Small Town Murder

 

 

 

         Franklin stared at the monster in the full length mirror attached to his closet door.  What he saw was far different from what other people saw when they looked at him.  They saw a young man who was of medium height, lean, and clean cut.  Some would say nerdy.  Someone who would be graduating high school in a little over a week.  What they didn’t see was a monster aching to make his third kill.  That is what Franklin saw.  He smiled at the monster in the mirror.  It smiled back at him.

          “Bonnie, do you want me to stay and help you clean and lockup?” Konnor Williams asked.
          Konnor, a senior at Kingfisher High School, was a member of the, soon to graduate, Class of 1973.  He had worked his junior school year at Mitchell’s Phillips 66 gas station across the street.  The Jiffy Stop sat in the southwest corner of Will Rogers Drive and Main Street (US Highway 81).  He started working there when Bonnie, co-owner along with her husband Jerry, offered him twenty-five cents an hour more than he made across the street.  In nineteen seventy-two when the offer was made, twenty-five cents an hour was a sizable pay raise for Konnor. To be fair, he had taken the offer to his boss at the station and tried to get him to match it.  Now he worked at the convenience store from three-thirty to eleven every school night and on Saturdays.
          “No, I will be okay.  You head on out of here at eleven and lock the front door on your way out.”
          “Sure thing,” Konnor said. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
          “Oh, Konnor, wait.  About tomorrow.  I need to take Jerry to the doctor in the morning.  Do you think you can skip your first class?” Bonnie asked.  “If you can, I really need you to open for me.  Jerry’s appointment is at seven fifteen.  I should be able to get here by eight-thirty, nine at the latest.”
          “Sure, my first class is Trigonometry and Calculus.  We are so close to the end of the year that Captain Jack has stopped assigning homework.  Since I have a hundred average in that class, I don’t think he will mind if I miss a Friday class.”
          “That’s great.  I really appreciate you helping me by opening in the morning.”
          “Yes, ma’am.  Take your time.  I will see you when you get here,” Konnor said.
          He walked out the front door, turned and stuck his key in the deadbolt.  He smiled at Bonnie through the plate glass door as he locked it.

          Bonnie wrung the mop out after one final rinse and emptied the mop bucket into the toilet.  After flushing the murky water, the toilet filled with clear, fresh water.  The water kept running after the toilet filled.  She jiggled the handle and smiled as she heard the water shut off.  No matter how many times he tried, her husband, a plumber he wasn’t, could not get the toilet fixed so they didn’t have to jiggle the handle.
          She looked at her watch, an Avon exclusive given to her last Christmas by her mother-in-law.
          “Eleven-twenty-six,” she said aloud while looking around at the empty store.  She stretched and yawned.  “Guess I’ll restock in the morning.”
          Bonnie walked to the back of the store.  Next to the back door on its right, the store’s electrical breaker box was mounted in the wall.  She flipped off the breaker that fed the two gas pumps. She turned off the store’s interior fluorescent lights with the half dozen switches mounted in the wall on the left side of the back door.
          Married eighteen years, and with no children to show for it, she and Jerry, opened the convenience store three years ago.  When Bonnie and Jerry opened for business, convenience stores were a relatively new concept. Theirs was the only one in Kingfisher.  It offered the best broasted chicken in town, two self-serve gas pumps, another new idea, and a drive-thru window.  The idea to install a drive-thru window was stolen from the Top Ten, a burger and shake drive-in next door.  Here at the Jiffy Stop, customers could drive up to the window, pay for their gas, get cigarettes and beer.  This convenience was something a couple widows and a Baptist preacher appreciated because of the discretion the window offered when they made their beer purchases.  Customers could also buy a few groceries from the comfort of their cars.
          Bonnie stood at the back door and looked around at the dark store, doing a mental checklist of the closing down for the night routine.  Normally, on weekdays, she opened and her husband closed.  But Jerry had been under the weather for a couple of days, so she had the place for all sixteen hours a day it was open.  Konnor came in after school.  But, since he was a minor, he technically needed to work with an adult in order to be able to sell beer.
          Bonnie opened the back door.  Lightning flashed off in the distance west of town as she stepped outside.  She sniffed the air.  Judging by the smell, the rain had to be close.  When she turned to lock the deadbolt, she noticed the outside light next to the door had a broken bulb.  Probably some kids.  She thought.  I will replace it in the morning.
          Just as she reached for the door handle of her four-wheel drive Ford pickup, her legs gave way, and she fell to the ground.  It was as if her feet had come unhinged.  She turned to look at the back of her legs.  She saw deep cuts on both just about ankle high.  Blood started flowing, then searing pain hit her. Before she could scream, she was shocked into silence by a gloved hand that reached out from under her pickup, grabbed her by the hair, and jerked her partly under the pickup.  In wide-eyed horror, she watched another gloved hand plunge a long, thin, sharp knife into her chest.  Jerry told me to park in front where it is safer.  Bonnie thought as life dimmed in her eyes.

