He Came to Work
Sure enough, by the time Charlie punched in, Emmanuel had already been stacking dirt for an hour and half. Charlie checked the punch card to make sure it wasn’t a typo, and then stuck it back in the plastic pocket. The punch card machine didn’t make mistakes.
Charlie slipped on his green Kale’s Nursery jumpsuit and peeked into the back lot from inside the utility shed. There he was, his long brown hair in a ponytail, working silently, doggedly, like a civil engineer laying bags along the bank of a rising river in a hurricane. Charlie sighed and walked outside, grabbing the bell on the swinging glass door to keep it from jangling. He hated it when it jangled.
“Manny,” said Charlie, sitting down on a pile of sod. It was a clear, cold day in early November. It was going to be slow. Lots of old ladies asking questions about pesticide. He imagined them sitting at home hunched over old gardening manuals, trying to find new ways to trick him, glasses pinched to their wrinkly old noses. They would cackle with glee, ferociously underline something contradictory, and then fire up the Cadillac and head on over.
“Good morning unto thee, Charles. The sun and I bid you welcome.”
“Manny, you can’t keep doing this. You know you get paid by the hour, right? I mean, I explained that to you before, right?”
Charlie deliberately sat on the pile of sod that Emmanuel was working on, trying to disrupt him like a child putting a hand in front of a line of sugar ants. Would they climb over? Would they go around? Would they stop and have a folksy ant jamboree? Emmanuel didn’t even hesitate. Emmanuel went right for the Christmas annuals.
“A good, fair living wage for an hour’s work. Yes, Charles, you made the arrangement quite clear.”
“Then you know I am going to have to send you home early today. You are working too much. I can’t pay you overtime, and there are other people here who need the hours just as much as you do. And you know I hate it when you work unsupervised. You make scheduling a friggin’ nightmare.”
“I seek not to outstrip my fellow man,” said Emmanuel, grunting as he lifted two mammoth genejacked Poinsettias into a trailer, “I only wish to work and be happy.”
“Fine. Just so you know. You go home at three.”
“Thy word is supreme. Adamant as the hardest rod in Israel.”
“Fine.”
Charlie gave Emmanuel a friendly pat on the shoulder and went back inside. He was easily the best and most frustrating employee Charlie had ever had. Charlie watched him work while sipping on coffee and calling in yesterday’s receipts, waiting for him to slacken or tire. If anything, Emmanuel only seemed to move faster, defying logic and inertia. He was a Newtonian aberration cranking out a constipated minimum wage. He made Charlie long for a healthy back and strong, hard bones and somebody daring him to pull a stripling through a chain link fence with his bare hands. Charlie had never been as hard a worker as Emmanuel was, but he had been close, by God.
At a quarter to ten, Omar and Sam rolled in. Sam was drunk as a cockroach in sinkful of paint chips and turpentine. He nearly tripped on his own floorboard as he launched himself out of his pickup, catching himself on a reflex sneaker and not planting his face on the tarmac out of sheer, stupid luck. Omar blanched to a shade of pale cardboard, got out of the passenger side, and quickly carried in a sack lunch, looking askance at Charlie and hoping to avoid guilt-by-association through feigned shock and horror. He immediately began filling out his timecard.
“Sam, you better sober up quick,” said Charlie as soon as Sam made it inside and found himself something to sit on.
“Ah, hell,” said Sam, “You know there ain’t shit to do today.”
“There’s always something to do,” said Charlie, “If we run out of plants and soil to unload, the sidewalks could use a good pressure washing. We get more done on days without customers. If you aren’t going to be any use, you might as well not be here.”
“Bullshit,” said Sam under his breath.
Charlie ignored him.
“You’re late, Omar. You were both supposed to be here at 9:30. Maybe you’d better start taking the bus instead of riding with this degenerate.”
“We would have been here right on time if this goddamn Arab didn’t have seventy thousand kids to kiss goodbye and a wife that don’t shut up. I kept honking the horn and telling him we had to fucking go, but he has to say something to everyone, don’t he? We’re lucky we made it here at all.”
“I am sorry, sir,” said Omar, “I try to be on time. I have much responsibilities. Soon I will have car, and there will be no problems.”
“Yeah, you’re gonna get a license like I’m gonna get a 14-inch pecker and a supermodel to suck it. You don’t even know which way to turn the key or what hole it goes in. And there ain’t no Toyota Dromedary yet.”
“I will get my license and then I will get my car.”
“Who’s on today?” asked Sam, pouring himself the last cold cup of coffee and draining it with a sour grimace.
“Just you, Manny, and Omar,” said Charlie.
“Oh, Christ no…I ain’t working with that crazy religious fuck. You got to start paying us extra when he’s here. You can’t even talk to him. He just whistles hymns and talks about how goddamn wonderful everything is.”
“Mr. Charlie, I am also not liking working with Mr. Manny. He is a bloodless djinn…a Yankee-Jew devil…and a product of your godless Western science. I feel I must take many baths after letting his eyes wash mine.”
“Regardless, that’s who’s on today. Since he’s worth the both of you, there’s not even a discussion. If you are offering me an ultimatum, then you can see yourselves out. He stays, and you can put me down as a reference when you apply for a job at Nan’s washing dishes. Good luck, cause I don’t think either of you meet Nan’s high standards for cleanliness or customer service.”
Omar punched in and walked outside, dejected but resolute. Sam eventually lolled himself to his feet and slumped to the door.
“Don’t forget to clock in,” said Charlie.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll write it down later. The machine always fucks my card up. Say Charlie…”
“What?”
“Is it true you get a kickback from Uncle Sam for employing that sum’bitch? I mean, I know he’s one holy hell of a worker bee, but don’t he creep you out to have around?”
“The only thing worth worrying about today is whether or not I will let you work here tomorrow. So help me God, if your stubby drunken fingers let so much as one terra cotta pot slip, you are gone. I don’t care how long you’ve been working for me. No more late nights; no more late mornings.”
Sam shoved open the door with a curled fist and let it bang shut behind him. Charlie gritted his teeth. If the bell’s jangle were a smell, it would be burning bone – the way a dentist’s drill smelled boring into a cavity.
Despite the rough start, the day went smoothly until lunchtime. Charlie handled what few customers there were, and even Sam seemed to get into the rhythm of the cool autumn morning. As usual, Omar went straight for the saplings and trowel. Say what you will about his grasp of English, thought Charlie, the man likes making baby plants grow.
At straight-up noon -- just when they were about to break for lunch -- a black sedan pulled into the front parking lot. It glistened like a puma. It had whitewall hovertires for countries that had gone completely aircar, and a big flat private satellite connection – big and round like a serving platter – mounted to the trunk. A car you could drive from space if you wanted to.
“Pretty nice car to be hauling dirt and plants around in,” said Sam.
“The wealthies and privileged will be sparing no expense to distance themselves from their oppressed brothers,” said Omar.
Emmanuel didn’t say anything at all. But for the first time that day he stopped what he was doing.
A man and a woman got out of the back. They wore identical silver suits and had identical silver trenchcoats. They both moved to the front stoop, and then the woman pulled out a notepad and gave it a hard look. She took out a ballpoint pen and made a note. She showed it to the man, who nodded once, decisively. The woman looked like she was about to argue, but then gave up. She put the pad away, and then opened the door to the utility shed. The man walked in, and she followed.
“Government,” said Sam.
“I’d better go in and see what they want,” said Charlie, “Maybe it’s a fat commission. Maybe we get to do the medians on the new mall.”
Charlie went in through the back door, and caught them just as they were about to ring the buzzer.
“Afternoon,” said Charlie, “Can I help you?”
“Charles Kale,” said the woman.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Owner and proprietor of Kale’s Nursery, with locations here and in South Rotterdam.”
“Yup.”
“We are from the Department of Hygiene, Adjustment, and Deportment. I am Miss Gin, and this is Mr. Krek. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No, sir. This is merely a routine placement evaluation. We want to make sure everything is going okay with your business. We are conducting an investigation for the Trinity Polytechnical Institute and we understand you are employing a…hmmm…graduate of ours.”
“Yep. That’d be Emmanuel. He’s been working here for a month, now.”
“Do you know where we can find him?”
“Sure. He’s in back. Just let me go get him.”
Charlie couldn’t open the back door because Sam and Omar were in the way.
“What are you doing here?”
