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I stood in a towering oak’s shadow, surveying the scene of my second murder. I’d broken the nearest streetlights the night before with a slingshot, so only the quarter moon lit the cemetery across the street and the row of bungalows behind me.
It’d been years since I’d shot out a streetlight. Since then I’d married, gone bald, divorced, lost fourteen jobs, and gained a nervous tic. I left the slingshot in my rundown flat across town. Instead, my freshly oiled .38 caliber revolver rested in my trench coat pocket. The other tools I brought included a flashlight, a stethoscope, and a crowbar I’d slipped into my belt.
I looked over my shoulder before crossing the street. While striding past the cemetery’s wrought-iron gate, I surveyed the long rows of engraved markers. Some were aging granite monstrosities, but most were simple affairs surrounded by pots bearing brown-leafed flowers. Extravagant family mausoleums sat scattered across the expansive graveyard. One of these in particular was my objective.
All remained silent except for rustling leaves stirred up by a chilling autumn breeze, and the annoying chirping of crickets. Instead of cursing myself for leaving my hat on the shelf above the slingshot, I took my frustration out on one of the merry black insects scuttling across the sidewalk. With a crunch, my boot terminated its participation in life’s choir.
I considered the gut-stained splotch. Its squelched silence now mimicked my soul. While there was no hope for the dead insect, my soul could be salvaged if I reached my first victim. In my nightmares she always promised me that.
A chain-link fence ran along the cemetery’s eastern perimeter. I ducked through the gap cut by miscreant youths years ago. Ignoring the paved drive, I strode between the headstones toward the resting place of my first and second victims.
The first, Valerie Stromson, mother of two, died under the wheels of my rusted-out Dodge Dart. She never knew what hit her; neither did the police. But I knew precisely where they had entombed her. That slate-gray engraved marker haunted my tortured nights too often to hope otherwise. And because her husband interrupted me here on the first anniversary of my crime, they’d filled the second of six mausoleum tombs with his corpse.
I froze at the sound of leaves rustling in the grass. With revolver in hand I searched the shadowy headstones and markers. The last time I’d entered this graveyard, I ignored such a sound. My shoulder still aches where Carlton Stromson had hit me with his tire iron.
Motionless under a walnut tree, I stared into the grass silvered by the pale moonlight. A set of reflective gray eyes peered around the base of an oblong stone. The fields nearby were infested with groundhogs. They don’t come out at night, I thought, before picking up a green-husked walnut and chucking it at the varmint. The steady left-right gait of the fleeing animal identified it as an opossum.
My smile disappeared when my peripheral vision caught motion ahead to my right. As if on cue, an owl hooted, but the lonely call wasn’t what caused the hair on my neck to stand on edge.
The cricket chorus faltered. Still, the wind-rattled leaves frustrated my attempt to detect further movement. I pulled out my flashlight and set my thumb over the switch. The flashlight wasn’t big enough to club anyone, but its narrow beam could temporarily blind them. My revolver solved problems. The coroner who examined Mr. Stromson ten years ago could attest to that.
The last time I entered this graveyard I’d been too careless. For a year I’d read the newspapers and followed the growing reward posted for me, the Route 511 Hit and Run Killer. Things like that happen when the wife of a respected lawyer turned influential state representative is run down. Technically, it wasn’t murder, but it didn’t matter.
I didn’t go to the funeral even though I knew Valerie from the corner coffee shop. We were both regulars. Her favorite was French vanilla with cream. Mine had been simple black, until she introduced me to hazelnut. If I’d shown up at the mortuary and looked her husband or the police chief, or her children in the eye, it would’ve been over.
I’d prayed endless nights for forgiveness. All I got was silence, a deadening silence that stifled my soul.
It started exactly eleven years ago. I loved baseball and picnics, until that night on the road. I loved a lot of things, until that night on the road after the company pig-roast. Since then my life had gone dead. Only the forgiveness of Valerie Stromson could revive it. Her blood-filled, dying gasps said so. Her intrusions into my dreams confirmed it.
It’s not like her ghost returned to haunt me. Simply, I had snuffed out her life’s light. In return she snuffed out mine. My chest was empty. I was alive in name only.
Nothing moved in the night. I finally decided it was another opossum hiding behind a headstone. I searched the shadows one last time before moving on. Within three strides—thwack—something struck me in the thigh. My coat absorbed most of the blow. I spun around to discover a walnut rolling at my feet.
I pointed my revolver, seeking a target, knowing I couldn’t allow any witnesses. Whoever was in the cemetery would flee, or join the planted corpses. Thunk. From behind, a second hurled green-husked nut glanced off my head.
