When I got home things got even bleaker. On the six o’clock news, I found out that the police were dropping the murder charges against Greg and were officially reopening the murder case. Greg’s lawyers had produced a witness who claimed that Greg was in a record store in Greenwich Village from five-thirty to six-thirty on the evening of the murder. It was also announced that the two witnesses who had thought they saw Greg on the elevator had mistaken Greg for a delivery man from Federal Express.
Greg and his lawyer were shown at a press conference. Greg said that he was glad that “the truth was finally known” and he hoped that whoever killed Ed O’Brien would “stop being such a coward and turn himself in.” Then Detective Figula came on and said that the police were actively pursuing other suspects. He gave out a special police hot line number for anyone who had information about the case.
Before the report ended, I picked up one of my shoes and flung it at the T.V. It hit the channel button, switching the T.V. to a different station. The other station was also covering the story of Greg’s release and I had to watch Detective Figula’s statement all over again. It seemed like there was no escape from it, that wherever I went the case would follow me. Detective Figula was staring at me through the T.V. set, talking directly to me. “We’re actively pursuing you, Bill. You might as well turn yourself in, because you’re not going to get away.”
I laughed out loud at the television, although I knew there was absolutely nothing to laugh about. My life was slowly falling apart and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
At about seven o’clock Julie came home from work. As soon as I saw her I knew that she was upset about something. The way my day was going, I had a pretty good hunch it had to do with me.
“I’m exhausted, honey,” I said. “You think we can order in some food tonight?”
“We have to talk,” she said. “Right away.”
“Can’t it wait?” I said, “I had a very hard day.”
“I’m very upset,” she said. “I’m so upset I don’t even know if I can talk about it.”
“All right. Let’s sit on the couch and get comfortable. But I’m warning you, I might not be a very good listener.”
“Are you lying to me about something?”
“Lying to you –”
“You heard me and I want you to answer me with absolute honesty. Are you lying to me about something?”
“I thought we settled all of this yesterday,” I said.
“Answer me, Bill. It’s very important.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and to be honest I resent this. I mean I told you I had a very hard day and then you come home and start getting all weird on me.”
“The police were at my office today,” she said. “They asked me all kinds of questions about you and what you might’ve had to do with your boss’s murder.”
“So that’s what you’re getting all hysterical about,” I said casually. “You got me frightened there for a second.”
“This isn’t something to joke around about,” she said. “I asked you a question and I expect an answer.”
“What’s the question?”
“Are you lying to me about something?”
“I’ve never lied to you,” I said. “You know that.”
“I don’t know anything. All I know is you’ve been acting very strange lately, all summer long actually, and you get stranger ever day. First it was showing up with all these mysterious injuries and now the police are involved. They were asking me all these questions about you – where you were that night, if you’d ever threatened your boss, whether I thought you were capable of killing someone.”
“What did you tell them?”
“What do you think I told them? If I thought the man I was engaged to was capable of killing someone I obviously wouldn’t be engaged to him. After all, I’m not crazy.”
“You have to calm down, sweetheart,” I said. “Sit on the couch.”
“But they made it seem so real, Bill. They said Ed was going to fire you and that’s why you got mad and killed him. I said it was impossible, that you’d never do anything like that, then they asked me if I had any proof you didn’t do it. They asked me so many questions I couldn’t even keep track of them. They wanted to know when I came home that night, when you came home, how you were acting, if I noticed anything strange about you. I had to tell the truth, that I did notice something strange about you, and now it’s got me wondering what else I should’ve noticed.”
“They were trying to scare you,” I said. “That’s what police do. They try to scare people into saying things they don’t want to say so if you know any information you’ll give it to them. But that’s the way they are with everybody, whether they really suspect that person or not.”
“But they were so sure about it,” she said. “At least they seemed sure about it.”
“The police came to my office today too,” I said. “They talked to me and they talked to a lot of other people. I don’t know if you heard on the news, but they’re reopening the investigation.”
“But why do they think you did it?”
“They don’t,” I said. “They’re just going through all the motions, checking every possible lead. You’ve seen how much publicity this case has gotten. They’re under a lot of pressure to come up with something.”
“I want to believe you,” she said. “I really really want to.”
“You don’t think I’d actually kill someone, do you?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I told you I couldn’t.”
“Then I don’t see what the problem is. The police asked us some questions, we answered them, and now we can go on with our lives. I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal about this.”
