Killing The Blood Cleaner (25 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

The inmate law library clerk, Albert Sams, stood near the chain link fence and watched the prison van pull up near the back gate. The officer exited the van and proceeded to the gate. The inmate watched the officer press the communication button to talk to the tower officer. The inmate watched carefully to make sure the tower officer was focused on allowing the officer to enter. With two quick flashes he threw the two tennis balls with their deadly cargo attached over the fence. The balls landed softly to the right side of the pickup area and were camouflaged by the tall grass into which they fell. Only a tiny bit of yellow from each tennis ball gave any sign of their presence, and only if one were carefully looking.

In a few minutes the van officer and another officer returned with Kirk and inmate, Jimmy Richards, the other law library clerk. Both inmates were handcuffed with metal cuffs with their hands in front. The two shuffled slowly in front of the officers toward the gate. The officers did not notice as the inmates caught sight of the yellow of the tennis balls peeking through the grass near the van. After a thorough pat down search of each inmate the officers moved the inmates through the gate and toward the parked van.

Tacy followed well behind the group as she went through the gate and entered the van on the passenger side. She watched as one officer ordered the inmates to sit on the grass while he opened the rear door to the van and carefully looked around inside for any weapons or contraband. The other officer stood by the driver’s door to the van and called the tower on his radio.

“We are heading out to Court with two head of inmates and Nurse Tacy. I need to pick up my weapon for the trip,” he said loudly into the device making sure the inmates were aware he would be armed. In a few seconds a basket was lowered from the tower which contained a service revolver in a worn, black leather holster. The officer strapped on the holster and climbed into the van. “I am expecting to pick up some extra security from the Brunswick Sheriff’s office at the Glynn County line,” he said into the radio as he looked over at Tacy. Tacy noticed the inmates moving their cuffed hands to the side and sliding around a bit on the grass, but she could not see them deftly hiding the tennis balls and their cargo under the shirts of their uniforms.

“Ten-four,” was the response which crackled from the device. The officer started the engine as the other officer quickly ordered the two inmates into the rear of the van and slammed the door. The van pulled slowly up to the metal barrier by the tower and once it had been raised, the van and its passengers headed out around the prison perimeter and onto Highway 189 towards Brunswick. As the officer pulled onto the highway he checked the inmates in the rear view mirror and saw them quietly seated and facing each other. He noticed Kirk seemed to be wriggling a bit but this did not seem unusual. Satisfied, he looked forward over the shiny hood of the State van. There was nothing ahead but blacktop and pine trees for as far as he could see. He pressed the accelerator and felt the van slowly creep its speed up to the limit. “What kind of hearing are you and Kirk doing?” the officer asked Tacy, trying to make conversation while stealing a look at her tanned legs.

“I really don’t know. I just got this Order to be present,” she said, nervously clutching a copy of the fax and Order in her hand. “Nobody has talked to me about it. I guess I will just go and tell the truth. Maybe I should have gotten a lawyer,” she said softly as she looked out the window.

The officer slowed the vehicle as they passed a decaying gas station and two small houses. Two black children were playing in one of the yards with a yellow dog as they passed. The officer glanced at the rear view mirror again and saw that the inmates were still quietly seated. “We should be getting an escort from the Sheriff down the road at the Glynn County line,” he repeated, looking over at Tacy. She paid no attention and continued looking out the window at the endless pine trees.

They had traveled about three miles from the prison when, suddenly, from the back of the van, there was a scream. “Dammit Kirk! Don’t kill me!” The officer slammed on the brakes and Tacy pitched forward into her seat belt. The officer maneuvered the van to the side of the road and turned his head to see Kirk holding a stiletto like, metal knife in his cuffed hands to the throat of the other inmate. The knife was attached with a nylon rope to a yellow tennis ball. A small wound on the inmate’s neck, very near his jugular vein, was oozing dark red blood.

The officer parked the van and turned on the blue light. He reached for the van radio, as Kirk shouted at him. “Don’t you be using that radio! You are going to be the one responsible for him getting killed. All I want is a running start for the woods and everyone will be OK.”

The officer looked at Kirk with a slight smile as he pulled the service revolver out of its holster and pointed it at Kirk through the steel mesh which separated the driver and passenger from the inmates. “Kirk, you ain’t going anywhere and I could give a shit if you cut him up like a fish. Now I am going to open the back door and you and your friend are going to come out and lie face down and wait for me to have some back up,” he said as he picked up the radio microphone and pressed the talk button. “This is Van 6. Code 10–31. Request backup. Kirk’s got a knife on the other inmate. Location one mile south of Trudy’s Gas station,” he stated loudly so Kirk could clearly hear. “10–4, Backup on way,” was the crackling response from the radio.

“You are going to let them out?” Tacy asked.

“I will shoot both of them if they do anything but get out and lie down in the dirt,” he said, waving the revolver. “Kirk is not going to be killing anybody on my watch,” the officer continued as he exited the van and walked around to the back. Tacy watched him and the inmates and then carefully pressed the automatic door locks. The officer looked into the back of the van to see Kirk still holding the knife at the throat of the other inmate. He did not notice the other inmate’s grip around the yellow tennis ball to the side of his leg. The officer then gingerly unlocked the doors to the back of the van and pushed them open. Thinking ahead to possible results if the revolver were fired, Tacy had now positioned herself on the floor of the van with her head near the gas pedal. She did not want to find out if the metal mesh would stop a .38 caliber revolver bullet, even if it had been slowed slightly by traveling through an inmate.