​

*           *           *           *           *

 

          “Get out of here.  I don’t want you here.  I have begged you to stop drinking.  And you come home drunk.  Again.  I can’t take this anymore,” Joan said.  Her voice was high-pitched and just short of a scream.
          Sheriff Robert Johnson stood on the bottom step of their front porch and listened as his wife expressed her feelings from behind the screen door.
          “When, excuse me, if you quit drinking, you can come back home, not until then,” Joan said.  Bobby, their two-year-old son, stood at his mother’s side and cried for his daddy.
          Robert listened to his wife but all he heard was his son.  His son’s crying for his daddy ripped his heart out.
          Robert quietly watched his wife’s lips move angrily as she berated him.  He couldn’t seem to get her to understand his drinking wasn’t his fault.  His own daddy and grandpa had been alcoholics.  He was a victim of genetics.
          Robert hadn’t said a word nor was he going to.  There was no talking to his wife when she was this way.  He turned from the porch and walked to his pickup.  He couldn’t take any more of his son’s plaintive cries of ‘daddy’.  He climbed into the cab of his pickup, turned the key in the ignition, and wiped at tears as he backed out of the driveway, lost in despair.
          Bobby, breaking free of his mother, ran out after his daddy.
          “Bobby!” Joan screamed.
          Robert slammed on the brakes a fraction of a second too late.  He felt something bump into the back of his pickup, then the sound of a little head slamming onto the paved driveway.
          “Bobby!” Robert screamed.