“It is a big deal,” she said. “I’m just not sure I can feel the same anymore.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just how I feel.”
“Are you saying you want to break up with me?”
“Of course not, I...I don’t know what I mean.”
“Well, you better think about it,” I said, “because to be honest I can’t stand not being trusted all the time. If you can’t believe me and support me then maybe we shouldn’t get married.”
For emphasis, I stormed off into the bathroom and slammed the door. My idea was to make her feel guilty so she’d break down and apologize to me. A minute hadn’t gone by when she knocked on the door, pleading for me to come out.
“Please forgive me,” she said. “I was being ridiculous. I realize that now.”
When I came out she apologized to me again and admitted that the whole argument had been her fault. I was happy that my manipulation had worked, but I knew the technique wouldn’t work forever. Julie was catching on to me fast. There was a limit to how needy and clingy she could get. Eventually she would realize exactly the type of man she was engaged to and then there would be nothing I could do or say to make her stay with me.
Although she didn’t mention the visit from the police again all night, she was much more aloof than usual. When I spoke I felt she wasn’t really listening to me and she hardly spoke at all. Most of the time she was looking at her lap or at the T.V., as if she had already divorced me in her mind.
Despite how tired I was, I had trouble falling asleep that night. All I could think about was the twenty-five hundred dollars and how impossible it was going to be for me to come up with it. I wished there was some way I could get out of paying the money, but there didn’t seem to be any reasonable solution. Everyone was starting to suspect me now and the prostitute coming forward could be the thing that did me in. It would prove I had lied to the police about my alibi and open the gates for all sorts of questions. Even if the police didn’t believe the prostitute, it would focus attention back on me which couldn’t lead to anything positive.
There was only one way that I could be sure that the prostitute would never get to the police. At first the idea seemed insane to me, yet the more I thought about it, the more I believed that it could actually work.
Sitting in the dark living room in the glare of late-night talk shows and infomercials, I thought about murder. The idea of killing another person didn’t frighten me, however the idea of getting caught was terrifying.
And it didn’t seem like there was any way I could possibly get away with killing the prostitute.
Even if the pimp and her other friends from the black van weren’t there like she promised they would be, they would be sure to track me down afterwards. For hitting the prostitute they had broken my fingers; I could only imagine what they would break if I killed her.
Then there would be the police to worry about. If they had really questioned the prostitute about me already, then it wouldn’t take a giant leap for them to assume I was involved when she showed up dead. She also said that she’d been with a friend when the police questioned her, and there would always be the danger that her friend could go to the police.
I thought about it for hours, running the same questions through my mind again and again. Finally, when I was almost ready to give up, the solution suddenly came to me. It was so simple and obvious that I was angry at myself for not thinking of it sooner.
I slept for a couple of hours on the couch and woke up feeling surprisingly energized. Julie was still acting strange around me, but I hardly noticed her. In fact, I was so involved in my plan that I hardly remember anything else about that day, until about noon when I left work and went downtown to Canal Street.
I needed some materials to carry out my plan and I wanted to buy them far away from my office and my apartment, in case the police decided to retrace my steps at some point later on. Canal Street wasn’t exactly like going to another state, but it would do. First I went to a hardware store and bought a saw. Then I went to a drug store and bought a package of extra-large trash bags. Next I walked up Broadway several blocks and went to a discount clothing store and bought a pair of heavy duty gloves. Most of the workers at the stores were Asian or Mexican immigrants and I doubted that any of them would remember seeing me, an average-looking American.
Finished with my shopping, I took the subway back to the office, glad that I had only been gone an hour. Throughout the afternoon I kept thinking about the plan, rehearsing every last detail. I’d prepared myself for everything that could possibly go wrong and, as far as I could tell, the plan was virtually flawless. The only possible kink was that the pimp could be there with his friends, but last night I had decided that this was highly unlikely and I still thought it was unlikely. The prostitute was expecting to receive ten thousand dollars from me over several weeks and it didn’t make sense that she’d be willing to share this “easy money.” More likely, she’d only told me her friends would be there as an idle threat, hoping that it would frighten me. That also explained why she picked an out-of-the-way place like Seventeenth Street to meet me, because it was out of her pimp’s turf and he’d be unlikely to find out about the transaction.
Of course this was all only a hunch, a reasonable hunch maybe, but still only a hunch. I had no idea if I was right and I had no back-up plan for what I would do if I was wrong. But I was confident that if the pimp wasn’t there the rest of the plan would go through without a hitch.
