the driveway making a left turn, heading towards town. Minnie was in her chair watching a game show, shouting out garbled answers through a mouthful of whatever she was eating.

  I stood by the window of the front door and looked up at the sky as a pack of gray clouds make their way in from the East. It looked like it might rain.

  That was three days before I killed again.

  Chapter 30

  Ralph had returned from the funeral for Heather, solemn and a bit gloomy, also a bit wet because of the rain that had begun to fall. He said it was a sad service--only because Minnie had asked--and spent the rest of the day in his recliner watching TV.

  The next day Ralph seemed to be more of his old self then he had been in the days past. He was more like the man I had met that stormy night when I stumbled into Jacob’s Bluff and less like the boring, hardnosed cop he had become after the murder. It was as if he suddenly realized it wasn’t his case to solve, and this one murder certainly wasn’t the end of the world. He had apparently let the burden rest where it belonged. With the non-retired police. It was tragic, yes, but what could one do? This was Earth, after all, and humans kill each other. Fact.

  On the third day after the funeral, a Sunday, Ralph asked Minnie if she would join him for dinner at The Sawmill. He had forgone his usual Saturday night dinner there for reasons I don’t know, and I noticed because he always invited me. I didn’t always go, but I always got an invite. I didn’t ask any questions, Ralph was many years my senior and who was I to question his actions? Ralph asked me to go as well, and I politely declined, saying that I was pretty tired and was thinking of just turning in early for the evening. Minnie asked me if I wanted her to make me something quick for dinner. I told her I’d manage on my own.

  The truth was I wanted the alone time. I wanted to write. When I last left my Jackson novel I had been writing the best pages of my life and I was dying to get back to that. I needed to keep him going. I needed to keep myself going.

  That Sunday night is just one of the ever-growing number of what-if’s that seem to have plagued my life. If I had went with Ralph and Minnie, gone to dinner and tried to match Minnie burger for burger, would things have accelerated like they did?

  I shake my head at that. Of course they would have. I was already too far gone. Well beyond the point of turning back.

  Minnie and Ralph got dressed in their "going out" clothes, which for Ralph was simply a change of his flannel shirt, while for Minnie it was changing out of a house dress and into slightly newer house dress--also a fresh coat of makeup--and, only after double checking that I didn’t want to join them, left me in peace alone in their house.

  I brewed a pot of coffee, making it strong, and set my laptop up on the kitchen table. With the steam rising off the freshly poured cup next to the keys, I did a quick scan of my last chapter, again marveling in its brilliance, thought for a moment, and then started to type, nearly shaking in excitement with the wonder of what would be next.

  Nothing came.

  My fingers would hover over the keys, poised for attack while I thought. I’d start to type a sentence, or just a word and then stop, backspacing and deleting every character. I thought I’d be able to just pick up right where I’d left off. I thought that once I came back to Jackson he’d just do the work for me, showing me in my head what should come next and how to handle it. It didn’t work that way. I stared at the screen and the screen just stared right back. The cursor stationary, not doing its usual dance across the digital page leaving a trail of letters behind it.

  I sat back and drank my coffee. I leaned forward and closed my eyes. I paced around the kitchen. I did all this trying to stir ideas. I had images dancing in my brain, images and pictures, even some dialogue, but I had no story. No plot.

  I had nothing. It was the first time in my life I had ever had writers block and I can see why it could drive even the most talented authors crazy. It certainly did me. Although I was already a frequent visitor of crazy land, so it didn’t have to work very hard to get me there.

  Now, in my fragile state of mind, it was only going to take very little to set me off in the wrong direction. The fear of never writing again did it that night.

  After an hour of pacing and coffee drinking I sat down at the table and tried to force myself to write. I just told myself it would be ok, whatever I wrote would be good enough, I’d been doing this a long time and tonight was no different than any other night before. That thought only got me through two or three shitty sentences before I slammed my laptop shut and pounded the kitchen table with my fist one solid time shouting, "Fuck!" and causing the coffee mug to rattle, a few drops splashing over the edge.

  I broke down then, quicker than I would have imagined possible. Thirty seconds before it happened I was just a sad, normal guy trying to write a chapter in his book, and then Boom!--I changed. Suddenly I was furious. My mind filled with anger and maniacal reasoning.