          Sheriff Robert Johnson sat straight up in bed when the telephone rang.  He sat up way too fast for the headache his hangover so generously provided.  He moaned as he held his forehead.  He turned to the side and placed his feet on the floor.  He lowered his head and closed his eyes.  His long, dark hair fell forward and covered his face.  He had not cut his hair since that horrible day Bobby died.
          At first, he wasn’t sure what had brought him out of the bad dream.  He tried to think happy thoughts, hoping they would replace the bad feeling that hung around the edges of the shadows which haunted his waking moments. He had thought he would finally be able to live without those bad memories.  It had been months since he had last had a dream about his young son’s death.  Even so, he still drank himself to sleep nearly every night in the hopes of keeping the bad dreams away.
          The telephone rang again.
          Robert ignored it.  He forced himself to remember what the year was, nineteen seventy-three.  It had been nearly two years since that awful day.  Yet the dream had seemed so immediate.  Still did.  He felt the darkness close in on him.
          The telephone rang again.
          Robert raised his head, opened his eyes, peered through his stringy hair at his open bedroom door.  He forced his gaze to look beyond the open door.  From where he sat, he could look down the hall and through the living room.  He stared at the turquoise wall mounted telephone next to the doorway.  A doorway that divided the living room and kitchen.  The lowest setting, of a three-way light bulb in a living room lamp, provided a night light.  He saw the telephone but did not acknowledge it.  He was not sure why he stared at the phone.  His thoughts were not in the present.
          The telephone rang again.
          “Now I know why I am looking at the phone,” Robert mumbled to himself.
          He leaned forward, placed a hand on the nightstand next to his bed, and slowly stood up.  On the nightstand, along with his cigarettes and lighter, were several beer bottles.  Most of the bottles appeared empty.  He looked them over, found one that still had a couple swallows left in it.
          The telephone rang again.
          Robert downed the last of the warm, flat beer.  He set the empty bottle back down on the nightstand then tucked his hair behind his ears.  He reached down, picked up his lighter and pack of Marlboro cigarettes, plucked one out, and lit it.  Robert took a long drag off it, held it in for a couple seconds, exhaled with a cough.  He quit smoking years ago, sort of.  He only smoked when he drank.  This rude awakening, this early, called for a cigarette.  He hoped it would calm his busy thoughts, maybe give him a chance to relax.
          The phone rang again.
          If only the damned phone would give me a chance to calm down from the bad dream, Robert thought.  He shook a couple of the empties on his nightstand.  Satisfied there was no more of the hair-of-the-dog on his nightstand to help quash his hangover, he put his cigarette out in the ashtray that sat on the nightstand.
          The phone rang again.
          Robert took a tentative step in the direction of the nagging telephone.  He coughed up a mouthful of yuck.  He made his way to the kitchen to spit down the drain.  He reached for the telephone just as it rang yet another time.
          “Yeah,” Robert said.  His voice was rough.  He cleared his throat loudly and spit into the kitchen sink again.  He ran water in the sink.  Along with the headache, he could still feel the dread that the dream had pulled over him.  He took his free hand and raked his fingers through his hair, hoping to fully wake up and shake that awful memory.
          “Sherf,” Deputy Bernie Rogers said.  His voice sounded excited and tinny.  The tinny sound was probably due to a poor connection.  Or, it could be that old widow Clark once again listened in on the party line Sheriff Johnson was forced to use this far out of town.  “We done got us a killing.”
          Sheriff Johnson looked at the clock on top of his television.  It was one of those new digital clocks.  It had the days of the week and the time on little cards that flipped as some internal mechanism slowly rolled.  He squinted as he tried to read the numbers, ‘Fri – 3:34 AM’ the clock read.
          Some bitch, Sheriff Johnson thought, I’ll probably be tied up all day and miss my Friday episode of General Hospital.
          “I need you to hang up now Widow Clark,” Sheriff Johnson said, taking a guess that she was listening.  The click on the line told him she had done what he asked.  “Okay, you can talk now Bernie.  What ya got?”
          “It’s Bonnie, what owns the Jiffy Stop.  Eddie found her a little bit ago when he came through the alley to pick up their garbage.  Looks like she was stabbed to death.”  Bernie’s voice remained excited but no longer sounded tinny.
          “I’ll be right over,” Sheriff Johnson said.
          He walked back to the bedroom, pulled on yesterday’s jeans, pulled up the top of the socks he had slept in, and stepped into his boots as he grabbed a clean shirt out of the closet.  He grabbed his watch off the nightstand and slipped it on his right wrist.
