The Peeper Keeper
Tim Thompson
Copyright 2012 by Tim Thompson
This is how it happened. I had stopped an attack and been attacked. Red and blue lights flashed around me as I waited for the ambulance to take me to the hospital. Crime scene investigators were setting up spotlights along the sidewalk to my left to highlight the splashes of blood every couple of yards. I was both a witness and a victim but the cops were treating me like a witness and I wasn’t allowed to leave. They didn’t think my wounds were serious.
I had cut through the park around 10 o’clock on my way home from a pool party at a friend’s apartment complex. I’d had a few drinks and then a few more drinks so I needed to catch a taxi and was heading to a main road where I could hail one. As I passed the duck pond, I saw a woman being chased by someone wearing a dark hood. She was too tired to scream and the man was closing the distance between them quickly. I don’t know what came over me, liquid courage maybe, but I ran to intercept the attacker. I cut across the grass toward the path they were following. I got within ten feet and shouted for him to stop. I was standing under the glow of the street light and couldn’t see the attacker’s face but he could see mine. He glanced in my direction as if I was an annoying gnat, but then stopped suddenly. The woman he was chasing kept running but now it seemed like she had never existed. He stared at me for a full five seconds before he turned and walked slowly but purposefully toward me. I turned to run but tripped over a tree branch that was lying in the grass. I rolled onto my back and raised my arms to protect myself. He was on top of me in an instant. I tried to see his face but his hood was pulled low over his head and I was blinded as I looked directly into the street light. I felt him raise his right arm to strike me when a gunshot echoed through the night air.
The woman who had escaped had found a police officer and had told him where we were. As the police officer continued to run toward us, the lunatic on top of me lowered his arm and hissed that this wasn’t over. I heard my shirt tear as he flicked his wrist twice over my stomach. Then he disappeared in to the darkness of the park. The cop chased after him but gave up quickly. He had been out of breath well before he had gotten to us. Take it easy on the doughnuts, officer.
Now I was waiting to get in the ambulance and was being interrogated by a detective and a CSI. The detective asked his last question and left me to be processed. The CSI, who introduced himself as Todd Evans, wanted to collect anything with blood on it. I looked down as he pointed his flashlight at my shoes. Very little white was left under the bright crimson blood. I sat down to remove my shoes and socks. It was then that I noticed that my shorts were also soaked in blood. I lifted my shirt to find four slices in my stomach. The cuts formed two x-shaped patterns. Blood ran freely from the shallow wounds that showed no sign of clotting but I didn’t feel a thing! The CSI quickly collected my shirt and discovered the scars crisscrossing my back.
“Oh my God”, whispered the CSI as he stared at the blood pouring out of the cuts on my abdomen. “I think I know what happened.”
***
CSI Evans put me in the back of an ambulance. “Get him there quick!” he shouted to the EMT who was waiting in the back. “See if you can stop the bleeding and if he makes it, send him to the crime lab!” He slammed the door before I could ask any questions. My heart was racing and my head was a whirlpool of questions. What happened to me? Who did it? Why me? Why wouldn’t I make it? Who did all the other blood belong to? Why wouldn’t the bleeding stop? Why didn’t it hurt at all? What did the x shaped cuts signify? And what did CSI Evans think happened to me?
The hospital was a blur. I had lost a lot of blood and even though the pressure bandages the EMT had applied helped, my wounds were still open and steady streams of blood ran down my abdomen. I had been given a transfusion in the ambulance and the orderly hung a fresh bag as I was placed on a gurney and rolled directly into a triage center. Almost immediately I was surrounded by two teams of medical staff who started stitching my cuts.
I could barely control my breathing and could feel sweat running down my back. Everywhere I looked, sinister people lurked. The man who scowled at me as I was rushed through the doors of the hospital, the woman who watched me being wheeled down the hallway without a hint of compassion, and now the aide to my left who wouldn’t stop staring at my bleeding chest all game the chills. They all seemed to want me to suffer.
After an hour and almost two hundred stitches I was told I would live. I was weak and the news didn’t calm me at all. I had been attacked. I had been violated. Someone had chosen me and purposely tried to send me a message. There was no other way to interpret the cuts on my stomach that wouldn’t stop bleeding. And why didn’t the cuts hurt or burn or even sting? I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand and felt the familiar pain of skin splitting. It wasn’t me, it was the cuts. They were special and that scared me even more. I inhaled deeply and shuddered right before I passed out.
I felt better physically after I woke up. Emotionally I was still a wreck. Someone was after me and I had no idea who they were. It could be anybody. I was lying behind a white curtain in a hospital bed with absolutely no protection but a bed sheet and a thin hospital gown. Quickly, I located the attendant buzzer and asked for my clothes. I was reminded that they had been collected at the crime scene but CSI Evans had noticed that we were about the same size and had sent one of his own jogging suits and a pair of flip flops for me to wear. I didn’t see any underwear so I sat up and prepared to go commando. I winced as the tight wrapping around my midsection constricted. I decided that CSI Evans wouldn’t be getting his track suit back even if he wanted it, which he probably didn’t. With that in mind, I checked out of the hospital against doctor’s orders and hailed a cab outside. I gingerly lowered myself into the back seat and asked the driver to take me to the Lexington Crime Lab. CSI Evans wasn’t going to get his track suit back but he was going to get a whole lot of questions.
