A Tale from the Hills (33 page)

Jack looked down the boardwalk and saw two men walking side by side. He scooted back as far as he could on the bench so that he was almost hidden in the shadows of the street light. The two men were much too involved in their own conversation to even notice that he was sitting there. They walked to the end of the pier and stopped for a few moments, and then sat down at the very edge. Their backs were turned to Jack as well as the rest of the world.

From out of no where a man appeared. He was shockingly close to the other side of Jack. He too was much too interested in the men on the pier to even notice poor Jack. But Jack was close enough to the man to see that the new man’s eyes were glazed and dancing from side to side. He looked a lot like the man who had run away on Friday night. The man began walking slowly and deliberately toward the end of the pier. The noisy surf made it impossible for the two men to hear him coming toward them. When he was within ten feet of the two men, he reached into his bootand pulled out a gun.

Jack had only a split second to respond. He slipped the derringer out of his pocket and fired it straight up into the air. William saw the flash of light from the corner of his eye only an instant before he heard the pop sound of the gun. How could he have missed seeing someone so close by? Obviously he had been too busy planning his sneak attack on the two men. He turned quickly and began running away from the two men, but directly toward Jack.

Jack tried to hold the gun steady enough to fire a straight shot, but the bullet missed its target by a wide margin. In his delicate condition he was much too shaky to reload the derringer before the madman was on top of him. As he ran passed the old man, he snarled and growled like a trapped animal. He stopped just long enough to completely empty his gun into Jack’s diseased old body. He was gone into the dark South Carolina night before the two men at theend of the pier even realized what was going on.

**********

The taxi driver told the police that he had dropped the old man off at the pier just before ten p.m. He was the only person in Charleston who seemed to know anything at all about the poor dead man. When the police rummaged through the dead man’s pockets, they found a key to a room at the Southern Belle Motel. A search of his room revealed most of his secrets. Fearing the worst, Jack had left a complete but concise synopsis of his trip from Charlotte to Charleston. He listed the people who would need to be contacted in case of his death, along with other pertinent information relating to the Waterfront Killer and the unsolved murders in Charleston. Because of the suspected relevance to the case in Wilmington, the bullets that were recovered from Jack’s body were compared to those recovered in Wilmington. Jack Wilson’s hunches had been right. All of the bullets came from the same gun. The killer had simply moved a little further down the coast.

The crimes were no longer subject to the laws and jurisdictions of one state or the other. These were nowfederal crimes because the killer had crossed state lines to do his bidding. The resources of the United States Government were now at the disposal of a special crimes unit which would be sent from Washington, D.C.

Without knowing it, Jack Wilson had accomplished a great deal of what he had set out to do. His sacrifice would help to save lives in Charleston as well as ease the suffering and worry of lives in Charlotte, after the mourning of his death had passed. He died never knowing what a hero that he had become.

***********

William’s impatience and lack of self control could very easily have cost him everything. If only his legs were long enough, he would kick himself in the ass. Not because he had finally killed the old man, because that was the most important thing that he had ever done. He should have killed the other two men too, who were on the pier. How could he have been so lax in his judgment. He had been so proud of himself up until that moment.

He hoped that everything happened so fast that the two men did not get a good look at him. After all, they had their backs to almost all of the action until the last few seconds. He also wished that he had not used the gun on the old man. He had not even fired the gun since he had been in Charleston, because he knew that it could be traced back to the killings in Wilmington. He had only used the gun to intimidate his prey, but he had not shot any of them. Now the police were going to know much too much about his movements. He decided that he was not going to take any more chances. After he read the morning paper, he was going to get the Hell out of Charleston, and just as fast as his little Ford could carry him.

The only problem with leaving so soon however, was the lack of a plan. He was tedious and thorough almost to a fault. Leaving on the spur of the moment was simply not his style. And not only that, but suspicious behavior such as leaving without a legitimate reason could cost him his life in the long run. The papers that he filled out when he boughtthe car had registered him in North Carolina. He was fingerprinted when he started the job in Charleston, so he was registered in South Carolina too. If the right people happened to put two and two together, he could very easily be sitting in the electric chair unless he played it cool for a while. He decided not to make any rash decisions until he found out just what the newspaper had to say.

The headlines read, “Killer Loose in the Battery”. The details were graphic and to the point, but there was no mention of the two potential witnesses on the pier. He suspected that they were either in hiding or under police protection.

“Oh God,” he said to himself. “What if they saw me and have already described what I look like?”

Beads of perspiration formed above his upper lip. He felt hot and cold at the very same time.

Another option came to him out of the blue. What if the two men ran away after they witnessed the shooting? What if they did not want to get involved in a murder investigation? What if they too had some things to hide? Obviously they were out for a late night rendezvous. That was one of the reasons why he chose men of that particular orientation as his targets. Secrecy was a major part of their lonely lives. Why would this situation be any different? All of a sudden he felt a little better about the whole thing.

Background information about the old man who was killed was very sketchy in the newspaper. The article mentioned that he was visiting Charleston from Charlotte. William did not know a soul in Charlotte, so how could he possibly have a connection to the old man? Something did not add up. He had been haunted all of his life either consciously or in his dreams, by the old man. He thought that maybe the newspaper and the police were trying to throw him off track. He could play that little game too. He was as smart as they were, they just outnumbered him.

One of the first things that he was going to do was to get rid of the car. It was a very prized possession, but not precious enough to get him caught by the police. He wasalso going to use the best trait that he had inherited from his father, he was going to break into the office at the docks to retrieve his fingerprints from his file. Hell, he was going to take the whole damned file and then set the place on fire. He might even use his file as kindling to start the fire. Those idiots downtown had no idea what a smart man that they were dealing with.