This was madness, I thought. The fools. But, if I used my revolver, how long before the cops came to investigate? Would I have enough time with Mrs. Stromson?
I turned and marched, figuring if the miscreants wanted to continue their game, they’d have to follow me. Then I could spot and deal with them. I pulled the crowbar from my belt. It’d be bloody, but it would solve my problem without gunshots. When I got one of them, the other’d run off. I’d be gone before the punk could tell anyone.
I detected the sound of footfalls trailing me. Increasing my pace, I circled around a pair of nine-corpse mausoleums and stood with my back against a sizeable oak. I waited, crowbar now in my right hand and revolver in my left, just in case.
I remained motionless with my back pressed against the tree, taking shallow breaths. The owl hooted, and the crickets recommenced their chorus. I waited, confident no one could distinguish me from the oak’s shadow. If they passed nearby, I’d nail one with my crowbar. If too far away, I’d stalk and club, or shoot the troublemakers.
Finally, my vigilance was rewarded with a faint shuffling crunch of leaves. I wondered if they’d guessed my location as the intermittent sound grew closer. On the breeze I smelled stale sweat and cigarettes. I readied myself. Teens or not, it was their mistake for interfering.
Fabric scraped against the bark of my tree while, twenty yards away, a hunched shadow crept between monuments. I adjusted my grip on the cold, black crowbar. The shadow, carrying a stick or club, froze.
Now or never, I thought, and spun to my left, around the oak tree. I spotted the crouched figure too late to adjust my swing. The stinging rebound off the trunk broke my grip on the crowbar.
The punk shot forward and into me, driving me backwards and to the ground. My head landed inches from a headstone.
The foul-smelling punk, with wild frizzed-out hair, wearing a padded black vest over a flannel shirt, outweighed me by thirty pounds. Maybe he thought it was over, but I let him know otherwise by slamming my revolver into his temple.
I knocked the hoodlum off balance and spotted the flash of a knife’s blade in his hand. He recovered, but not fast enough. I shot him in the chest before he could stab me.
He fell back, groaning. I climbed to my feet, trying to shake life into my numb right hand, just as a screaming woman charged me. Although she was far smaller than her punk partner, the crazed teen’s hair was longer and wilder. She came at me holding an aluminum bat cocked back, ready to swing.
With my left hand I leveled my revolver to silence the screaming girl. She proved faster and struck my hand, breaking bones before knocking my gun into the darkness. Her momentum carried her into me and we both crashed to the ground.
Adrenaline muted my shattered left hand’s pain. I grabbed a handful of hair with my right hand and yanked her away from the bat.
I was on my back and hadn’t let go when she leaned close and spat in my face. "You bastard!"
I promptly head-butted her in the nose before rolling away and staggering to my feet. The punk girl was still on her knees so I kicked her in the stomach. She fell back, gasping for air.
With my right hand I clutched my left wrist to stem the rising, throbbing pain. I began to search for my gun when I saw the man I’d shot climb to his feet.
"Ready for some more, killer?" His grin flashed brighter than his blade.
I didn’t waste time wondering why he wasn’t dead. Without a weapon I was no match for him. Even if I got to the baseball bat before he reached me, wielding it one-handed wouldn’t be easy. Plus, the girl might recover, making it two-on-one, so I turned and ran.
"Coward," yelled the punk. His taunt told me I’d put some distance between us.
I leapt over grave markers and sprinted between monuments until my foot found a groundhog’s hole. My right ankle twisted with a snap. Instinctively I tried to catch myself. When my shattered left hand slammed into the ground, pain shot up my arm. My mind flared in agony before I blacked out.
I awoke to cold beer spat in my face.
After a deep, throaty laugh, the beer-spitter said in a menacing voice, "Wake up, Mr. Welson. You won’t want to miss this."
I was seated with my legs resting out straight. The excruciating pain in my ankle and hand told me the cemetery experience wasn’t a dream. I tried to wipe the beer from my face, but my right hand was bound to the chair.
The beer-spitter’s heavy boots trod on gravel behind me. The odor of stale sweat and cigarettes told me it was the punk I’d shot.
"Hold still," he said.
I opened my eyes. A propane fishing lantern’s glow lit a small white roadside cross. I knew immediately that I’d been brought to the lonely spot on Route 511 where I’d run down Valerie Stromson. Layers of gray duct tape secured my arms and chest to the backrest of a lawn chair and a wire cord ran from my neck across the road, into the darkness.
The punk tugged the cord and secured it to something behind me. The loop around my neck cut off my breath until he adjusted it. "Mom said you’d disturb her rest tonight."
