The Last Victim (25 page)

“Look,” he continued between chews, his mouth working hard on the meat, “it was consensual sex. We fell asleep together. Then
I thought he was trying to kill me.”

“But he was just making you a nice breakfast,” I argued.

Gacy seemed to be staring at me intently. Was he looking at my crotch? No, it was my uneaten food.

“Hey, would you like my lunch?” I offered. “I’m really not that hungry.”

He reached over and grabbed my tray, digging into the meat with relish. With his mouth full, he returned to the subject of
his first kill, but ignored the earlier point I’d made.

“He ruined my rug,” he said, as if that explained why he deserved to die. “Besides, he shouldn’t have tried to attack me.”

“But he wasn’t trying to hurt you,” I reminded. “You knew it then, and you know it now.” This was the first time I’d actually
challenged him, but I’d been with him all morning and I still hadn’t pried loose any secrets. I wanted this visit to have
some value.

He remained calm. “Hey,” he said, “you don’t stand over someone with a knife while he’s sleeping.”

“So what happened
after
you stabbed him?” I prodded. He was sopping up the last of the gravy with his bread, and I was afraid he wouldn’t be so accommodating
once lunch was over.

“Let me tell you something, Jason. You can tell when someone is dead because he shits all over the floor. The kid stunk up
the place. I dropped him in the crawl space.”

I couldn’t believe it! He was actually admitting that he’d put the body in the place where all the other bodies were found!

“So if it was an accident,” I asked innocently, “why did you bury the body instead of just telling the police?”

Now Gacy adopted the same pedantic tone I’d heard so many times before, as if I were some kind of idiot who was altering the
facts. Listening to him could be infuriating, because his arguments always sounded halfway convincing. Only after you carefully
poked and prodded at his version of events did his lies unravel. After listening to him for a minute, I decided it was best
to leave the burial issue alone and hit another angle.

“How did it
feel
to kill that kid?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It didn’t feel like anything. I didn’t care. He needed to die.”

I pressed him further. “Did you feel any power?”

“Look,” he said impatiently, “I dumped the body in the crawl space and buried it. I felt fine. I slept fine. I was fine.”
With each assertion, he seemed more and more irritated. He also seemed more and more distracted, until I’d concluded he’d
stopped listening altogether.

He rose from his chair and began looking out in the hallway where the guards were now standing. He seemed to be watching carefully
to monitor their movements.

“Um, John,” I said with a catch in my voice, “when are the guards coming back? They promised to take our pictures together.”

He suddenly turned on me, his face furious. “The guards are on the other side of the bars. Do you know how long it would take
them to get in here if you screamed? Probably two minutes. I could kill you right now if I wanted. You know that, don’t you?
I could take this pen and stick it right here in your neck.”

He’d been standing behind me as he screamed this, so I quickly assumed a defensive posture. He just kept ranting. “You’d bleed
to death all over the floor by the time you got any help.”

I’d never been so scared in my life. Although I was physically more powerful than him, and although he was handcuffed, the
difference between someone on the streets saying, “Hey, I could kill you,” and
him
saying it was profound. Adrenaline—psychotic adrenaline—counted for a lot, I knew. Knowing that those hands were responsible
for the death of so many others my age ate away at my courage. I realized, then and there, that in spite of my youth and strength,
John Wayne Gacy could very well hurt me if he wanted to.

But he wasn’t going to try anything like that just yet. First, he was going to attempt to break me down completely, reduce
me to a perfectly compliant victim.

“I have a special treat for you, Jason,” he said, leering. He reached down into his sock where he’d hidden a small packet
of baby oil. Apparently, he intended to use this as a lubricant to sodomize me, considerate lover that he was.

He pointed to the chair he now admitted placing in the storeroom across the hall. “See that chair, Jason?”

I nodded dumbly.

“That’s where I’d do you. They wouldn’t find your body until all your blood ran on the floor.”

