Retribution

By Lawrence Clarke

Love is never easy, especially as a closeted lesbian with a successful career. Its even more difficult when you are a closeted lesbian with a penchant for murder. Detective Sergeant Kira Lang meets Molly Treacher at a high-end lesbian club in downtown Cleveland, and the two women fall hard for each other. It seems like a match made in heavenuntil Kira is called to investigate a murder with possible personal connections.

The victim was a father and husband; witnesses say he physically abused his wife and child during dinner, so Kira cant feel too bad for whats become of the guy. With the appearance of the FBI, however, her little restaurant murder turns into something much bigger. Worse, it may involve the newfound love of Kiras life. Agent Barry Truscott plants the seeds of doubt, but Kiras intellect waters the plant to full growth.

Is it possible? Could Molly be a serial killer, hell-bent on getting revenge on her long-dead, abusive father? Kira has her doubts, but Truscott has been on Mollys trail for a long time; his extensive knowledge of Mollys life and crimes may sway Kiras opinions. Even so, if Molly is only murdering men who deserve it, does Kira want justice served? Or will her love for Molly put an end to Truscotts suspicions for good?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462039142

Lawrence Clarke

Lawrence Clarke was born and raised in Northern Ireland. A former British Merchant Marine, he is a freelance architectural AutoCAD designer in Australia. Lawrence Clarke’s short stories have appeared in Australian magazines and he has three novels published.

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Contents

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RETRIBUTION

For Mary

Fate dealt her a losing hand. She smiled.

Thanks to The Cuyahoga County Police Department, The Tourism Bureau of Ohio and the Great Lakes.

As always, a big thank you to Wikipedia for their collected information on everything.

My appreciation to Doctor Norman Billings and his staff.

And thanks to all the ordinary people, like me, who gave of their time and advice, to help me with this project.

SINNING

It’s almost over for me and I’ve returned to the beginning of my Journal. These will be my final entries.

I’ve lived two lives. One consisted of the first 14 years and the other the next 28. Fourteen years of misery and 28 years of light and shadow. The light being the ability to love—a gift passed on to me by my kind and caring mother—and the shadow that which has dogged me since I sent my father on his way to hell.

I think pathetic is the way to describe my current predicament and later in my journal you’ll see what I mean by that remark.

For the past score of years, when men like my father cross my path or that of my friends, I remove them; simple as that. Now, after striking down 21 of the bastards, tonight I’ll take my own life in the same way. Don’t get me wrong. I carry no illusions; I plead guilty without being charged and the knife sits, ready for self-use, on the coffee table before me.

All the people who hunted me, the FBI and plenty of state and county law institutions, have failed but not nature’s microscopic building blocks. They passed on to me the combined genetic history of my mother and father and I would hazard a guess that at least one of them would’ve died from this illness had he not done for her and I for him. Their biological cocktail brought me undone, nothing else.

I hope this journal reaches my friends where they, and only they, will read the admissions that would’ve put me away for my few remaining months if I didn’t end my life. These few paragraphs, although written at the beginning, are not the first entry but will be the last.

In all likelihood you’ll be fascinated while delving into my life story and, by that time, I might be trawling through hell looking to inflict further retribution on the cause of my twisted existence.

Speaking of hell, if it exists, I’ll have a question for Satan; something in the order of why me? What was my great crime in the fore-life to be born to a bastard of a man? Explain fate to me, Moloch, I’ll loudly insist if I find myself in that place of torment. I accept that I deserve a certain amount of punishment for my crimes in this life but part of my fateful damnation seemed to mean the laying of a curse on many of those innocent friends who shared my existence.

Aside from my selfish rants, enjoy my journal and, after you read it, my friends, I trust you will do with it as I’ve instructed. I would suggest you skim over the first fourteen years since they are repetitive. You will repeatedly read of the beatings suffered, accompanied by the psychological torture foisted on mother and me. It gets boring but I had to transcribe as much as I could remember as an epitaph to the gentle and innocent one who gave me womb and board. Forgive my insouciance, Mother, but I felt I should show my friends I am not altogether the dark individual that the press, no doubt, will make me out to have been.