I didn’t say anything as he came around front and grabbed a roll of duct tape from my lap. He tore several lengths from the roll with his teeth and used them to secure a burlap sack to my trench coat. I strained to identify my captor through the flaring shadows. "Louie Stromson?"
I winced and felt my left cheek begin to twitch. I’d always done my best to avoid Louie. Most people did. He’d become a cold-blooded thug, plain and simple.
"That’s right," he sneered. "You killed Mom. Now it’s your turn. She wants you dead." He adjusted the sack’s opening. "For your head. And don’t try to go anywhere. The chair’s staked down." He pulled my revolver from his belt and pointed to his chest. "Bullet-proof vest. Dad would’ve got you if he’d had one," he said before trotting across the road.
The crickets were unable to drown the sound of ratcheting as the cord tightened. Its weight pulled the loop tighter until I was barely able to draw a breath. Tape held my legs to the chair so I couldn’t get leverage to stand, nor could I free my arms. Looped wire beneath the tape insured that.
Louie Stromson trotted back across the road toward me, his hand held at hip level, following the wire. "Showtime," he said as the glow of headlights appeared.
The oncoming car would clear the rise and have only seventy-five yards to stop. It wouldn’t. Its grille would catch the wire.
"That’s right," said Louie as he rubbed his hands in anticipation. "Decapitation. At least your death’ll be quick."
Ignoring the shooting pain of my injuries, I gasped, "No," and rocked, trying to free myself.
The headlights crested the hill. At first I thought it was my screams, but the beat-up pickup truck skidded to a halt ten feet from the wire.
Louie’s wild-haired sister, Jenny, stuck her head out the window. She laughed and tossed Louie a beer. "Bet he pissed his pants," she said.
They snickered and finished their beers while I sat erect, struggling to keep the wire slack so I could breathe. Then Louie pulled my revolver. "Let’s get this over with," he said, walking past the lantern. "I’ll leave you some light, but you’re not going anywhere." He aimed and shot out my right knee.
I screamed, writhed, and gagged as the wire tightened with my every jolt and twist.
Jenny opened the pickup truck’s door and slid over so her brother could take the wheel. With a repeated twitch of his left cheek, Louie mimicked my nervous tic and laughed rancorously while putting the truck in reverse. Through watery eyes, I spotted headlights cresting the hill. Louie saw them scant seconds before impact. He tried to turn off the road, but the sedan slammed into the truck’s side.
The pickup rolled toward me behind a shower of gravel and debris. Jenny’s ejected body landed five feet away. The t-boned truck came to rest on its side six feet from the wire.
Blood poured from a deep gash in Jenny’s forehead, but that didn’t concern me. A steady stream pouring from the truck’s ruptured fuel tank did.
The expanding pool of gas would eventually reach me or—worse—the propane lamp. It could ignite the fumes. With all my arms’ strength I yanked and pulled, straining to break the lawn chair’s rivets and bolts.
The gas had just reached Jenny when I managed to free my right arm. I tore at the tape around my left arm, fear masking the pain, all the while choking for breath.
Once it was free, I wedged my left hand’s fingers between my neck and the cord and with my right, grasped the wire, tugged, and slowly extracted my head from the noose.
I sat back, breathing deeply, inhaling gas fumes. I looked to see how far the fuel had spread. Jenny lay sprawled in the center of the gas puddle, staring up at me through bloodied eyes. We both looked to the lamp.
Ignoring my shattered knee and ankle, I strained with both legs and tore with my right hand to break free from the duct tape’s hold. I watched Jenny smile as she deliberately rolled over and kicked the lamp, toppling it.
Flames erupted. Despite my injuries I kicked and tore before lunging away, half uprooting the staked chair. I crawled as my clothes caught fire and my flesh burned. I screamed while rolling to extinguish the flames.
Then the truck exploded.
A week later, I awoke in a hospital’s burn unit. Twenty minutes after a nurse noticed I was awake, a dumpy detective entered my room. With a notepad open and ready, he asked me what had happened that night on Route 511.
I lied, and the detective wrote it all down. I counted on Louie’s record for felonious assault and Jenny’s stint at the state mental hospital to bolster my story.
It turned out that Louie and Jenny Stromson, along with the sedan driver, had perished in the fire.
Shortly after midnight, long after the detective left and the nurses were busy working at their station, Valerie Stromson invited me to meet with her on our twelfth anniversary.
This time I knew it was a set-up. But Valerie still promised me forgiveness and she’d always been a lady of her word. She just wasn’t going to make it easy. Forgiving someone never is.
It was the only offer of hope I had, so I swore to Valerie that this time I’d make it.
“The Scene of My Second Murder” first appeared in Fear and Trembling, May 2009