“Lunchtime,” said Sam, pushing inside. Omar followed sheepishly.
“Manny! Would you mind coming here for a second, please?” yelled Charlie.
Emmanuel hung his head.
“Manny!”
Emmanuel nodded, and then slowly made his way to the utility shed. He clomped inside and stood there holding a Bird of Paradise in a ceramic pot that had the twelve signs of the zodiac carved into it. Charlie had to give him a shove to get by. With the cash register and scale, the utility shed was now at maximum occupancy.
Emmanel dug into his jeans and fished out his ID papers. Mr. Krek took them, and looked at Emmanuel for a long time. Finally satisfied, he gave them back.
“Mr. Krek is here representing the Biological Crimes Oversight Committee,” said Miss Gin, “You’ll have to excuse him. He isn’t normally authorized to accompany field operatives. Now. You are the, er…um…I hate this part…”
“Jesus,” said Emmanuel, “That’s right. I’m the Jesus.”
“And your employer has been made aware of this without any attempt at subterfuge or conniving?”
“I have,” said Charlie, “And no…Emmanuel was quite forthright about his unfortunate origins. I have no problem with any of it.”
“You have also made this clear to any co-workers or curious customers?”
“He’s a Jesus,” said Sam slyly, biting into a grinder from Omar’s sack, “Big deal.”
“I am religiously and ethically opposed to his very existence,” said Omar. He stopped, shook his head, and then continued reluctantly. “But I am also believing whole-heartedly in the separations of business and belief. There are people religiously and ethically opposed to my very existence, too.”
“Sure are,” said Sam.
“He’s an excellent worker, and I have had no problems,” said Charlie, “He’s a person, just like you and me.”
“Well, not exactly like you and me,” said Mr. Krek. Sam snickered. Miss Gin glared at him, and he shut up.
“That’s really all we wanted to know,” said Miss Gin, “Sometimes Jesuses…you know…have problems being accepted on the outside. It’s not their fault. Trinity Polytechnic does what it can, but it has only been five years or so since we let the first reconditioned ones fully participate in society. The world still has a hard time taking them, and they still have a hard time taking the world.”
“They should never have been let loose,” said Mr. Kreck, “You have a ticking time bomb on your hands, Mr. Kale. I hope you are insured.”
“Kreck, if you don’t be quiet, I am going to fill out an official report. This is not your job, and your little war against Trinity is going to have to wait. I am in charge here,” said Miss Gin. She choked down a few more sentences and then grew calm once more. “Do you mind if I take a look at the rest of your nursery, Mr. Kale?”
“Not at all.”
She left without saying a word. They watched her through the window. She walked all around the grounds, even to the back roses, making little tic marks on a pad of electric paper. The rest of them didn’t leave the utility shed. Emmanuel seemed too nervous to eat anything, but Sam, Omar, and Charlie went ahead with their afternoon meal. Kreck crossed his arms and leaned against the scale. He fidgeted with the buttons and tried to weigh his own foot. Finally, Miss Gin returned – sweaty, but seemingly satisfied.
“Well, gentlemen, if that is all…we bid you good day. I am truly sorry for the interruption.”
“Please, fill your heart with gladness and relief, Noble Lady Gin,” said Emmanuel, dropping to one knee, “Thy soul has found ours at sup on the gladdest noontide, neither at work nor at play. Your presence has subtracted nothing from our enjoyment of an idle hour.”
“Well. Thank you, Emmanuel.”
“You. Are. Welcome.”
Charlie chuckled, nervous. He grabbed Emmanuel under one arm and tried to lift him out of his prostrate position. “Manny, get up. You know, I’ve always thought that was kind of a silly coincidence. You being named Emmanuel, and all. Kind of hits you over the head with it, doesn’t it?”
Kreck snorted.
“They are all named Emmanuel, at first,” said Kreck.
Emmanuel flushed deep red, and tried to back himself into a corner. Charlie winced. He didn’t know it was a touchy subject. So many things were, with Jesuses.
“Krek, I’m warning you…” said Miss Gin, balling herself into a coiled spring of rage.
“Ellen, don’t be silly. It’s common knowledge. See, Mr. Kale, in school they all went by Emmanuel and their mother’s last name. Emmanuel Jackson, Emmanuel Smith, and so forth. Most of the reconditioned ones have picked new names now that they’ve been freed. Most of them want to disappear and forget all about where they come from. Then there are those who resist. Those who feel some sort of perverse pride at what they are.”
“That’s it,” said Miss Gin, “Consider yourself officially censured. You are only supposed to ask and answer questions. And I didn’t hear anybody ask you any goddamn thing.”
Kreck ignored her. All of his attention was focused on Emmanuel. Suddenly Charlie wondered what his last name was. He paid him in cash and had never bothered to find out.
“Goodbye,” said Miss Gin, over-polite, “and, again, thank you for your cooperation.”
“I’ve got a question,” said Sam happily, crunching Omar’s lunch sack into a ball and tossing it into the trash basket, “If he’s a clone of Jesus, how come all them don’t look the same? And how come he can’t do any miracles, or nothin’? I mean, don’t that just PROVE Christianity wrong? Last I heard, they were still trying to sell it.”
Miss Gin sighed. Mr. Kreck, who was almost out the door already, suddenly came alive.
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Nah, Charlie just told us he was a Jesus and that was that. But then I got to thinking here. My sister married a John Kennedy, you see, so I know a little bit ‘bout clones.”
“It’s such a sad little tale. So strange and horrible.”
“Kreck…”
“It’s my turn to talk, Ellen. He asked a question, and as an emissary of the Biological Crimes Oversight Committee, I am in a unique position to give him a detailed and informed answer. We wouldn’t want these poor fools getting their information from off the streets, would we? And evidently, we can’t trust you or EMMANUEL here to give them straight answers.”
Miss Gin smoldered, but seemed defeated.
“No one ever asked me anything before,” said Emmanuel quietly, “I just came to work.”
“You see, we can’t tell the public at large, because we wouldn’t want to cause a panic. That’s why we’ve instituted these formal check-ups, where we can at least make sure those in immediate contact with a Jesus are informed. The Jesuses and their assigned case worker are supposed to make sure their friends and acquaintances know the risks, but sometimes they’d rather let the credulous persist in error.”
“I think that’s just what we’ll do,” said Charlie, “Now if you don’t mind, we have a business to run here.”
“I am also wanting to hear what he has to say,” said Omar, “We have right to know what is going on with this infidel.”
“That you do, my friend,” said Kreck.
Charlie gave Emmanuel a sympathetic look, and tried to stand between him and Kreck, who looked as if he wanted to gut him and wear his lime Jello jumpsuit like a Neanderthal pelt.
“So what’s the deal? Where do they come from?” asked Sam, “I mean everybody knows they are rescued clones, but what the hell? There are lots of rescued clones that don’t have whole damn government organizations for ‘em.”
“You could look it up if you wanted to, but most people don’t have the time or inclination. In the late twentieth century, a group of millenarian crazies – the Cult of the Rerisen Lord – decided that they ought to clone Jesus in order to get some actual new thoughts on his gospel and end all of the unbidden interpretation. So, they rounded up all of their virgins, and found one willing, and they impregnated her with DNA from a Holy Prepuce stolen from the Vatican.”
“Prepuce?” asked Omar.
“Foreskin,” said Krek, “A relic. Like the Shroud of Turin. Anyway, it was a complete failure. The baby she had after nine months of constant prayer was oriental. Now Jesus may have been a lot of things, but nowhere in the Bible does it talk about him being Red Chinese.”
“So the relic was a fake?” said Sam.
“Exactly. Any ordinary group of weirdos would have cut their losses and given up. But these guys were in it deep. They had a charismatic private funder from the busted tech sector, and he was willing to put up millions to see this thing through. So they found some more relics, and they found some more virgins. They got organized, started taking donations so they could actually buy relics instead of swiping them. They started cloning Jesuses on an institutional scale, and even started a private compound to protect and serve them. Well, it turns out there are WAREHOUSES full of relics which purport to have actual bodily secretions of Jesus Christ on them, and let me tell you – it was quite an impressive undertaking. They didn’t want to miss any. They got through ten years of constant insemination before the Reproduction Ethics Act passed and the government shut them down. We’ve been trying to handle the fallout ever since. To answer your questions, the clones can’t perform miracles because none of them are actually Jesus, and they all look different, because they are all just the clones of various suckers whose graves got raided by itinerant priests in ancient times. They aren’t even all males. The problem is: the older ones, like Emmanuel here, still have remnants of cult brainwashing giving them the fits. They still think they’re Jesus. Or could be, anyway.”