So now, on with the story. Enjoy.

. . . . . . . … . . . … . . . … . . . … . . . … . . . … . . . . .

As a child and early-teenager, I never got to walk the magnificent countryside which surrounded my Blue Ridge Mountain home and I never played little league or attended sleep-overs. My world existed between house, school and church and, I suspect, before that dreadful final night of my first life, the violent side of my character was all but set in stone.

I have disliked, but importantly not hated, the light of day since I was in my early teens. I prefer a moonless night. It was at such a time that I came to my first fork in the road. After careful consideration, I use that term correctly where my bastard of a father used it wrongly the night he died.

He was a brooding, sullen man, given to directing fits of strong violence against my mother and me. Under that man’s domestic rule, we cowered in his dark shadow while during daylight he preached about the light and love of heaven to his flock. So often over the intervening years I have sat, almost trance-like, trying to decide if he actually believed he was a man of god or did he use that persona as a cloak draped across the evil that dwelt in his twisted psyche? I took the bastard’s life when the night was black, and in later years when I walked under that same type of sky, I remembered the kill with a rare kind of satisfaction.

Finally my dear ones, I admit my opinions are warped but one thing I’m certain of; my mother and my father’s god, the big guy up yonder calling the roll, had a more twisted sense of humor when it came to our futures or lack of them.

1

My father was a church minister. Above the door of his church hall was affixed a huge cross and below it a plaque which stated, ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden’. Every so often I listened to one of his sermons and a voice inside me called out, liar or blasphemer. When his service ended he stood at the church door smiling warmly and shaking hands.

His flock at home was given no such treatment. If I was due a punishment, my mother was blamed as well; for being responsible for my actions, he felt she was as much at fault as I, the sinner. Where he would strap or paddle me for my misdemeanor, he would punch or slap her. My mother defended him by saying he was only continuing the cycle of his own rearing and we would survive. I never found out what in his rearing caused him to be the callous individual he was to us and, in truth, I never really had a mind to investigate. I grew up hating the coward with a vengeance.

Sometimes we, the defenseless ones, would be unaware that a member of the church had lodged a complaint against me. It would be something minor like perhaps my bicycle had left a tire mark on a front lawn or I had been in a fight at school with someone else’s child. The old man would walk through the door while we sat with bated breath waiting to see what wrath his latest homecoming brought down on us. There were nights when he smiled slightly, ate his tea, talked of his day in holy land and retired to his study for the evening whereupon we smiled at each other and sighed in relief. At other times, he came home wearing a dark brooding face and ordered me to my room. I would sit on my bed and listen to the sounds of violence coming from below. My mother never screamed and he never hit her face or arms. When my turn came, he would walk into the bedroom holding the method of my punishment. By a very early age, I knew to kneel by the bed with hands in supplication to his god. After a dozen strokes, numbness came and the flagellation usually stopped at twenty.

Our final year together, my fourteenth in his ministerial purgatory, my mother and I reached the limit of our endurance. We mustered all of the resolve and dignity he had left in us and packed two suitcases. We fled to her sister’s house in Calgary. We were found easily and the Canadian police brought us to the border where, in the company of a social services representative, my father took his possessions into his keeping without troubling the law any further.

Strangely he did not punish us for that major occurrence, perhaps slavering over our obvious fear, but the first and last time I made a small mistake in his eyes, and what it was escapes me now, I was sure he would kill us both. He was flinging my gentle mother around the dining room where she bounced off the walls, and when I saw the blood gush from her nose, something snapped inside me. ‘Stop!’ I shouted. He turned to look at me with violent eyes as I grabbed at his sweaty shirt. For the first time in my life, an adult punched me. I was of slim build in those days and I think my jaw cracked or broke as I hit the wall. I looked into the livid face of a demon. He did not speak, just pointed to the stairs. I walked quickly to my room. Another first was the scream my mother let out as something came crashing down, then silence for a moment, before the heavy footfall on the stairs.