  No, this is not happening! First I lose my wife, my world. I drive out to the middle of fucking nowhere on the brink of suicide and just now slowly start to get my shit together and now this? Writing, the one and only thing I have going for me is just going to fucking disappear too? Fuck no it isn’t! Not if I have anything to say about it! I might have lost everything else, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose this. This is all I have left!

  Then the worst part of all, I remembered--as if I could have ever forgotten--why the last chapter had been so good. I can still feel the way the twisted smile grew across my face. I smacked myself in the forehead for not realizing what I needed to do, as if it was something as simple as going to the market to buy a loaf of bread. I grabbed my laptop and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  When Superman went out in his suit he saved humanity. When I put on my suit, Jackson and I went out to
destroy it.

  Chapter 31

  On that night I was laughing at myself for not realizing sooner what it was going to take for me to keep my Jackson novel alive. Now, going over it again as I write this, I find it almost impossible to believe that I had actually detached myself that far from reality. If I hadn’t have lived it I would never believe it. Never believed that I was so willing to sacrifice lives, guiltlessly, for the sake of "helping" myself.

  I had thrown the laptop on the bed, no new words written on the page, and hastily stripped down and bounded back down the hall to the bathroom. I showered quickly, dried, and threw on my suit. It was the first time I had put it on since the night I killed Heather, and I remembered finding one of her hairs stuck to one of my pant legs.

  It was a little after eight when I got in my Jeep and left the house, and was about a quarter after when I pulled into the deserted lot the storage facility sat on. I performed my customary swap of vehicles, slipping into the leather seat of the Mercedes and remembering how much I loved the car. It was sleek, stylish, and sexy. Just like Jackson.

  Once I pulled the Mercedes out of the Storage Facility I planned on letting my actions follow the same game plan I had set in place for my attempt at writing; just start going and see what happens. Sure, it had been a failed plan for my writing, but I really didn’t know how else to approach what I had set out to do. I had never so much as hunted a squirrel before, and now, for all intents and purposes, I was essentially hunting a human.

  I had imagined and elaborated on quite a few small ideas while writing the murder scenes in my original Jackson story with no trouble. I was convinced that all I needed was just one small opportunity, to see just one tiny thing, and the rest of it would come to me. My opportunity came much quicker than I had anticipated. And it couldn’t have been more perfect.

  I had set out towards Larendale, leaving the dim glow of Jacob’s Bluff well behind me as I motored down the road. The usually dark drive was even darker that night due to the patches of gray clouds blocking out what little help the stars and moon may have been trying to offer to travelers. Being overly familiar with the journey, plus with the assistance of my high-tech headlights, I wasn’t concerned.

  I had made it maybe fifteen minutes down the road--a little over halfway--when my opportunity showed itself in the form of a white, broken down Toyota Camry. More important than the car, however, was the young girl standing shivering beside it, waving her arm frantically as I approached.

  I’ll be honest, it startled me a bit. In all my travels up and down that particular road, I had grown accustomed to seeing nothing. And I mean nothing. A car would pass by every now and then, sure, but you always had headlights shining from far ahead to warn you of those encounters. With this, I had the speedometer needle sitting comfortably on eighty and all at once out of nowhere my headlights splashed and reflected off of the rear of the Camry. The light twinkled and glared and caused me to instinctively tap the breaks. The needle shot down to fifty and my heart rate sky rocketed, my first thought being, God, don’t hit it, whatever it is! Not the car!

  A split second later, as I had slowed the Mercedes down to a relaxing twenty miles-per-hour, I saw for the first time with clear certainty what I was looking at. The Camry was pulled over to the side of the road, the left rear tire sticking out into my lane just a little. The brake lights and headlights were still on, but the hazard lights were not. This girl apparently failed Road Safety 101. The girl herself had short, spiky black hair, and was dressed in black jeans and a black long sleeved t-shirt with a large red symbol on the front I didn’t recognize. The outfit and hair further reduced her grade in the Road Safety class.

  I pulled my Mercedes in behind her Camry and got out. Her rear bumper was covered with stickers proclaiming "Fuck Homophobes", and "Jesus loves you but everyone else thinks you’re an asshole," among other gems. I looked up from the bumper and met the girl’s eyes, which in the shining light from my headlights looked just as black and dull as the rest of her outfit. I saw now that she also had her nose pierced and had on dark black lipstick. She wore heavy black boots that laced all the way up to her knees. The term "Goth" seemed more than appropriate.

  "Jesus, thank Christ!" she blurted out before I could ask her what the problem was. "I thought I was going to freeze my clit off out here."

