The Killings Read online

  THE KILLINGS

  J. F. Gonzalez & Wrath James White

  Sinister Grin Press

  Austin, TX

  sinistergrinpress.com

  Published by Sinister Grin Press

  Austin, TX

  www.sinistergrinpress.com

  April 2012

  “The Killings” (c) 2012 by J.F. Gonzalez & Wrath James White

  All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the

  publisher’s written consent, except for the purposes of review.

  Cover Art by Kyushik Shin www.shinybrush.com

  Cover Design by Shane McKenzie

  To Mom - WJW

  To Mike Lombardo, who takes great delight in being killed in my stories - JFG

  Acknowledgements

  Both authors would like to thank Shane McKenzie, Kyushik Shin, Bob Strauss, and Tod Clark.

  J. F. Gonzalez would like to thank Cathy and Hannah, Brian Keene, Deborah Daughtee, Steve Huff, Kelli Owen, and Bob Ford.

  Wrath James White would like to thank his wife Christie and Monica J. O’Rourke.

  Authors’ Note

  The true cases of the Atlanta child killings by Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Ripper murders of 1911-12 provide the inspiration and the backdrop of The Killings. We have taken certain fictional liberties with both cases. While we have used the name and likeness of Wayne Williams as a character in this novel, our fictional depiction of him is based on a matter of public record. Likewise, we have changed the names and dates of several incidents from both cases and changed other things for the matter of verisimilitude.

  For those interested in getting the real facts behind both cases rather than a fictionalized account, we direct you to The Atlanta Child Murders: The Night Stalker by Jack Mallard, and The Atlanta Ripper: The Unsolved Case of the Gate City’s Most Infamous Murders by Jeffrey Wells.

  - June 28, 2011-January 13, 2012

  - Altoona/Lititz, PA

  - Austin, TX

  Prologue

  June 15, 1911, Atlanta, Georgia

  It was after eleven p.m. when Tanya Smith left the home of her employer, Mr. and Mrs. Henry E. Monroe, and began making the long walk to her home in the Grant Park area of the city.

  It had been a full day for Tanya. The day had started with Tanya preparing breakfast for her employers and their three children, who fell between the ages of six and thirteen. After breakfast there was the matter of cleaning the dishes, and doing the laundry and hanging it out to dry in their spacious backyard. After that she had to dust and sweep the entire living area of the thirteen-room mansion and change the linens in the guest bedrooms - the Monroes were having guests from South Carolina that weekend.

  Earl Leiber, the Monroe’s butler, had visited the general store that morning, and Tanya assisted him in bringing his purchases into the house and distributing the contents - canned and dried goods in the large pantry; items that needed to be cooled were stored in the cold room; and cleaning and other household goods in the butler’s pantry. In between these duties she prepared lunch and assisted the Monroe’s private chef with dinner, and then she worked right through dinner service and its cleanup.

  There were other tasks as well, some that could have waited until the next day, but Tanya didn’t mind. The Monroes could be uppity at times, but it was better dealing with them than with her husband, Bryan, especially if he’d been out drinking. Better to work the extra hours to avoid that. Besides, Bryan was usually asleep when she came home late from work. He surely never complained about the money the Monroes paid her. For a maid, she didn’t do too badly. So many of her peers had it much worse.

  Tanya reflected on this during her walk. She did have it pretty good, all things considered. She was twenty-five and married with no children. She grew up not too far from where she lived now with Bryan. Her parents had been born into slavery but had never really known that term as she thought of it; they’d been younger than six when President Lincoln ushered in Emancipation. Despite that, her parents and Tanya herself had been in bondage (most White folks she knew would not consider her current conditions to be bondage, but she begged to differ).

  While they were paid for their labors and were considered free in the eyes of the federal government, the weight of the past was heavy. Many of her peers were mistreated by their employers; there were beatings, rapes; Negro men were still lynched for anything - for the vague suggestion of a possible crime, for speaking to a White person without being addressed first, and for the simple sport of it. Tanya knew of much worse too - of White men who reveled in the sport of brutalizing her people for their own sadistic pleasures. She’d heard of a group of dog fighters in Cobb County who also held matches in which two Negro men had been forced to fight it out bare-fisted until one or the other died. The Ku Klux Klan, long thought to be dormant by most people, had a strong presence in this region and was beginning to make a comeback.

  And her husband, Bryan, was a drunk who sometimes got too loose with his fists.

  But they had friends. They had family. They did things together on rare days off - watching the horse races on the south side; shows at the Nickelodeons downtown, when they could afford it; church on Sundays followed by dinner at her parents’ house or his; on warm afternoons a barbecue; and reading together on quiet evenings - Tanya was teaching Bryan how to read with H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha series (Bryan had loved She). For the most part, it was a good life.

  If she could only get Bryan to stop drinking, it could be better.