Although I wasn’t supposed to meet the prostitute until eight o’clock, I clocked out and left the office at five o’clock sharp. So this could be confirmed later on, I made sure to board an elevator with Mike and several other people from the office. When we got outside, we split off in different directions. I was carrying the saw, the trash bags and the gloves in my briefcase. At Times Square, I veered north on Broadway. I kept walking at a steady pace until I reached the Zeigfeld Theater on Fifty-fourth Street. A movie was playing there that ran from six to eight forty-five, and a ticket stub from that show would be the perfect alibi for me.
I bought a single ticket then killed time in a nearby cappuccino bar. At a few minutes before six I returned to the theater. Entering, I smiled flirtatiously at the pretty black ticket taker, hoping that I had captured her attention enough so that she would remember me if anyone should ask. Even if she described me as the weird-looking guy with the cast on his hand it would help.
I sat in a seat on the side aisle, about halfway toward the screen. The Zeigfeld is a very large theater and it wasn’t even a quarter filled. After about an hour into the movie, I got up and walked along the side aisle toward the front of the theater. It was during a dark, action sequence so I doubted anyone noticed me. I went out a side door and emerged on Fifty-fourth Street.
It was about seven-fifteen, so I still had plenty of time to get downtown. I didn’t want to get into a cab with a cab driver who might remember me, so I took the subway.
Everything was going smoothly until the subway was approaching the Thirty-fourth street, station when it suddenly stopped. I thought it would just be the one or two minute delay that subways typically encountered, but then the conductor came on the P.A. system and said that due to an emergency situation at Penn Station we would be “delayed indefinitely.”
Five minutes passed, then five more minutes, then another five minutes, and another five minutes. I was starting to panic. I convinced myself that there was no possible way I could meet the prostitute on time. It was already twenty to eight and the prostitute’s warning that she would go right to the police station if I was even a few minutes late weighed heavily on my mind. If the train didn’t start moving soon there was a very good possibility that I would spend the rest of my life in jail. The worst part of it was that I couldn’t express any of my anxiety. For fear that someone might remember the frantic-looking passenger who seemed in a big hurry to get somewhere I didn’t want to get up and start pacing or complaining out loud. So I had to stay seated, cursing and screaming silently while my life slowly ticked away.
At ten minutes to eight, the train jerked forward and started to creep into the Thirty-fourth Street station. I still didn’t think there was any way I could possibly make it on time to meet the prostitute, but at least I had a chance.
Fortunately, there was an express train waiting across the platform. I got on, just beating the closing doors. I prayed there wouldn’t be any more delays. The train started slowly, then it picked up speed and in just a few minutes we arrived at Fourteenth Street. Running along the platform, I saw a clock – three minutes to eight.
I don’t think I’ve ever run faster in my life. As I was dodging traffic and pedestrians, sprinting up Seventh Avenue, it occurred to me that I hadn’t even been rehearsing my plan. Suddenly, it didn’t seem as clear to me as it had earlier. I imagined hundreds of things could go wrong and didn’t understand how I ever thought I’d get away with it. But I had no choice, I had to go through with the plan whether I wanted to or not. Even if I could think of some way to pay the prostitute the money or talk her out of going to the police, I ‘d have no assurance that she’d keep quiet forever. She could change her mind at any time and milk me for more money and I’d live my life in constant fear of her returning.
I reached the parking lot where we’d arranged to meet and saw by my watch that it was one minute after eight. The prostitute, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, was already walking toward the street. When she saw me, she turned around and walked toward the back of the lot. It was much brighter than I’d expected. Light from lampposts in the street spread over much of the area and a spotlight attached to a building behind the lot shined light on the lot’s back left corner. I realized that I should have come by here earlier to check out the area, but of course there was nothing I could do about that now.
Standing in front of the parked car – the only car in the lot – she was pointing something at me that looked like mace. This didn’t surprise me since I knew she wouldn’t show up without protection. Seeing the mace actually brought me a sense of relief because I knew it meant that I was right about my assumption that she’d been bluffing about her friends being here to back her up. If her friends were really here, then she obviously wouldn’t have a need for the mace.
“That’s fine,” she said. “You can stop right there.”
“What’s with the mace?” I said. “You want your money or you want to blind me?”
“Where’s the money?”
“I have it – right here in my briefcase.”
“Show it to me.”
