The Wicked Heart

Chapter One

The mind of a killer is an empty thing.

The strings of a puppet are filled with mischief.

Imagine a mind, then, that when a string is pulled somebody will die -- an innocent asleep in her bed. Imagine and then quickly forget, lest the impulse pluck deep and make you realize that we are all puppets in a show without rules.

But maybe that is not true.

It doesn't matter. It seems true.

Dusty Shame did not play by any rules. He had killed twice in his life and he was going to kill again. But he didn't enjoy taking human life. He wasn't a psychopath in the traditional sense of the word. He did not dream of blood and screams and feel cold sweat break out over his limbs and experience a rush of sexual satisfaction. He didn't even dislike most people, never mind hate them. No one had ever done anything particularly wrong to him, and until he started to kill, he had never thought of hurting anyone.

Yet tonight would be murder number three.

Three -- the one that was supposed to charm.

But where was the charm for poor Dusty?

Where was the reason?

The answer was so simple it couldn't be the final answer. Yet it must be put down. Dusty killed so he could rest. It was only when he forever closed the eyes of another that he could close his own eyes and sleep without the dreams and the voice telling him it was time to awaken and continue with the pain.

Of course, such a reason must have meant Dusty was crazy. People who heard voices were invariably insane, experts would say. But few experts had ever been inside a mind the equal of Dusty's. Had they entered, they would have realized that insanity was as mysterious as reason, and thatthe two were often difficult to separate.

Dusty may have been crazy, but he was also a nice young man.

He was eighteen years old, a senior in high school, six weeks shy of graduation. His grade point average was three point six, and he was taking chemistry, calculus, computer science, and German. He was on his way to college, that is if he didn't make a quick stop at the electric chair first.

He was a handsome young man. His hair was light brown, soft and fine like that of an angel, his eyes green as grass in evening twilight. He was five ten, fit and muscular, but plagued by repeated heartburn. He had a tendency, when in social situations, to be jerky in his movements. But when he was alone, especially when he killed, he moved smoothly and gracefully as a dancer. Always, though, he was quiet. Had he been more talkative, he certainly could have had plenty of dates. And maybe if he had spoken to more girls and listened to their voices instead of the one his head, he wouldn't have become a murderer.

Maybe, maybe not.

Dusty's first two victims had been girls.

It was late Monday night. Dusty drove through the dark California streets of his hometown, Chino -- a suburb in San Bernadino County, which adjoined both Los Angeles and Orange counties. He was headed toward his next victim's house. Years ago Chino had been a place to tie a horse in the backyard, but now there were housing developments everywhere. The town had been home for Dusty all his life. He couldn't say he liked the place, though, but that may have been because his had been a sad life.

His next victim was Nancy Bardella and she lived only two miles from him. He knew Nancy from school, unlike the other two he had killed, whom he knew only via the modem lines of a national computer network -- Einstein. Nancy was in his chemistry lab and class -- she sat two rows in front of him, on the right, in class. He had spoken to her a few times, although never at length. She was a pretty girl with long brown hair and dimples that showed when she laughed, which she did often.

Dusty knew from eavesdropping on her conversations that her parents were away for a few days. He had chosen to kill her, instead of another girl, largely because of this fact. Also, Nancy was a sweet girl and seldom had an unkind word to say about anybody. It was important to Dusty that each of his victims be as innocent as possible. In reality, Dusty liked Nancy.

The late April night was warm -- the month of May and another southern California summer were around the corner -- and the streets all but deserted. Dusty liked the late-night hours best, when the hum of the city was at its gentlest. He was particularly sensitive to crowds and crowd noise; it was as if the mental static of many minds wore on the, delicate centers of his brain. Often, just visiting a mall exhausted him. When he did sleep, which he seldom did, it was usually in the daytime, after school.

But he knew tonight, what was left of it, he would sleep well, if he could just kill Nancy and get rid of her body without being caught. Dusty may have loathed what he did, but he didn't want to go to jail. He felt if they locked him up, the voice would go on tormenting him endlessly, and he wouldn't be able to do anything to silence it. That was his greatest fear, although he had others.

