The May Day Murders (34 page)

Stanley’s eyes were trained on Sara’s
apartment building as he silently approached the corner of the
roof. When he stopped at the two-foot ceramic masonry wall skirting
the roof, he leaned over and peered down at the view below. He
could see the traffic moving south toward Spring Street and hear
the occasional horn honking echoing up off the walls of the
surrounding buildings. His eyes returned to Sara’s building—an
ancient, ugly brownstone flanked in the foreground by two other
nondescript buildings standing directly across the street from
where he now stood. Sara’s apartment was on the seventh floor—two
windows to the right—and even at this distance Stanley could see
the lone figure of someone moving about inside the apartment. That
figure, he already knew, would be Sara Hunt and Sara would be alone
tonight until at least midnight since her roommate would be waiting
tables at the Stardust Diner until 11:30.

Stanley unzipped the nylon backpack,
took out a powerful telescope and set it aside. He removed the
tripod, extended its legs, positioned it on the roof and secured
the telescope to it. Peering through the eyepiece, he deliberately
swung the telescope around and downward until Sara’s apartment
building came into view. He carefully panned from side to side
until he had a bead on her well-lit living room window. After
fine-tuning the focusing knob, Stanley smiled to himself when he
saw the crystal clear image come into view.

Sara Hunt was doing her nightly aerobic
exercises and apparently felt secure in the fact that no one could
possible be watching—she was wearing nothing but her panties.
Stanley felt his pulse quicken and his mouth salivate as he stared
at her gorgeous body, reveling in the notion that she was
performing For His Eyes Only. At the moment, Sara was standing a
few feet from the window, her left side facing toward him, her arms
extended straight up into the air. Stanley observed her as she did
twenty-five reps of this exercise then stopped and turned to face
the window.

Sara paused for a few moments and
merely stood there motionless, as if awaiting a cue of some kind.
Then she suddenly began a totally different exercise. Stanley
surmised that she was exercising to music and that she had just
paused to wait for the beginning of the next song. As Stanley
watched Sara grind her hips from side to side, his breath came in
gasps. Her copious breasts were heaving and undulating to the
rhythm of the music that he was unable to hear, yet could almost
feel. He was all but certain that it was the Rolling Stones she was
grinding to—most likely one of their more danceable tunes …
Honky Tonk Woman
, perhaps?

He had discovered that Sara Hunt was
quite possibly the most devoted Stones fan still living judging by
the extensive collection of their CDs and vinyl LP’s she had in her
possession. He had never seen so many records by any one artist
before in a single collective bunch, short of those found in a
record store.

But Sara’s love for the Stones was just
one of many things Stanley had learned about her as a result of his
surveillance over the past couple of weeks. He knew that she was an
actress, but not a very successful one, and that acting was by far
the most important thing in her life. Her apartment was littered
with dozens of copies of Backstage, The Village Voice, and other
publications advertising casting calls and screen tests in the NYC
theater forum, and when she wasn’t waiting tables at a Greek diner
in the Village, Sara was auditioning for parts in every conceivable
type of acting job available: soaps, films, commercials, Broadway
and off-Broadway productions—even the occasional porno film, he had
been surprised to discover. Stanley still couldn’t forget his
absolute shock at finding a suspicious looking videocassette
entitled
Josie Loves Dick
stuffed behind a stack of old
magazines on a back shelf. His curiosity aroused, he had taken the
time to play a quick run-through of the film on Sara’s VCR and sure
enough, there was Ms. Sara Hunt portraying the gifted Josie Jobber
sucking some big old stud’s prick! Watching her perform her
artistry on the man had done nothing but disgust Stanley and only
bolstered his desire to kill the slut all that much
more.

He had wondered what Sara’s parents
back in Pennsylvania would have thought of their daughter’s stellar
performance when he suddenly come across several dozen letters, all
unopened and apparently from her parents. Stanley had decided
(perhaps without thinking, he had to admit now) to risk opening up
one of the letters and reading it. The letter had been from her
father, begging her to forgive him for all of the pain and
suffering he’d caused her as a child. He had gone on to tell her
that he’d only done what he had done to her because he loved her
and begged her to please come home and give him a second chance.
Stanley had read the rest of the letter and it didn’t take a genius
to figure out by reading between the lines that not only had her
father sexually abused Sara but that he was in fact the very reason
she was in NYC now acting out other people’s lives in an effort to
try and forget her own fucked up past as an abused
child.

Stanley had also learned that Sara Hunt
was very methodical and faithfully kept a journal of her everyday
activities, which she logged into each night before she went to
bed. He had quickly skimmed through it and learned that she had
recently broken up with her boyfriend and that she now felt “lonely
and directionless.” His name was Jonathan Baker and Stanley had
later found a photograph of Jon-boy in her photo album. On the back
of the picture Sara had written:
Jonathan, before he shaved off
his beard. I miss that beautiful beard!

Based on what he’d learned in the
process of investigating her apartment, Stanley had eventually come
to a conclusion: Sara Hunt was a mess. She was insecure, naive, and
lonely, had had a terrible childhood full of abuse, and was
probably about as vulnerable now as she had ever been in her life
since having recently lost her boyfriend of the last three years.
Stanley was glad for all of this—the bitch certainly fucking
deserved it.