I tried to appease him as best I could. I was thinking,
Now’s the time to come out of your role, let him know you’re not someone to be trifled with.
But the strangest thing happened: I was frozen in the character I’d pretended to be. It was like I’d become Jason the Wimp
and couldn’t escape. I couldn’t seem to do anything but reassure him he was in control, that he really could do whatever he
wanted.

In some hidden corner of my brain it occurred to me that I was getting just what I’d bargained for. I’d wanted to know what
Gacy did with his victims just before he killed them.

Now I knew.

G
acy just stared into my eyes for what seemed like several minutes. After taking one final look to make sure the guards were
safely out of range, he stood in front of me and told me to stand up.

“Why do you want me to get up?” I said in a squeaky voice. It didn’t even sound like me. “I thought we could look at your
logbook now.”

“Do you
mind,
Jason?” he said petulantly. “Maybe I’d like to see what you look like standing up! I only got a view of you for a second
when you came in.” That wasn’t quite true, of course; he’d been stealing glances at my crotch every chance he got. But I decided
to humor him.

“Fine,” I answered, rising to a standing position. I couldn’t believe that a few moments earlier he’d been threatening to
rape and kill me and now he wanted me to model for him.

I took a quick stride across the small room to grab the logbook and then returned to my chair, making sure I didn’t let him
get behind me again.

My pose of being genuinely interested in him—despite his barrage of threats—apparently disoriented him, threw off his “game”
temporarily, because he consented to give me a quick look at his book. The contents included notes on everybody who’d ever
been involved in his life. I was particularly interested in the section on me, in which he’d recorded the times, dates, and
length of each phone call, also noting what we’d talked about. It was almost comical, the way his keeping tabs on me mirrored
the way I kept tabs on him.

As I was turning the logbook’s pages, fascinated by the details of Gacy’s life, I caught a hint of movement just outside my
field of view. Somehow Gacy had gotten behind me again. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his handcuffed hands raise
up and reach behind my neck. His mouth was open and he looked as if he was in some type of trance.

I felt his hands on the back of my neck and I tried to pull away. His grip tightened, and, with the leverage that came from
his standing over me and my being seated, he pinned me against the wall. Just when I was about to fight back with all my strength,
I realized he wasn’t trying to hurt me at all.

He was trying to kiss me!

In some ways, this infuriated me more. The idea of his putting his lips on me was disgusting. In one quick burst, I broke
away from his grip.

“What’s wrong, Jason?” he coaxed. “You need to relax.”

I could tell he was confused that I was being so resistant to his overtures. He’d gone to great trouble to get rid of the
guards and arrange a private setting for us to be together. He’d spent months fantasizing about how this scene would unfold.
Now I wasn’t playing my part.

“Sorry,” I offered, trying to regain my composure. “It’s just that you scared me, grabbing me like that.”

By now, Gacy’s libido was like a freight train hurtling down the track. And mixed in with the lust was ferocious anger. “You’re
so pretty, you little hustlin’ bitch,” he snarled. “You like to get fucked, you little shit.”

I cast my eyes downward, afraid to say anything that would escalate the situation.

“You wander the streets hustling,” he said, working himself up. I noticed with revulsion that he’d now taken out his penis
and was slowly stroking himself. It was obvious he was becoming more and more aroused. “You sell your ass. You do have a pretty
tight little ass.”

What the hell do I do now?
I thought. Unable to think of anything, I just sat mute, noticing as I did that my words and actions had ceased to matter
much. To Gacy, I’d become an object now—a thing for him to sexually fixate on.

“You can’t pull that hustlin’ shit on me,” Gacy warned, continuing to masturbate.

“I know, John. I’d never try to hustle you, because we’re friends, right?” I tried. As had happened before, I hoped that by
invoking our friendship I’d slow his psychotic momentum.

“Look at my cock, Jason!” he demanded as he continued pulling on his penis. He must have thought that the sight of him—fat,
old man that he was—would turn me on, get me in the mood, as it were.

As if . . .

“John,” I pleaded feebly, “come on.”

“Did you hear what I said?” he screamed. “Look at my fuckin’ cock!”