Miss Gin crossed herself. Kreck rolled his eyes.
“We’ve had more problems with Jesus clones than any other novelty clone put together,” said Kreck, “And that includes Napoleons and Elvises. It’s because they are clones of an abstraction and not of a real person. No one can handle it. That’s why public funds were used to start up the Trinity Polytechnic Institute and train them with job skills for the demands of the secular world. But that doesn’t mean that every Jesus clone isn’t a potential mushroom cloud waiting to happen. Jesuses kill more people every year than cigarettes, now. They catch you by surprise. Mass murder, serial trophy killing, armed insurrection – you name it, they’ve done it. We had a Jesus down in San Diego who was placed in a baby aspirin factory last year. He was only there for six weeks before he started coating every fiftieth aspirin with redback spider venom. Imagine growing up thinking you are the son or daughter of God, and then finding out you’re just another asshole. You’d go nuts, too.”
“So why ain’t they all locked up?” asked Sam, “Why are we spending money to train them if they’re all psycho? Why is he here?”
“That’s a very astute question. Very astute.”
“I just came to work,” said Emmanuel. “That’s all I want to do. Work and be happy.”
“Krek isn’t telling you how many success stories we’ve had,” said Miss Gin, “Not every Jesus is crazy, nor is every crazy person deserving of a lifetime of penal solitude. And you never know…” said Miss Gin, her breath catching. “You never know.”
“You never know what?” asked Omar.
“Time to go,” said Mr. Krek, grinning at his partner and handing Sam a business card. “Here’s my contact information. Keep in touch. Stay alert. It’s always best to prevent problems instead of mopping them up later. I’ll tell you something: I sure as hell wouldn’t work with one.”
Mr. Krek and Miss Gin walked back out to their Sedan and took off. Sam and Omar looked like they wanted to say something, but Charlie gave them an eyeful of fiery malice and they smugly went back to work without complaint. Charlie watched the sedan leave, a dull throbbing beginning at the base of his skull.
“Mister Kale,” said Emmanuel, shyly.
“I know, son. Don’t worry about it.”
“Mister Kale, my mother’s last name wast Fields. That’s what they called me: Emmanuel Fields. I still go by Emmanuel because she made me promise to never forget. But you can call me Fields if it gladdens thy soul. I am going to go home early this day, if thou allowest it. It is sad to remember the time we have lost, and the friends we will never make.”
Charlie nodded, and Emmanuel walked back outside, deftly grabbing the bell and letting it fall toneless against the aluminum siding. Charlie knew he would be back tomorrow and work harder than ever. He also knew he was going to lose most of his other employees.
He could see Emmanuel go in the big storefront window. There was something peculiar in his step as he walked down the street to the bus stop. Something there that Charlie had never seen before. Something light.
You never knew. You just never knew.
20040922
Coattail
“If you were going to kill someone, how would you do it?”
“Poison. Definitely poison.”
“Why poison? There are so many ways to go wrong with poison.”
“Like how? You don’t even have to be on the same continent with your victim. There’s a lot to like about poison’s anonymity, speed, and finality.”
“Well, what if it fucks up? What if you get the dosage wrong, or your man is hideously immune? You’ve just put your mortal enemy in a heavily-guarded hospital with a case of paranoiac anorexia and a team of detectives up his ass trying to figure out why. And there you are stuck in Belize chatting up AP stringers and changing your haircut every day to stay one step ahead of Interpol.”
“Belize sounds lovely.”
“What if they don’t drink from your ruby goblet of doom at all, but give it to their kid or something? Not only did you fuck up, but you just killed an innocent.”
“Act of mercy. There aren’t any innocents.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I think I am going to kill someone.”
We both put down our respective sections of the newspaper and stared at each other across the breakfast table. I was reading the comics; Sheila had the rest. Jack Sprat and the information age.
“Besides,” I said, “nobody likes poisoners. If you were caught, you wouldn’t stand a chance with a jury. Murder is only acceptable in inverse relation to its degree of cowardice. You’d be better off hacking up cheerleaders in a utility shed somewhere. We all have that impulse, I think.”
“I only take my cues from the best. And you don’t necessarily have to kill anyone to get the most out of poison, Norbert. Think about all of the lead and Prozac in our drinking water.”
She pointed to an article in the municipal section.
“Once upon a time, the government only murdered its dissidents. Now it waits for those who can’t afford water filters – the agitated poor – to simply get thirsty. Then it grinds them into good citizens through chemical domination.”
“Unsubstantiated supervillainy. Much too clever for clods with bureaucratic tendencies.”
“On the contrary. Peasants are pheasants, and the hunters grow weary of the same old game. With poison, you can make already downtrodden subjects even more stupid and docile with their complete oblivious complicity. It isn’t sporting, but it is goddamn satisfying. Nothing beats reveling in the slow descent of your rivals into tedious delirium.”
“Hmmm. I see your point. Not to mention all the fun that can be had with the precipitous dangling of an imaginary antidote.”
“Exactly. Would you rather eliminate your enemy like a stupid Nazi or make him your eternal slave like a wily Brit?”
“I’ll do anything as long as I walk away Scot free.”
“Are you really going to kill someone?”
“I think so. Yes, it certainly seems like I have no choice, now.”
Sheila folded the business and leisure sections neatly into a stack and tossed them briskly into the recycling bin. She swilled the last grainy dregs out of her favorite blue porcelain coffee cup, and then put it into the sink for me to wash later. I liked the icy glint in her eye. She knew I was serious, and I knew she didn’t care. Love? Lust? It worked, whatever it was.
“I am going to kill the man who writes this comic.”
I slid her the funnies. She picked them up with a wanton smirk, one delicate hand on one delicate hip.
“I have been planning on killing him for years. I think you can see why.”
She read the strip I was pointing to, her smile slowly fading.
“Knobbly Hurkle. By Sanderson Savage. Hey Knobbly (says one poorly-drawn bobble-headed youth), where do ya think we go when we die? I don’t know, says Knobbly (who looks to be some sort of retarded mongoose with truly grotesque elbows that must weigh him down like twin cartoon wheelbarrows), but I sure hope they have coupons. My God.”
“So you understand what I have to do.”
“I understand nothing. This Sanderson Savage...do you know him?”
“Not personally, but I know what he looks like. I saw a television special on him last month, and it said he would be moving to our town in order to pursue his career in poetry. Just last Thursday I saw him in the produce section of Randall’s. He was buying pistachio nuts. He wore a bowtie. That was when I knew the weight of coincidence was too heavy to bear, and that I must act or hold cheap a lifetime of conviction and rectitude.”
“Why Knobbly Hurkle? I mean, it’s bad…but so are most newspaper comics. Surely there are worse people in the universe.”
“Maybe. But maybe not. The history of Sanderson Savage and his gangly homunculi is as sordid and disturbing as it is lengthy. Knobbly Hurkle is not the pleasantly unassuming mongoose he appears to be, and his influence on the minds of the naive has been immeasurable in terms of sheer lasting damage.”
“Oh yeah?”
Sometimes I forgot Sheila was a stodgy old continental Kraut. But where else could one find a girl who knew her way around a riding crop and the importance of impeccable posture?
“Knobbly Hurkle was invented in 1972 after Mr. Savage reportedly did a near-lethal dose of LSD, upending an entire vial and spending a summer chained to a wall in a crooked government insane asylum. The character originally began as Savage’s disordered alter-ego, a node of reason on the blistered edge of a broken mind, the only way the fragmented lunatic could communicate with the outside world. Half reckless scamp, and half Satanic id, Knobbly Hurkle raped, pillaged, and jested his way across bland landscapes of alienated American subculture, planting seeds of discontent and slyly subverting every dominant ideology taken for granted by a mindless, anodyne audience. He was hard hitting, he was fresh, and he was funny. A generation of adolescents decided that Knobbly Hurkle would be their mascot, and it wasn’t long before market pressure plastered him across every syndicated daily in America.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Oh, it wasn’t. I grew up reading Knobbly Hurkle and I loved him. We grew our hair out long together, we shaved our hair off together, we pierced our nose and started listening to Depeche Mode together. We even tried cocaine together for a brief period in the eighties. I almost got a Knobbly Hurkle tattoo when I was in France with the Teacher’s Union, and by no means was I his biggest fan.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Ten years ago something strange happened. I woke up one morning and I discovered that Knobbly Hurkle was dead. The lines were the same and the characters were all there -- Sally Strut, Uris the Urthman, Doctor Pow -- but the soul was gone, and the strip had merely become a lifeless shell of its former anarchic genius. I read in horror as Knobbly Hurkle delivered a stiff platitude about how men would never understand women, and therefore how hard it was to find a decent auto mechanic. I thought it was just a fluke at first. That Savage was having a bad day. Maybe he let a friend write a guest strip because he lost a bet or something. But day after day, week after week, the comic continued to degenerate, burning and salting all of the artistic ground it had gained. Finally there was nothing left. The body of Knobbly Hurkle was not only dead – it was rotten. And the leftover maggots were very, very, very, very unfunny.”
