Rubble and the Wreckage

by Rodd Clark

Overview

Everything Crumbles

Gabriel Church knows you can't take a life without first understanding just how feeble it is. If you desire murder, you hold a life in your hand. Whether you release it to grant life or grip tighter to end it, it is at your command and discretion.

Gabriel is a serial killer with a story to tell.

Christian Maxwell studied abnormal psychology in college but chose instead to focus on a career in writing. His background comes in handy when he thinks of writing about a serial killer. He can't think of anyone more qualified to write the story of Gabriel Lee Church and in the murderer's own words.

It's been done before, but never with a killer who has yet to be captured or convicted. With nothing more than a gentleman's understanding between them, Christian records Gabriel's life story. Gabriel doesn't ask for his complicity, nor does he ask for his silence. Christian's interest in the man, though, is fast becoming something more than academic.

When Christian and Gabriel become unexpected friends and then lovers, the question remains: What is Gabriel's endgame...and why does he want his story told?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948608589
Publisher:	Ninestar Press, LLC
Publication date:	04/30/2018
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Walking through dreamy memories might be a favored pastime of the old and the weary. For Gabriel Church it was a drain. He pocketed those recollections where they couldn't be easily found. But now he was sifting through the decay, retrieving them for his obsessive confidant. He enjoyed talking about his life, at least how it ended up during these last few years, and he enjoyed seeing the astonished look on the faces of his audience; however, having to dredge up the past was exhausting. But he understood it was good to begin a story from the beginning. How else might he explain his life, without explaining where he had escaped from? He knew his father was a big part of the equation of what was to become Gabriel Lee Church, so he began with him.

Bennett Church wasn't a kind man; specifically he wasn't kind to his children or his wife. His family was forced to receive the brunt of his emotional instability. They accepted their fate with every backhanded swing or disdainful look. The public saw a much different persona in Bennett, and when Gabe arrived at school with occasional blue bruises, black eyes, or tiny scratches, no one could have envisioned just how he got them. "Boys will be boys," they would say, but the secretive, shameful looks from the Church children should have been ample reason to question what lay before them, exposed, like an open nerve.

"You need to build up your character," his father would say as he set unreasonable tasks as punishments for the smallest of infractions in his daily routine. When Gabe had been six or seven years old, Bennett found him playing with his tools on the garage floor one Sunday afternoon and lit into him with a vengeance. A man of reason might see that as a potential bonding moment between a father and a son who was obviously emulating the man he admired. A sane man might laugh at the sight of such a small boy playing at the pretense of hero worship or developing strong masculine characteristics. But Bennett didn't see things the same way most fathers did; instead, he slapped the boy on the back of his neck watching the wrench the boy held go flying from his tiny hand.

Gripping the boy by the nape with a single arm, he yanked him quickly from the concrete floor, pulled the boy's pants down, and gave him a sound thrashing on his bare bottom. Nevertheless, that wasn't his only punishment. He forced Gabe to clean the gutters for the remainder of that once lazy Sunday, and the image of that diminutive lad dragging a ladder around that weighed nearly as much as he, and struggling to prop it against the house was saddening to watch. Gabe's mother had witnessed his punishment from her position at the kitchen window as she was washing dishes. Gabriel glimpsed her eyeing him as he stoically dragged the ladder from spot to spot, pulling gunk and dead and rotting leaves from the trough. His eyes seemed to beckon to her, while instead she chose to look down and focus her attentions on her soap-filled glasses and dirty dinner plates. It was about that time where the boy learned the first of many tragic lessons to come.

Little Gabriel Church may have cried that afternoon; he couldn't quite remember, but he had stared at a red Popsicle he had pulled from the fridge before he first found himself playing in the garage. He'd forgotten about it because of his whipping and subsequent punishment. He stared at the large red stain as it dissolved into a puddle on the driveway, melting in the oppressive Tennessee humidity. He couldn't seem to pull his gaze away. It was as if the pooling red had somehow fractured his mind, and he found comfort with that. It may have been but a single moment in time, but it was a moment that would have lasting effects.

Bennett never issued a decree, or commanded any punishment, without watching the outcome. The day of the gutters, he'd pulled out a lawn chair from the garage to observe his son's progress. But more importantly, to ensure the satisfactory completion of the task. Gabe remembered it well. It had been an aluminum chair with blue nylon webbing; the kind they first sold in the fifties and still sold to this day. Bennett sat drinking a beer and lounging in that familiar old blue lawn chair, and the boy could almost catch a sneer in a corner of each eye. He was too young to understand that look at the time. Yet given his later experiences, he might've recognized it later for what it truly was ... sadism. There were twisted mechanics in Bennett's logic. Gabe and his sister, as well as his mother, had been the recipients of that logic, and the ensuing punishments for failure in adhering to Bennett's strict codes. Not all moments held Bennett's wrath, some days he was simply quiet and even-tempered. To Gabe, it was like watching a hungry dog that wouldn't eat ... It was only then that you needed to worry.

