A Love Song for Dolores

TW: murder, gore, threats of sexual violence

Well, I suppose I didn’t have to kill him.

And I guess I didn’t have to kill him in such a gruesome way, but what’s a girl like me to do?

I had to stop this. This daydreaming about hungry pigs and screams not heard. I had to get on with the mechanics of cleaning up the kill site. I herded the pigs back outside, burned the clothes I was wearing, burned the clothes he was wearing, and cleaned up the blood from the floor, though it wasn’t much. The pigs licked most of it up. They are so cute when they eat!

My fingerprints were everywhere, as expected. I wiped everything down, of course. I’m no idiot. Should the police ever suspect me, they would have no fingerprints to connect me with a crime. All real evidence was in the belly of the pigs and in the burning heap of garbage behind the house. Anyway, I’m just a girl, pushing 30, with a nice smile and pleasant personality. Who would suspect me?

The car was a problem. I decided to simply drive it into an old abandoned mine seven miles away, and I covered the entrance well enough. I had spotted a series of abandoned mines on my treks through the area, and like a smart person, I kept the mines in mind. There was no sign of anyone poking around here, so it was probably a safe place to hide the car. It would be found sooner or later, but that didn’t matter. The absence of a body and my sweet demeanor were my protectors.

My getaway was a thing of beauty. I drove to the local grocery store where I worked, to say good-bye to everyone. I had prepared a valid reason for leaving quickly, but I swore to them all that I would miss them, and if they ever found themselves in Las Vegas they should look me up and we’ll get together. It was all lies, you know. I don’t have a sister, I don’t live in Las Vegas, and I won’t miss them. Any of them.

My old Jeep had Nevada license plates. Nice touch, right? I got them from a salvage yard in Nevada. Part of the pretense. I changed them back to the real ones once I got to Amarillo. I had to be legit once I started hitting toll roads. Another nice touch. I got home and slept well.

Fin, as they say in France.

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He entered her house quietly and expertly, having scouted out the terrain and his victim thoroughly. With supreme confidence (and we know that this is always a mistake for people performing nefarious deeds), he subdued Dolores and strapped her to a chair in the kitchen. He fixed himself a drink commonly referred to as a screwdriver, and tossed it down in a few swallows. Wiping his mouth, he made another one, sipping this one. It wouldn’t do to get drunk and miss all the screaming, begging, and crying.

He rummaged around in his bag for a bit, prolonging the extracting of his tools so he could see the fear in his victim’s face. He was a little perturbed that she didn’t react, so he slapped her. Hard. Blood came from her cheek.

“You know who I am. You know what I’m gonna do to you. Show some respect, missy!” He hissed in her ear, licking her neck and moaning. He wouldn’t rape her, but he didn’t want her to know that. He wanted to see undiluted fear. He wanted tears of desperation and begging. Lots of begging. Once he got sick of it, he would plunge three screwdrivers into her heart and watch her die, making sure that the last thing she ever saw was his grinning face.

Dolores spat in his face, so he hit her again, this time in the stomach. She bent over and groaned in pain. He pulled her upright by her hair and put his face an inch from hers. His breath was fetid and sour smelling, causing her to turn her head away, but he forced her head forward and spoke quietly.

“Yeah, I’m gonna take my time with you. It’ll take you hours to die, and you’ll be begging me to kill you. Just a little poke here,” he indicated a spot below her heart, “and you’ll bleed slowly. Then another poke here after an hour or so,” he indicated a spot on the other side, “and you’ll bleed a little more. I’ll watch you fade away, and all that time you’ll know you’re dying. But I won’t let you die until you beg me to kill you, you little bit…”

“Whatever dude. Just shut up and get on with it,” Dolores spat out.

The man blinked at her, confused and angry. No one else acted like this. They all pleaded for their lives, promising everything. Money. Sex. Silence. Usually all three.

He finished his drink and made another, pondering future actions. What could he do to make her like the others? He thought about it while the third drink was disappearing into his gut. He stood up for the last time in his life. Just as suddenly, he fell to the floor.

“Pancuronium bromide,” Dolores said to the supine and surprised man on her floor.

“Yeah, I tinkered with the chairs here so I could escape,” Dolores said lightly, walking over to a razor blade she had embedded into the wall. With a few movements, she freed her wrists. She then peeled off the tape from around her legs and tossed the remnants of the chair legs and the chair arms aside.

The man tried to sit up, but his muscles just wouldn’t respond. He could still think, and he could still feel fear. Right now, fear dominated him. He glared balefully at the girl who was standing over him.

“Used in death row executions. Causes complete paralysis of the body. Right about now you probably find it hard to breathe. If I left you alone on this floor, you would eventually suffocate. But don’t worry,” she bent down and patted his clammy cheek, “I’m not leaving you here to suffocate. I’ve got a surprise planned for you, buddy, but first I have to take your clothes off. Evidence,” she said lightly.

The surprise, she thought gleefully, was pigs. He didn’t see that coming. That is, not until she opened the back door and let them in; he then had a low-profile view of several hungry pigs running towards him. He sensed rather than felt the pigs’ teeth tear into his flesh. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t. And she just stood there and watched as they ate him while he was still alive.

His eyes dimmed after a few moments. He gasped, and then he was a serial killer no longer. Dolores watched his departure from this life closely, noting the widening of his eyes, his attempts at speaking; she could smell his fear, and she was willing to bet that his victims had had the same scent of fear.

Dolores hummed a sprightly tune as she crossed into Oklahoma, reliving those glorious moments when the pigs were feeding and the serial killer (who the cops couldn’t catch) succumbed to death. And it made her hungry, so she stopped at the border and got some barbeque.