“What happened?”
“Savage had made a complete mental recovery, and it turns out that he was a completely mediocre, completely boring, and completely talentless person. But so was an entire generation. No one seemed to notice that Knobbly Hurkle -- whose low-slung elbows once dragged bright lines of illumination through the dirt of the Western World -- had become a marionette for corporate greed, a corpse made to dance for a man with a hollow heart. A proud proponent of all that I loathed and disdained. His dreck was still gospel for my peers, however: once hard to swallow, it was now entropic pap for the toothless masses to gum until they grew sleepy with intellectual malnutrition.”
“Hey, that’s right…I remember Knobbly Hurkle. Didn’t he get banned in Europe for spanking the Queen of England? The cartoon version, anyway.”
“And the very next year he was bought by Disney to do a series of films on teen pregnancy. Sanderson Savage started to do his famous commercials for Uniball for the Pen 15. My friend was murdered -- for money, for status, for laziness, and for ineptitude -- and I must take my revenge. The damage has been done, to society and to art, but I must kill his maker so his spirit may rest. A violent death will be the only thing that will distract posterity from Savage’s last ten years of trite respectable failure.”
“I don’t know how I feel about this. I’ve always wanted to murder somebody – you know that – but I don’t want to waste my cherry on some bullshit cartoonist. I want to be creative like the “Chessboard Murderer.”
“Don’t kid yourself: It will definitely be entertaining. But there’s no need to involve yourself if you aren’t fully committed. Are you with me or not?”
Sheila sighed. She rolled her eyes and bit her lip. She took off all of her jewelry and then put it back on, a uniquely obnoxious habit. She kicked at the recycling bin, knocking it over and spilling newspaper and milk cartons all across the kitchen’s parquet floor. She bent over to scoop them back together, and then stopped in mid-squat. Her lips moved. She was reading something. She turned to me and smiled.
“I’m with you,” she said quietly, “But only because I know for a fact we won’t get caught. The police are trying something new. Ever wanted to know how a remora feels?”
2.
My name is Detective Gerry Lee Miller. The eighth kill by the “Chessboard Murderer” has prompted this live journal, in which I hope to chronicle the actions of the police force towards apprehending this sick and dangerous individual. The press has been particularly uncooperative and confrontational regarding what they call “faceless, menacing silence on the part of the investigative authorities” and I am supposed to simultaneously render them irrelevant and put a personal spin on what has been the single most baffling series of homicides in this detective’s career. The Department gave me an ultimatum, and this is the compromise we came to. I received my BA in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University before I got my masters in Criminal Psychology and decided to serve justice, and they feel my unique and humanistic approach to law enforcement will help clarify and communicate our findings, theories, and warnings to an increasingly panicky public. At this point, we’ll try anything. We are getting NOWHERE.
The facts so far. The “Chessboard Murderer” has been taking victims for fourteen months, covering the entire Southwest region and leaving absolutely no traceable physical evidence. The killer’s calling card is a single chess piece – Staunton – which he leaves on the chest of each victim after shooting them singly through the forehead, crossing their arms, and rouging their cheeks. He has been alternating back and forth between leaving black and white pawns, killing minor government officials and the operating captains of several local organized crime syndicates. Many feel that he will continue the metaphor and move forward to people in more conspicuous positions of power for both the establishment and illicit communities, but it is still unclear whether or not other pieces from the chessboard will be used or what will happen if one side loses its king. Regardless, the security detail for the Governor of seven states has quadrupled, and the Police Union has sworn swift vengeance after the latest death of Patrick Flynn, a beloved 20 year veteran in the vice squad of San Bastinado county.
I didn’t know Sgt. Flynn, but now I have seen him naked with all of his organs weighed and on a platter. What makes the measure of a man? His heart was unusually heavy when he died, but that was only because of arthrosclerosis. The “Chessboard Murderer” has changed everything I knew about police work, and is giving me and my precinct the unholy terrors.
We are all stumped as to the motive and means behind this killing spree. All attempts to find a pattern outside of random assignation of value on an imaginary social chessboard have met with utter failure. The killer seems to choose his victims at random after targeting a profession. A garbage worker, a firefighter, a police officer, and a social worker have so far been tapped as white pawns, and the black pawns have all been countercultural unsavories specializing in the flesh, drug, burglary, and gambling trades. The rampage has had at least one interesting effect: criminals are lying low in the hopes that they will be passed over as viable candidates when their card comes up. Cops and robbers now have a chilling third estate.
The situation is grim, but we are optimistic about our chances of eventually finding the killer and bringing him or her to justice. The FBI has been working with us for over six weeks now, and many leads have yet to be explored. The general public has absolutely nothing to fear, and it seems certain that the serial killer will grow increasingly careless as he becomes more and more successful. To the extent that he loses respect for the law, the law will make up the distance with its eternal, unending vigilance. My Chief told me to put that one in for him. There you go, Chief.
I am also supposed to discuss the personal side of this case, and the toll it is taking on me: the lowly homicide detective. To be honest, I don’t really have time for a personal side. My friends have always respected my choice of career over frivolity, and I have been divorced from my husband for over eleven years. I do have one concern. I have noticed lately that my relationship with my daughter has become mutually distant as I have had to spend many long nights at the station, poring over old chess manuals and manufacturer catalogs, placing dot after dot on the big board and drinking enough coffee to pickle my liver like a Vidalia onion. And she is so busy with school and cheerleading, we never see each other anymore. She gets the house during the day, and I get it at night. I hope to change this soon. Honey, if you are reading this, let’s go out for ice cream this weekend.
3.
My daughter – Renee -- has politely informed me that the purpose of a live journal is to be confessional and not informational.
“Mom,” she says, “If you want to get more hits, you have to tell them dirty secrets. You can’t just tell them things they can find out in the newspaper.”
This is what I get for $30 a month of broadband access. She can barely finish the TV Guide crossword, and she is giving her own mother professional advice. She is probably right, though. Dammit, some days I wish we could just cram them back inside and slowly digest them like they slowly digest us.
Note: This web site does not in any way reflect the opinions of the Windy Valley Police Department.
Here are some juicy factoids you won’t find anywhere else:
? John Wayne Gacy, the Illinois hospital clown who murdered at least thirty-one homeless gay men and kept them under his house, swears to this day that he was hired by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia to be the front line in keeping the AIDS epidemic from reaching the heterosexual population. According to Gacy, the hospital where he volunteered would give him the dossier of a patient who had tested positive for HIV and then offer him a sizeable bounty. “My checks were all signed by the Secretary of the Treasury,” he said in an interview with Katy Couric that has never been aired. “I cashed ‘em all because I needed the booze. I just didn’t feel right about murderin’ all them queers, but you know how it is. I was bein’ patriotic. Then they decided they was done with me, and here I am. But I wasn’t the only one doing it, yunnerstan. There was lots of us. At lest fitty. I ain’t so patriotic no more.” Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
? Neither Shirley or Marilyn Manson are actually related to sixties svengali and convicted murderer Charles Manson, but Leonard Manson, inventor of the travel toothbrush, is. After a lengthy paternity suit that snaked through three separate district courts, the results of the court-ordered blood test were finally made public in 1997. Charles remains silent on the subject, but reportedly sends his son a box of Twinkies on his birthday. Leonard Manson used to eat them, until he reportedly bit into one that contained human feces.
