Reverse Metamorphosis book one of the Irrevocable Change trilogy (28 page)

In a night stand beside a king sized bed in
the larger bedroom, he found what he was looking for; two more
plastic containers, one of them full of pictures of Lizzy. On a
shelf in the clothes closet, he found a box with packages of
negatives labeled with each woman’s name, along with a 35mm camera.
After collecting the remaining containers of pictures, negatives
and the camera he finished checking out the other rooms. After
stepping into the kitchen he removed two cans of Coke from the
refrigerator and put them in his pockets. Turning off lights as he
went he made his way toward the front door, making sure nothing was
out of place.

Out in the hallway he again used the picks to
set the dead bolt, left the building with the bag over his shoulder
and put it in the car trunk. While there he picked up a small bag
containing Weaver’s badge and service revolver. Since this was
Friday night he had no idea how long he might have to wait for
Rocco to come home. The fake moustache and the plastic rimmed
safety glasses were put in the glove box for temporary safe
keeping. One Coke was opened and the other was placed under the car
on the asphalt to keep it cool. From the sack in the seat he
removed two brass knuckles, one for each hand. Being as it was
close to Halloween he had one other prop to remove from the bag; a
full face rubber mask. The only other items he needed were the gun
used to kill Weaver and his own gun, both of which he placed in his
pants pockets.

By ten o’clock he had finished the first
Coke. At midnight he had finished the second Coke. At one a.m. the
temperature was twenty seven degrees and he was standing behind the
Firebird getting rid of both Cokes. Five cars had entered the lot,
two parked in garages and three in open stalls.

A Mercedes sedan entered the lot a few
minutes past two o’clock and parked in an open stall. The man and
woman, who were dressed formally, staggered unsteadily yelling and
laughing loudly as they entered the building through the far
entrance.

At three thirteen the red Eldorado carefully
rounded the driveway entrance. The door on garage 2306 began to
open as the car swung wide to line up with the opening. Rocco had
arrived home, and he was alone. Clay pulled the Halloween mask on,
stepped out of the car, looked both ways and hustled over to the
line of garages to the open doorway. Standing against the siding
separating the two adjacent garages he waited. The car engine had
been shut off and the lights turned off. The driver’s door opened
and he heard cursing interspersed with other muted conversation.
“God damn bitch. Feed her drinks all fucking night and then she
decides she doesn’t FEEEEL like fucking. If a fucking police car
hadn’t been outside the bar I’d have fucked her ass right there in
the parking lot.”

Rocco stepped up to the doorway and Clay
threw a hard right into his mid section. Rocco had caught sight of
Richard Nixon as the figure stepped in front of the opening and
started his punch. There was a look of startled amusement when he
saw the rubber mask, but the expression quickly changed as he saw
the arm moving and then felt the blow. He exhaled strongly as the
wind was knocked out of him and couldn’t make a sound, except for a
raspy, gasping attempt at breathing.

By then Clay’s left hand had landed on his
right jaw and he heard the jaw bone shatter under the impact of the
brass knuckle. Rocco went down on his back and Clay continued to
land blow after blow to his head and mid section, until the man lay
still on the concrete floor between the wall and the car. The door
opener light was still on; Clay straightened up, stepped past Rocco
to the doorway, glanced outside and couldn’t see anything to alarm
him. He tugged on the rope attached to the release mechanism on the
door traveler unit. With a tug he moved the garage door downward
until it was two inches from being closed.

Taking the 9mm bullets and magazine from his
pocket he put each bullet between Rocco’s right forefinger and
thumb. The loaded magazine got prints on it next and then it was
inserted back into the Italian automatic pistol. The gun and
silencer was placed in Rocco’s right hand for prints and they were
put in the Caddy’s glove box. Weaver’s badge and Smith & Wesson
service revolver got his prints and were placed into Rocco’s right
jacket pocket.

By then Rocco was stirring and starting to
moan softly. Clay put a brass knuckle back on his right hand and
hit his victim again, knocking him unconscious again. Spotting a
five gallon bucket against the wall, he moved it over near Rocco
and placed the man’s right foot up on it. Then he stomped on the
extended leg and heard the resulting crack as the leg broke. Rocco
whimpered at the sudden additional pain, but failed to regain
consciousness.