“Let’s go back farther first,” I said. “I don’t want anybody from the street seeing us.”
As she considered this and decided it was a good idea, she hesitated a moment, then started backing slowly toward the back fence. I wanted to get her as far back as possible because the back of the parking lot – especially on the right side where we were – was much darker than the front of the lot, and we were much less likely to be seen by any passersby.
She stopped after backing up a few feet.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Now show me the money.”
“All right,” I said. “No reason to get excited. Take it easy.”
I knew that I was approaching the most dangerous part of my plan, that after this everything would go smoothly.
So I tried not to think about it.
I started to open the briefcase, then I lunged forward, grabbing her right wrist, paralyzing the hand that was holding the mace. Before she could scream, I swung my hand with the cast as hard as I could across her face. The cast was hard so the impact hurt her a lot more than it did me. She fell backwards against the fence, staring at me with wide, confused eyes as blood streamed out of her mouth. I knew that she would start to scream soon and that I had to finish her off fast.
I put my hand and my casted hand against her throat and squeezed as hard as I could. Her neck was much thinner than Ed’s and she died even easier. It seemed like I’d only been squeezing for a few seconds when her body fell limply onto the ground.
Quickly, I dragged her body behind the car so we were completely out of view from the street. Facing us were a few windows in an industrial building next to the lot. The building looked dark and vacant, yet I had no way of knowing whether someone was in there watching everything that was going on.
I had to finish what I had started anyway. It was time for phase two of the plan and I had to take several deep breaths to prepare myself for it.
When I thought I was ready, I took out the gloves from my briefcase and put them on. Then I took out the saw. Trying not to think too much about what I was doing, I sawed off the prostitute’s head. The blade went through easy at first, then it met some friction near the bone, then it went through easy again. As you can imagine, sawing off someone’s head can get you sick to the stomach and I had to fight hard to keep myself from vomiting. I didn’t know if the police could trace a person’s vomit, but I assumed they could. I kept telling myself that she wasn’t a person, she was a piece of wood, and there was nothing sick about what I was doing. Believe me, I was getting no enjoyment out of it and, if I could have thought of any other way of keeping the prostitute from going to the police, I certainly would have done it. But killing her was the only sure way of keeping her quiet forever, and killing her this way was the only way I’d get away with it.
My plan was very simple. I’d heard on the news the other day that someone had killed a prostitute in Queens and chopped off her head and taken it with him. The police were extremely concerned because another prostitute in Newark had been killed a few months earlier and her head had also been missing. The police feared that a serial killer might be responsible for the crimes, so I figured I’d give the police one more victim to think about. If I could make them believe that Denise the prostitute had been killed by the serial killer, then they would never suspect that I had anything to do with it.
I took out a trash bag and tried not to look as I put the head inside it. The head was much lighter than I’d expected. I’d assumed it would weigh about as much as a bowling ball, but instead it felt as though I was carrying a large cantaloupe.
There was blood everywhere, but I luckily managed to keep all of it off my clothing. There was only a little blood on the edge of my cast, but I’d have to worry about that later.
I double-bagged the head and the bloody gloves and put the saw back in the briefcase. I carried the bag and the briefcase out of the parking lot and headed toward the subway.
I wasn’t thrilled about carrying the head on the subway, but I had to get rid of it somehow – because that’s what the serial killer always did – and I knew that it would be best to take it as far away from the crime scene as possible. I’d decided that the Harlem River would be a good place and I got on the number 1 train going uptown.
The train was pretty much empty and no one seemed to notice me. I tried not to look nervous, although inside I was a wreck. The reality of what I had done and what I was holding on my lap had finally hit me. I feared that I was becoming a lunatic, no better or worse than the actual serial killer who went around killing prostitutes. I thought about the events of the last month that had brought me to this low point in my life, wondering how it had all happened. I decided that it really started when I was fired from Smythe & O’Greeley and was forced to take a job as a telemarketer. If I had stayed in advertising everything would have been different.
Looking up, I noticed a woman standing in front of me, staring at me. I thought I might have been talking out loud, then I realized that the woman looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure how I knew her. Then it hit me. She was Lisa, the woman I’d met at the bar that night.
When she saw my look of recognition, she smiled at me and I smiled back reflexively. The last thing I wanted now was to get into a conversation and yet I didn’t know how to avoid it. I was about to get up to get out at the next stop when she sat down next to me.
