The Ax (12 page)

I slam on the brakes, and he slides down the front of the car. I see his hands clutching, scrabbling for some hold, but there is none. The car is still moving, though more slowly, and he goes under it, and I feel the heavy bumps as we drive over him.

Now I brake to a stop. Now I turn on the headlights, and switch into reverse gear, so the backup lights will come on, and I see him three times, in all three mirrors, the inside mirror, the one outside to my left, the one all the way over there outside to my right, I see him three times, and in all three mirrors he’s moving.

Oh, God, no. He has to stop. We can’t go on like this. He’s rolling over, he’s trying to rise.

I’m already in reverse. Now I accelerate, and I close my eyes, and I feel the
thump
and the
thump
, and I slam on the brakes and skid, and think no, please, I’m going to hit a parked car, but I don’t.

I open my eyes. I look out front, and he’s there in the glare of my headlights, in the rain, one arm moving on the pavement, fingers scratching on the pavement. His hat is gone. He’s crumpled, mostly facedown, and his forehead is against the pavement, his head twitching in slow fits back and forth.

This has to stop
now
. I shift into Drive, I drive slowly forward, I aim at that head. Ba-
thump
, the front left tire, yes. Ba-
thump
, the rear left tire, yes.

I stop. I shift into reverse, and the backup lights come on. In three mirrors, he doesn’t move.

I’m weeping when I get back to the motel, still weeping. I feel so weak I can barely steer, hardly press my foot against the accelerator and, at last, the brake.

The Luger is still in my pocket. It weighs me down on the right side, dragging down on me so that I stumble as I move from the Voyager to the door to my room. Then the Luger bangs against my hand, interfering with me, while I try to get into my pants pocket for the key, the key to the room.

At last. I have the key, I get it into the lock, I open the door. All of this is mostly by feel, because I’m sobbing, my eyes are full of tears, everything swims. I push the door open, and the room that was going to be warm and homey is underwater, afloat, cold and wet because of my tears. I pull the key out of the door, push the door closed, stagger across the room. I’m stripping off my clothes, just leaving them anywhere on the floor.

The sobs have been with me since I made the U-turn on Nether Street and drove carefully around the body in the middle of the pavement. The sobs hurt my throat, they constrict my chest. The tears sting my eyes. My nose is full, I can barely breathe. My arms and legs are heavy, they ache, as though I’d been pummeled for a long time with soft clubs.

A shower, won’t that help? A shower always helps. Here in Dawson’s Motel, the bathroom contains an old-fashioned clawfoot tub. Above it, sometime later, a shower nozzle was added to protrude from the wall, and a small ring to hang a shower curtain. When you step in there and turn on the water, if you move an inch in any direction you touch the cold wet shower curtain.

But I’m not moving. I stand in the flow of hot water, eyes closed, tears still streaming, throat and chest still in pain, but the hot water slowly does its work. It cleanses me, and it soothes me, and at last I turn off the water, push the too-close shower curtain aside, step out, and use all the thin towels to dry myself.

I’ve stopped weeping now. Now I’m merely exhausted. The bedside clock-radio says 12:47. Exactly one hour ago I left this room, to go kill Everett Dynes, and now I’m back, and I’ve done it. And I’m exhausted, I could sleep for a thousand years.

I get into bed, and switch off the light, and I don’t sleep. I’m so weary I could start crying all over again, but I don’t sleep. The scene on Nether Street, in the dark, in the rain, in the lights of my Voyager, keeps replaying in my head.

I try to remember the last time I cried, and I cannot; sometime when I was a child, I suppose. I’m not good at it, my throat and chest still ache, my head feels clogged.

I try not to move around in the bed, I try to do things that will help me get to sleep. I count to one hundred, then back to one. I try to bring up pleasant memories. I try to shut down entirely.

But I cannot sleep. And I keep seeing the event on Nether Street. And every time I turn my head, the clock-radio shows some later time, in red numbers, just there, to my right.

I must have been crazy, out of my mind. How could I have done these things? Herbert Everly. Edward Ricks, and his poor wife. And now Everett Dynes. He was like me, he should be my friend, my ally, we should work together against our common enemies. We shouldn’t claw each other, down here in the pit, fight each other for scraps, while they laugh up above. Or, even worse; while they don’t even bother to notice us, up above.

When the clock says 5:19, I come to my decision. It has to end now. I have to make a clean breast of everything, atone for what I’ve done, do no more.

I get out of bed. My exhaustion has left me, I’m awake and alert. I’m calm. I turn on the lights and look around for writing paper, but Dawson’s Motel does not equip its rooms with stationery, and I’ve brought no paper with me.

Paper lines the dresser drawers, white lengths of paper, in the old-fashioned dark wood dresser. I take out the paper from the bottom drawer, and find it stiff, rather thick, smoother on one side than the other. A very simple level of manufacture, this paper. (I could cry all over again, just for a second, when I notice myself noticing that detail.)