“I bet you don’t wander away from here now
Lover Boy” Clay said to his inert victim. As he put the bucket back
where he had found it the light bulb went out. Feeling his way over
to the door in the darkness he raised the door, stepped outside and
closed the door softly, so as not to engage the automatic track
mechanism.

Back at the Firebird he removed the blood
covered jacket. After removing the sweaty mask he put the bloodied
gloves inside it and wrapped the mask in the jacket. He was
breathing heavily from the exertion and the excitement of the
attack. Inside the car a new pair of gloves was removed from the
paper bag, and the rolled up jacket was placed inside the empty
bag. Clay started the car, pulled out of the parking space and left
the apartment complex. At an all night gas station three blocks
away he used the pay phone at the edge of the lot to call the local
police dispatcher. Anonymously he reported seeing a man being
beaten in garage 2306 behind building 2300 in the Woodlands
Apartment Complex.

At the warehouse Clay took everything out of
the trunk including the explosives Joey had provided. The small
bomb was placed on the rear floor and two five gallon cans of
diesel fuel were set in the back seat. The car was driven six
blocks from the warehouse and parked under an elevated highway
exchange. Both side windows were lowered and the timer on the bomb
was set for five minutes. Clay started away from the car at a fast
jog and was two blocks away when he heard the explosion. The fire
behind him was reflected in the window glass of an office building
across the street as he continued jogging back to the
warehouse.

Once again inside the building he changed his
clothing and put his work clothes, shoes, and the mask and gloves
in a pile, and then sat down with the pictures and negatives. After
separating Lizzy’s images from the rest he picked up the clothing
and walked outside to build a fire in a burning barrel at the back
of the building. Slowly he fed the pictures and negatives of his
sister and her abusers into the flames, except for one photo in
which the faces of both of Rocco’s friends was clear. The camera
body was opened and it and the film inside were fed to the flames.
Then the bloody clothing, gloves, and mask were put in the barrel.
When the flames receded he used a narrow piece of a board to stir
the ashes, so no visible evidence remained to speak of the
episode.

Back inside the building he sorted through
the remaining pictures and found one of each nude woman where she
had been posed alone, standing, kneeling or laying on a bed in
suggestive poses. He wrote the name of the girl in the photo on
each picture and those, along with the notebook, were placed in his
car under the floor mat. The remaining photographs and negatives
were placed in a large gym bag and put in the trunk. By then it was
after six in the morning. Stopping at the first pay phone he saw,
he dialed the number of the girl he had been seeing and woke her
up.

“Hi Carol, this is Clay. Are you alone? I’m
lonely; I’d like to come over.”

“Yeah, now.”

“Yes, I know what time it is; but I’d like to
be close to you this morning.”

“No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“Good, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

At two the next afternoon, after Carol had
fed him a late breakfast, Clay found a payphone where he could make
calls from his car. He started down the names of the women listed
in the notebook calling each one. His plan was to let them know he
had the photographs and negatives in his possession. He promised
them the pictures would be destroyed if they did as they were
instructed. They were to deny any involvement with John Rocco and
deny the existence of the photographs taken of them. To conceal his
identity from Lizzy he put five marbles in his mouth and talked
around them. Luckily he only swallowed one and had a short choking
coughing fit while on the phone. He was able to reach four of the
twelve women listed besides Lizzy.

By then the evening newspapers were on the
stands and he read an article under the headline “Suspected Cop
Killer in Custody”. The police had John Allen Rocco in protective
custody at the intensive care unit of SAINT MARY’S HOSPITAL. He had
been stabilized in critical condition due to a severe beating he
had received by an unknown assailant. An anonymous source had
reported the attack. Several pieces of incriminating evidence had
been discovered when Rocco was taken into custody and the District
Attorneys office was waiting for the results of ballistics test
currently being run.

Stopping at the bus station, he took the gym
bag inside and placed it in a rental storage locker. It would be
safe there until he was ready to destroy the remaining
photographs.