I took a baseball bat from under the bed and stood before the door. When he entered, with head down, he was still out of breath. I swung as hard as I could and caught him at the side of the mouth before ducking around and out through the open door. With a bellow, he was after me in a flash. I ran down into the dining room and stopped in shock. My mother lay still under a tall china cabinet. The side of her head poured blood onto the floor. I ran to the kitchen with the demon not far behind. I grabbed for a knife from the rack, turned and stood waiting as he stopped in the doorway, bloody mouthed and mad eyed.

God set me down at a fork in the night road, he growled, and meeting your mother clouded my judgment. Unwittingly, I took the sinner’s path; and then you came along. Both of you have sorely tried my patience, and I have failed. I am not Job. It is over for me but you will accompany me beyond this life to whatever place I am destined to occupy. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous; but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

I found a voice that came to me from beyond my tender years, and it was painful speaking through my injured and swelling jaw. Don’t quote Psalms to me, you bastard; your actions have nothing to do with God or destiny, Father; they are no more than the plain cruelty of a coward. I may well go with you momentarily but I will refuse to occupy the same part of hell that you do and I will cut you before you take me.

He moved across the kitchen and I was raising the butcher’s knife when his hand shot forward and gripped my wrist. My concealed left hand came round in an arc holding a small paring knife and I embedded it in the side of his throat, twisted and pulled. By sheer luck, not judgment, I must have pierced the carotid artery for, in an instant, blood sprayed down on top of me. His attack was forgotten as he fought to stop the bleeding. Get me a towel, he wheezed.

I ignored his plea and walked from the kitchen as he struggled towards the towel rack. With difficulty, I moved the cabinet off my dear mother. She was dead. Tears blinded me as I stood up. I went back into the kitchen where my father was now sitting with his back to the kitchen bench trying to stem the flow of blood from a wound that was larger than I would’ve imagined. His skin was gray. I lifted the big knife off the floor and knelt down beside him.

You killed her, you unholy bastard. I said this calmly knowing that shouting would have no impact on him now. So much for a man of God; so much for your destiny. The road was not forked where we entered your life; you had passed that fork long before we became your punching bags and you had already taken a wrong turn. You murdered your wife and now I’m your judge, old man, and guess what, I am sending you to hell with the use of this. I held up the large blade. He made a feeble grasp for the hand which held the method of his end. This is for all the suffering you laid on us and for the taking of a gentle life. If hell is not your destination and your god is waiting to welcome you, tell him to improve his choices. Using both hands, I plunged the knife into the other side of his neck and left it there. I pressed my thumb into his blood and placed it against his forehead. The mark of Cain, I said softly. Without looking at the result, I walked out of the kitchen.

I knelt by my mother again and pulled her dress into a proper and fitting shape. I went up to the bathroom and returned with a wash cloth. I cleaned the blood from her soft, beautiful countenance, kissed her mouth and left her there in repose. In later years, I would realize I had not loved my mother as a child normally does but I felt a strong pity for her in that she, not the demon, had made the wrong choice.

My whole face was throbbing but the adrenaline, and three painkillers I swallowed, held the pain in check.

I found a large pair of scissors and went to the bathroom where I cut my hair very short and as neatly as was possible. I swept up the dead hair and flushed it down the toilet. I showered my father’s filthy blood away, and changed into loose jeans, a shirt and a cap, before filling a backpack with the basics I would need. I took all of their rings, my mother’s bracelets and chains and any cash I could find, which included the contents of my father’s small safe in the study. In the safe I found a biscuit tin which contained bundles of notes of all denominations. Church collection money, I guessed. I took it.

I left my bloody clothes on the bathroom floor since I was intelligent enough to know I could not cover the fact that I was the killer and would be blamed for both murders more than likely. I left no notes protesting my innocence for, in using the knives, I had stooped to the level of my late father.

I went back to the kitchen and, with some difficulty, removed the wallet from his back pocket. I emptied it on the Kitchen bench. I searched through every slot in the wallet and eventually found what I needed, a copy of his pin number. I set the wallet on the bench, minus his saving card.

I left them together, but apart and, after extinguishing all the lights and locking up, I walked away from the only home I’d ever known; away from the Blue Ridge Mountains. I was old enough to know the years of severe mistreatment had scarred me and the last night of my first life was an underlining of that statement. I didn’t realize how badly for some years until the second time I took the life of another man like my father.

