Murder, Part 1

Chapter 1.
1989:

It ends tonight.
Through the cold evening air I can feel shortness of breath, the trembling heart, the tensing of muscles, her eyes getting wider and wider until it seems like they could pop right out of her skull. At least one of her fingernails is missing from compulsively digging them into the oak chair I've bound her in. There's blood on her chest, her legs, her upper arms, and splotches on her face, and none of it is hers.
The horror she embodies in this moment is a mirror, and I stare into it as willingly as any man to face the truth of his own dementia. I feel sorry for her, and I wish I could cut her bonds and give her the gun I used to shoot her husband, tell her to put it to my knees and fire because that's where it would hurt the most, then put a round in my stomach and let me die as its acids ate through the rest of my organs. But that would be too easy.
To give her a way out would be too simple. I want to be defeated, more than she or anyone could ever know, but I refuse to make it easy. I want her to find a chink in my armor of her own volition, and I want her to exploit it to every gruesome end. But I already know she won't. She's stopped begging, stopped crying, now she's just staring at me. I think it's possible she's altogether forgotten how to speak.
She looks like a domestic cat, caught in the arms of an angry child, knowing it's going to die but incapable of striking back by virtue of its own origins.
I hate her for being so pathetic. I hate her for being so helpless, for giving in so quickly.
And I hate myself for needing to do this thing in the first place. And deep down I've come to understand a horrible truth, one that I've only barely touched on as yet, but will surely revisit as these killings continue; though this act will set the demons at bay, in less than a week I will be hungry for more.
Killing sets me at ease, but like sex and drugs, its effect is only lessened by time and experience.
She will be my tenth victim, and my last. I've made sure of that.
I wave the gun in her face and watch as she becomes a pencil sketch of herself from the fear, and I put my finger on the trigger and she practically shits herself. It's a crude thought, I feel guilty for it, but what the hell, it's murder.
I take a deep breath, and I consider just walking away. I won't, obviously, because she's seen my face, heard me talk. Not that it matters at this point, but I can't stop the killer in me from going down that road. But, really, how big of a mind-fuck would it be if I pressed the gun into her temple, leaned close, got right in her face, and just screamed at the top of my lungs? And before she has time to let that sink in, I just turn around and walk away. I'd be out of the apartment before she could even process the fact that she was still alive. It'd be worth doing just for the weirdness of it.
But I'm too far for that now. Caught up in my own silly little web. I have to kill her, and not just because of the ostensibly obvious reasons. The carnal necessity that brought this whole thing out in the first place, that's why I'm here. That's why I have this gun, that's why I shot her husband, and that's why I have to shoot her.
I have to because I need to because I want to.
So I put the gun against her head, and I lean close, close enough to kiss her on the lips, and I look her right in the eyes.
“I'm sorry,” I say, and I pull the trigger.

I'm blinded by the gunfire and deafened by its scream, but it sticks around too long. Something terrible has happened, and before I can take it in, I'm pulled backwards onto the floor. A foot stomps on my hand and the gun I had is ripped away. I've been flipped over and put in cuffs, and I hear some vague mumblings about rights. And then my vision returns.
There's sobbing, and it's a woman's voice, and I look up to see that she isn't just alive, she's unharmed.
There's a smoking hole in the wall behind her, and I can't help but smile for all the rage and relief I feel.
“You couldn't have cut it any closer if you tried!” I shouted.
A pair of spit-shined shoes under a perfectly trim brown set of suit pants steps on the shattered glass in front of me, and suddenly I'm yanked up off the ground, made to be eye level with whoever's in front of me.
And as soon as I see his face, I smile.
And I wink.


2009:

“Alright Walt -uh, may I call you Walt?”
He rubs behind his ear. “Absolutely.”
The kid smiles. “Cool. Alright Walt, here's the deal, I'm going to ask you some questions, and they're going to be vague. The way we do these sorts of things is, we ask these short form questions to give you room to work with, so you feel free to ramble on about whatever comes to mind. What we're going to end up doing is, we're going to cut up the footage of the interview -use the bits and pieces that are most compelling, or best represent a certain period in your life.”
“Period?”
“Uh, yessir. We're doing a retrospective on your whole life.”
“I was under the impression you were going to stick mainly with the Couples Killer.”
“Well Walt, that will certainly make up the bulk of the thing, but we have to fill forty five minutes of air time. The CK case, as compelling as that is, everyone knows it, we spend the whole night talking about it people won't watch through to the end. What we're going after here is the story behind the story. What motivated you to become a cop, you know, stuff like that.”
“I see.”
“Are you comfortable with that, Walt? I assume our legal team went through the particulars-”
“I'm afraid I was misled a bit, but that was the fault of my people, not yours. Don't worry about it, son. What do you want to know?”
“Hold on just a moment.”
The kid turns and signals to the crew around the set -a yellow wall and plastic tree that could only look natural from a handful of perspectives. Red lights flash on top of three separate cameras, two of which are fixed, the other resting on the shoulders of a bald man with orange facial hair. Everything in place, they give the kid a thumbs up.
“Alright Walt, tell me about your childhood.”
“Ah, well. It was pretty run-of-the-mill. I was born in Dallas, 1961, youngest of six. My dad was a WWII vet, flew with the 8th Pursuit Group in '43. I was not exactly a planned child, my brothers ended up taking care of me more than anyone. My father died of lung disease when I was in high school, mother following soon after for... various reasons. I was brought up a pretty strict, upstanding kind of guy. Now, my brothers, they tended towards the hippie movement, but by the time I was old enough to really see what it was, it had already started to fall apart. Then there was Vietnam, now I never went over there obviously, I was only fourteen when the war ended, so I can't say much about it first hand, but I watched my siblings burn their draft cards and run from their responsibility, and I swore I'd never go down that road. Retrospectively, sure, it was a bad war, and probably not worth fighting, but I was raised to follow the orders of my country. I went into the army in '79, went to Grenada in '83, came home and joined the Academy. By '89 I wasn't too much better than your average beat cop. Big difference was my morals. Most of these guys, they were raised on Dirty Harry, you know what I mean? That was a big problem back then, a lot of guys were getting into law enforcement for the wrong reasons. They wanted to be Clint Eastwood with his .44, taking the law into their own hands and lookin' badass the whole way. That ain't the way of things in the real world, though, you understand, police work is mostly just boring paperwork. Me, I'm one in a million. I got lucky with my career, and you ask any other famous cop out there who made a name catching some serial killer, he'll tell you the same thing. Right place, right time. And if he says different, he's a liar. Now, that's not to say that there isn't any skill involved, there's a lot to being a cop that most people don't realize. There's plenty of people who couldn't have figured out the pattern, who would have been stumped by all the bits and pieces, and there were, too. But I can name at least five guys offa top of my head who were a stone's throw away from my job, who coulda took that case as far as I did. It's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And being the right guy for the job.”