***
“They’re calling him The Peeper Keeper or TPK.”
I just stared at him. His mustache had a few flecks of white. It didn’t even quiver a fraction of an inch as he waited for my response. I had so many questions and they were eating at my injured stomach but at least I felt safer. Well, a little safer. I liked to read thrillers and more often than not the bad guy was a member of law enforcement who had snapped and somehow found a way to immerse himself into the case. I looked hard at CSI Evans trying to decide if he was a crazy stabber or not.
“Don’t you want to know why?” he finally asked.
“We’ll get to that in a minute. Why do you think you know who did this to me?”
“There’s been a pattern of attacks. At least I think there is. Three victims over the past three years have been attacked similarly.” He paused and waited for me to ask what was similar about the attacks. I did.
“I don’t want to alarm you any more than is necessary, Mr. Roberts.” Yeah right, I thought. Sentences like that don’t exactly lower a person’s blood pressure. A trickle of sweat made its way down my back.
“Three victims,” he continued, “have been attacked with a sharp object. Mr. Roberts, there’s no easy way to say this. He cut out their eyes.”
My body turned cold. I was probably already cold from all of the blood I had lost but this revelation chilled me to the bone.
Evans continued, “The reason why I think this is connected to you is that the victim who survived reported that she never felt any pain. She swears it didn’t hurt a bit.”
“Wait. Only one person survived? I didn’t think having your eyes removed was fatal.” It was a surprisingly rational observation for a guy who was possibly being hu
nted by an eyeball collector.
“That’s the other thing,” Evans answered. “There’s something on his blade that keeps the wounds from clotting. You’re not a hemophiliac, right?” I assured him that I wasn’t.
“Then why did your shallow wounds keep bleeding and bleeding?” he asked. I thought about it. Something was tickling the back of my mind. There was something familiar but it wasn’t ready to come to the surface yet.
“He was first called Dr. Bloodtears but we decided it was a bit cheesy,” Evans added. “We called him that because we think he had some kind of medical training and this anticoagulant he coats his blade with causes the victims to bleed profusely from their eye… sockets.”
“Like tears”, I mumbled. “And yeah, that is cheesy. So why me?”
“We don’t know. There isn’t anything demographically that ties the victims together. It’s almost like the attacks were random but now I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because of tonight. My theory is that he saw you and decided you were a better victim.”
“A better victim? What makes you think I was a better victim than a woman who was about to collapse from exhaustion?”
“Well,” and again he paused. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins. This hooded asshole was never going to get a chance to hurt me again because my heart was about to blow a gasket. “What if he saw someone that he had targeted before? Someone who had gotten away.”
“That’s your theory?” I shouted. I was really losing it. “What are you basing it on?”
“It’s a new theory, Mr. Roberts. I only came up with it a few hours ago while you were in the E.R. getting sewn up. It first started when I saw the scars on your back.”
“My back? That was years ago! I was mugged!” I erupted. “What makes you think that was the same guy?”
“I pulled the report of the night your back was injured. All the victims surfaced after you were attacked the first time. There wasn’t a pattern to figure out yet. But now things are starting to add up. The x shaped cuts on your stomach represent the two x shaped cuts he uses to cut open his victim’s eyes. Mr. Roberts, I believe the same man who put those scars on your back cut your stomach tonight. And if my theory is right he’s telling you that your eyes are next.”
***
Memories came rushing back to me. The attack on my back. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time…. on purpose. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about. I wanted to forget. But now, maybe, to protect myself and end this nightmare I needed to remember. I needed to jump from one nightmare to another. So I did.
It was March first, four years ago, and I had been drinking then too. I lived in a funny little duplex that looked like a stand-alone house but my garage connected to the kitchen of the unit next door. It was located off Boston Road on the southwest end of town. I was walking home from my favorite little drinking hole behind the Kroger on Man-O-War and Boston called the Caddyshack Bar and Grill. It wasn’t much but everyone knew me by name and were nice when I had one too many. That night might or might not have been one of those nights depending on who you asked. If you asked me, the answer would have been no. If you had asked any of the females in the bar I had talked to within an hour of stumbling out, the answer would have probably been yes.
I had just crossed Boston and left the wide yellow circle that the streetlight cast when I felt someone nearby. I remember this because I was worried about getting a fine for public intoxication. Lexingtonians don’t like people walking around subdivisions drunk and the record of arrests in the local paper has several listings of citations for public intoxication outside of New Circle Road every month.
I straightened up and paid special attention to my balance and stride. I also did my best to ignore whoever was behind me to my right. That proved to be a mistake. I felt something wet flowing down my back and an arm reached around my left shoulder. I screamed and let my right arm slide out of the sleeve of my jacket where it had been hiding. The road beer I had smuggled out of the bar was still in my hand and still unopened. I swung my right arm over my head and creamed the attacker right on the head. There was some kind of padding on his head but the glass still shattered, foam sprayed everywhere, and I collapsed. Whoever had attacked me fled and then next thing I remember, I was in an ambulance. Someone must have heard my scream and called 911. Lexingtonians are good for that. Lucky for me, huh?