2

WINTER, 2010.

Kira Lang’s African ancestors must have had a strong drive and determination to succeed in their new land after slavery was abolished. They would have been hard workers who strove to succeed at the highest level a colored person could achieve in those segregated days. It was obvious they had moved into the general Northern population and, over a period of 200 or so years, had mixed, mingled and inter-married Asian, Caucasian and native American people.

The end result was a tall, sturdy, young woman of extreme beauty. Her skin resembled that of a white woman with a deep, all over tan and her thick, black hair fell uncurled to her shoulders. She had the darkest of almond shaped eyes above a wide mouth and strong, straight nose. The warrior qualities of her Zulu and Indian forebears were tempered by the phlegmatic intellect and work ethic of her Asian ancestors.

With her physical attributes, one would think it would be an advantage to put them to use but she seldom did, except in the secret confines of the club ‘Doors’. Because of her job, she dressed and made up to conceal her beauty where she could. She never dated and, at 37 years of age, had only loved one other in her life; that was way back in college. It was safe to say, she was career orientated.

Lang parked her black, 1984 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet in a side street and walked back to the Big Wally Burgers car park. She steered a course between the cruisers and unmarked cars towards the tape. John Deering met her halfway. He looked up at the sky. At least it’s not raining or snowing.

Deering, a 42 year-old father of three youngsters, was a big guy; an ex-college linebacker who stood at six feet and five inches, broad shouldered and wide-browed with a shock of fair hair. He was easy going enough without smiling too much and when he was on the job, he was on the job. No social conversing, mind on the matter at hand. He was an ideal partner for Lang.

John. The greeting was officially friendly but she was well aware of his, and others, minor resentment to the fact that she had made sergeant ahead of the older, more senior guys on her watch. What have we got?

Body in the bushes, name of Zack Miller. Blade left stuck in his gullet. His family is still parked in the restaurant.

Any witnesses? She smiled dryly.

He gave her a look. Whole bunch of them waiting to describe what went down.

None then. So fill me in.

The kid, his son, found him. Says some stranger came to their table and asked who was drivin’ the Bronco, apologizes and says he’s reversed into the thing. Zack tells his family to stay put and storms out with the stranger. They go outside, and Zack gets done in right here.

So you obviously have a good description of the stranger?

Reasonable but we haven’t laid anything on the family yet. The kids and the mom are quietly traumatized, as you’d guess they would be. We’ll get a sketch artist to work with each one tomorrow when they’re in better shape. I could’ve handled this scene, partner. There’s nothin’ worse than having your night off disrupted. He smiled.

I’ll make sure your concern for me warrants a passing mention in dispatches, Detective, she said dryly as they arrived at the body. Lang donned shoe covers and gloves before ducking under the tape. She looked for the least disturbed patch of ground and approached the body.

A switchblade protruded from the throat of the victim, and the ground cover beneath his head was soaked in blood, dyed a dark purple by the halogen lights above. Just inside the tape C.S.I. techs were still setting up spotlights at random locations on the periphery of the murder scene.

The grey haired, portly M.E., Richard Valetta, stood up as she approached. Pretty straightforward, Kira; knife wounds in both sides of the neck, both killing wounds to left and right common carotids. Whoever the perpetrator was, he was quick and he meant to kill. Next to no struggle; one wound killed him and one was for show. At position one, the knife was twisted to allow blood flow. All but bled out. There’s a clear, bloody thumb print on the forehead. This victim was not a small man and to place the knife so deep the attacker must have perfected a technique. Valetta could find no other serious injuries but told her he would have a report delivered to her the following afternoon once he had carried out his mandatory autopsy.

Thanks, Richard. Valetta didn’t acknowledge but she knew he had heard. John, release the C.S.I. hounds. We need the thumb print impression ASAP. You and Malcolm have a preliminary chat with the family when they’re up to it. I’ll wander round the others who were in the place when the body was found; talk to the Manager. Most of the customers are gone, but we took and verified addresses before we let them depart.

—

Okay, Mr… ?

