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

the formulas

ESAU
Maybe I can help; I was always good at algebra

YOUNG GIRL (MOVING OVER)
My name is Deloris Whitfield, please sit down

ESAU
My name is Robert, let me see the book


Deloris handed him the book and in a few minutes he had solved the twenty questions she was assigned, Deloris was amazed.

DELORIS
How much would you charge to tutor me? I don’t have much money

ESAU
A smile

DELORIS (EXCITED)
When can we start, I’ve got to get a good grade, I‘m planning on going to college next year

ESAU
When do you want to start?

DELORIS
How about tomorrow afternoon, my grandmother goes to work at noon, so the apartment will be quiet

ESAU
I’ll meet you right here tomorrow at 1:00 pm


Deloris jumped off the bench grabbed her book and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Tomorrow my dear you will learn more than algebra,” Esau said to himself. During the three years since the X-Man escaped the Ist Deputy had quashed the complaint on Ringo and Evetta and Lieutenant O’Shea had been transferred to the Motor Maintenance Unit. There had been no more murders or rapes in the city that could be attributed to the Esau Sneed, but Ringo knew he was still out there, waiting. On Wednesday afternoon I was deeply involved in a chess game with Mike, the organizer of the Harvey, Illinois Library Chess Club. Mike was a club player and had a basic knowledge of the royal game, where I had a United States Chess Federation Master’s Rating.

MIKE
I finally got you Mr. Ringo

RINGO
Really, mate in three

MIKE (PUTTING ON IS GLASSES)
You’re crazy man I’m going to capture your bitch

Mike captured the queen but in three moves, he was mated.

MIKE
Shit, I thought I had you this time


My cell phone ranged.

EVETTA
I just talked with Cahill he said a report just came over VICAP, a young girl raped and murdered in Joliet, X carved in her chest

RINGO
Next time Mike, gotta go

A warm summer rain started to fall as I parked my Dodge Neon in the Police Headquarters at 35th South Wabash, Police Parking Lot. Evetta and Cahill were already in the office reading the teletype from the FBI. Cahill was very light skin, light brown hair cut short, over six feet and a solid two hundred pounds. He told us that he joined the US Marshals five years ago after he got discharged from the Marines and spent most of his time on the Marshal’s Apprehension Unit. Cahill pulled a folder out his brief case

CAHILL
This just came in, A young girl who lived in the Fairview Projects in Joliet was found murdered this morning, she had been raped and stabbed and a X was carved in her chest, sound familiar?

RINGO
Let’s go to Joliet
An hour later at one-thirty in the afternoon we pulled onto the fire-lanes at the Joliet Fairview Public Housing Projects in a predominately black section of the city that had 28 high-rise buildings with 16 stories each, with a total of over 4300 apartments mostly arranged in U-shaped clusters of three, and stretched for two mile, it was a large public housing project but was slowly being demolished. An angry crowd had gathered- a combination of drug dealers and gang bangers stood on the stoop and were held back by a cadre of uniformed Joliet Police officers in riot gear standing at the lobby door of the high rise building.

VOICE IN THE CROWD
All of you racist asshole cops need to get the fuck out our hood,” someone shouted.
“I live in that building, motherfucker.” a young woman screamed at the police blocking the door.

I showed my badge to a young, nervous looking white policeman his white face shield resting on top of his blue helmet. We entered the lobby of 124 South Jefferson and asked an officer what floor.

OFFICER
Apartment 10B and the elevator is out of order

We started up the urine soaked, dark and graffiti-marked stairwell passing other police officers. I was out of breath when we reached the tenth floor; more uniform officers were on the corridor and in front of apartment 10B. We entered the neatly furnished apartment and I saw an older woman sitting on a couch in the small front room, being comforted by a female officer, another police officer nodded towards the bathroom. In the bathroom a Crime Scene Investigator was examining the body while an evidence technician was snapping photos and another was writing notes. The victim was dark brown skinned and her hair was in corn curls, she looked to be in her late teens. She was naked and propped against the rim of the bathtub, a pair of pantyhose was tied tightly around her neck and duct tape covered her mouth. Carved between her budding breast and numerous stab wounds was a large X and a bloody X was scrawled on one wall. I looked at Evetta and we both knew that the X-Man had returned, I felt a knot in my stomach, a tremor of revulsion and recognition, I’ve seen this before. A Crime Scene Investigator pulled of his latex gloves and walked out the bathroom, Evetta and I followed.

EVETTA
What we got?

INVESTIGATOR
Black female, Deloris Whitfield, seventeen or eighteen, raped, stabbed and strangled have to wait until the ME get her on the table to find out cause of death, but looks like she been dead only hours, that‘s the grandmother Bertha Whitfield,” he said pointing to the front room.

