The X-Man by Brian R. Lundin (100 best novels of all time .TXT) 📕

I searched the entire area, looking downward. The rain and snow had eliminated any footprints and the back yard was littered with foul smelling, rotting garbage and discarded furniture. It began to snow again and the sky became an overcast gray. I searched the perimeter of the small yard first, walking beside a worn wooded fence eyes trained downward, I found nothing. We walked up the stairs to the rear wooden porch that had gaping holes in the floor and I shook the door that showed signs of being jimmied but was unlocked, when I gently pushed the door open the

(CREAKING SOUND)

After entering, Evetta took the floor plan out the folder and I made a note of the noisy hinges. Something wasn’t right; inside the apartment was an unnatural quietness, someone was in the apartment. I pulled out my .44 Magnum and put a finger to my mouth as Evetta pulled out her weapon.

A MALE VOICE (YELLING)
Hello, is someone there?

RINGO
Police!

FADE IN:
An elderly man wearing overalls come into view.

EVETTA (GUN AT HER SIDE)
Who are you?

ELDERLY MAN (VISIBLY SHAKEN)
I’m the building maintenance man, the police told me I could come and clean the apartment

RINGO (Holstering the weapon)
We’re conducting an investigation, give my partner your name and address and we’ll notify you when you can come back.

Man gives the information to Evetta and hurry out the apartment.

RINGO (removed two pair of disposable surgical gloves from his front pants pocket and give one to Evetta.)

FADE IN:
It was a plain, stark apartment, smelling of disinfectant and death. Shadows deepen in corners as we entered the small, clean and tidy kitchen. There were a few pieces of unwashed silverware in the sink, a wood table surrounded by four chairs that held a bowl of artificial fruit and a grocery store receipt. Shaded masks of black fingerprinting powder covered most of the items in the room. Putting on latex gloves, Evetta carefully opened the refrigerator and made a note of its contents; orange juice, butter, mustard and mayonnaise, a six-pack of Miller’s Lite beer and a half filled bottle of white wine. The refrigerator freezer contained a bag of spoiled neck bones, ham hocks and salt pork; she wrote down the expiration date of the items and closed the door. In the cabinet over the sink was a two-pound bag of pinto beans, two cans of mild chili beans, box of cornflakes and nothing else. On a counter was a coffee maker a two-slice toaster and a small microwave oven. Evetta noticed that there were no curtains on the kitchen window; I peered out the window on the south wall at another drab looking apartment building.

RINGO
She must eat out a lot

EVETTA
Or can’t cook
FADE IN:
We walked through a small hallway and into a small living room that contained a brown cloth couch, two brown chairs and a 24-inch plasma wall television. Black dusting powder littered the curtain-less window frame and landing. The floor plan revealed that the window faced a narrow gangway between the buildings and was five feet from the ground. Looking out I wondered if the X-Man had stood on a box and pulled himself up.

RINGO
She must have been very private person, no photographs, and no personal items at all, where is the bathroom?

EVETTA (looked at the floor plan and pointed)
Down the hall on the other side of the apartment if our Vic was taking a shower or in the bathtub, she might not have heard anything

RINGO
Was the window broken?

EVETTA
Nope!

RINGO
The report states that the both doors were unlocked?
EVETTA
Yes sir
FADE IN:
Ringo lifts the window and it went up about a foot

RINGO
This is a pretty small opening for a man to crawl through

FADE IN:
We entered the victim’s equally bare bedroom that contained a queen size bed, a walk-in closet, a three drawer chest-a-draw, a nightstand and a small color television. There were no curtains on the windows that faced the gangway. Evetta carefully open the doors to the nightstand and found feminine napkins, cheap perfume, a half-filled cellophane bag of suspected marijuana and a dildo.

RINGO
The worst part of this job is the uncovering of people’s private lives. Murder has a way of bearing for the world to see and expose all of those private things we spend a lifetime trying to hide. The murder victim does not have time to bury or hide their little secrets; the victim is left unmasked and totally vulnerable

EVETTA
This reminds me of some cheap transit hotel room

RINGO
What do you know about cheap hotel rooms?

EVETTA (SMILING AND WINKED)
I wonder if she ever though someone would find her sex toy

FADE IN:
Ringo opened the fingerprint-dusted drawers; the top drawer was empty and noticed a smug on the top that had been dusted. The second drawer contained socks, neatly folded blouses, rent receipts and other papers. An empty trash basket sat beside the bed and I opened the third drawer and removed a dusted ledger. The ledger contained three columns of checks, checking account deposits and withdrawals another line contained credit cards payments and amount due.