? The most famous serial killer on record was Vice President William R. King, who served under Franklin Pierce and was notorious for habitually impregnating chambermaids exclusively to kill the illegitimate newborns. While abortion was neither safe nor effective in the mid-19th century, there were certainly methods available. King simply enjoyed smothering infants.
? The “Chessboard Murderer” shoots with his left hand and always places the body of the victim in a separate room, leaving a trail of blood that sometimes leads through an entire house. Specialists say the rouge on the cheeks is indicative of someone who takes his time, and therefore studies his victim in great detail before acting. The only victim not found alone in his own house was 26-year-old Angel Salazar, found slain in the rectory of the Presbyterian church next door.
My head is killing me, and I swear I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome from bending and unbending paper clips to open and close massive file folders. I have spent the entire day investigating the final hours of Patrick Flynn and trying to figure out whether the “Chessboard Murderer” picks his victims one at a time, or whether he decided long ago who he would kill to achieve his murderous dreams. Is my man an architect or an artist? Does he go according to a grand diabolical plan, or is he willing to allow flexibility when the situation gets tricky?
I keep wondering if he has a chess piece for me. Knight? Rook? The ease with which he killed poor Patrick Flynn has made all of us police officers jumpy. He nailed him cold, like he knew us from the inside.
Speaking of nails, I finally asked out Jim Peterson at the hardware store. It has been years since I have been on a date, and I am kind of giddy. I know I should be focusing on the case, and I AM, but Gerry Lee definitely needs time for Gerry Lee if she is going to keep her head straight and solve this thing. And Jim Peterson is such a sweetheart! He’s got those big, flat carpenter’s hands. You know what I’m talking about. The kind that could paddle the little man in the boat all the way to the Falklands and back.
I have to think of some place romantic and cheap for us to go. An escape. More on this later.
Something else to ponder: DNA samples taken from underneath the wedding ring of Patrick Flynn have turned up a partial match, but nothing on record. Whoever it is, he isn’t a registered sex offender. Patrick Flynn was a tough guy -- by all accounts a smart, brawny, and attentive officer -- and anybody that could get the drop on him is not to be taken lightly. Ballistics say the gun is a large caliber revolver, but I keep imagining a little woman with a little derringer taking big men by surprise. Maybe that is burnout talking. If you spend enough time reconstructing crime scenes in your head, you start to see through the killer’s eyes, and you start to feel what they must feel. It’s no good. You have to step back and be creative. OMG, police work can be tough!
4.
Good news! We finally found a dealer in antique Staunton chess pieces who swears he can trace the purchases. “Chessboard” uses pieces from a different set every time, but that means he must either be a collector or has become one very recently. The Chief burst into my office this morning and gave me a big thumbs up and tried to buy me a beer, and I had to tell him thirty times that I don’t drink. WTF? Maybe I ought to start.
Jim Peterson could not keep those big hands to himself! The date was an utter and abysmal failure. We went to Cody Lemon’s Lobster Circus, which ended up being a horrible idea. Even though they are a pretty good deal, there is nothing more depressing than family restaurants when you are on a date.
Under the flickering halogens, Jim looked like a third rate cirrhosis cadaver. I mean, I am desperate, but not THAT desperate. A girl has to have her pride. Plus, he just wasn’t very interesting and kept trying to tell me why all of my opinions were wrong. Look, jackass: I went to college, and I got a master’s degree. That makes you the one that has to work to prove himself intellectually legitimate. And then there were all the foul and embarrassing things going on under the table. Knee squeezing and heavy petting. Oh well. At least there are serial killers to catch.
By the way, if you have any information leading to the arrest or capture of the “Chessboard Murderer,” please call 1–800–555–GOTM and leave a message. The family of Carmine Montopolous, “Chessboard”s seventh victim, has offered a $50,000 reward for anybody whose help breaks the case, and they are definitely good for it. I went to their house to interview Carmine’s dad “Shaky,” and it is SEVEN STORIES TALL! They have this little David statue in their foyer that pees hand sanitizer and whose posterior functions as a pumice stone for corns and calluses. The guy was practically lighting his cigarettes with 100 dollar bills, and wanted to know if you were supposed to tip the investigating detective. The state pays me, but “Shaky” is paying out big time if you, John Q. Publicum, can help us. Plus, there is the standard federal reward. If you know anything, TELL ME! Tell me, tell me, tell me! Thanks. Seeya.
5.
Another murder today. And it is totally a strange one. I don’t know what to think about it yet. Surely you’ve seen it on the news by now. The TV cameras won’t leave me alone, that’s for damn sure.
The victim was quickly identified by his fans as Sanderson Savage, beloved artist and creator of the cartoon “Knobbly Hurkle,” whose gleeful antics are a favorite among druggies and the elderly. The victim had been missing for three days when a group of schoolchildren scheduled to see his studio found him dead in his kitchen. After ringing his doorbell and then finding his door unlocked, they burst in on what must have been a truly nightmarish scene of carnage. One child needed to be hospitalized after slipping on pooled blood in the marble entryway and breaking her arm. Savage had been dragged through every room in the house – spilling his blood on every piece of expensive furniture and ensuring an abysmal estate sale -- before being laid out prone on the kitchen table, his feet resting on two velvet chairs. On his chest was a black pawn. On his cheeks were circles of red rouge. His arms were crossed, and, by all eyewitness accounts, he looked almost beatific.
By the time police arrived, however, the crime scene was in shambles. The body had been moved into an upstairs bedroom by a protective and horrified elementary school art teacher and flipped onto its stomach. We asked as many questions as we could, but this was not going to be the casecracker. There were children’s fingerprints everywhere, and trying to interview the bug-eyed mops was an exercise in psychological devastation. My mother instinct was trying to shield them and console, and my detective instinct was trying to pry out every gruesome detail. I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t think any of those kids are ever going to become cops. Or cartoonists, for that matter.
The odd thing about this murder is that we can’t figure out why in the hell Savage is the latest black pawn. What ties to the underworld does a well-known and well-respected artist have? Unless “Chessboard” is trying to tell us that art itself is a form of degeneracy. It doesn’t really fit with his established worldview, and we have to scrap months of psychological profiling. Sanderson Savage should have been somebody our killer would have respected. Somebody beyond the chessboard.
After we sent the kids home with their parents, we spent the rest of the day bagging and tagging. The Savage house was disgusting, frankly, and not just because of the bits of brain ground into the pink and purple shag. There were pictures all over the place of that ugly little mongoose and his friends, and all sorts of awards, trophies, and ego trinkets from around the world. It was the house of a perpetual traveler with too much time and money. I had to keep a close eye on my beat cops: it was the kind of place they wouldn’t give two shits about stealing silverware or electronics from. It was like the whole place had been hosed down with dollar bills. Even the wall paper looked hand-drawn, and there were mirrors covering at least 60% of the surface area in the master bedroom and bathroom. God knows why. 150 pounds overweight and pitted like a pickle barrel from monstrously disfiguring teenage acne, Savage had a face and body made for print. That prompts the only good lead from this tremendous disappointment and kills my primrose-with-a-handbag hypothesis: “Chessboard” must be a big, strong guy. All of his other victims have been waifish, and he carried Savage just as far as he carried the others to display him properly.
I did an interview with a reporter from Channel 11 earlier this evening, and he gave me a bit of insight into just what exactly the public cares about. He wanted to know if rumors concerning the suspected homosexual pedophilia of Savage were true and connected to his death. I just stared at him. Of course they aren’t true, and the man is dead either way. Don’t you people care about murder anymore?
6.
Holy crap, somebody’s ass is toast. When we finally figure out what happened, somebody won’t have a job tomorrow. Not if I have anything to do about it.
During the nightshift, the evidence room at the station was broken into and the black pawn from the Savage case was taken. We were supposed to ship it to the FBI’s mobile crime lab in the morning, and this was the only possible time it could have been filched. The attendant says he saw nothing, heard nothing, tasted nothing, etc, etc, etc. The cameras show a shadowy figure with a cloak for a split second before they are covered up by a wad of chewing gum. How did he know where they were? More and more I am beginning to think “Chessboard” is a cop. But surely that’s impossible. Surely we could smell it if one of our own turned rotten.
At any rate, this is going to be a major setback for the specialist doing our Staunton analysis. The Savage murder has been a clusterfuck from the first whistle. And to make the whole thing worse, the “Chessboard Murderer” has finally made national news with his latest slaying. The director of the FBI is starting to take some major flack. I wonder if I will be around for much longer or will the whole thing go completely federal? Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. If I see another Sanderson Savage retrospective on A&E, I am going to puke bullets.