D’Angeles, Senora, but please call me Rod. He understood the look she gave him. It is easier and better for business than Rodriguez.

Okay, Rod it is. You get a good look at the guy who accompanied Mister Miller from your restaurant?

Yes, I did. He was a customer here; followed the asshole and his family in through the door.

Why did you judge Miller to be an asshole, Rod?

First, he complain about the service then he abuse one of my juniors. After that, at his table, he punch his wife in the arm and then, a while later, he slap his boy hard in the face. I went to him and told him we have other customers who want to enjoy their meals. He had been drinking. He told me to fuck off or I would get trouble too. I was going to ring the patrol but the other man approaches him and they go outside. Guess someone else was thinking too, how ignorant this man was.

Murder’s murder, Rod, asshole or not. So, what did the stranger look like?

He was a tallish guy, average build. He was wearing, not sunglasses, but, you know, those tinted glasses that people with sensitive eyes wear; the ones with blue lenses. He was dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, sneakers too, expensive ones with raised soles; black hair to shoulder and a flat cap.

You got an eye for that sort of detail then?

I don’t rely solely on the cameras in case of robbery. If someone grabs my attention, I take note of that person.

Okay, Rod, don’t leave the country, I’ll probably want to talk with you again.

The small, swarthy man smiled, Where would I go, Detective. Cuba is out of the question. And Big Wally is my life. He stood from the table. How long before I can continue my business?

Sorry, Rod, you’re closed until tomorrow morning.

Fuck, Rod said as he walked away.

—

Later, Deering and Lang sat at a table sipping coffee.

Random? asked Deering.

She looked around the place then back to the other Detective and shrugged as she sipped the bad coffee.

Deering continued, So, the boy was wrong; the killer didn’t come into the restaurant afterwards; he followed the family. Takes a big pair of balls to take a well built, angry guy outside and stab him in the throat. Questions; was he looking for the family man? How did he get him into the bushes there, without a struggle? Did he just snap in the restaurant? Alternatively, has he done this before? Was he disguised and looking for trouble?

Don’t know yet, she said, rubbing her eyes. When CSI have taken molds and picked up all the prints around the Restaurant, the toilets and the body, and we’ve got the identikit drawings, we’ll attack the database; see if we can come up with anything. The camera may give us something.

What’s my partner’s gut feeling?

Gut feeling at this stage, honestly? He nodded, smiling. This guy was a passing phantom and could be a state or two from here by now.

I concur, Sergeant Lang.

3

Journal Entry from Thursday February 11, 2010.

Idon’t, as a rule, partake of the tasteless fare that’s on offer at roadside diners and burger-stops but I hadn’t had a meal all day because I had been undergoing medical testing that required starvation tactics being employed by the clinic. The neon lights caught my eye just past the Cleveland city limits and, fool that I am, I decided to have as healthy a meal as they could muster from the unhealthy crap in their kitchen. I wasn’t in disguise as I sat quietly and ate what was offered up as food, paying no attention to the people around me.

I glanced up from my cardboard box when a big guy shouted at his wife. The kind of person I hate with a vengeance. I had returned to gaze at my meal when I heard a sound from the past I know only too well; the dull slap of a fist on flesh. I looked up as the woman, with teary eyes, was rubbing her arm. I went back to my meal but the guy was drunk and getting louder, directing his rants to the child beside him. When I raised my eyes to him he was staring straight at me. You want something, Shitface? I lowered my eyes and a few minutes later the manager came out and spoke to him. Words were exchanged and the boss left for the safety of the kitchen. The big guy slapped the kid who sat looking into space with tears on his cheeks.

Here before me sat a portrait of my former family. I made a decision.

I left most of whatever it was I’d been attempting to eat and went outside. I watched through the window as I prepared myself in the back of my BMW. There were about seven people in the place and it was obvious which one owned the Bronco. I re-entered the restaurant wearing my lucky blue glasses.

Now, sitting here at my desk eating actual nutritional fare, I feel as I always do in the aftermath of a righteous cleansing; justified. Another mother and her offspring free from the bullying oppression of a man not deserving of his place in society. And like always, as he died, I looked into the face of my father and smiled.