T
he next stop was at
St. Mary’s Hospital. After waiting almost fifteen minutes, he got a
parking space near the front of the parking lot and close to the
main entrance. Getting directions to the intensive care unit was
easy, even before he spotted a guard sitting outside the main doors
leading into it. Taking a seat in the waiting area assigned to the
I. C. U. he settled in and read magazines until five thirty when he
recognized Rocco’s friends approaching the nurses station. The tall
one asked what room John Rocco was in and the nurse on duty told
them Mr. Rocco was not allowed to have visitors. He then inquired
about the patients condition and was told “Mr. Rocco is stabilized
and resting, but still in very critical condition.”

As the men walked away and toward the hallway
leading back to the main entrance, the short one said, “What should
we do now Greg?”

The reply was straight forward, “Now we get
the hell out of here and wait for Johnny to get better before we
talk to him.”

“How long do you think it will take?” the
short one asked of his friend.

“How the fuck should I know, Charlie? I ain’t
no God Damn doctor.”

Charlie ignored his foul tempered friend and
continued talking, “I can’t believe Johnny killed a cop. He ain’t
no killer. There’s got to be a mistake about him being
involved.”

Clay followed the two men out of the building
wondering what intelligence level their friend Johnny must be on.
Or, maybe he couldn’t find anyone with a brain to go along with his
scheme so he settled for these two.

The men left the hospital and walked back
five rows, toward the center of the parking lot before both got
into a four year old green Dodge pick up truck. Clay had been
watching the two men from the hospital entrance area before heading
for his car. When they drove out of the parking area, he was behind
them at a discrete distance.

Several miles from the hospital the pick up
entered a residential neighborhood and pulled into the driveway of
a small, older frame bungalow. Clay drove past and continued into
the next block where he backed into the driveway of a house with a
for sale sign in the overgrown yard. He recorded the number of the
house the two men had stopped at, and the street name on a pad of
paper and turned on the radio, preparing for a wait. Instead, the
pickup backed out of the driveway and headed back the way it had
come. Clay followed slowly until he saw Charlie enter the house,
and then sped up to catch his prey. Less than a mile away, the
pickup parked at the curb in front of an old two story house. Clay
was following far enough behind to be able to pull into the
driveway of a house on the other side of the street and watch as
the man entered the building through a side entrance. After backing
out into the street he drove past the man’s pickup and circled the
block on his left, parking at the corner where he could see the
green pickup at the curb. The house had two address numbers on the
front porch and one at the side door Greg had entered.

He must rent either the basement or a
converted attic apartment, Clay thought as he wrote down the
address and the truck’s license number. At eleven the pickup had
not moved, so Clay headed for home to get a few hours sleep before
returning.

At five thirty the next morning he was parked
down the street from Greg’s truck, sipping on a large cup of coffee
and eating the first of three donuts.

He sat hunched down in the seat, questioning
himself about what he was planning for the two men who had taken
part in raping his sister. He had used Carol the previous morning
for his own personal needs. He had no deep and tender feelings for
her. She was just one more available and pleasant person to spend
time with and use for a sexual outlet until he tired of her; or she
of him. But she had the opportunity to say NO. If each of the three
men he was plotting against had allowed Lizzy a choice he would
have no quarrel with them. It would have been a shared copulation
where each party benefited in there own way, not necessarily equal,
but beneficial to each. Both individuals could have shared some
level of feeling for the other and would have the option of
breaking off the relationship simply by saying NO. Instead they
chose to take her by force, under a stupor of drugs, knowing she
would object to what they intended to do to her. The acts they
perpetrated on her body were to exhibit their power; their control
over her will and body. And, worse than the initial physical
molestation they had attempted to coerce additional participation
through emotional blackmail. They had no intention of a shared
experience where they might possibly touch the soul of a partner
and contribute to the person’s happiness. Or, at the very least,
might fill a basic even short lived emotional or sexual need with
and for a person. He personally knew, O.K., suspected very
strongly, Lizzy had previous one night stands with several men on
the fringe of his circle of friends. Oh, what the hell, he was
certain some of his close friends had each banged her several times
too. But those choices didn’t make her a slut and sure as hell
didn’t give anyone the right to set her up for an all night gang
bang.