Nancy lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in one of Chino's new housing tracts. Dusty pulled onto her street and cut the engine, allowing the car to coast into Nancy's empty driveway. He disliked bringing his car so close, but it was necessary when it came time to carry the body out. He never left a body behind, the voice was strict about that, and for that reason the parents of his first two victims were still looking for their daughters. He occasionally saw posters advertising rewards for information about their disappearances. He knew that the parents would be searching for their children for a long time.

Nancy had lived in southern California all her life. Dusty knew that her father worked as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft, and that her mother took care of preschoolers. Nancy was an only child. Her best friend was Sheila Hardholt, who was Dusty's lab partner in chemistry. Dusty liked Sheila as well.

The cul-de-sac was well lit, which bothered him. All the new housing tracts in Chino were loaded with lights. The house was also visible from many surrounding houses. If someone were to peek through a window as he was carrying out the body, he would be in serious trouble. But he knew his window of vulnerability was brief -- maybe a minute at best, only the actual time when he had the body in his hands. If a neighbor were to see him now, sitting in his car, it was doubtful he would sound an alarm. It would be hard to trace his car just from a glance. Red Ford Escorts were a dime a dozen in the L.A. basin. Plus he had smeared his license plate with mud.

Dusty sat in his car a moment, studying the house. There were two stories -- Nancy's bedroom was probably on the second. Although most of the houses in the neighborhood had yet to have yards installed, Nancy's parents had spent big bucks on landscaping. The lawn was made up of thick fescu grass, common to the area. Recently planted shrubs hugged the clean orange stucco walls. More important than these details were the six-foot-high walls and the accompanying gates, which would surely be locked. More than likely, he would have to take the WY out the front door, something he had not done before.

The walls presented no problem for him. He could climb over them. Sitting in the car, he decided to do just that and then try to find an open window in the back. In his pocket he carried a lock-pick kit. But he had not grown up playing with locks, and his skill at outwitting dead bolt locks was minimal at best. He also had duct tape in his pocket, and knew he could tape a window and break it without making much noise. He did that the night he had visited Stacy Domino's house, the first time he had killed.

His other tools were few: a ball peen hammer, two large heavy-duty green garbage bags, and a white towel. He used the hammer to kill; the narrow head of the ball peen hammer was a more lethal weapon than a regular hammer. The bags were for the body -- one for the top half, the other for the bottom. The towel was his special piece of paraphernalia. Just before striking the death blow, usually to the delicate temple area at the side of the skull, he would throw the towel over the girl's head. He made every effort to keep any blood from spilling, leaving the police and the parents with the idea -- the possibility at least -- that their daughter had merely run away or been kidnapped. But neither police nor parents would entertain the latter idea long because no ransom note would be forthcoming.

Yet these possibilities were important to satisfy the voice. They greatly heightened the torment of his acts.

On his hands he wore leather gloves. Always.

Dusty picked up the hammer, the garbage bags, and the towel, and stuffed them into a knapsack that fit over his shoulder. After turning off the overhead light, he silently opened the car door and stepped onto the concrete driveway. He closed the door, but did not shut it completely. He preferred, when he was done, to place the body in the trunk, but if he felt rushed he could set in the passenger seat. The seats, like the trunk, 'were covered with clear plastic he had obtained from a garbage bin behind a cleaners. He went to great lengths to prevent staining his car with blood.

He approached the house on the right side, opposite the porch walkway, and was over the brick wall in a moment. The backyard did not please him. Two other houses, elevated slightly above Nancy's, had unobstructed views into her yard. He had to pause to reassure himself that it was late, and that the two other houses looked as asleep as empty buildings.

A quick scan of Nancy's back windows showed him one that was half open. The sight brought him a measure of relief, although his muscles remained taunt and his breathing rapid and uneven. In his lock-pick kit was a small screwdriver. He took it out and slipped it under the bottom edge of the window screen, bending the metal slowly upward. The screen popped free. He set it on the ground and gently eased up the window. A moment later he was able to step inside with a long stretch of his legs.

He was in the living room. The furniture, glimpsed in stabs of yellow streetlight, was new, and the faint smell of fresh paint hung in the air. He stood still for several seconds and forced himself to take long deep breaths. His heartbeat was the sound of toppling stones. He had to convince himself that the beating was not reverberating off the walls, echoing up the stairs to Nancy's sleeping ears.