After the kill, I returned to the diner as a different looking person and ordered a burger with fries and rings.

I was actually enjoying the fresh burger when the Miller boy found the body and came screaming into the restaurant. I watched the wife’s reaction to the news carried inside by her frantic offspring, and it was one of confusion and fear; no tears, no histrionics but just the worry of what the future might hold now that the breadwinner was gone. Down the road a way, when she finds another partner, that abused soul will realize the favor I’ve done for her tonight. Lady, show a modicum of intelligence. Select a gentle, law abiding, responsible person, and enjoy the life every decent woman is entitled to lead. Her husband didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her or me.

The restaurant owner didn’t venture out but did call the police. The wife sat motionless where she had been all along, ashen faced but tearless. She eventually moved but only to pull the boy into her embrace.

When I returned to the restaurant, as I said, I was a totally different individual to the one who drove the sword of the downtrodden into his throat. And, if the opinion has entered your mind, I’m not schizophrenic.

The beautiful detective in charge talked to me, and I was suitably pale and shaken. I gave her a real address and phone number two States away before offering up a friend’s name if a reference was needed; all actual people but not connected directly to me. I volunteered the names of my friends’ children, supplied a business card, and anything else that may’ve been required. She did not ask me if I had killed the man in the car park and, with the production of a card, she appeared to accept, for the meantime, that I was on legitimate business in the area. I gave a rough description of a man I had passed in the parking area. I told them he was pretty tall, maybe six feet or more, was wearing dark clothing, and had black hair and blue glasses. I said he had bid me a good evening; which I had thought odd, I told her, something that not too many people would do these days.

I am well aware the liar adds too much detail so I called a halt there except to say I didn’t see him get into a vehicle. My own coffee cup shook as my trembling hand raised it to take a sip. This was not lost on the very good-looking woman.

You, my good and loyal pals, may mistakenly start out making the judgment that you had a serial killer dwelling in your midst. Years ago, I asked all these questions of myself. Am I a serial killer? What is that? I mean, what is the true definition of a serial killer? How many times have you watched television shows or read books where experts claim that killing of the serial type is an addiction. My victims are intermittent, spanning several years and many places. These experts, you know, the psychiatrists, psychologists and profilers, say this type of person kills without motive. I always have the same motive. No structured personality, they maintain. I feel I have a good personality with lots of friends and business acquaintances. Abuse is another trait oft dragged out. Now there I fit the bill. Above average intellect; again, I think I fit the bill. The experts say that serial killers only play a role in life as an aside to their illness. I love my life, and am fulfilled because of it and yet I have killed many, many times. I never, ever take trophies, and I have never harmed a woman simply because I have yet to come across one who physically bullies her husband and has no compassion for her offspring. That is not to say there are no such women. So much for criminal profiling.

When I walked out of that pleasant little roadside diner last night, I drove home with a clear mind and what I considered to be a pure heart. Today I have retrieved my journal from its secret place and made this latest entry.

This killing was messy by my standards but Zack Miller proved difficult to isolate and, in the end, I had to gamble more than I have in the past. I may not have to heft Diodorus Siculus’ sword of Damocles for another five years or more.

4

WINTER, 2010.

Kira Lang owned a house on a small lot at the east end of Perkins Avenue. Her father and a few faithful saved souls from the gospel hall had built it and the ownership had passed to Lang when her father’s mind ceased to function rationally.

The house took up its full legal measure of space on the block and was too big by far for her needs. It was erected in the bitsa style. Bits brick-built, bits colonial, bits in the Palladio style and so on. Taken as a whole, the home looked totally different to anything in the neighborhood and its crowning glories were the dormer windows and two high chimneys. It had five bedrooms—three on the second floor and two under the roof—two large bathrooms, an ensuite, her father’s study, various cupboards and a passage completed the upstairs. Downstairs were a kitchen, dining space, another roomy study/library, parlor, garage and a family room leading onto a narrow patio before a small garden ran to the fence and down both sides of the house. Cleveland realtors had been offering to buy it for years, and at times she had been tempted but then she moved through the house and heard the long ago whispers of her gentle creators, so the temptation waned.