Chapter 17
Perlmutter sat back in his chair, bleary-eyed, wondering what he had gotten himself into. He had been at the library since nine thirty that morning bent over a microfilm reader, and this was the first break he had taken. He didn’t know much about the Skull Cracker Killer (SCK) when he had tossed out the idea to Lawrence Getzler about making a movie focusing on SCK’s wife, but after spending four hours reading every newspaper article he could find about the killings that took place in New York, the subsequent killings that happened in Los Angeles, and the investigations that had gone on since then, it seemed obvious to him that Sheila Proops was the original SCK, and that she had gotten her sad sack of a husband to continue the killings in Los Angeles.
Wow. That was what he mouthed to himself several times as he tried to make sense of what he had read. It was inconceivable that Proops was not in prison, although to be fair, she didn’t fully escape justice. One of her New York killings had left her partially paralyzed and in pretty rotten health. A chill ran down his spine as he thought about approaching this woman—who had to be a twisted and deranged serial killer—for her life story. If he hadn’t all but gotten Getzler’s blessing, he would’ve walked away from this, because this wasn’t the kind of movie he had imagined making. That one would’ve been about an innocent and naïve woman married to a monster; someone completely unaware of her husband’s horrific crimes. But this would be something very different. As he thought about what the true Sheila Proops movie would be, he was stunned to find himself excited by the idea. In his mind, he began seeing scenes of the movie playing out, and he started shaking as he realized just how big of a blockbuster he potentially had on his hands. That if he made this, he’d be exploding on the scene just as his idol Orson Welles once did with Citizen Kane.
He had brought a pen and pad with him, and as fast and furiously as he could write he scribbled down the ideas as they popped into his head.
An hour later he had filled the pad of paper and he sat back, exhausted.
* * *
Griffin treated himself to a night at the Hotel Bel-Air. It was damn expensive. Six hundred and forty-five dollars, but he decided he had earned this luxury after driving all the way from Seattle. Besides, the decision to shell out the money for a night’s stay was already paying dividends. One of their guests, a paper-thin blonde in her late forties who’d had enough Botox injections to leave her face a hard plastic shell, had slipped him her room number while he was having breakfast at one of the hotel restaurants. Maybe he’d make her one of his victims, or maybe he’d only steal her car. He’d decide which when the time was right.
He had lounged in bed until ten that morning and had lingered at breakfast over a plate of Belgian waffles and a pot of coffee. This had left him getting a late start, and he didn’t leave the hotel until after checkout time. It wasn’t until two o’clock that he finished the paperwork on a used Honda Accord. The car had 200,000 miles on it, bald tires, and spongy brakes, and it still cost him $1900, which he paid in cash. He was being ripped off, but he didn’t bother haggling over the price. He needed transportation to Sheila Proops’s home in Simi Valley, and he couldn’t very well take a taxi or arrange for an Uber ride. Besides, the car was temporary, and the money he spent on it didn’t matter. From what he had read, Proops was wealthy. He was sure he’d find a cache of hidden money somewhere in her home. If not, he would later be able to find plenty of wealthy women in Los Angeles who would have expensive cars for him to steal. Money had never been much of an issue for him. He always found ways of getting enough of it.
He made a mistake taking 405 North instead of US 101. Once he passed Vanowen Street traffic inched painfully until he reached the exit for 118 West. What should’ve been a fifty-minute drive to Sheila Proops’s home on the outskirts of Simi Valley ended up taking two hours. Whenever he’d find himself growing tense, he’d calm himself by imaging the things he would soon be doing to Proops, and this would invariably leave him smiling. By the time he pulled into her driveway, he was feeling quite relaxed.
He wasn’t being sloppy, parking the car at her home. There was an old, beat-up sedan parked in front of the house, and that was what would draw people’s attention. But even if anyone later remembered seeing his Honda parked in the driveway, it wouldn’t matter. The odds were good that if a neighbor saw it, he’d get the make or color wrong when he reported it to the police. Even if the neighbor got the description of the car right, and the salesman who sold him the Honda later connected it to Griffin, it still wouldn’t matter since he had used one of his fake driver’s licenses when he bought the car, so the police would be looking for Wade Hannifin from Leadville, Colorado. Any description the salesman might give of a lean, very good-looking man in his early thirties would end up fitting half the hopeful actors scrambling to gets jobs in Hollywood. So while he could’ve been anal-retentive about it and found a place to park where no one would remember seeing his used Honda, why bother? Besides, he planned on driving to a deserted strip mall in East LA later that night and setting the car on fire.
Griffin closed his eyes and imagined the beast rising until it filled his consciousness. Soon he could feel the beast’s ferocity coursing through him like an electric current. He opened his eyes, his lips stretched into a harsh grin. Never had he been so on edge to kill as he was right then. He forced himself to take several deep breaths. He needed to control himself, otherwise he’d be ripping Sheila Proops to pieces within minutes of starting on her, and what he wanted instead was a slow dance that would last for hours. It wasn’t going to be easy, though, given how enormous the beast had grown in his mind, and how the beast’s demonic red eyes burned like fire into Griffin’s very soul.
He took another deep breath and held it in until he could better compose himself. Then another one, this one even deeper. Once his facial muscles relaxed and his grin disappeared, he left the car, walked to the door, and rang the bell. A middle-aged black woman with a thick scowl answered.
“You here about the job?” she asked gruffly with a noticeable Haitian accent.
Griffin had no idea what she was talking about, but he nodded.
“About time someone came,” she grumbled.
He followed her into the ranch-style house. After a couple of steps, she thought better of her decision to bring him to Proops, and told Griffin to wait where he was. “Better I talk to her first,” she said, her expression the same as if she’d bitten into an especially sour lemon.
