Evil Casts a Shadow

Flicking the ashes from a half-smoked Marlboro into a used paper coffee cup, he continued to scan the neighborhood. His focus was on a house located half-way down on the left side of the street. Coughing sporadically, he reached for a small towel. Pausing to clear his throat, he leaned out of the van’s window and expectorated a white mass of phlegm. Wiping his nose and mouth a second time, he stroked his chin and continued to scan the north end of the street with a pair of cheap binoculars. The house he was looking at was non-descript, much like the rest of the houses on the street. Built in the 1940s to accommodate employees who worked in local defense plants, a once vibrant neighborhood gradually fell into hard times when those companies either downsized or merged in the 1970s. What he was looking at now was badly in need of paint and repair, but he wasn’t interested in what the outside looked like. He was only interested in who lived inside. He put the binoculars down on the dash, and finished the last bit of cold coffee from a second paper cup. Not bothering to wipe his mouth, a dribble of coffee slid down his grizzled chin, the result of a three-day beard, and lit up another cigarette. His wife wanted him to stop smoking, which he did for her sake. Killed along with her two children in a car crash, he still continued to reel at the thought of losing them. At one time, his marriage had emotionally and physically fulfilled him, but not now. It was Jennifer Holmes who ran the stop light that night that had put an end to it. He wanted revenge by his own hand, but in the end, she got what was coming to her. Her death was horrible, but nothing like what he had to endure. Clarke took up smoking again after his family was killed. The acrid smoke cleared his senses, allowing him to focus on the task at hand. He once had a family, but they no longer existed except in his memory. They say someone never dies as long as their memory lingers. He hoped this was true because it was all that held him together. As he sat there, slowly exhaling the harsh smoke from deep within his lungs, he thought of her and dreamt of what could’ve been. They’d met at the university and were instantly attracted to each other. Looking back, he chuckled at his impulsiveness and stupidity in marrying a girl he hardly knew, especially one who had children from a previous marriage. In the end, that didn’t matter because he was lonely. Those five years on death row had hardened him and denied him his humanity, but she had restored it through her love, and that had sustained him. He took another long drag on his cigarette, then casually flipped it out the open window. Turning his head slightly, he breathed deeply, momentarily inhaling the cool ocean air through his nostrils and open mouth. In retrospect, some would later call him a monster, as if that term, now long overused by the mainstream media, meant anything. Perhaps their jaded view of the world demanded ever-sensationalized headlines, more ink, and more news readers parroting headlines that meant little to anyone not paying attention. To those glued to cable TV news stations 24/7, tales of horrendous crimes against their fellow man, spoke more volumes about an intellectually bankrupt and morally rotten culture than anything else. The finer points of civil discourse eluded him. After all, he would be described by those who knew him as a “blue collar” man, a man little given to social graces. Yet somehow, his wife had “humanized” him in ways he never imagined. From a one-time junkie, to a falsely convicted serial murderer who once sat on a Texas death row, his life had gone full circle until that awful day when his wife’s car was T-boned on a city street by some privileged, reckless woman. The horror and pain of that day never subsided, imbedded in his psyche to the point where it no longer mattered if he lived or died. Even his escape to the south Pacific island of Pohnpei had not assuaged his anger at Holmes, or for that matter any woman. The only thing that worked to calm him, albeit only temporarily, was lying on the beach and soaking up the sun. Then one day, a blond named Reni from Atlanta, asked him to take their photograph. All three were gorgeous, sexy would have been a better description; beautifully tanned bodies toned from multiple hours in a gym. This time he was going to get even. Something had snapped that night in the hospital’s emergency room where his wife died. At first, it wasn’t noticeable, but as his anger became more internalized, it was now time for retribution of the most horrific kind, and with these three women, his anger would play out in a most horrible way. Even the FBI and the local authorities would be shocked by his brutality; his cruelty. The media would later describe his crimes as horrific, but even that failed to garner people’s full attention half-a-world away. No, his crimes would be something special, something the news media would trumpet in blaring headlines designed to sell newspapers. His reign of terror, which he was now about to unleash on an unsuspecting public would shock and stun even the most jaded. He was about to get his revenge.