7.
That’s it then. I’m finished. So is this live journal. So is our entire department’s involvement with “Chessboard.” Two more murders. Husband and wife. We have been declared unfit to preside over such a sensitive and difficult case. Fine by me. I need a good, long vacation. Somewhere tropical. I have sent Renee to stay with her grandmother, and I spent all afternoon trying on bathing suits.
Sheila and Norbert Delacroix were the latest two victims, in case you’ve been living on the streets and stealing your television in half-hour electronics store installments. Norbert Delacroix was a high school guidance counselor, and his wife Sheila was a German national and historical specialist on sadism and torture. A match made in heaven, I guess. The guidance counselor got the white pawn, and the writer got the black one. We may never know why. “Chessboard” reused the piece he stole, though. Why he went to all that trouble to find the Savage pawn and bury it savagely inside the chest of Mrs. Delacroix, the first example we’ve seen of our boy losing his homicidal composure, baffles us all. We may never know anything.
I’m done with serial killers, personally. You just can’t pen ‘em, and they just don’t play fair. Ever since “Chessboard” went public, the name Gerry Lee Miller has been synonymous with comical negligence and supreme municipal incompetence. I’m glad to be done with it. Put me on the traffic division, Chief. I still know what yellow, red, and green signify.
To close this sucker out, I’ll post some pictures of my new tan when I get back from my trip. Until then, AFK and goodbye.
“If you were going to kill someone, how would you do it?”
“Poison. Definitely poison.”
“Why poison? There are so many ways to go wrong with poison.”
“Like how? You don’t even have to be on the same continent with your victim. There’s a lot to like about poison’s anonymity, speed, and finality.”
“Well, what if it fucks up? What if you get the dosage wrong, or your man is hideously immune? You’ve just put your mortal enemy in a heavily-guarded hospital with a case of paranoiac anorexia and a team of detectives up his ass trying to figure out why. And there you are stuck in Belize chatting up AP stringers and changing your haircut every day to stay one step ahead of Interpol.”
“Belize sounds lovely.”
“What if they don’t drink from your ruby goblet of doom at all, but give it to their kid or something? Not only did you fuck up, but you just killed an innocent.”
“Act of mercy. There aren’t any innocents.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I think I am going to kill someone.”
We both put down our respective sections of the newspaper and stared at each other across the breakfast table. I was reading the comics; Sheila had the rest. Jack Sprat and the information age.
“Besides,” I said, “nobody likes poisoners. If you were caught, you wouldn’t stand a chance with a jury. Murder is only acceptable in inverse relation to its degree of cowardice. You’d be better off hacking up cheerleaders in a utility shed somewhere. We all have that impulse, I think.”
“I only take my cues from the best. And you don’t necessarily have to kill anyone to get the most out of poison, Norbert. Think about all of the lead and Prozac in our drinking water.”
She pointed to an article in the municipal section.
“Once upon a time, the government only murdered its dissidents. Now it waits for those who can’t afford water filters – the agitated poor – to simply get thirsty. Then it grinds them into good citizens through chemical domination.”
“Unsubstantiated supervillainy. Much too clever for clods with bureaucratic tendencies.”
“On the contrary. Peasants are pheasants, and the hunters grow weary of the same old game. With poison, you can make already downtrodden subjects even more stupid and docile with their complete oblivious complicity. It isn’t sporting, but it is goddamn satisfying. Nothing beats reveling in the slow descent of your rivals into tedious delirium.”
“Hmmm. I see your point. Not to mention all the fun that can be had with the precipitous dangling of an imaginary antidote.”
“Exactly. Would you rather eliminate your enemy like a stupid Nazi or make him your eternal slave like a wily Brit?”
“I’ll do anything as long as I walk away Scot free.”
“Are you really going to kill someone?”
“I think so. Yes, it certainly seems like I have no choice, now.”
Sheila folded the business and leisure sections neatly into a stack and tossed them briskly into the recycling bin. She swilled the last grainy dregs out of her favorite blue porcelain coffee cup, and then put it into the sink for me to wash later. I liked the icy glint in her eye. She knew I was serious, and I knew she didn’t care. Love? Lust? It worked, whatever it was.
“I am going to kill the man who writes this comic.”
I slid her the funnies. She picked them up with a wanton smirk, one delicate hand on one delicate hip.
“I have been planning on killing him for years. I think you can see why.”
She read the strip I was pointing to, her smile slowly fading.
“Knobbly Hurkle. By Sanderson Savage. Hey Knobbly (says one poorly-drawn bobble-headed youth), where do ya think we go when we die? I don’t know, says Knobbly (who looks to be some sort of retarded mongoose with truly grotesque elbows that must weigh him down like twin cartoon wheelbarrows), but I sure hope they have coupons. My God.”
“So you understand what I have to do.”
“I understand nothing. This Sanderson Savage...do you know him?”
“Not personally, but I know what he looks like. I saw a television special on him last month, and it said he would be moving to our town in order to pursue his career in poetry. Just last Thursday I saw him in the produce section of Randall’s. He was buying pistachio nuts. He wore a bowtie. That was when I knew the weight of coincidence was too heavy to bear, and that I must act or hold cheap a lifetime of conviction and rectitude.”
“Why Knobbly Hurkle? I mean, it’s bad…but so are most newspaper comics. Surely there are worse people in the universe.”
“Maybe. But maybe not. The history of Sanderson Savage and his gangly homunculi is as sordid and disturbing as it is lengthy. Knobbly Hurkle is not the pleasantly unassuming mongoose he appears to be, and his influence on the minds of the naive has been immeasurable in terms of sheer lasting damage.”
“Oh yeah?”
Sometimes I forgot Sheila was a stodgy old continental Kraut. But where else could one find a girl who knew her way around a riding crop and the importance of impeccable posture?
“Knobbly Hurkle was invented in 1972 after Mr. Savage reportedly did a near-lethal dose of LSD, upending an entire vial and spending a summer chained to a wall in a crooked government insane asylum. The character originally began as Savage’s disordered alter-ego, a node of reason on the blistered edge of a broken mind, the only way the fragmented lunatic could communicate with the outside world. Half reckless scamp, and half Satanic id, Knobbly Hurkle raped, pillaged, and jested his way across bland landscapes of alienated American subculture, planting seeds of discontent and slyly subverting every dominant ideology taken for granted by a mindless, anodyne audience. He was hard hitting, he was fresh, and he was funny. A generation of adolescents decided that Knobbly Hurkle would be their mascot, and it wasn’t long before market pressure plastered him across every syndicated daily in America.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Oh, it wasn’t. I grew up reading Knobbly Hurkle and I loved him. We grew our hair out long together, we shaved our hair off together, we pierced our nose and started listening to Depeche Mode together. We even tried cocaine together for a brief period in the eighties. I almost got a Knobbly Hurkle tattoo when I was in France with the Teacher’s Union, and by no means was I his biggest fan.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Ten years ago something strange happened. I woke up one morning and I discovered that Knobbly Hurkle was dead. The lines were the same and the characters were all there -- Sally Strut, Uris the Urthman, Doctor Pow -- but the soul was gone, and the strip had merely become a lifeless shell of its former anarchic genius. I read in horror as Knobbly Hurkle delivered a stiff platitude about how men would never understand women, and therefore how hard it was to find a decent auto mechanic. I thought it was just a fluke at first. That Savage was having a bad day. Maybe he let a friend write a guest strip because he lost a bet or something. But day after day, week after week, the comic continued to degenerate, burning and salting all of the artistic ground it had gained. Finally there was nothing left. The body of Knobbly Hurkle was not only dead – it was rotten. And the leftover maggots were very, very, very, very unfunny.”
“What happened?”
“Savage had made a complete mental recovery, and it turns out that he was a completely mediocre, completely boring, and completely talentless person. But so was an entire generation. No one seemed to notice that Knobbly Hurkle -- whose low-slung elbows once dragged bright lines of illumination through the dirt of the Western World -- had become a marionette for corporate greed, a corpse made to dance for a man with a hollow heart. A proud proponent of all that I loathed and disdained. His dreck was still gospel for my peers, however: once hard to swallow, it was now entropic pap for the toothless masses to gum until they grew sleepy with intellectual malnutrition.”