After he read the newspaper he walked around for a while in the Battery. He wanted to get a feel of the area the day after the event took place. He was somewhat surprised to discover that very little had changed. The same vendors were there sitting up their food stalls and other wares for sale. There were a couple of policemen walking around, but that was typical for a Monday. He did not risk walking up the pier where the old man bit the dust, so to speak, but he knew that the old fart had to be dead because he filled him full of lead, as the cowboys say in the movies. For a split second William imagined himself as a cowboy in the old West. He decided that he was born too late to live up to his full potential as a gunslinger.

From the Battery he walked to the street where he kept his car. He had not been there for several days but everything seemed to be fine. He busied himself taking the title out of the glove box, and checking the trunk for anything that would tie him to the car. Even though it was getting close to the time that he would have to go to work, he drove to the corner filling station to have his tank filled with gasoline. He pulled the car back to its usual spot and then walked quickly back to the boarding house. He would really have to hurry to avoid being late for work. He was glad that no one in Charleston knew that he owned the car. It would be so much easier that way.

He seemed to be preoccupied all evening at work. He barely avoided being hit by a shipping crate because his mind was somewhere else. His boss finally told him to get his mind back on his job, or go home. William asked his boss if he had heard anything about the shooting on the pier.

“Yes, what about it?” his boss replied.

“Do you think that a killer is loose on the waterfront?” William asked shyly.

“I don’t know man. Why don’t you just worry about your job and let the police do their job.”

“I guess that you are right.” William answered in a raspy voice.

The seeds of discontent were planted.

William slipped a bottle of highly flammable cleaning fluid into his lunch pail during his dinner break. He was sure that no one would miss it or trace it back to him. That night after work he took the round about route back to the boarding house. He stopped by his shiny black car just long enough to pour the highly flammable cleaning fluid all over the inside and outside, and underneath, and around the tires. He struck a match and ran like Hell to a safe distance away. He hid in the bushes long enough to see his shiny black beauty explode like a bomb after it turned into a raging inferno. He was safely back inside the boarding house by the time that the fire truck arrived on the scene.

The first part of his plan was executed even easier than he had imagined. As conservative as he was when it came to money, he felt like the sacrifice of his car was necessary to save his ass. The next part of his plan might be somewhat tougher to pull off. He would have to get into the office at work with three shifts going on the docks. He would need to come up with a way to clear the area just long enough to retrieve his file and start the fire.

Since June of that year, activity along the coastal waterways had been nonstop. German submarines had been spotted and even picked up on sonar off the coasts of several Eastern states. President Roosevelt declared a national emergency in order to control shipping in United States coastal waters. Nazi aggression and America’s allegiance to the Allie’s cause were about to run a collision course. Security was higher at vulnerable points along the Atlantic coast than at any other time in America’s history. It would be extremely hard, if not impossible, for William to break into the office.

The Fourth of July holiday was coming up and Americans were showing their patriotism by planning spectacular events. Charleston had planned a huge fireworks show which was only a few more days away. Bulletins were posted all along the docks declaring a work stoppage for the entire twenty-four hour holiday period. Although William was in a hurry to leave the city, a few more days could mean the difference between success and capture. He decided to wait for the holiday break.

During the few days that he had to wait until the holiday, he had more planning to do and more decisions to make. Where was he going? How was he going to get there? Would he be able to take his prized possessions with him? He had already decided that he was not going to buy another car. He wanted to have nothing with his name on paper. He could never hop a train because he had too many possessions. He would have to either hitch a ride with someone, or buy a ticket for a train or a bus. He only knew that he wanted to leave the city behind, and he wanted to keep his collection of souvenirs.

The more that he thought about hitching a ride with someone, the more that he liked the idea. There could be nothing better than getting a free ride plus be able to keep his possessions with him safely inside a car or truck. And he had a pretty good idea about how to get the free ride too. That very night after work, he set his scheme into motion.

During his dinner break he wrote several notes that would fit easily on a bulletin board. He was going to post them around the city. He knew that if he visited the right places, that he would more than likely be successful just in time for the Fourth of July weekend festivities to come to a close. After his shift was over he washed his face and combed his dark hair and neatly tucked his shirttail into his jeans. He had always had the sort of look that people like most of his former victims were very attracted to. He knew that if he cocked his head a certain way, or blinked his dark eyes at just the right time, that things would always generally go in his favor. And with his great protector safely hiddeninside his boot, he felt as safe as a bug in a rug, and confident and secure of his manhood. He was well on his way to a new destination, just exactly where he was not quite sure of yet.

************

The responses to his notes were supposed to be picked back up in each of the individual bars where he left them, on the following Monday before the holiday weekend. He was impressed to get four serious proposals. There were several more responses, but none that had any relevance except for those four. Each of the men left a contact number for William to call during the morning hours of Tuesday or Wednesday, which did not give him much time to prepare for the weekend.

In his notes William offered to help with the driving and pay half of the gasoline expenses in exchange for a ride. Nothing else was offered, and nothing else should be expected. Of course he failed to mention that in his notes. He called the first response on Monday immediately after breakfast. He was disappointed to find out that the trip had been cancelled. The man still wanted to meet somewhere for a drink, or something, but William quickly declined the offer. The second call was basically the same as the first in substance. William began to suspect that perhaps the men only responded in order to meet him for other reasons. He would have loved to obliged their more indecent proposals but he did not have the time to invest in killing them.