“Yes, John,” I answered. “It’s very nice.” I couldn’t believe I’d said something so stupid, but what
could
one say in such a situation?

Having apparently come to a decision, he pushed his penis in the direction of my face and ordered, “Get on it!”

“Quit fuckin’ around, John. I’m not going to do that now.” Would the promise of something
later
appease him?

“Do you know how many little shits died for this cock?” he asked. “Do
you
want to die for this cock? I should have you bend over. Then I can tear the shit out of your tight little ass. You’d like
that, wouldn’t you? You want me to beat you, don’t you?”

His breathing was becoming more and more labored as he continued to stroke himself, standing up. His face was turning bright
red. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack.

“Open your mouth,” he ordered, “so I can piss down your throat. You should like piss. You’re just a big pile of shit yourself.”
Then he cackled insanely. It was just like a scene in a slasher movie. Except the movie was real, and I was in it.

I continued assessing my options. I wondered if I should kick him hard or really hurt him with the chair I was sitting on.
What if all I achieved was to make him more frenzied and unmanageable?

“Come on, Jason, get over the chair here,” he said, pointing to the empty seat. “You’ll be a little bloody, but that’s nothing.
A real man can take pain, especially from another man.”

It was at this point that I completely broke down. I’d like to say it was an act, that I faked tears to win his sympathy.
In all honesty, though, I just lost control. Some part of me realized that Gacy was showing himself to me in all his glory
because he knew I wouldn’t be alive to tell anyone.

“John,” I gasped out now through sobs, tears streaming down my face, “you said we were friends. Why are you doing this to
me?”

Abruptly, he sat down and looked at me with disgust. His erection had now wilted and he tucked it back into his pants. “What
the fuck are you doing here? Just get out of here.”

“John,” I pleaded, “you know that’s not what I want.” Incredibly, rather than saying, “John, that’s the best suggestion you’ve
made all day,” I was obeying my internal programming—an inner voice that preached “success at any cost.” I couldn’t bear aborting
my three-day visitation with Gacy without having cracked his “code.” I couldn’t bear the realization that coming to Illinois
had been all for naught.

We were both emotionally exhausted at this point, and both frustrated because neither had gotten what we were after. Thankfully,
our first day together was about to draw to a close and it was hard to visualize coming back for the second. Gacy seemed to
sense my reluctance, because suddenly he turned the charm back on. All smiles, he invited the guards to join us and had them
take several photographs.

I was just about to say goodbye and scurry on out of there when he took me aside and furtively handed me a pair of bikini
briefs he’d stashed in his own underwear. “Would you wear these for me tomorrow?” he asked in a pitifully pleading voice.
He then pulled from his sock a silver bracelet and handed it to me. He also mentioned that he had a new painting he’d give
me the next day. His 180-degree shift threw me off balance.

Walking out of the prison that day, everything was a blur. One minute I was awkwardly thanking Gacy for his hospitality, the
next I was standing in the parking lot waiting for Ken to pick me up.

On the drive back to the motel, I shared some of what I’d gone through. Ken seemed shocked by my story, but he couldn’t have
been too surprised because he took me at my word.

“
Please,
Jason,” he pleaded. “Don’t say a word about this to anyone. It could really hurt John’s chances for an appeal, or a postponement
of his execution.”

“Give me a break!” I responded. “He actually threatened to rape and kill me! There’s no way I’m going back in a cell with
that lunatic!”

“But this has never happened before,” Ken insisted. “Most of the people who visit him are older. They’re reporters and lawyers
and stuff and he’s always been—”

“I don’t care!” I said loudly enough to make him cringe. “The guy is crazy.”

“You just triggered something in him. I don’t know. You’re just like the boys he killed.”

If I had any doubts about where Ken stood before, I didn’t any longer. He admitted his belief that Gacy had committed all
the crimes he’d been accused of. In a way, hearing this from him was a relief. That meant I didn’t have to play games with
him. I could confide in him, even get his advice on what I should do.