He started up the stairs, not even bothering to check the downstairs rooms. He knew Nancy was up there; he could sense her, but not with his ears or eyes. He could feel her life as clearly as he would feel that life pass through him as he brought it to an end. Her soul would pass through him, he knew, with the blow to the brain, and in that instant something inside him would sigh, and he would have peace, if only for a little while. At least it had been that way before.

It was too easy, too perfect. All three of the bedroom doors on the second floor lay open. Nancy's was the small room on the right, her soft rhythmic breathing drifting into the narrow hallway like a child's song floating on a spring breeze. Nancy, awake had always impressed Dusty as a kind person, but in sleep, even before he saw her, she touched him in a way only a saint could. She was innocence; he could almost hear the angels singing in her dreams. Strangely, this quality, this goodness, didn't make it harder for him to kill her, but easier. Or maybe it was not so strange because Dusty was in many ways like his nickname, Dust, and viewed everything from the ground level, where the insects that crawled through the mud were the best friends of the flowers that scented the air with their perfume.

Dusty moved to the open doorway and stood looking down on Nancy. She lay on her back, dressed in an oversize T-shirt, white panties, a sheet draped loosely over her tan legs. Her brown hair spread across her pillow, so perfect, like fabric woven of silk threads. Her right elbow was cocked at a sharp angle, her right hand pressed to her chin as if she were deep in thought. Her other arm hung over the side of the bed, the hand almost touching the floor, completely unafraid of the bogeyman that might lurk under the box springs. But of course she was not scared, Dusty thought, angels were watching over her.

So was something else.

As old as the angels.

Dusty removed the towel and hammer from his knapsack.

He wanted it to be quick. He didn't want her to suffer. Still, the thought of the blood plagued him, the evidence of the struggle it would leave. He had to get the towel in position without waking her. He had been able to do that with his second victim because she had been an extremely heavy sleeper. He knew that because of her loud snoring. But he did not believe Nancy would be so easy. He considered the possibilities for several seconds before coming up with a plan.

He would alter the point where he usually struck. He would not hit Nancy on the temple, but directly on the forehead. He would toss the towel over her face and strike an instant later. The first blow might not kill her -- the skull was thick in front -- but it would stun, and there would be time for others. He knew, though, even as he moved closer to the bed, that timing was critical. If he did not kill her quickly, she would scream, and both her bedroom windows were wide open. He did not want her to scream; he did not want her to know that she was about to die.

In his left hand was his towel, in his right the hammer. He stepped within a foot of the bed and felt cold sweat drip down his arms. Yet suddenly he could no longer hear his heartbeat, his breathing even, only the sound of her breathing, her life, her identity. Even though Dusty believed her soul would survive his attack, he did not think her personality would. He believed, in heaven, no soul could remember having been on Earth. He believed that it would be impossible to enjoy true peace with such memories, especially with such memories as he had. Nancy would be Nancy for only a second more.

Dusty tossed the towel onto her face.

It landed smoothly, a tissue drifting over a reclining doll.

Dusty raised his hammer to strike.

Just then Nancy sat up. He would have said she bolted upright; she caught him so completely by surprise. Yet she moved so easily, so without fear, that it seemed as if her own mother had awakened her. The towel fell from her face onto her lap. Her eyes popped open and she looked at him. Her expression wasn't one of fright or surprise, although she was only partially awake. There wasn't a hint of recognition in her expression. Her voice came out like that of a small yawning child.

"Hello," she said.

Dusty struck with his hammer. Because he meant to hit her as she lay flat on her back, his blow landed at an odd angle. The hammer smashed her forehead, between the eyebrows, but the bulk of the force of the blow was directed lower. He ended up crushing the bridge of her nose. He actually heard the faint sound of shattering cartilage. Nancy's head dropped forward as she was hit, although, remarkably, her eyes remained open. He could tell by her eyelashes. Blood dripped from her nose onto his towel, her T-shirt. Dusty didn't know if her open eyes signaled consciousness; he doubted it. But he wasn't taking any chances. He raised the hammer again and struck a crushing blow to the top of her skull. This time the sound was loud, as the strong bone splintered beneath the cold steel.

Nancy toppled farther forward.