  Her trek home took her through the West End - the White part of town - and she was never bothered while walking through these neighborhoods. She knew she had to dress as if she knew her place in life. Because she only walked through these parts of town on her way to and from work, this presented no problem. She wore her maid uniform on days she worked. This was acceptable for a Negro woman walking through the West End. She was occasionally mocked - hey, nigger this, hey, nigger that - but the catcalls went in one ear and out the other. She knew not to acknowledge the insults. It was survival. She knew her place. To meet such catcalls with a response would only invite something worse. If she ignored it she lived to fight another day.

  The clean suburban homes and buildings along the business district gradually gave way to older neighborhoods. These in turn gave way to the more familiar neighborhood she called home. The deeper she walked through this area the less she saw White faces and the more she saw Negroes and other races - mostly Indians, even a few Mexicans and Chinese. While statistically crime was much higher in this area, Tanya felt safer here. She was in her own neighborhood. She knew this place. She knew the people. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  She was five blocks from home now, walking down Carson Street. Johnson’s Saloon was on the corner, and she could hear raucous laughter from inside, and underneath that, music - good ragtime, from the sound of it. Georgia had passed a law prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages last year, but that didn’t stop business at the many roadhouses and saloons in the area. For the most part, the police turned a blind eye to it. They were roadhouse patrons too. Tanya wondered when the police would be forced to crack down harder on places like Johnson’s. The sooner the better, she thought.

  A group of two women and three men were hanging out beneath the gas lamp on the corner. They laughed at some joke being shared amongst themselves. Tanya nodded and smiled as she passed by.

  Four blocks from home. She made a left down Duke Street. Here the streets were narrow, lined with brick buildings and housing apartments. Most of
the windows in these buildings were dark, but a few oil lamps burned behind drawn curtains. The door to one of the apartments opened and a man stepped out. Tanya caught only a fleeting glimpse of him as she continued her way home and dismissed him just as quickly. Negro, a few years older than her, broad-shouldered and tall, very well-dressed. Probably leaving his woman’s home or heading out to meet a woman.

  Tanya continued on past Chestnut Street to the outskirts of this section of town that gave way to a wooded glen. A shortcut through this glen would take her on a direct course to her home, which bordered the area on the other side (to travel to that section of town through the regular city streets would take her two blocks out of her way, and then she had to double back; cutting through the woods was a shortcut). The well-dressed Negro man was walking behind her, but this was no problem. She felt safe in this part of town. This was her neighborhood.

  She had just left the warren of buildings and was approaching the field to make the shortcut through the woods when she heard a voice call out to her. “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

  Tanya stopped and turned around. The man’s voice was soft, almost musical, but it carried well. He was a good twenty yards from her, walking toward her. The trees in the glen rustled with a soft breeze. “Yes?”

  “You forgot something, ma’am,” the man said.

  Tanya blinked in surprise. “I did?” Did I drop my purse? she thought.

  “Yes, you did,” the man said. He was suddenly standing in front of her, tall, very handsome, with a wide grin that didn’t seem right. Tanya blinked, wondering what she’d forgotten. The man wasn’t holding anything. She was about to take a step back when she felt a sudden punch to her stomach. She almost fell over but a firm hand gripped her shoulder, holding her up. She blinked, eyes swimming in a haze of vertigo as a line of spit ran out of her mouth and hit the dirt.

  The man’s fist was buried in her stomach, and pain radiated out from the point of impact. She felt his fingers tighten on her collarbone, and then the fist on her stomach traveled up toward her chest. She felt an explosion of fire trace its way along the path his fist made, and her waist and upper thighs felt warm and wet. Damnit, I done pissed myself, Tanya thought. Her body jerked up, held in place by the strong grip on her shoulder, and there was another explosion of pain in her lower ribcage. There was also a sound she didn’t like - the same sound she heard when she was butchering a hog and her knife struck bone.

  The man pulled his fist away from her and she saw the blade slide out of her abdomen, spilling blood all over her feet and the ground.

  Tanya opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t. The only thing that came out was more drool, but this time it was tinged with blood.

  A hand grabbed her hair, pulling her head back. The man’s eyes blazed in an unholy grimace of lust. Tanya tried to scream again, but there was another flash of the blade followed by an incredible pain in her throat, and then she was falling to the ground, aware of the incredible pool of blood already gathering there. And then she was out.

  ***

  After he slit her throat, he dragged her body into the copse of trees and got some good camouflage behind some bushes. He bent down, being careful to make sure Duke Road was clear and nobody was coming to investigate anything. All was silent. Then he went back to work.

  The woman was still alive, but he didn’t care. He tore through her maid uniform and found the jagged gash he’d cut through the woman’s abdomen. He pulled the clothing off from around the wound and reveled in the incredible scent of blood. He tilted his head back, his eyes closed, and breathed in the wet, coppery aroma. It was intoxicating. Liberating. His nostrils flared as he basked in its scent. He wished he could bathe in her blood, that he could excise her choice parts and take them with him, but there wasn’t time for that. He had to get his rocks off, and he had to do it quick.

  He cast another quick look around, his breath coming in short, harsh gasps. Nobody was coming.