  I stopped at the rear window, not wanting to get too close, no sense in scaring her off yet. "Yeah, it’s a little chilly tonight." I said.

  "Fucking A"

  "Car trouble?" I asked the obvious.

  "No. I got my fucking period and didn’t have a tampon."

  She was upset, that much was obvious. I didn’t let it deter me. "Alright," I said, "stupid question, I know. What happened?"

  She sighed and I saw some of the tension leave her. She fished around in one of the tight front pockets of her jeans and brought out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. She lit one and then said, "No clue. Was driving along just fine and the fucker just cut off. So I rolled off to the side here and that’s it. End of story."

  "Did you call a tow-truck?"

  She pulled her cell phone out of her other jean pocket and held it up above her head. "No signal."

  Of course, the road from Jacob’s Bluff to Larendale wasn’t only almost always deserted, but the cell phone reception was also very spotty.

  "Were you on your way to Larendale?" I asked.

  "Yep."

  I walked up to her then, slowly, and smiled, sticking out my hand. "I’m Jackson," I said. "I’m going that way myself if you’d like a ride. Once we get in cell phone range we can call a truck and have them come get your car."

  This girl was hard and tough--or at least gave the appearance to be--and I saw the scrutiny in her eyes as she looked me up and down and then flashed her eyes behind me and examined my car. I know what she was thinking: Nice looking guy, expensive suit, expensive car, probably not a psycho killer. Boy was she wrong.

  She took one last puff on her cigarette and then tossed it on the ground, stomping it out with one of her boots. Then she shook my hand, "I’m Alex. I guess I don’t have much of a choice. It’s either go with you or start walking."

  She opened her driver’s side door and turned off her car’s lights, grabbing her keys and a small black purse that was on the passenger seat. Once she had all her belongings, I walked with her to the passenger side of my car and opened the door for her.

  "Well aren’t you just a little gentleman," she said in a patronizing voice. I closed the door without response. I walked around the back of the car and got in, putting the shifter into gear and slowly pulling back out into the desolate road.

  I could have killed her there, God knows I wanted to. The situation and scene was already enough to write about. A girl stuck on the side of the road, helpless and needing, with a vulnerability lying underneath her hard exterior shell. And who should come to save the day but the pseudo-helpful killer in a Mercedes.

  It would have worked, but I felt I could still shake things up a bit. Plus, the spot on the road where her car had failed her was out in the open, nothing but flat fields stretching off in both directions. Being familiar with the road, I knew that another five or seven minutes further and the road started to become tree lined. Dragging a girl into the woods on a dark and chilly night seemed cliché but also felt very right. I started to get excited.

  We drove a few hundred yards in silence. I took a quick glance over and saw that she was sitting, seatbelt off, with her legs pulled up under her. The thought of her dirty boots on the leather of my seats caused a twang of irritation, but I quickly suppressed it. No need to get upset yet. Being casual I asked, "So do you live in Larendale, or visiting, or… what?"

  She sighed heavily, as if she was hoping that maybe the ride would have completed sans words being spoken.

  "No, I don’t live there. I fucking hate that town. The new Rob Zombie movie just came out. Me and Zappo were going to go see it."

  I nodded. "That your bo
yfriend?"

  She laughed a squeaky laugh that reminded me of Minnie and seemed completely out of character for somebody who seemed to repel color and pleasantness. "Um… No, she’s my girlfriend." I thought back to the "Fuck Homophobes" license plate. Of course. This just keeps getting better and better.

  "Zappo, huh? Birth name?" I let the question linger, meaning it to be a joke. Alex just sighed again and turned her head to look out the window, watching the nothingness pass by in dark. I had apparently ended conversation between us for the time being. That was ok, though. Up ahead I could see the start of the trees and a tingle of excitement bubbled in my stomach. I had already thought of how it was going to go down. It would only take a slight bit--a slight bit more, that is--of deception first.

  The last minute of driving crept by, even though I had the Mercedes going seventy, but finally we reached the trees, a subtle expanse of forest that hadn’t yet been uprooted for farming or cattle grazing.

  I drove past the point where the trees started and went maybe another hundred yards before I slammed on the breaks and gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands, faking a struggle to keep the car on the road as I ripped the wheel hard to the left and right. Alex’s head shot forward and she just put her hands out in front of her in time to keep from bashing her forehead on the dash.