Bennett would turn out to be a case study in psychosis; his son would study the man with an obsessive duality, equally afraid while utterly fascinated. Bennett's wife and daughter though never saw that keen understanding masking the man's true nature. They were fortuitously blind where Gabe's vision seemed more clearly defined. It would take years before Sissy Church found the strength, or courage, to finally leave her husband, and even then only from the sanctuary of her sister's place in upstate New York. It wasn't surprising to anyone who knew her though; the scars were plainly visible and the damage too ingrained in hers, and her children's psyches. An intangible fabric stretched too thin across the loom and borne from years of untold abuses too numerous to count. Sadly for Gabe and his younger sister, they would never truly learn whether there had lasting effects from their upbringing, because they had nothing to compare it against. It was all the normal they'd ever known. Yet for Sissy it was that persist reminder lingering continuous and unanswered through her mind ... "What if I'd only left sooner?"

Christian was an educated man. He understood as Church recounted his childhood and the influences that had shaped him. It would never be a single item that made him a killer, and it couldn't be. There would be too many stimuli and far too many weighty pressures creating a sociopath like Church, but he'd taken notice of how the killer began his tale with the story of his father.

The downtown streets of Seattle began to bustle with evening crowds. The patrons at the Cherry Street Grinder were finishing their coffee and liquors, and the mood transformed from afternoon leisure to the excitement of Seattle nightlife. Church had finished three glasses of wine in the hour or so they sat at a table as Christian scribbled frantically on his notepad, desperate to capture every shade of the man he claimed as his subject. And it was only the beginning. He couldn't chain the man to a table and hold him prisoner. But there was going to be a great deal he needed to hear before even beginning his draft. Seeing the brooding irritation building in the killer meant he had to keep him entertained without overstepping his role.

"So ... when will you be ready to discuss your first murder?" The words fell like stones from his lips. He could see Church was caught off guard — apparently recalling painful memories pissed him off — because when he turned toward his spellbound audience, Christian caught the killer's expression and another shudder crept down his spine. Someone dropped a utensil somewhere off in the direction of the kitchen, and the sound shattered the indelicate moment. Christian was thankful for the noise, which startled the café dwellers and pulled focus from his question. He caught the lingering scent of freshly ground coffee, and noting the lateness of the day, he had to remember he was in Seattle. Caffeine-swilling, healthy-looking people — the type who thought wearing cargo shorts to a wedding was damned appropriate. But he loved it here. There didn't seem to be any other city that better suited his relaxed and laid-back attitude. What else could one expect in a town founded by whores and flannel-wearing loggers?

Church had settled back into his chair and crossed his arms again. His light-gray eyes sliced a countenance that Christian could not fathom — it was cold and unreadable. His look could have said a dozen different things, but their emotional void made any understanding a challenge. Watching him, Christian began to see what a powerful hold he might have exercised over more than a few of his many victims. Had he enticed his quarry with his strong features or white smile? Or was it something sinister he wondered; like stalking a wounded gazelle from the shadows he hid inside? There were questions that Christian needed answering, and he only hoped Gabriel Church would allow him another meeting under that great pretense of him writing the life story of a soon-to-be-famous serial killer.

It was as if Church had picked up on the writer's brooding contemplations and attempted to ease his concerns. "S'all good, little buddy ..."

Christian's thoughts and any explanation for his arbitrary statement trailed off and became absorbed in the sounds of people brushing past in mid-conversation holding coffee cups and wine glasses, like the oblivious sheep they were.

"We can jump ahead if you're so inclined ... but trust the Sherpa, and know we will be traveling back around to the beginning before it's all said and done." Church gazed off at some distant horizon and placed a finger on his lips in abstract reflection, as if remembering his first victim was something he had to pull from his memory. And actually he remembered it all too well. Christian sat mesmerized, hanging impatiently for every detail of the story to come.

"My first kill came when I was quite young. My temper was worse back then, and I stumbled around without focus or direction. I have gained a maturity and wisdom to the things I do now, but the first time had been rash and unplanned. I would say it ended badly, but every foal that'd ever fallen from its mama's womb had to struggle to stand. I guess I wasn't any different."

"I was twenty-one and feeling smug and certain back then. I'd been drinking a lot in those days, and my inexperience always led me down the wrong paths. I'd been headed to Fresno. A friend told me about a guy who was hiring, and I needed work. But the drive cross-country didn't really do me much good. It took longer than it should, and I became distracted along the way. Originally I had told my well- meaning friend I'd meet up with him in Fresno — he was gonna put in a good word for me with the owner. It was some shitty dispatch job at a freight company, but like I said, I was only twenty-one and didn't have a lot of appreciable skills ... unlike now."

Church quickly grabbed his crotch, surprising Christian. "Ya see, I had a twenty-one-year-old cock and a love of beer. Who'd ever thought I would've made it across the country for some fucked up interview before I found trouble ... and trouble I did find."