He caught her as she fell, dropping his hammer to the floor, and quickly wrapped her head in his towel. There was blood, both from her face and the top of her head, but not a great deal. For a moment he held her, held her as if he were giving her an affectionate hug, and it was good. Yes, it was just hot. Something, a gust of warm air perhaps, a brush of astral matter maybe, left her body, left her lifeless, and touched him as it passed. He felt the familiar sigh of pleasure inside, the relief it brought, the silence -- the silence of evil, so close to the silence of God. Dusty thought of God right then and wondered why God made him go to such extremes to find peace. He was grateful that Nancy was at peace. He couldn't imagine her life as being that happy, her frequent laughter aside. He couldn't imagine a happy life for anyone, period.

After a bit, Dusty eased Nancy's body off the bed and onto the floor, careful to keep the towel wrapped firmly around her head. She felt remarkably light, soft, still warm, even through his gloved hands -- it really was nice to hold her. He took one of the green garbage bags from his knapsack and, leaving the towel in place, eased the opening over the top of her head, over her chest and back, down to her waist. Only one thing troubled him as he worked and that was his missing her breathing. He had enjoyed listening to it, and it was sad it was over for good.

He reached for the second bag, and when he had her completely covered he took out his duct tape and sealed the bags together. From experience he knew the tape would not break. He had constructed the equivalent of a body bag, and it pleased him to know that Nancy was safe inside.

Now came the hard part, or at least, the dangerous part. He had to get rid of the body, and he had to do so before the sun came up, which would happen in approximately three and a half hours. Tucking his hammer in his knapsack he crossed to her desk and grabbed her purse and stashed it in his bag as well. Taking this one item, he knew, went a long way toward creating the impression that Nancy had run away from home, at least for the police. The parents, of course, would never believe it.

Dusty hastily made the bed and gave the room a quick going over, making sure he had left no evidence of his visit. Then he did something. that contradicted all his previous actions, all the care he had taken.

He took a small square card and placed it on top of Nancy's bed.

Where anybody could see it.

A card with a unique symbol on it.

Dusty knelt and carefully lifted the body into his arms. It was the body now, nothing more. He started down the stairs.

Before leaving the house, through the front door, Dusty set down his burden and quickly replaced the screen on the window through which he had entered. He shut the window as well. He knew the police would examine each window for sips of forced entry, but he believed they would learn nothing from the screen he had popped out. He had been careful not to dent the metal with his screwdriver.

Dusty peeked out the front door before stepping outside with the body. His luck held; the neighborhood continued to slumber. He closed the door with his foot as he left, but did so carefully, making hardly a sound, making sure it was locked. A moment later he was at his car. He had to set the body down on the driveway to get his keys out, the trunk open. He cautioned himself that he was exposed now, under the scrutiny of streetlights, but his confidence rode high. This had happened on the two previous kills. He would start the night as a nervous wreck and then feel invincible once the body was in his hands. At the same time, he knew the trap of being over confident. When he was scared he took every precaution. Fear, he believed, sharpened the mind, it did not dull it.

He set the body onto the clear plastic that lined his trunk, the head making a soft thud as it rolled to the side, a puppet dropping from the end of a string that had been cut. He closed the trunk as soundlessly as he had opened and closed every door and window in the house. Then he climbed into the car and put the key in the ignition.

Starting the car was dangerous. People, if they were awake, often glanced out their windows when a car nearby was started. Turning over the engine would be the loudest noise he had made since entering the cul-de-sac. Fortunately, his car was only a couple of years old and started without prodding. He backed out of the driveway the instant the engine caught. He was out of the cul-de-sac within sixty seconds of leaving the house with the body.

A couple of miles north of Chino ran Interstate 10, a freeway well known to transcontinental travelers. It was possible to ride I-10 from one end of the country to the other. Dusty got on I-10 and headed east toward Interstate 15, another freeway well known to southern California residents -- it being the straight road to Las Vegas. Dusty headed north on 15 in the direction of Vegas and passed through a portion of the mountains that hemmed in the L.A. basin. He was careful not to speed, but within forty minutes of leaving Nancy's house, he was in the desert. He drove with the window down, the night air turning warmer the farther he drove, dryer. He left Interstate 15 for a lesser known freeway, 395, and plowed through the dark night, lit occasionally by the glare of his headlights on a tall cactus. Traffic was sparse, mostly long distance truckers, trying to get a headstart on another weary day on the road. Once on 395, he relaxed more and let his speed creep up. It was seldom the police bothered with the road, he knew. He had been on 395 a few times lately. It wasn't far off this desert highway that he buried his victims.