When I got to the hospital I received a strange greeting. The EMT had assumed at first that I was in shock and therefore wasn’t thrashing around in pain. He was so busy trying to stem the bleeding from the wounds on my back that he didn’t have time to administer any anesthetic. When I didn’t cry out for painkillers during the ambulance ride he started to get suspicious. So when we pulled up at the emergency room doors he wondered if I was already on something illegal. He whispered to the physician who rushed out to greet us that I stunk of whiskey and hadn’t asked for any anesthetic.
Something was up. The doctor, of course, noted that in her report and in doing so provided CSI Todd Evans with one of the most important clues of the case. I had been attacked, cut, the wound wouldn’t clot, and I showed absolutely no signs of physical discomfort.
Three large gashes crossed my back. It was labeled a mugging gone wrong by the police officer who took my statement and interviewed the bar staff and the neighbor who called 911. My insurance covered the cost of the trip to the hospital and my company gave me a month off to recover. I thought I could put it behind me. But now here it was staring me square in the face again and this time something or someone didn’t want me to stare back ever again.
***
Days went by and turned into weeks. I really didn’t want to die but the cycle of paranoia I had entered had turned my life upside down. I was terrified of everything. I was a zombie at work. I suspected everyone. Customers were stone cold killers in yuppie masks. My coworkers were clever criminals who were hiding their murderous tendencies behind facades of normalcy. My boss, who had always been a dick, was also a suspect because he was pretending to be concerned and that was definitely not in his nature. Like I said, the guy was a dick.
I triple checked the doors and windows before lying down to seek the sleep that never came. My appetite had dropped to almost nothing and I was dropping pounds daily. This wasn’t living. I was the epitome of the walking dead. That fucker had already won.
I called CSI Evans the next day and asked him a question that had been bugging me for a while. “Did the one survivor give any kind of description of the guy that attacked her?” I asked.
“Nothing useful. Average height, average weight, wore gloves and she didn’t see his face.”
“Too dark?”
“No, he wore a hood.”
I froze. The hood. How could I not have remembered that? Another memory came rushing back into my head. I was lying on my side, sticky warm blood flowing down my back and I was watching my attacker run away. My attacker and his hood. Then I remembered something that I had no business remembering. Something I had pushed so deep inside it should have never surfaced. My attacked turned around under the street lamp. There in the yellow circle he stood and I saw his face. Or I saw where his face should have been. But there had been no face, only a shiny blue convex oval.
***
I was employed selling and leasing BMWs at the Don Jacobs dealership on the corner of Nicholasville Road and New Circle. It wasn't the best job in the world. In fact, it actually carried a small amount of prestige. It wasn't like I was selling Kias or anything. I was pretty good at it too. People knew me and they knew I would do everything possible to get them into the Beemer of their dreams. But since TPK had come into my life, my sales had gone into the toilet. I couldn't focus. Things got to the point where I couldn't work the angles and do the numbers. I couldn't sell a car to a customer with a suitcase full of cash. All I could see was a cold blooded killer waiting to attack me.
> At night I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling dreading going to work the next day. How could I end this? Should I kill myself? That was an option but the outcome wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to live. The only problem was there was a psychopath who wanted my eyes. He wanted to cut my eyes out of my head! He had attacked me twice, putting me in the hospital and leaving scars on my back and stomach because he wanted to let me know that he was going to cut out my eyes. I had no idea who he was, what he was, or why he wanted my eyes or even chosen me in the first place. But I was starting to believe CSI Evans' theory that I was been chosen somehow. I was in this creature's crosshairs and I couldn't see any way out.
I sat in my cubicle staring at the wall. I didn't even bother to try and greet the "ups" who came into the dealership looking for a new car. I scribbled mindlessly on a notepad on my desk. Thirty minutes passed before I looked down at the sheet of paper. Written over and over were the words “Find him”. It took me a minute to figure out what my subconscious was trying to tell me. I needed to find the madman before he found me. I needed to face him and do it on my terms. So I spent the rest of the week constructing a plan.
The first part of the plan was letting him know who I was and where I was. I thought back to what Todd Evans said about TPK attacking the track chick and then stopping to come after me. If he knew who I was or where I was I probably would have been attacked much earlier. I knew he was looking for me and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting around. This hell that barely resembled what used to be my life needed to end and end soon. I was hell bent on making that happen.
I approached my boss the next day. I waited until he was heading out for lunch and asked if I could join him. He looked shocked that the salesman who had turned into a zombie and was hanging onto his job by a thread wanted to talk but finally agreed and we walked up the road to Wendy’s. After we ordered and sat down I popped the question that I knew was paramount to the success or failure of my plan.
“Is the dealership still planning to take out a full page ad for the big sale next weekend?” I asked.