The rougher side is better for writing on. I sit at the table, I smooth the paper in front of me, I pick up my pen, and I write:

My name is Burke Devore. I am 51 years old and I live at 62 Pennery Woods Rd., Fairbourne, CT. I have been unemployed for close to 2 years, through no fault of my own. Since my army service, I have at all times been employed, until now.

This period of unemployment has had a very bad effect on me, and has made me do things I would never have thought possible. Through placing a false ad in a trade journal, I got the resumés of many other people who are unemployed, as I am, in my field of expertise. I then determined to kill those people who I feared were better qualified than I was for one certain job. I wanted that job, I wanted to be employed again, and that desire made me do crazy things.

I wish to confess now to four murders. The first was two weeks ago, on Thursday, May 8th. My victim was a man named Herbert C. Everly. I shot him in front of his house on Churchwarden Lane, in Fall City, CT.

My second victim was Edward G. Ricks. I only meant to kill him, but his wife mistook me for an older man who’d been having an affair with her young daughter, and in the confusion I had to kill her, too. I shot both of them last Thursday at their home in Longholme, MA.

My final victim was last night, in Lichgate, NY. His name was Everett Dynes, and I deliberately ran him down with my automobile.

I am truly sorry for these crimes. I don’t know how I could have done them. I feel so sorry for the families. I feel so sorry for the people I killed. I hate myself. I don’t know how I can go on. This is my confession.

My last resumé.

When I finish it, I sign it, but I don’t date it. There’s no need.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll do tomorrow. Either I’ll shoot myself with that Luger in my raincoat pocket hanging from the pipe rod in the closet over there, or I’ll drive back to Lichgate, find the police station, and show my confession to a policeman there.

I just don’t think I can kill myself. I think I have to atone. I think I have to pay for my crimes. And I think I’m just not somebody who commits suicide. So I think I’ll turn myself in to the police tomorrow morning.

I leave the confession on the table, turn off the lights, get back into bed. I feel very calm. I know I’ll sleep now.

I sleep like a log. I wake up refreshed, comfortable, hungry as a bear. I left no morning call, so I’ve slept until I was finished sleeping, and the clock-radio reads 9:27. I’m usually out of bed by seven-thirty, so this is really coddling myself. I always had to get up at seven-thirty to get to my job, when I had a job, and I did that for so many years that the habit has stayed with me.

I shower with the curtain only half closed, which is much more comfortable for me, but leaves the floor very wet. I’m sure that’s not the first time that’s happened.

It’s still raining outside, a steady rain out of a low grayish white sky. It won’t stop today. I put my overnight bag, with the Luger in the bottom, into the car, then hunker down in the protection of the roof overhang to look at the front of the Voyager.

The glass over the left parking light is gone, and so is the chrome rim around the headlight, but the headlight seems to be intact. There are dents on the body-work in the left front. If there was ever any blood anywhere on the car, the rain has washed it away.

I go back into the room one last time, to see if I’ve left anything, and that’s when I see the sheet of paper on the table. I’d completely forgotten about that, done in the woozy hysterics of the night. Wow, and I almost left it behind.

I sit at the table, and read what I wrote last night, and that awful dread begins to creep over me again. How terrible I felt last night. Tense, anxious, terrified, unable to sleep. I’m glad writing this made it possible at last for me to lose consciousness for a while.

I meant all of this last night, I know I did. Everything seemed so hopeless. The first one, Everly, went so smoothly, but both of them since have been absolute disasters. I’m not used to this sort of thing, it would be hard enough to do even if they all went smoothly and cleanly, but to have two horror shows in a row really ground me down.

From now on, I have to be more careful and more patient. I have to be sure the circumstances are right before I make my move.

I sympathize with the me from last night, who felt such despair, and wrote these words, and apologized to his victims. I too would apologize to them, if I could. I’d leave them alone, if I could.

I take the confession with me, folded in my pocket. I’ll burn it later, somewhere else.

I don’t have to go back through Lichgate, which is good. I head south toward Utica on Route 8, and as I drive I think about the damage to the car. I have to get it repaired. I have to fill out a report for the insurance company, though I’m not sure the damage will exceed the deductible. I have to give Marjorie an explanation.

And at the same time, of course, I have to remember the police will be looking for this car. Even if they don’t call it a murder back there—and I have no idea if they can tell the body was driven over more than once—but even if they don’t call it murder, even if it’s merely a hit-and-run, that’s still manslaughter, and they’ll be looking for the car.

What do they have? Probably tread marks. The glass from the parking light. The rim from the headlight. One or all of those things will tell them the make and model of the car. They’ll know they’re looking for a Plymouth Voyager with these specific injuries to the left front. I didn’t see any paint chipped off, so they probably don’t have the color.

There are a lot of these cars on the road, but there won’t be many with these particular scars. Fortunately, the headlight still works, and the headlights are switched on because of the rain. With that rain falling, and with the light glaringly on, it will be very hard for any passing cop to see the small dings around the front of the car. I should be safe, until I can get it fixed, and I think I know how to do that.