“Hey, that’s right…I remember Knobbly Hurkle. Didn’t he get banned in Europe for spanking the Queen of England? The cartoon version, anyway.”
“And the very next year he was bought by Disney to do a series of films on teen pregnancy. Sanderson Savage started to do his famous commercials for Uniball for the Pen 15. My friend was murdered -- for money, for status, for laziness, and for ineptitude -- and I must take my revenge. The damage has been done, to society and to art, but I must kill his maker so his spirit may rest. A violent death will be the only thing that will distract posterity from Savage’s last ten years of trite respectable failure.”
“I don’t know how I feel about this. I’ve always wanted to murder somebody – you know that – but I don’t want to waste my cherry on some bullshit cartoonist. I want to be creative like the “Chessboard Murderer.”
“Don’t kid yourself: It will definitely be entertaining. But there’s no need to involve yourself if you aren’t fully committed. Are you with me or not?”
Sheila sighed. She rolled her eyes and bit her lip. She took off all of her jewelry and then put it back on, a uniquely obnoxious habit. She kicked at the recycling bin, knocking it over and spilling newspaper and milk cartons all across the kitchen’s parquet floor. She bent over to scoop them back together, and then stopped in mid-squat. Her lips moved. She was reading something. She turned to me and smiled.
“I’m with you,” she said quietly, “But only because I know for a fact we won’t get caught. The police are trying something new. Ever wanted to know how a remora feels?”
2.
My name is Detective Gerry Lee Miller. The eighth kill by the “Chessboard Murderer” has prompted this live journal, in which I hope to chronicle the actions of the police force towards apprehending this sick and dangerous individual. The press has been particularly uncooperative and confrontational regarding what they call “faceless, menacing silence on the part of the investigative authorities” and I am supposed to simultaneously render them irrelevant and put a personal spin on what has been the single most baffling series of homicides in this detective’s career. The Department gave me an ultimatum, and this is the compromise we came to. I received my BA in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University before I got my masters in Criminal Psychology and decided to serve justice, and they feel my unique and humanistic approach to law enforcement will help clarify and communicate our findings, theories, and warnings to an increasingly panicky public. At this point, we’ll try anything. We are getting NOWHERE.
The facts so far. The “Chessboard Murderer” has been taking victims for fourteen months, covering the entire Southwest region and leaving absolutely no traceable physical evidence. The killer’s calling card is a single chess piece – Staunton – which he leaves on the chest of each victim after shooting them singly through the forehead, crossing their arms, and rouging their cheeks. He has been alternating back and forth between leaving black and white pawns, killing minor government officials and the operating captains of several local organized crime syndicates. Many feel that he will continue the metaphor and move forward to people in more conspicuous positions of power for both the establishment and illicit communities, but it is still unclear whether or not other pieces from the chessboard will be used or what will happen if one side loses its king. Regardless, the security detail for the Governor of seven states has quadrupled, and the Police Union has sworn swift vengeance after the latest death of Patrick Flynn, a beloved 20 year veteran in the vice squad of San Bastinado county.
I didn’t know Sgt. Flynn, but now I have seen him naked with all of his organs weighed and on a platter. What makes the measure of a man? His heart was unusually heavy when he died, but that was only because of arthrosclerosis. The “Chessboard Murderer” has changed everything I knew about police work, and is giving me and my precinct the unholy terrors.
We are all stumped as to the motive and means behind this killing spree. All attempts to find a pattern outside of random assignation of value on an imaginary social chessboard have met with utter failure. The killer seems to choose his victims at random after targeting a profession. A garbage worker, a firefighter, a police officer, and a social worker have so far been tapped as white pawns, and the black pawns have all been countercultural unsavories specializing in the flesh, drug, burglary, and gambling trades. The rampage has had at least one interesting effect: criminals are lying low in the hopes that they will be passed over as viable candidates when their card comes up. Cops and robbers now have a chilling third estate.
The situation is grim, but we are optimistic about our chances of eventually finding the killer and bringing him or her to justice. The FBI has been working with us for over six weeks now, and many leads have yet to be explored. The general public has absolutely nothing to fear, and it seems certain that the serial killer will grow increasingly careless as he becomes more and more successful. To the extent that he loses respect for the law, the law will make up the distance with its eternal, unending vigilance. My Chief told me to put that one in for him. There you go, Chief.
I am also supposed to discuss the personal side of this case, and the toll it is taking on me: the lowly homicide detective. To be honest, I don’t really have time for a personal side. My friends have always respected my choice of career over frivolity, and I have been divorced from my husband for over eleven years. I do have one concern. I have noticed lately that my relationship with my daughter has become mutually distant as I have had to spend many long nights at the station, poring over old chess manuals and manufacturer catalogs, placing dot after dot on the big board and drinking enough coffee to pickle my liver like a Vidalia onion. And she is so busy with school and cheerleading, we never see each other anymore. She gets the house during the day, and I get it at night. I hope to change this soon. Honey, if you are reading this, let’s go out for ice cream this weekend.
3.
My daughter – Renee -- has politely informed me that the purpose of a live journal is to be confessional and not informational.
“Mom,” she says, “If you want to get more hits, you have to tell them dirty secrets. You can’t just tell them things they can find out in the newspaper.”
This is what I get for $30 a month of broadband access. She can barely finish the TV Guide crossword, and she is giving her own mother professional advice. She is probably right, though. Dammit, some days I wish we could just cram them back inside and slowly digest them like they slowly digest us.
Note: This web site does not in any way reflect the opinions of the Windy Valley Police Department.
Here are some juicy factoids you won’t find anywhere else:
? John Wayne Gacy, the Illinois hospital clown who murdered at least thirty-one homeless gay men and kept them under his house, swears to this day that he was hired by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia to be the front line in keeping the AIDS epidemic from reaching the heterosexual population. According to Gacy, the hospital where he volunteered would give him the dossier of a patient who had tested positive for HIV and then offer him a sizeable bounty. “My checks were all signed by the Secretary of the Treasury,” he said in an interview with Katy Couric that has never been aired. “I cashed ‘em all because I needed the booze. I just didn’t feel right about murderin’ all them queers, but you know how it is. I was bein’ patriotic. Then they decided they was done with me, and here I am. But I wasn’t the only one doing it, yunnerstan. There was lots of us. At lest fitty. I ain’t so patriotic no more.” Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
? Neither Shirley or Marilyn Manson are actually related to sixties svengali and convicted murderer Charles Manson, but Leonard Manson, inventor of the travel toothbrush, is. After a lengthy paternity suit that snaked through three separate district courts, the results of the court-ordered blood test were finally made public in 1997. Charles remains silent on the subject, but reportedly sends his son a box of Twinkies on his birthday. Leonard Manson used to eat them, until he reportedly bit into one that contained human feces.
? The most famous serial killer on record was Vice President William R. King, who served under Franklin Pierce and was notorious for habitually impregnating chambermaids exclusively to kill the illegitimate newborns. While abortion was neither safe nor effective in the mid-19th century, there were certainly methods available. King simply enjoyed smothering infants.
? The “Chessboard Murderer” shoots with his left hand and always places the body of the victim in a separate room, leaving a trail of blood that sometimes leads through an entire house. Specialists say the rouge on the cheeks is indicative of someone who takes his time, and therefore studies his victim in great detail before acting. The only victim not found alone in his own house was 26-year-old Angel Salazar, found slain in the rectory of the Presbyterian church next door.
My head is killing me, and I swear I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome from bending and unbending paper clips to open and close massive file folders. I have spent the entire day investigating the final hours of Patrick Flynn and trying to figure out whether the “Chessboard Murderer” picks his victims one at a time, or whether he decided long ago who he would kill to achieve his murderous dreams. Is my man an architect or an artist? Does he go according to a grand diabolical plan, or is he willing to allow flexibility when the situation gets tricky?
I keep wondering if he has a chess piece for me. Knight? Rook? The ease with which he killed poor Patrick Flynn has made all of us police officers jumpy. He nailed him cold, like he knew us from the inside.
Speaking of nails, I finally asked out Jim Peterson at the hardware store. It has been years since I have been on a date, and I am kind of giddy. I know I should be focusing on the case, and I AM, but Gerry Lee definitely needs time for Gerry Lee if she is going to keep her head straight and solve this thing. And Jim Peterson is such a sweetheart! He’s got those big, flat carpenter’s hands. You know what I’m talking about. The kind that could paddle the little man in the boat all the way to the Falklands and back.