RINGO (OPENING THE LEDGER)
She kept good books, and her last deposit of five hundred dollars was three days before she was killed, she had a balance of two thousand

EVETTA (LOOKING IN THE DRESSER DRAWERS)
Shit that’s more than I got. No underwear, no panties or bras


RINGO (WALKING TOWARDS THE BATHROOM)
Well, let’s wrap this up

FADE IN:
Ringo and Evetta walked towards Peggy’s bathroom her most private sanctuary, with every step they moved closer to the deadly confrontation and Peggy’s final moments on earth. I swung open the door of the bathroom and Evetta handed me the color photographs. Ringo loosen his tie unbuttoned the collar button and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and placed it back into his pants pocket. The scene was well preserved and processed; the entire bathtub had been dusted as well as the floor, sink, commode and cabinet, inside the medicine cabinet was dental floss, toothpaste, more feminine napkins, aspirins and a toothbrush. Ringo leafed through the photographs, frame by frame; the first photo was a close-up of Peggy’s face. She had long black hair and what appeared to be a nice body. Her grotesque, bulging, oversized eyes were wide open in terror and her face was distorted, a pair of knotted black panty hose was wrapped around her neck and gray duct tape covered her mouth, the images seared themselves into my mind, just like the others. The next photo was a full shot of the Peggy, naked in the bathtub. Another photo was a downward shot showing a long, deep incision that ran from both sides of her neck crossing at the top of her vagina, and the tub was quarter filled with bloody water. There was a full shot of the bathroom that showed the blood on the walls and a blood smeared large x on the medicine cabinet mirror. I walked around the tub and reconstructed the scene like a Hollywood film director preparing to shoot a scene: the killer enters the bathroom; did she know him, was she waiting for him? Was she in the shower or taking a bath and before she could react he hits and stuns her? Did she falls or was she placed inside the tub, was she dead before he carved the x on her body, or alive and felt the blade as it sliced through her skin?


RINGO
Special Agent Wesnek of the FBI Profiler’s Unit who had created a psychological profile of the X-Man told me that most serial killers fits easily into a profile, certain parts of the five similar rituals homicides in Chicago points to a psychotic: a spontaneous unbalanced individual, who may have auditory hallucinations and claim to hears voices or claim that we are receiving messages and commands from God. He may be delusional, which could be influenced by his background or childhood experiences, but three other cases submitted have all the symptoms of someone who is a psychopath. A psychopath differs from a psychotic in that he can be functional, hold a job even have a family, but nearly all psychopaths have antisocial personality disorders and lack a conscience and are prone towards violence to others. They are extremely cunning, charming and calculating and have no regards for human life or suffering. One study suggests that psychopaths have a strong genetic component. The study demonstrates that children with anti-social behavior can be classified into two groups: Those acquired their criminal behavior by genetic influences, and those who acquired it from their environment. His preoccupations with deviant sexual fantasies of one kind of another dates back to his childhood, our study of your case believes that your X-Man is extremely dangerous and will keep raping and killing and it seems like you have an individual that exhibits both traits. Your X-Man don’t want to kill his victims immediately, that would ruin it for him, he got off on the fear of his victims and the medical reports indicate that some of your victims wounds and sexual assaults were per mortem, at or near the time of death. Did the killer knock Peggy unconscious and when she came too did he strangle her just enough for her to lose consciousness again, and when she came too again that when he finally killed her? Any evidence of masturbation or sperm in the bathroom?

EVETTA (LOOKING AT ANOTHER REPORT)
Nope

FADE IN:
Ringo backed out of the bathroom; drained.
RINGO
I know he is still out there, somewhere, searching for another victim. All of the murders had the same Modus Operanti or MO: all of the victims were young black female, between eighteen and thirty-five, all attractive and living alone, all had the large X smeared in the bathroom and all were found naked in the bathtub. All of the victims’ underwear was missing, no fingerprints or trace evidence, no evident of a relationship or association with the victims and all of the victims were raped. After the killings does he calmly walk out the door and leisurely walk down the street, maybe go to a bar for a drink and join a society that he has no use for?

FADE IN:
Ringo staggers and is held up by Evetta.

EVETTA (HOLDING RINGO)
Let’s get out of here

FADE IN:
Evetta drives to the Special Crimes Bureau located at 2900 South Western Avenue

EXT- SPECIAL CRIMES BUREAU
The ancient white stone building used to be a storehouse for CTA buses and was purposely chosen for it remoteness. It was a converted warehouse built in 1935. There were no signs indicating it housed an elite investigative unit that consisted of specially selected and trained detectives and four sergeants who called the place home.

INT-FIRST FLOOR
A large room where the walls and ceiling were painted the usual stale municipal off-white. The room contained cubicles with top of the line computers for the detectives, two interrogation rooms with a row of a bus- station type chairs bolted against a wall and in the basement had four holding cell for prisoners.

FADE IN:
Ringo and Evetta entered the building and waive at Detectives Marcus Burke and Charley Turner that both had telephones to their ears, their suit jackets hung over the back of their chairs and their ties were loosened. They were writing on paper pads lying next to the Chicago Sun-Times, the headlines read in bold print