As I headed into the front room to interview the grandmother

EVETTA
I’ll handle it

It never ceased to amaze me how my partner could sense my moods, she knew that somehow if the killer was the X-Man, I felt responsible for this young girl’s death, we had him, we had arrested him three years ago and somehow he had escaped after killing a police officer, I moved aside as she approached Bertha.

EVETTA
I’m Detective Evetta Lunden from Chicago, me and my partners Sergeant Ringo and US Marshall will be assisting the Joliet Police Department

Bertha’s eyes shifted to the bathroom as police officers were removing Deloris in a body bag, tears swelled in the grandmother’s eyes as the officers and her granddaughter left the apartment. Every police officer hate this moment when you have to intrude in a person’s most terrible moments, but it had to be done.

EVETTA
I hate to intrude at a time like this, but it’s important to gather as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, can I ask you a few questions, please?

BERTHA (WIPING HER EYES WITH A NAPKIN)
Yes

Bertha said that her granddaughter was an honor student and a senior at Joliet High School and she had raised her every since her mother and father was killed in a drive- by when she was two, Deloris had a scholarship to Indiana University and she wanted to be a social worker, she wanted to help the young girls living in the projects, she didn’t have a boyfriend or many girlfriends, she stayed mainly to herself studying and surfing the Internet.

EVETTA
Can you check her room and see if anything is missing?

We followed Bertha into Deloris bedroom, Bertha checked the closet and dresser drawers. She removed two one hundred dollar bills and showed them to Evetta and continued opening drawers. Bertha looked at Deloris neatly folded blouses and bras and opened the last drawer.

BERTHA
All of her panties and panty hose are gone

Evetta thanked Bertha and we left.


5 June 2012

The rape and murder of Deloris was on the national news and an when we returned to our office a crowd of reporters, black ministers and news crews stood in front of Police Headquarters confronting a Deputy Chief and demanding to know the latest on Deloris’s murder.

IRENE MUJHASI
Is this the X-Man, has he returned?
VOICE IN THE CROWD
What’s the department going to do to protect our black women

We pushed through the crowd without commenting and entered the building and went into Captain Woods office

WOODS
Bad?

RINGO
Yep, young high school girl, raped, stabbed and strangled, X carved into her body and smeared on a wall and panties missing.
WOODS
Sound like the X-Man?

RINGO
Why now, he’s been gone over a three years

WOODS
Who the fuck knows, maybe the urges got too strong for him to handle; he’s just a homicidal nut and by this evening every black leader in the city will be demanded to know what we’re going to do
I knew she was right, the city was already a racial cinder block and anything could ignite it.

WOODS
I got a call from Sergeant Hickman, Joliet Police Gang Unit, he’s got his guys out in Fairview talking to their informants, somebody has got to have seen something

RINGO
Believe me, Captain if, no, when we catch him this time he won’t get away again. I should have blown his fucking brains out when I had the chance

We returned to my office and Evetta poured coffee.

EVETTA
Think it’s him?

RINGO
It’s him!


8 June 2012
The little man sat on the bed in room 201 at the Joliet Motel naked except for Deloris’s pink lace panties. He swallowed a Valium and a Librium with a sip of Miller’s High Life beer and lay on the bed and began to masturbate, he thought of Deloris. He smiled as he remembered how he had fooled her into thinking he was going to help her with her algebra. How stupid she was, unable to figure out those elemental algebra questions. His mind drifted to how excited she was as she had let him into her apartment, all ready to be tutored; well he tutored her alright, with his dick. He remembered the shock on her face when he hit her knocking her out, duct taped her mouth and tied a pair of pantyhose around her neck. He remembered her tight and bloody pussy; it had been a long time since he had a virgin.
He remembered the wanton look in her eyes when she came to, she was really enjoying this lesson. The little man increased the rapidity of his masturbation and remembering how she looked when he let out a groan and ejaculated. He felt good; he popped an Ativan, downed it with a swig of beer, and fell asleep. The next morning Evetta, Cahill and I were at the Joliet Police Gang Unit drinking coffee with Sergeant Hickman. All night long I kept seeing the young girl with so much promise lying in the bathtub, violated and killed by a maniac.

SERGEANT HICKMAN
I remembered about two or three years ago getting a teletype of a serial killer in Chicago called the X-man, rape and killed young women and carved X’s into their bodies, think it’s the same asshole?

RINGO
Yep, we’re pretty sure it is

RINGO (SHAKING HIS HEAD)
One of my guys talked with an informant and was told that he saw a little dude talking with Deloris, the day before she was killed and he had never seen him before, no one paid any attention to him because he looked too small to be a cop. Matter-of-fact most of the homeboys were proud of Deloris and she