I have to think of some place romantic and cheap for us to go. An escape. More on this later.
Something else to ponder: DNA samples taken from underneath the wedding ring of Patrick Flynn have turned up a partial match, but nothing on record. Whoever it is, he isn’t a registered sex offender. Patrick Flynn was a tough guy -- by all accounts a smart, brawny, and attentive officer -- and anybody that could get the drop on him is not to be taken lightly. Ballistics say the gun is a large caliber revolver, but I keep imagining a little woman with a little derringer taking big men by surprise. Maybe that is burnout talking. If you spend enough time reconstructing crime scenes in your head, you start to see through the killer’s eyes, and you start to feel what they must feel. It’s no good. You have to step back and be creative. OMG, police work can be tough!
4.
Good news! We finally found a dealer in antique Staunton chess pieces who swears he can trace the purchases. “Chessboard” uses pieces from a different set every time, but that means he must either be a collector or has become one very recently. The Chief burst into my office this morning and gave me a big thumbs up and tried to buy me a beer, and I had to tell him thirty times that I don’t drink. WTF? Maybe I ought to start.
Jim Peterson could not keep those big hands to himself! The date was an utter and abysmal failure. We went to Cody Lemon’s Lobster Circus, which ended up being a horrible idea. Even though they are a pretty good deal, there is nothing more depressing than family restaurants when you are on a date.
Under the flickering halogens, Jim looked like a third rate cirrhosis cadaver. I mean, I am desperate, but not THAT desperate. A girl has to have her pride. Plus, he just wasn’t very interesting and kept trying to tell me why all of my opinions were wrong. Look, jackass: I went to college, and I got a master’s degree. That makes you the one that has to work to prove himself intellectually legitimate. And then there were all the foul and embarrassing things going on under the table. Knee squeezing and heavy petting. Oh well. At least there are serial killers to catch.
By the way, if you have any information leading to the arrest or capture of the “Chessboard Murderer,” please call 1–800–555–GOTM and leave a message. The family of Carmine Montopolous, “Chessboard”s seventh victim, has offered a $50,000 reward for anybody whose help breaks the case, and they are definitely good for it. I went to their house to interview Carmine’s dad “Shaky,” and it is SEVEN STORIES TALL! They have this little David statue in their foyer that pees hand sanitizer and whose posterior functions as a pumice stone for corns and calluses. The guy was practically lighting his cigarettes with 100 dollar bills, and wanted to know if you were supposed to tip the investigating detective. The state pays me, but “Shaky” is paying out big time if you, John Q. Publicum, can help us. Plus, there is the standard federal reward. If you know anything, TELL ME! Tell me, tell me, tell me! Thanks. Seeya.
5.
Another murder today. And it is totally a strange one. I don’t know what to think about it yet. Surely you’ve seen it on the news by now. The TV cameras won’t leave me alone, that’s for damn sure.
The victim was quickly identified by his fans as Sanderson Savage, beloved artist and creator of the cartoon “Knobbly Hurkle,” whose gleeful antics are a favorite among druggies and the elderly. The victim had been missing for three days when a group of schoolchildren scheduled to see his studio found him dead in his kitchen. After ringing his doorbell and then finding his door unlocked, they burst in on what must have been a truly nightmarish scene of carnage. One child needed to be hospitalized after slipping on pooled blood in the marble entryway and breaking her arm. Savage had been dragged through every room in the house – spilling his blood on every piece of expensive furniture and ensuring an abysmal estate sale -- before being laid out prone on the kitchen table, his feet resting on two velvet chairs. On his chest was a black pawn. On his cheeks were circles of red rouge. His arms were crossed, and, by all eyewitness accounts, he looked almost beatific.
By the time police arrived, however, the crime scene was in shambles. The body had been moved into an upstairs bedroom by a protective and horrified elementary school art teacher and flipped onto its stomach. We asked as many questions as we could, but this was not going to be the casecracker. There were children’s fingerprints everywhere, and trying to interview the bug-eyed mops was an exercise in psychological devastation. My mother instinct was trying to shield them and console, and my detective instinct was trying to pry out every gruesome detail. I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t think any of those kids are ever going to become cops. Or cartoonists, for that matter.
The odd thing about this murder is that we can’t figure out why in the hell Savage is the latest black pawn. What ties to the underworld does a well-known and well-respected artist have? Unless “Chessboard” is trying to tell us that art itself is a form of degeneracy. It doesn’t really fit with his established worldview, and we have to scrap months of psychological profiling. Sanderson Savage should have been somebody our killer would have respected. Somebody beyond the chessboard.
After we sent the kids home with their parents, we spent the rest of the day bagging and tagging. The Savage house was disgusting, frankly, and not just because of the bits of brain ground into the pink and purple shag. There were pictures all over the place of that ugly little mongoose and his friends, and all sorts of awards, trophies, and ego trinkets from around the world. It was the house of a perpetual traveler with too much time and money. I had to keep a close eye on my beat cops: it was the kind of place they wouldn’t give two shits about stealing silverware or electronics from. It was like the whole place had been hosed down with dollar bills. Even the wall paper looked hand-drawn, and there were mirrors covering at least 60% of the surface area in the master bedroom and bathroom. God knows why. 150 pounds overweight and pitted like a pickle barrel from monstrously disfiguring teenage acne, Savage had a face and body made for print. That prompts the only good lead from this tremendous disappointment and kills my primrose-with-a-handbag hypothesis: “Chessboard” must be a big, strong guy. All of his other victims have been waifish, and he carried Savage just as far as he carried the others to display him properly.
I did an interview with a reporter from Channel 11 earlier this evening, and he gave me a bit of insight into just what exactly the public cares about. He wanted to know if rumors concerning the suspected homosexual pedophilia of Savage were true and connected to his death. I just stared at him. Of course they aren’t true, and the man is dead either way. Don’t you people care about murder anymore?
6.
Holy crap, somebody’s ass is toast. When we finally figure out what happened, somebody won’t have a job tomorrow. Not if I have anything to do about it.
During the nightshift, the evidence room at the station was broken into and the black pawn from the Savage case was taken. We were supposed to ship it to the FBI’s mobile crime lab in the morning, and this was the only possible time it could have been filched. The attendant says he saw nothing, heard nothing, tasted nothing, etc, etc, etc. The cameras show a shadowy figure with a cloak for a split second before they are covered up by a wad of chewing gum. How did he know where they were? More and more I am beginning to think “Chessboard” is a cop. But surely that’s impossible. Surely we could smell it if one of our own turned rotten.
At any rate, this is going to be a major setback for the specialist doing our Staunton analysis. The Savage murder has been a clusterfuck from the first whistle. And to make the whole thing worse, the “Chessboard Murderer” has finally made national news with his latest slaying. The director of the FBI is starting to take some major flack. I wonder if I will be around for much longer or will the whole thing go completely federal? Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. If I see another Sanderson Savage retrospective on A&E, I am going to puke bullets.
7.
That’s it then. I’m finished. So is this live journal. So is our entire department’s involvement with “Chessboard.” Two more murders. Husband and wife. We have been declared unfit to preside over such a sensitive and difficult case. Fine by me. I need a good, long vacation. Somewhere tropical. I have sent Renee to stay with her grandmother, and I spent all afternoon trying on bathing suits.
Sheila and Norbert Delacroix were the latest two victims, in case you’ve been living on the streets and stealing your television in half-hour electronics store installments. Norbert Delacroix was a high school guidance counselor, and his wife Sheila was a German national and historical specialist on sadism and torture. A match made in heaven, I guess. The guidance counselor got the white pawn, and the writer got the black one. We may never know why. “Chessboard” reused the piece he stole, though. Why he went to all that trouble to find the Savage pawn and bury it savagely inside the chest of Mrs. Delacroix, the first example we’ve seen of our boy losing his homicidal composure, baffles us all. We may never know anything.
I’m done with serial killers, personally. You just can’t pen ‘em, and they just don’t play fair. Ever since “Chessboard” went public, the name Gerry Lee Miller has been synonymous with comical negligence and supreme municipal incompetence. I’m glad to be done with it. Put me on the traffic division, Chief. I still know what yellow, red, and green signify.
To close this sucker out, I’ll post some pictures of my new tan when I get back from my trip. Until then, AFK and goodbye.
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