          Robert stepped into his bathroom long enough to grab a mouthful of Listerine, swished it around while he pissed, then spit it into the toilet as he flushed.  He got a bottle of aspirin out of the medicine cabinet above the sink.  He shook a half dozen out into the palm of his hand and tossed them in his mouth, crunching them as he returned to his bedroom.
          Robert took his battered, dusty cowboy hat off the bedpost at the foot of his bed.  He tucked his long hair behind his ears then clamped the hat down on his uncombed hair.  Sheriff Johnson looked at his Mr. Coffee coffee maker with its empty coffee pot as he walked through the kitchen on his way to the garage.
          “Sumbitch, I could use a cup of coffee,” he said as he hit the button that raised the garage door.  The garage door opener’s chain drive clanked loudly as it sprang to life.  The door clanged and banged as it spasmed its way up the rails.  He winced at the loud noises which were not helping his headache one bit.
          Ten minutes later, he pulled in behind the Jiffy Stop.  Eddie and his garbage truck, actually the city owned the truck, Eddie drove it, were still there as well as Bernie.  Old Doc McIntyre, who served as the county medical examiner, was also there.  At least his station wagon was there, he didn’t see Doc.
          “Eddie, you got any coffee left?” The Sheriff asked as he walked up to where Bernie and Eddie stood.
          “You bet, Robert,” Eddie said.  He looked at Robert’s bloodshot eyes. “You look like you could use some strong coffee, which I happen to have.  Rough night?”
          “Yeah, rough night,” Sheriff Johnson said.  He looked at his watch. “And damned short.”
          Eddie walked around to the passenger side of his truck.  The door protested being opened with a loud, long squeak.
          Sheriff Johnson winced at the sound.
          “Damn, Eddie.  I think your door hinges have had grease worms eating at them,” Robert said.
          Eddie laughed as he grabbed the steel thermos off the passenger seat, and poured steaming hot coffee into the thermos’ cap.
          “Thanks,” Sheriff Johnson said as he took the coffee.  He took a big drink.  Steam drifted up around his face as he looked around.  “Where’s your helper?”
          “I’m flying solo today.  Floyd is down with a bug.”  Eddie shrugged.  “Most likely an eighty proof bug.  But what’s a guy to do?”
          Sheriff Johnson lifted the corner of the blanket that had been draped over Bonnie.
          “Is this how you found her?”
          “Yes sir.  I felt for a pulse, but she was cold and had no pulse,” Eddie said. “I tried not to move her.”
          “We appreciate your sticking around.  Unless Bernie needs you for something, you can go on and finish up your route.”
          The Sheriff gulped down the last of the coffee then handed the thermos lid back to Eddie.  “Thanks for the wake-me-up.”
          “Anytime, Robert,” Eddie said.  He looked at Bernie.  “Need me for anything, Bernie?”
          Bernie spat out a long, dark stream of tobacco juice.  “Nah, I got nuttin’ for ya, Eddie.”
          “Damn it Bernie, how can you chew that shit this early in the morning?” Sheriff Johnson asked.  He turned a little green around the gills as he stared down at the brown liquid accented with saliva bubbles.  He shuddered as he looked up.
         Eddie climbed into his truck, released the air brakes, and drove off.
         “It’s not early for me, Sherf.  I’m coming off the night shift.  ‘Sides, I chew no matter what the time of the day.  Kind of like you are with your coffee.”
          Sheriff Johnson gave another involuntary shudder.  “You want to tell me what happened?”
          Bernie spat again.  “Well Sherf, it looks like she had locked up and was about to go home when she got kilt.  Anyways, that’s the way I figure it to be, ‘cause the store is locked up tighter than a nun’s pussy.”
          “Bernie!”
          “Well, you know what I mean.” He spat again. “Anyways, it looked like she was about to get in her pickup when she was stabbed in the heart.  What I can’t figure out is why the killer would cut her Achilles tendons after he done kilt her.”
          “He did what?” Sheriff Johnson asked.
          “Well, look for yourself.”
          Bernie pulled the blanket off Bonnie’s feet and pointed out the deep cuts behind her ankles.
          “Damn, that is strange.”
          “Maybe it is one of them there cult rituals.”
          “Could be I suppose,” Sheriff Johnson said.  “You got pictures and everything?  Are we ready to turn Bonnie over to Doc?” He looked around. “Where is Doc?”
          “He’s a nappin’ in his wagon and yeah, the scene is processed.  She’s ready ta go.”
          Sheriff Johnson walked over and, using the back of his hand, tapped on the window of the M.E.’s car with his Kingfisher High School class of ‘61 ring.  Doc McIntyre woke with a start then rolled the window down.
          “Ready for me, Robert?”
          “Ready, Doc.  Bernie will help you load her.  Doc, will you call Jerry about his wife for us?”
          “As soon as I can get her cleaned up a little.”
          “Bernie, help the Doc, then meet me at Cattlemen’s.  We’ll discuss this over breakfast.”
          “Right, oh, Sherf.”