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It wasn’t easy to catch and kill a serial killer, Dolores thought. One had to understand him, to get into his head, to prepare. Most of all, one had to wait for the right opportunity. And, if one were clever enough, one would be able to anticipate the serial killer’s future movements and determine their future targets.

He was not a truck driver, though the police insisted that he was. He was not a worker at some carnival or fair, though this was a theory that was widely accepted by the pundits writing for the more salacious and exciting periodicals. He was not a route salesman, not a drifter, not a disturbed veteran, not a junkie, not an office drone with a dark secret. He was a professional photographer.

Dolores almost missed it. In fact, she would have missed it had she not broken into the apartment of the lead detective running point on the investigation of the Screwdriver Killer’s first victim. The mountain of information took a while to get through, so she had to break into his apartment over the course of several days. It was the first day of felonious action that got her the pertinent information, though she didn’t know it at the time.

A bunch of numbers scribbled on a piece of paper. The first line read: 17 – 9 – 1/5 – 100. The second line had similar numbers, as did the third and fourth lines. It wasn’t until she was watching a “Columbo” episode that it hit her; the numbers related to camera settings. A quick internet search brought her what she had been looking for. The numbers all related to aperture openings, focal length, shutter speed, and something called an ISO number. This meant little to her, except that they were settings designed to produce clear, sharp, full-length pictures of a person indoors.

These numbers were not found at any other crime scene, so the cops didn’t consider them important. Dolores knew that serial killers often left the best clues at the site of their first kill. They had not yet perfected their technique nor their subterfuge, and this one was no different. The cops knew it, too, but they didn’t know what to do with that information. She did.

This was the beginning. The next part was getting inside the killer’s mind. Dolores sifted through all of the evidence that she had found (ok, taken pictures of). What she found (and surmised) was that the killer of young women was a free-lance photographer. He traveled around, taking pictures and selling them to newspapers, magazines, and news media outlets. The killer lived in a nice apartment with fairly expensive (to her) tastes, so he was successful. Since he was successful, he must be selling to many different sources. Since he sold to many different sources, she could cross-reference tens of thousands of photos from all of the different types of media outlets and find some common names.

This took over three months, but it was necessary. Dolores was not one to shy away from the tedium of her task because, in the end, she would get what she wanted. What she needed.

A list of 97 photographers was quickly narrowed down to seven. Of those seven, four were eliminated due to physical disabilities (two in wheelchairs, two with prosthetic arms). Three remained. After a little reconnaissance, two others were eliminated because they were gay men, and gay men simply did not go around killing young, good-looking women. This left Conrad Nichols. He was 35 years old, educated, and lived alone. His apartment was tasteful, clean, and devoid of all personal touches. Conrad Nichols, the so-called Screwdriver Killer, was her man. She was never wrong about these sorts of things.

Where he would strike next was more of a problem. The killer was all over the country, his targets seemingly random. Dolores couldn’t figure it out, so she did the next best thing: she followed him. All the way to Texas. He was pretty easy to follow because, like most killers, he had an inherent belief in his own cleverness. He couldn’t be caught, so there was no need to hide his movements. Dolores just shook her head at this. The only safe serial killer is one who hasn’t yet been noticed by the police. Or her.

There is a thin line between being a professional and an amateur. An amateur would lose their cool and give themselves away when coming face to face with their prey. They would be unduly wary when meeting the killer, and he would see that. They would try to follow him, and the amateur would be wildly unsuccessful at this. They would take photographs and be spotted by their prey.

Dolores was a professional. She let the prey come to her. She never followed him, never photographed him, never evinced even the slightest interest in him. To all appearances, he didn’t exist in her world.

Not only that, she was a prepared professional. She dyed her hair to match his victims’ profiles, got a job at the local grocery store (the man liked to prepare his own meals, so he would be shopping here regularly), and wore clothes designed to attract attention. She rented a house far away from town so that she would be isolated. She didn’t have a dog. She left her curtains open at night, with the lights on. Dolores was practically begging to be a victim of the Screwdriver Killer.

At work, she gave out details about her life. She had a sister with three kids and no husband. She travelled the country, getting odd jobs to make money, just to experience life. She wanted to be a writer one day, and these experiences would help her. She was Baptist, of course. Jesus loved her.

Conrad spotted her quickly, and just as quickly made up his mind about his next victim. The rest was all too easy. She feigned indifference when he came through her line. He flirted with her and she rebuffed him coldly. At night, she knew she was being watched, so she made sure he saw her lounging around in her underwear, reading a book, sipping wine, watching TV.

Dolores had stolen the pancuronium bromide from a medical disposal site that had laughably cheap locks and motion sensors that a kindergartener (in her opinion) could disable. The stuff used to put death row inmates into a permanent sleep was deemed out of date. As Dolores had shown, it worked just fine. Even the pigs felt the effects of the bromide, sleeping the better part of a day before the effects wore off. Dolores didn’t know this, but it’s worth mentioning that Dolores was willing to sacrifice the pigs, if needed, to get what she wanted.

Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa swept by her as she relived her latest exploits. She slept in her Jeep, ate fast food fare along the way, and arrived in Chicago three days later. Yawning, she flopped onto her couch and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When she awoke, she could see tessellated patterns of sunlight on her back wall. It was a peaceful feeling, watching the patterns crawl slowly along the wall until the sun disappeared from the horizon.

The peace would not last, though. Dolores would start to feel that itch again, that need to kill, to inflict violence and death upon someone. She would not sleep after a few days. She would start smoking again. She would start hunting for a new victim. She would need a new love song to pursue. After ten years of doing what she did, she couldn’t get rid of the need to kill.

The newspapers the next morning trumpeted the latest exploits of the Van Gogh killer. He always took the left ear from his victims as a token of his deeds. Dolores read the article twice.

I have a lovely left ear, she thought…