Mr. Bagley was on the road, weaving his way through traffic. His hands were steady on the wheel, and his mind was poised but floating. The first time he’d taken a life was some thirty-nine years ago, about sixteen months after Lillian’s death.
Shelton Rory was the name of his first victim… The old man remembered him: bald-headed, with sharp features primarily marked by a career-driven way of life. Mr. Bagley had never meant to kill him. However, after a small talk at a local bar with Shelton, in which the latter professed his devotion to his job rather than his loved ones, Mr. Bagley started to despise the man. Shelton also kept complaining, in a very conceited way, that he actually didn’t have enough time to do what he really wanted to do, because he was awfully busy.
“But you know what, I’ll do it someday.”
Responding to a maddening compulsion, Mr. Bagley had beaten him to death two days later. Since then, the compulsion had stuck with him, and he’d gone on to kill over twenty-one people in the span of three decades. Men and women, all guilty of taking time for granted. All guilty of living their lives making plans; all stoked on the delusions of securing their future, as if it was a promise one was entitled to by right, by virtue, or by want. And each time before the final blow was struck, Mr. Bagley had seen in their dying eyes, the realization that if they were born knowing how it was all going to end, they would’ve lived a little more in the now.
The brutal nature of the killings had earned him the nickname The Bludgeoner, and the press had just run with it hysterically; psychoanalyzing his actions, twisting their meaning, and missing the point.
At times he wondered –– after reading about one of his exploits in the paper –– why his murders were considered heinous crimes, when a violent act of nature that could claim hundreds of lives was not.
And the same explanation always presented itself: the lawmakers, the doctors… they all agree that an act of nature is an act of fate. And murdering is but the act of madmen.
But I’m not mad…
The old man was thinking. He’d merely snatched up his victims’ lives; the same way fate had snatched up Lillian’s, when it prompted that stupid deer in front of his car without warning.
He was driving...
Lillian…
She was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. This was the closest he’d ever gotten to her. He remembered what it was like being with her in the cabin of his pre-owned Chevrolet Corvette; how his heart thumped hard against his chest knowing he could just reach over and touch her hands, that were crossed over her lap. But that would’ve been awkward, he had thought then. That would not have been very appropriate. He was a lonely heart; but she wasn’t. She was seeing someone at the time…
Though that summer day at the drive-in she was alone by chance, and he was there by design. He took the picture and she didn’t mind. And by the end of this simple shared moment of bliss, furthering the interaction with her seemed possible. The most fantastic things… it all seemed possible then, when she accepted his shy offer to drive her home afterwards…
Presently, Mr. Bagley took a bend, his car swiping through the wind, passing a jumble of rundown facades and mundane faces, that clogged the sidewalks the same way plans for the future clog the timeline of the now.
For years on end after Lillian’s death, the passenger seat had been empty … The spot was already taken by her memory… strange how Lillian was always sitting there… every time he was driving in any car he had ever owned… every time…
She was sitting there right now…
Half dreaming, Mr. Bagley said to her, “I should’ve told you… I wanted to… I was going to… I was just waiting… waiting to drop you home first… then I would’ve told you… I…”
Presently, something reckless with two short legs and two swinging arms unexpectedly flew out right in front of him. Mr. Bagley hit the brakes, and the tires noisily screeched to a stop.
The old man thought, This is how it ended last time… in a deadly rollover. This is how fate intervened… through a deer… or, in this instance, through a jaywalker.
The jaywalker was now staring past the windshield at Mr. Bagley with ugly eyes because he figured he had the right of way. After taking the time to swear at the old man, the jaywalker finally walked off.
Mr. Bagley drove away after that little run-in, thinking how he had to stay focused. He couldn’t lose his edge now and get into a car crash, especially with Zoe’s body in the trunk.
Poor Zoe…
She was swathed in a thin plastic sheet. He had nearly run out of it, since there was not much of it left in the apartment. He had never thought that he would use it again after his cancer diagnosis. And wrapping Zoe up all over had proven heartbreaking to say the least. So he kind of did it fast and loose, just wanting to be done with the task.
After that, the old man had cleaned up the blood, bleaching the floor where she had lay. He had changed out of his sweater, which was stained with Zoe’s blood on the sleeve. Then he had quickly gone out to his car and pulled out of the Condo to park right behind it, on a derelict vacant lot. The old man had been lucky, because there were no pain-in-the-ass bystanders around to make carrying a dead body in open air even riskier than it already was.
Returning to his apartment, Mr. Bagley had picked up Zoe in his arms. She was lighter than she looked. After double-checking that the hall and staircase were clear, he had hurried downstairs, towards a backdoor that opened on an external steel staircase. Outside, he had proceeded through a rubbish-strewn alley that connected the Condo to the vacant lot. That side of the lot was fenced, though... A corrugated-iron hedge erected to separate both properties. There was a gap in it. Feeling the limp weight in his arms, he had flung Zoe upon his shoulder, stepped through the gap, walked to his car, and unloaded his burden into the trunk. After all that, the old man had felt drained of his life-force; the exertion seemed to slowly take its toll on his muscular endurance.
From here to the countryside, there were a couple of lakes between neighboring area codes along the chief route. A lake would be ideal to dispose of the body. Mr. Bagley figured he’d pick the most suitable spot based on a gut feeling when the moment came, and would improvise on a way to weight the body down so the body couldn’t float to the surface. And though he had yet to get out of the inner city, he reckoned the journey would take no more than six hours.
Six hours of driving... It could feel like forever. On such long drives, going down memory lane sometimes helped pass the time. But he knew already what he would find down there. And for the first time in a long while, looking forward to whatever lay ahead was tempting.
All of a sudden the old man’s eyes darted up. Something hard and panicky tugged at his heartstrings. In the rearview mirror a police cruiser had just popped up, with its beacon light on, signaling the car to pull over…
Chapter XX
WITHIN THE DARKNESS OF
THE CAR TRUNK LIES…