Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [145]
He had stolen it out from under his stepfather’s bed the night he ran away from home. Home—that was certainly a misnomer. It had never felt like his home, even less after his mother was gone. Without her, the two-story brick house had become a prison, and he had taken his punishment nightly for almost three weeks before he left.
Even the night of his escape, he had waited until after his stepfather had finished and then collapsed from exhaustion. He had stolen his mother’s suitcase and packed while blood trickled down the insides of his legs. Unlike his mother, he had refused to grow accustomed to his stepfather’s deep, violent thrusts, the fresh tears and old ones not allowed to heal. That night, he had barely been able to walk, but still he had managed somehow to make it the six miles to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church where Father Daniel had offered refuge.
A similar price had been paid for his room and board, but at least Father Daniel had been kind and gentle and small. There had been no more rips and tears, only the humiliation, which he had accepted as part of his punishment. He was, after all, a murderer. That horrible look still haunted his sleep. That look of utter surprise in his mother’s dead eyes as she lay sprawled on the basement floor, her body twisted and broken.
He slammed the suitcase shut, hoping to slam out the image.
His second murder had been much easier, a stray tomcat Father Daniel had taken in. Unlike himself, the cat had received room and board with no price to pay. Perhaps that alone had been reason enough to kill it. He remembered its warm blood had splattered his hands and face when he slashed its throat.
From then on, each murder had become a spiritual revelation, a sacrificial slaughter. It wasn’t until his second year of seminary that he murdered his first boy, an unsuspecting delivery boy with sad eyes and freckles. The boy had reminded him of himself. So, of course, he needed to kill him, to get the boy out of his misery, to save him, to save himself.
He checked his watch and knew he had plenty of time. He carefully placed the old suitcase by the door, next to the gray and black duffel bag he had packed earlier. Then he glanced at the newspaper folded neatly on his bed, the headline garnering yet another smile: Sheriff’s Deputy Suspected in Boys’ Murders.
How wonderfully easy it had been. He knew the minute he had found Eddie Gillick’s lighter on the floor of the old blue pickup that the slick and arrogant bully would make the perfect patsy. Almost as perfect as Jeffreys had been.
All those evenings of excruciating small talk, playing cards with the egomaniac, had finally paid off. He had pretended to be interested in Gillick’s latest sexual conquest, only to offer forgiveness and absolution when the good deputy finally sobered up. He had pretended to be Gillick’s friend when, in fact, the conceited know-it-all turned his stomach. Gillick’s bragging had also revealed a short temper, mostly targeted at “punk kids” and “cock-teasing sluts” who, according to Gillick, “had it coming.” In many ways, Eddie Gillick reminded him of his stepfather, which would make Gillick’s conviction even sweeter.
And why wouldn’t Gillick be convicted, with his self-destructive behavior and all that damning evidence tucked neatly inside the trunk of the deputy’s very own smashed Chevy? What luck, stumbling across it in the woods like that, making it so easy to stash the fatal evidence. Just like Jeffreys.
He remembered how Ronald Jeffreys had come to him, confessing to Bobby Wilson’s murder. When Jeffreys asked for forgiveness there hadn’t been a shred of remorse in his voice. Jeffreys deserved what had happened to him. And it had been so simple, too. One anonymous phone