As much as Stanley despised Sara Hunt
(and everything that she stood for) he had to admit that she still
had one beautiful fucking body. He felt the almost overwhelming
urge to masturbate right now as he watched her half nude body
gyrating to the music he couldn’t hear. The expression on her face
was intense and provocative as she lip-synced the lyrics to
whatever song she was grooving to. His hand went down to his crotch
for a brief moment and he could feel his rock-hard erection
pulsating with the nagging need for release. But he suddenly took
his hand away with resigned determination. Tomorrow, Stanley
thought, he would have the real thing. He would slice that bitch
from both sides and have her screaming for more …

Perspiration had formed on his brow as
he continued peering at Sara through the telescope. She was really
getting into it now, her hands cupping her luscious tits and her
eyes closed tight in ecstasy. He could almost sense that she knew
he was watching her and that she was regretful for having ever
double-crossed Stanley Jenkins all those years ago at high school.
She wanted to make it up to him now by giving him something that
would really please him and hopefully make him forget how angry he
was with her. She was treating him to his own little private
audition and she was going to make it one of her most unforgettable
performances yet …

Sara suddenly stopped and froze for a
moment. Stanley could tell by the annoyed expression on her face
that something had distracted her, possibly the ringing of her
telephone. He watched as she turned and headed toward the door,
just visible at the far end of the living room. She stood by the
door for a moment as if listening to what someone on the other side
was saying then suddenly shrugged her shoulders. She said something
then moved out of Stanley’s sight. When she returned a moment later
and resumed her exercises, it was only for a minute for so. Sara
then left the room in a huff.

It started registering with Stanley
what may have just happened. A neighbor had knocked on her door and
complained about the music so Sara had turned it down before
resuming her aerobics. But the lower volume evidently wasn’t to her
liking so she had decided to give it up for the night.

Stanley continued peering through the
telescope until he saw Sara reappear several moments later. She was
carrying a glass of water as she made her way across the living
room. She flipped off the light switch before continuing toward the
other side of her apartment. This would be her bedroom, Stanley
knew, and both of her bedroom windows unfortunately faced the front
of the building, out of Stanley’s field of view.

Stanley breathed a long sigh before
removing the telescope from the tripod. He now had his plan solidly
formulated in his mind and tomorrow he would carry it
out.

He retracted the legs of the tripod and
stashed away the telescope with a smug grin on his face. He loved
the feeling of exhilaration he was experiencing right this
moment—that adrenalin-induced high he always felt just before the
completion of a mission. By this time tomorrow, he will have
succeeded in accomplishing what he had set out to do and be on his
way back home.

Did he really want to give all of this
up and retire? he wondered. It was all so challenging, so
gratifying. Would he truly be happy settling down with a wife and
family? Maybe he would only semi-retire, on second thought. She
would be able to understand that he was absolutely driven to go out
on these missions and how important they were to him, wouldn’t
she?

His heart suddenly sank for a moment as
it dawned on him that there would no longer be the motivation that
had been driving him all along once he settled down. He will have
completed his master plan and no longer feel the compulsion to
murder again …

Or would he?

Stanley had read somewhere that murder
was just like an addictive drug and he was beginning to see what
they meant by that. The experience felt so awesome and the high was
better than any of the acid he’d dropped in college. And what
better way was there to get a point across to some fucking slut
than putting a sudden end to her existence? To relieve the world of
yet another ungrateful bitch that thought she was so above everyone
that her shit didn’t stink? They needed to be taught a lesson, by
God! And who better to teach them that lesson than Stanley Jenkins,
who had been shit upon his whole goddamn life?

His teeth were now clenched in total
extreme rage and Stanley realized that he had just smashed his fist
into the concrete wall. He brought his bloodied hand to his mouth
and licked at the blood on his knuckles, savoring the salty iron
aftertaste. He smiled to himself as he recalled what the shrinks
had kept telling him while he was in the nuthouse: “You have got to
get a handle on that temper of yours, Stanley, or someone besides
yourself might get hurt someday.” He had always hated the way the
doctor and entire staff seemed to be talking down to him, as if he
were some kind of sick person or total moron. Like, did they really
think that he wasn’t already quite aware of his temper? Or that he
didn’t know exactly why he had been committed to the institution in
the first place? They of course thought he was nuts, but Stanley
knew better. He had been sent to the institution because he’d
fucked up and that was basically the whole ball of wax. There
wasn’t any more to it.

Stanley had played their game though,
only because he knew that he’d be in there forever if he couldn’t
prove to them that he was “safe to return to society.” It had been
a breeze, actually, because he had known just the right things to
do and say to the shrinks to win them over and eventually convince
them that they weren’t dealing with some lunatic asshole here, but
a perfectly sane and intelligent young man who had fooled around
and gotten himself just a little too stoned one night at college
then pulled a little harmless prank on someone.

He soon realized that the only reason
they had kept him in as long as they had was because they had grown
fond of him and didn’t want to let him go. Especially that faggot,
Doctor Flagg. Christ, were his consultations ever a humdrum! The
way he would always try to psychoanalyze him with all that Freudian
bullshit about mother-son relationships, latent homosexuality
tendencies, insecurity and lack of self-respect. It was all
x-amount of bullshit and the good doctor knew it, too. But finally
the doctor’s true colors started to show and the game suddenly took
on an entirely new twist. Hell, if Stanley had known that all he
had to do was let the doctor give him an occasional blowjob, he
would have been out of that hellhole one fuck of a lot
sooner!

But that was then, and this is now,
Stanley thought. No sense in crying over spilt milk,
ha-ha.

In retrospect, it was probably to his
advantage to have been locked up in the nuthouse as long as he’d
been. It had given him plenty of time to read, research and figure
out what he was going to do with himself once he was released. Had
he gotten out sooner, he probably would have done something rash,
with his temper and all, and ended up getting thrown right back in
there.

But instead, he’d hung tight and
devised his master plan. And when he finally had gotten released on
that glorious May morning, he knew that he had the added plus of
his father’s life insurance settlement to help make his plans
materialize.