In the bright fluorescent light of the subway, the ruddiness of her skin was apparent as were the dark circles under her eyes, and she wasn’t nearly as attractive as she’d seemed in the dark bar.
“Long time no see,” she said.
“I was thinking you looked familiar,” I said. “I just didn’t recognize you at first.”
“No loss,” she said. “So what happened to you?”
“Happened? Oh, I was in an accident. A car accident.”
She didn’t seem to care. I made sure to keep the part of the cast with the blood on it facing my lap.
“So what brings you to the West Side?” she asked.
“Work,” I said, anxious to avoid the subject. “A lot of work. What brings you here?”
“Oh, just going to meet a friend,” she said ambiguously. I realized that she was being intentionally vague about the sex of the friend, trying to make me jealous.
“Sorry I never called you,” I said. “A lot came up after that night and I just didn’t –”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I wasn’t exactly holding my breath. So what’s in the bag?”
“The bag?”
“Yeah, what do you do, bring your laundry to work?”
I laughed tensely.
“Of course not,” I said. “This is just garbage.”
She looked at me, a combination of confused and disgusted.
“Just some things at the office I needed to throw out,” I continued. “I didn’t want to put them in the office trash.”
I wasn’t sure whether or not she bought the explanation.
“There’s something weird about you,” she said.
“Weird?” I said, feeling the prostitute’s nose pressing against the bag. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, there’s just something about you I can’t put my finger on. My girlfriend said it that night, after we left the bar. She said, you know there’s something strange about that guy you were talking to and I agreed with her. But I really don’t know what it is. I just had a feeling there was something, I don’t know, I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it was the way you were dressed that night in that sweat suit, and the way you kept staring at me. What I’m trying to say is you shouldn’t feel like you lost out anything by not calling me because I wasn’t going to go out with you anyway.”
At the next stop, she got out. As the train pulled away, I saw her walking determinedly along the platform. I wondered if she somehow suspected that I had killed somebody. It seemed unlikely, yet why else did she say there was something weird about me? Then I decided that it was probably just a defense mechanism. Although she didn’t want to admit it, she was hurt that I hadn’t called her so she made up the excuse to herself that I was “weird,” so she wouldn’t feel bad about it. It was typical female psychology that had nothing to do with me.
I rode the subway all the way to 145th Street without any more mishaps. I’d never been to Harlem before so when I got out of the station I was disoriented and wasn’t sure which way to walk to get to the river. I walked in a direction I thought would lead me there, then after I’d walked several blocks I turned back and walked in the other direction.
Most of the buildings in the neighborhood were abandoned or chiseled down to empty lots. Compared to the Upper East Side it looked like a war zone. Groups of people on street corners stared at me angrily as I walked by, as if they feared me or hated me or both. I realized how unusual I must look, the only white person in the neighborhood. They probably thought I was a cop.
Passing a housing project, a couple of teenagers started following me. I imagined what would happen if I got mugged. I remembered reading a story in the newspaper once about a girl who was dog-sitting for a rich Park Avenue couple when the dog died. Afraid to leave the dead dog in the apartment, she put it in a suitcase and took it to the A.S.P.C.A. On the way there she was mugged and the suitcase was stolen. The article speculated on the expression the mugger must have had when he opened the suitcase and discovered the dead dog. I smiled, thinking about the expressions the teenagers would have if they stole the garbage bag and discovered the prostitute’s head. Then I realized that this would be the worst scenario possible. The teenagers would be able to identify me to the police and I’d be arrested instantly.
Clinging to the bag tightly, I walked as fast as I could. The teenagers increased their speed also, then they veered off on a side street and left me alone.
Finally, I saw the river ahead. It was like discovering a pond in the middle of a desert. I walked faster until I was practically jogging. I crossed a playground and a baseball diamond and then I reached the railing to the water. To the right was the bridge where the subway passed on its way to the Bronx, so I walked left until I thought I was as out of view as possible.
From my briefcase, I took out the saw and put it inside a new garbage bag. I tied the bag tightly then threw it into the river as far as I could. It sank about fifty feet from the shore.
Next, I flung the bag with the head and the gloves into the water. It didn’t sink, but this really didn’t concern me. When the head was discovered, the police would simply think the serial killer had dumped it in the river.
I was about to walk away when I heard someone behind me. I stood still, hoping the person would leave me alone.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the harsh male voice said.
Terrified, I turned around slowly. Then my worst nightmare came to life. A police officer was facing me, his right hand resting on his holster.