The spot was his alone. He was quite sure no one else knew about his cave, or else, he believed, he would not have been directed there in the first place. He had come upon it a few days before he visited Stacy Domino. He had found it in the middle of the day, when the sun was directly overhead and frying everything; the narrow opening at the end of the gully, the opening, hidden behind a big rock, that led into the cool cave with the fine sand floor. Intuitively, even before he dug and confirmed his feeling, he had known there were other bodies buried there. Parched skeletons with clean skulls that had not lost their grins.

Twenty miles along on 395, at the top of a low rise he knew even in the dark, Dusty suddenly veered off the road and plowed into a landscape that could have been sliced from the far side of the moon. Dust swam around his Escort and he had to use his windshield wipers and wiper fluid. Yet he was still on a road of sorts, although it had been abandoned years ago to the snakes and tumbleweed. There was no house along the dirt path, though, not even a deserted shack and he wondered why it had ever been made. It didn't matter. He was as isolated as he could be in the United States and there was no one on his tail.

It was a tall succulent that was his next marker -- a Joshua tree, half dead, with a withered arm bent from the weight of years, bent precisely in the direction of the cave. The voice knew about the Joshua and said it was to be taken as a sign of past triumphs. Seeing it, Dusty veered to the right once more. The car bounced on the rocks and sand, and he could hear the body rolling around in the trunk. He always hosed off his car at a gas station before he returned home.

Approximately two miles off the dirt road he was forced to park before a mound of boulders set in a staggered pattern that allowed no cars to trespass. Physically, the next task was the most grueling of the whole night. The cave was half a mile away, but that was far to carry a body, even one that weighed only a hundred pounds. Then, even before he could dig the grave, he had to retrace his steps and return to the car for the shovel. It was impossible for him to carry the body and the shovel at the same time.

The night air was dry, even for the desert, and after climbing out of the cat he wished he had brought a water bottle. He briefly considered carrying the body to the cave and then driving back to the the road to find a large Coke before digging the grave. But he checked his watch and knew that was foolish. He had two and a half hours before sunrise and he would need half that time to clean up the night's work. He still wanted to get at least three hours of sleep before school started. It would not do to miss class immediately after a killing.

The moon had already set and the area was as black as the bottom of a dry well. Before lifting the body out of the trunk, he grabbed his flashlight, turned it on, and jammed it in his belt so that the beam shone around his feet. It was not ideal, but he walked slowly while carrying a body, and the light would be enough to keep him from stumbling. With everything in place, he leaned over and picked up the green garbage bags.

Desert temperatures were dangerous to underestimate timate. It was four in the morning and it had to be in the mid-eighties. Dusty had to stop to catch his breath four times on the way to the cave, and each time he felt as if he would collapse from dehydration. But once he reached the cave, and lowered his head and back, and squirmed around the tall narrow stone that shielded the opening, he felt better. Fully into the cave, he was able to stand completely erect, and here the temperature was twenty degrees lower than outside. He had often wondered at the coolness of the place and suspected there was a subterranean stream under it. When he sat completely still in the cave for a period of time, which he had done after burying his last victim, he heard a faint gurgling sound.

Emitting a deep sigh of relief, Dusty moved to the rear of the cave and set the body down in the fine white sand. He didn't stop to rest. It was best to finish the job, he knew, before he relaxed and his muscles cramped up. He turned and hurried out of the cave and back to his car.

The entire process of digging the grave, setting the body inside, and covering it took over an hour, even working with the soft sand. That was because Dusty never skimped on the depth of the holes; he lay his bodies at least five feet under, always mindful that a wild animal could smell the corpse and dig it up. He never paused after he began to shovel the sand over what was left of Nancy Bardella. By now his mind was remarkably empty.

There was a hint of light in the east when he finally reentered the city of Chino. Before going home he stopped at an automated car wash and deposited his four quarters and soaped and hosed down his car. A Pepsi machine stood in the comer of the lot and he guzzled down four cans of soft drinks. At the car wash he threw away the plastic that had lined his seats and trunk in a large dumpster, noting with a trace of satisfaction that there was not a drop of blood anywhere. Finally he removed his gloves. It was always the last thing he did. He headed for home confident that he had not left a shred of evidence linking him to the crime.