As Christian scrawled notes, the speed of his writing almost made the words indecipherable. The excitement had prickled the hairs on the back of his neck, and he mentally tried to race ahead during Church's tale, anticipating the outcome.

"I had stumbled into a bar at some midpoint in my journey. I was in some rundown city just out of Dallas. The drive left me tired and parched, and that shit hole was the first place I came to. I think my intention was to get a motel room, have a bite and shower, and rest up for another long day on the road, but that didn't work out as planned."

The younger man looked up from his writing. It dawned on him, at that moment, how deep and resonant the killer's voice was. He had an unmistakable timbre, which seemed pleasing to his ear, and even though the words were flat and without range, he never had that drone of a long-blowing horn. All in all, it was a pleasant sound. Church seemed to choose his words carefully, like he was practicing them in his mind before they escaped his tongue.

"I never made the motel, rather, choosing to stop in for a cold one at some rustic pool bar, and when I did I spied a group of men playing poker at one of the tables in the back. Musta been a regular game, 'cause they all seemed to know each other pretty well. Now, I'm not a great card player, and I don't know why, but I asked to join in, and they all agreed. Too heartily, I see that now, but I guess I had money in my pocket I was itchin' to lose, or it was the cold Budweiser hitting me fast, or that old familiar devil crooking his finger at me, imploring me to sit and play."

"And so you stayed," Christian offered as some lame crest to his story, and to illustrate just how enthralled he was.

"Yeah, I stayed, then after a few rounds of cards and beers one of them saw I was winning ... and that by God was just sheer luck! 'Cause like I said, I wasn't good at cards. Then this asshole starts suggesting I was cheating. Looking back, I'm sure none of the guys at the table really thought I was cheating. I suppose it was just backslapping bullshit by drunk fuckers who were used to ribbing each other too much. Still, I was a stranger at their table and being cocky and twenty- one didn't take too kindly to the accusation. There were words, harsher I suppose than they shoulda been. Then I decided it was time to head out, but only after I raked in my winnings and pocketed the cash. Dammit, I didn't cheat anyone! I was just a lucky son of a bitch."

Church looked down at his empty glass and then up at Christian. There was a clear understanding that on the next lull in the conversation the writer was expected to scurry his ass up to the bar for more drinks. Gabe's look seemed to say "I'm not your sister, and I don't give it up for free!"

"Of course, I didn't do the wise thing and drive my beat-up Chevelle to the nearest motor lodge, leaving the distasteful incident behind. No. I sat outside the bar and waited for two more hours, just watching the door. When the big man who'd sullied my character walked out and got into his pickup and then drove down the highway — presumably headed home — he had someone following him." Church leaned closer to Christian and whispered so others might not hear his story.

"It didn't take much. It had been barren out there on those no-name rural roads. Running his truck off the road was just good driving on my part. Didn't give a shit what it mighta done to my car, I was too pissed to care. I tried one of those pit maneuvers the cops are so proud of. His truck barreled off the road and into a tree line, upending nearly a quarter mile of barbwire fence. I'm about as good at driving as I was at cards, just lucky, thoroughly lucky that night, but he was probably three sheets to the wind by then anyway. His head must've hit the steering wheel 'cause when I came up behind him, he seemed dazed. I slammed my own car into park and ran to his driver's side door and flung it open.

He was a big man, outweighed me real good. But he was either too drunk or too dazed to comprehend what was happening. I pulled him to the ground and kicked him square in the head. My boots had steel toes, and the blood splattered, like when we used to shoot up watermelons when I was a kid. I had already grabbed my hunting knife from the glove box and drove it all the way to the hilt, right there into the side of that fat fucker's neck. If the kick hadn't done it, the blade did. He wallowed like a sick cat in the grass and weeds on that dark, deserted stretch of road. Eventually he bled out, but not before he received a few choice kicks to the stomach and even one in his nuts."

Christian stopped writing long enough to look up. "Looking back now, after all that's gone down, do you regret killing him?"

"Regret's a powerful word, and I can't regret it because I hadn't any feelings either way at the time. I was just being stupid and rash. I mean I should've gotten caught on that one kill alone. As it stood, I didn't. And once I yanked the knife outta that guy's neck, I sped away contented to leave that shit-stain of a town behind. And I didn't stop until I was almost to Arizona. Fortunately for me, the county police were too stupid or lax to ever try and hunt me down. In fact, until now, no one else had even heard of that part of my tale."

Church smiled through sickly grin, as if they were somehow linked by some furtive secret of clandestine lovers who met under the cover of night. Christian only returned his stare unaffected, yet silently wondered about all the things that must be going through the other man's mind. He had become connected to a murder in some backwoods town in East Texas — one that might be recorded in some dusty banker's box, sitting forgotten on a metal rack and slapped with a big label, the words "cold case files" stamped on the side.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Rubble and the Wreckage"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Rodd Clark.
Excerpted by permission of NineStar Press, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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