Griffin didn’t mind waiting, and he watched as this woman disappeared into the house. She didn’t go far, because only seconds later he heard her telling Proops that a man was there for the caregiver position. Sheila Proops’s voice was too weak for him to make out her response, but he had no trouble hearing the Haitian woman subsequently yelling at her, her voice growing increasingly exasperated.
“Oh no, you’re going to see this man, and you’re not going to give me none of your nutty excuses why you ain’t! I told you up front I’m only temporary ’til you get someone permanent, and I ain’t staying here a minute longer than I have to! You don’t see him, I’m leaving right now!”
He strained to hear what Proops said next, but he couldn’t make it out. She must’ve capitulated, though, because the Haitian woman returned shortly afterwards. While she appeared at first to be mumbling to herself in a hot, agitated way, she told him that the lady would see him now, and he followed her from the hallway to a modest living room where Sheila Proops sat in a wheelchair.
Griffin had seen a photo of her in one of the newspaper stories, but it was still a shock seeing her in person. She wasn’t exactly tiny, since she was probably five foot six, but she appeared shriveled, her flesh desiccated, and her body twisted in an unnatural way as if she were a gnarled carving done out of a large piece of driftwood.
Proops sat morosely, refusing to look at Griffin, and the Haitian woman’s exasperation seemed to grow as she watched this. With her hands balled on her hips, she threatened, “You better behave yourself, or I’m right out the door. You better believe I am!”
The left side of Proops’s mouth pinched into an angry, bitter circle, while the right side continued to droop unnaturally, but she consented to twist her neck and look at Griffin with cold, pale eyes. He smiled at her and was amused to see the left side of her mouth also twist upwards.
“I want to talk to him alone,” she said in a painfully slow manner, as if it took a great deal of effort to push out each word.
“Fine with me,” the Haitian woman said. “I’ll go run errands. But you better behave yourself.” She turned to Griffin. “Don’t let her chase you out of here. You be here when I get back.”
Proops made a soft wheezing that could’ve been laughter. “Oh, he’ll be here, don’t worry about that.”
The woman gave Proops a look as if she were crazy, and then hurried out of the room as if she couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. Sheila Proops waited until the front door slammed shut before telling Griffin that she had once been very pretty.
“Is that so?”
She nodded in a slow and deliberate manner. “Less than six years ago, but that doesn’t matter.” She paused for a moment as if she were gathering her strength, then, “I know why you’re here.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not here about the job?”
“No, of course not,” she said in her painstakingly slow cadence, as if it took everything she had to spit out each word. “The reason you think that you’re here is because you want to kill me.”
The woman was full of surprises. Griffin had to give her that.
He gave an exaggerated look of astonishment, and asked, “Why would you think that?”
“Please, don’t treat me like an idiot. I recognized you immediately for what you are.”
Griffin had had his fun, but his patience was quickly growing thin. It took Proops so damn long to spit out each word. Still, he reminded himself, there was no reason to be in a rush to get started, and he was curious about what she thought she’d recognized.
“What do you think I am?” Griffin asked.
“You’re like me. Someone who has to kill.”
She made that wheezing sound again that could’ve been laughter. “You look so incensed,” she said. “Like I’ve insulted you.”
“Of course I’m insulted,” Griffin admitted, a hotness flushing his face. “I’m nothing like you. I don’t need to draw attention to what I do. I’m more than happy staying in the shadows instead of being a publicity whore who kills only so the media makes me famous and gives me a cute name. It’s disgusting what you did.”
Her left eye sparkled while her right eye remained dead. “A true artist,” she forced out. Even though only the left side of her mouth worked, she was still able to smile in a bitingly condescending way. “Would it surprise you to know I killed hundreds before I began killing them the way I did in New York to earn me that name?”
That did surprise him. Quite a bit, actually. He took a seat on the armchair across from her, and began seeing her in a different light than he had earlier.
In her painstakingly slow method, she explained, “I became the Skull Cracker Killer not for fame, but because I discovered killing them that way was what I needed. That was the only way to release the pressure inside so I could breathe freely.”
Griffin nodded to himself as he considered this. “It doesn’t change anything. I’m still going to do what I came here for.”
“Of course you are. But you didn’t come here to kill me. Not really.”
He smiled at her with a confidence that he was no longer feeling. Without saying another word to her, he got up from the chair and wandered over to the kitchen. He walked around the room opening drawers so he could take inventory of what she had. He picked up a solid oak rolling pin and felt its heft. That would work just fine on the Haitian woman when she returned. He would give her a little tap on the back of the skull; only hard enough to knock her to the floor, and then he would take his time doing things to her, and he would do all of this in front of Sheila Proops. He was beginning to feel an affinity to the woman who was once the Skull Cracker Killer, and he figured he’d let her enjoy one last killing. But no matter what kinship he was beginning to feel, he was still going to turn his attention to Proops after he finished with the Haitian woman.
Griffin moved back to the living room and sat in the armchair across from Proops, and slapped the rolling pin into his open palm as he waited. He wasn’t going to say anything to her, but her last comment nagged at him, and when he saw the way the good half of her face had formed a cat-who-swallowed-the-canary kind of smile, he couldn’t help himself.
“Why am I here if it isn’t to kill you?” he asked.
The half of her face that was smiling grew more impish. “For guidance.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
“No, not at all. You came because you want the same infamy I stumbled into.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he insisted.
“Once you stop lying to yourself you’ll realize the truth. With my help and mentorship, I can make you the most infamous serial killer who ever lived. And that’s what you really want.”
Griffin tried to tell her she was wrong, but he found that he couldn’t. He got up and went back to the kitchen so that he could put the rolling pin away. When he returned he sat quietly and listened to Sheila Proops’s proposal.