Except for the card. The symbol.

Why did he leave it?

Because the voice said he had to.

But even the card, he thought, did not relate to him.

It simply related the crimes to one another. And to the past.

The voice said it was important.

Dusty lived with his invalid mother and an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who helped take care of his mother. His mom was a fifty-year-old widow, a victim of fate that had snatched away her husband when Dusty was only nine years old, and then taken her mind a few months later. Dusty's mother, though only middle-aged, had Alzheimer's. What was left of her brain did not allow her to feed herself, never mind find the bathroom. Fortunately -- if such a word could be used to apply to anything in Dusty's life -- Mr. Shame had died with a large life insurance policy. Dusty was spared the need to work full-time, and his mother was able to avoid the questionable care of a state-run home.

His mother was a vegetable. She could not talk, did not even recognize him, and he seriously doubted she remembered her own name. She could still walk, although like an arthritic penguin, if she had someone to lead her. But all she did all day was sit in the living room and stare at the ashes in the fireplace. It was as if those ashes were the last thread that connected her, however tenuously, to the world. She would emit a faint cry if he or the live-in helper started to clean the fireplace. It had been that way since Mr. Shame died.

Dusty loved his mother very much.

Mrs. Hilda Garcia was the woman from El Salvador. From what Dusty could gather, she had six children back home and sent them all but a fraction of her salary. Apparently her husband had been killed in a misunderstanding over the price of a bottle of beer. She was almost as reclusive as his mother, and would sit for long hours in her bedroom watching Spanish programs. Her English was as poor as her cooking. Dusty lived alone with two women with whom he could not really communicate.

Dusty parked on the street in front of his house and entered through the side door. He didn't worry that Mrs. Garcia would take note of his unusual hours and question him. She was a heavy sleeper, and she minded her own business. Sometimes, though, because of the looks she gave him, he wondered if he frightened her. Yet the looks were rare, and basically they got along fine. Dusty never thought of himself as a scary person.

Before retiring for what was left of the night, Dusty stopped in to check on his mother. She slept flat on her back, on top of the bed, with both knees bent up. She had slept that way every night since she had begun to lose her mind. A yellow nightlight glowed in the comer. Her nightgown was long and woolen, too warm for April, and stained from endless accidents with food. From the sound of her breathing he assumed she was asleep, but as he moved closer he saw that her eyes were open. She did not turn her head as he approached. She gave no sign that she knew he was there.

"Mom," he said. "Are you all right?"

He often asked her that question, although she never answered it. Her eyes continued to stare at the ceiling. He sat on the bed beside her and took her hand. Her flesh was as dry as the dust he had poured onto Nancy Bardella's corpse.

"I had a good night," he said. "Things went well. I don't think there'll be any follow-up problems."

On occasion, he also talked to her about the murders he committed, but only in a roundabout way, never coming out and saying he had killed. At those times her breathing would quicken, and he would I imagine she understood. He didn't know why he did this.

"I should go to bed now," he said, squeezing her hand. "This is a good time for me to rest, you know, after the job's done." He leaned over and kissed her forehead, and as he did so, her eyes suddenly closed. "Don't worry about me, Mom," he whispered in her ear. "Your boy is doing well. He's doing the best he can."

Dusty went to his room and shut his door. His tools, the hammer and so on, were still in the trunk of his car, where he would leave them until later. He stripped down to his shorts and climbed between the sheets. He closed his eyes for a moment and listened for the voice. It wasn't there and he was relieved. He had to get up in three hours, but he knew he would sleep deeply, and hopefully he would feel good when he awoke. It had been so long since he felt good.

Just before Dusty dozed off, he thought of the way Nancy had looked at him when she had awakened, the instant before he had hit her with the hammer. She had been half asleep, true, and startled, but he realized now that she must have recognized him. He wondered, briefly, if the last image in her life had stayed with her as she crossed over to the other side. But then he reminded himself that angels never remembered the earth once they were in heaven.

It was important he never forget that, he told himself.

Copyright © 1993 by Christopher Pike