  He had his way with the woman. The blade of his straight razor tore through her abdomen, making deep cuts within the viscera. As he cut, he seemed to go in a kind of trance, intoxicated by his bloodlust, seemingly possessed by some madness. He pulled her intestines out of her abdominal cavity and he orgasmed, coming all over the inside of his trousers. He panted harshly, cutting through the viscera of her bowels, the smell of blood and other bodily fluids heavy and musky.

  When he was finished - it never took that long, a minute perhaps - he shifted his penis around, the sticky wetness of his spunk coating the crotch of his trousers. He always came when he was cutting them up. This time he got off quicker than he would have liked to. There were still things he wanted to do with her. He bent over her, his bloodlust rising. His knife flashed and dipped in, cutting deep.

  It didn’t take long for him to get aroused again. His erection strained against his trousers. The heady aroma of her digestive system didn’t get him excited; this time, it was the look and feel of her viscera as he pulled it out of her abdominal cavity.

  The heat of her insides wafted at him like a furnace. He took in another deep lungful of air, suppressed a shudder, and quickly got hold of himself. Not now. Not tonight. Once is enough.

  Stopping was always the hard part. If he only had a place he could take them where he could have a bit more privacy. Inside his head, a malevolent presence urged him to sate his every perverse passion on the woman’s corpse. He called it the Fury - or that’s what it called itself. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that its will was nearly irresistible. It knew all the buttons to push, which strings to pull. It knew all his secret, dirty, violent, evil lusts, and it encouraged them, stoked the fire with kerosene. It was his own little band leader, waving its hands and urging the percussion section behind his ribcage toward a frenzied Ragtime crescendo. The rhythm was wild, seductive. It would be so easy to give in to it now, to lie down and roll in the woman’s blood and entrails like a kitten with yarn.

  He took several heaving breaths, trying to slow his pulse, quiet the Fury’s tempestuous rage. With great effort he managed to collect his wits and catch his breath. His clothes were filthy from the romp in the bushes. Blood drenched his black suit.

  He looked over toward Duke Street, peering over the bushes. Deserted.

  Turning back to the woman, who now lay lifeless before him, he scrambled to his feet and began weaving his way through the trees, toward the outskirts of town, which was probably where this woman had been going. He paused once to pull a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wipe the blood off his hands and face. He checked his clothes for blood. A great amount had soaked into his black slacks and his dark suit coat; this late at night, nobody would notice. Spots of blood had stained his shirt. He stuffed the bloodied handkerchief in his front pocket and pulled his suit coat together to cover the stains and continued on, forging his way through the trees. He’d been watching this area for months now, and there were quite a few chambermaids who lived in the neighborhood that bordered the other side of these woods. He could emerge out of the woods on that end of town, skirt the edges until he reached the center of town, and then be on his way.

  Twenty minutes later he walked down Main Street with a calm and purposeful step, a look of contentment on his face. From a distance he looked just like any other young, proud Negro man who might be strolling home after a night on the town.

  ONE

  July 11, 1911, Atlanta, Georgia

  It was a bad summer. Every Saturday there were more killings, and every Sunday the papers were filled with lurid reports of mutilation and murder. Journalists were delighted to have something interesting to write about. Their articles scared the Negro community into stunned silence, wondering if they were next. Parents didn’t let their kids play outside anymore, and women made sure to get home before dark. The churches were full of colored folks praying for the murderer’s capture and their own salvation.

  Robert Jackson would have been there himself if he didn’t have to work this morning. He was pla
nning on catching the afternoon service.

  Robert wiped the sweat from his brow as he walked down Carson Street. He was twenty-three years old, tall, lean, and broad-shouldered. He favored dark slacks and white shirts on most days, especially during the summer. The hat he wore today was tan with a broad rim. He considered ducking into one of the saloons to get out of the sun for a little while, maybe have himself a beer, but drinking made him sleepy, and as the proprietor and sole employee of Jackson’s Barber Shop, he couldn’t afford to spend all morning drinking in a bar and show up late for work. He envied those who could. But mornings were always the busiest time of the day for him; that’s when all the business owners and professional Negroes came in to get their haircuts and shaves so they looked sharp for work. Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings were the busiest times. Friday was when all the gangsters, hustlers, musicians, and nightclub performers came in to get sharp before the speakeasies kicked into full-swing; and Sundays were when all the drunks, harlots, gamblers, and adulterers got themselves cleaned up for church to beg the sweet Lord for forgiveness from all the sinning they had done the night before.

  The sun had not yet reached its full height in the sky but already the heat and sweltering humidity was so oppressive that Robert had trouble thinking about anything else. His mind was filled with thoughts of lemonade, iced tea, and the occasional indulgence of imagining himself walking down the street to Ms. Millie’s and buying some of the homemade ice cream she sold off her front porch.

  The city always got mean in the summer. The heat brought out the worst in folks. Murders in August were not uncommon in Atlanta - people getting stabbed in bar fights, shot over back-alley card games, husbands killing their wives, wives killing their husbands. That was all normal. What had been going on recently was something different. It was bad and it was only getting worse.