With the doors open, the officer could now clearly see Kirk and the other inmate, still in the same position. “Both of you, come on out and if you make any fast moves I will shoot both of you!” he shouted at the two inmates as he pointed the pistol directly at Kirk. Kirk put the knife to his side and the two inmates began to slide forward on the metal bench seats toward the open doors of the van. “You better drop that knife before you come out of there,” the officer ordered when he noticed Kirk still had the knife in his hand. The other inmate continued sliding closer to the doors and closer to the officer’s face. Kirk defiantly still kept the knife in his hand as the officer watched. “Kirk, I will kill you if you don’t drop that knife,” the officer ordered, his focus now fully on Kirk and the knife as the other inmate slid closer to the officer on the metal bench, the yellow of the tennis ball showing slightly in his clenched hand. The officer fearfully tightened his grip on the pistol and sighted it on Kirk. He felt a sense of relief when Kirk dropped the knife to the metal seat beside him.

In one quick motion the other inmate squeezed the contents of the tennis ball directly into the officer’s eyes. There was a tight scream from the officer amid the strong smell of ammonia and then the blast from the gun which tore through the roof of the van. The inmates quickly pressed their advantage, with Kirk grabbing the waving gun and the other inmate puncturing the officer’s chest with the knife attached to the other end of his tennis ball. The inmates now stood above the officer as he writhed on the ground, clutching his eyes, his blue uniform awash with blood. Kirk aimed the pistol at him and then fired. The officer gurgled a cry and then was silent in a pool of blood. Kirk reached down into the dead officer’s pockets and grabbed the keys to the van and the handcuffs. Immediately he began unlocking his own cuffs.

“OK Kirk, let’s get going. It’s a long way to Florida and we has got some good pussy to enjoy,” the other inmate said, holding out his cuffed hands to Kirk to be unlocked and cocking his head over toward Tacy and the passenger side of the van.

“Sorry Jimmy. I won’t be needing a law library clerk on my trip,” Kirk said as he pointed the pistol at the inmate’s chest and fired quickly. The blast tore through the inmate and knocked his now limp body back into the ditch by the road. Kirk watched him for a second to make sure he was dead, and then picked up one of the knives with a tennis ball attached which he stuffed into a back pocket. He then closed the van doors and slowly walked to the driver’s side of the van.

Tacy had remained crouched on the floor of the van as she listened to the sounds of the fight. She reached for the microphone to the radio and clicked on it desperately, finally realizing that the radio would not function unless the motor was running. She heard the crunch of the gravel by the door and prepared herself to fight.

Fumbling slightly with the keys, Kirk unlocked the door to the van. Tacy made a quick lunge at him from her position on the floor which Kirk easily deflected with the butt of the pistol. He grabbed her by the hair and roughly tossed her into the passenger seat as he assumed his position in the driver’s seat.

“You get yourself hooked in. We got a lot of traveling to do and I don’t want you distracting me,” he said to Tacy, shaking her violently with one hand. Tacy obediently fastened her seat belt and Kirk turned on the ignition and started the motor. He then grabbed Tacy again by the hair and put the knife on the dashboard in front of him. Picking up the microphone he calmly radioed the institution, “This is Unit 6. Situation under control. Cancel backup. We are proceeding to Court.”

“10–4” was the immediate response which crackled back on the radio. Kirk then did a U-turn and headed the van back towards Lester. Tacy looked back and saw the two bodies lying in the grass and red dirt as they sped back towards town.

THIRTY-SIX

Jack pulled in to the front of the prison under the tower and mashed the communications button. “Has the van with Kirk and Tacy left yet?” he yelled into the machine.

“I shouldn’t be telling you, Dr. Randolph, but they have been gone about twenty minutes,” officer Beulah Burns in the tower replied.

Jack backed his car up and headed out toward the highway. At the highway he turned right toward Brunswick. There was only one vehicle ahead of him, a dusty green pickup which he quickly passed. His old car seemed to slowly float down the hot blacktop. He passed Trudy’s gas station and saw the black children playing by the road. He drove for about a minute and then noticed a prison van approaching at a very high speed. He slowed his vehicle as the van approached and turned his head to look at the driver. The vehicles quickly crossed but in that instant Jack saw enough to give him a shudder. It was clearly Kirk driving the van with his hand on Tacy’s head in the passenger seat. For a second his eyes met Kirk’s and then the van was past in a flash of white metal.

Jack stood on his brakes and fishtailed the car around, skidding across the blacktop and onto the dirt, creating a huge cloud of red dust. It took him a second or two to regain control of his car and accelerate in pursuit of the van.

“Looks like I get to kill that doctor friend of yours,” Kirk said with a snarl as he watched in the rear view mirror as Jack’s car righted itself and headed toward the van. “Might as well have some fun with the blue lights,” Kirk said as he turned on the blue lights and siren.

Jack was now about a thousand yards behind and the van was pulling away and heading for the gas station. The children heard the siren and saw the flashing lights and stopped their play to watch. The older child held his dog by the collar as the van approached. But when the van came within a hundred yards, the sound of the siren was too much for the dog and it broke away from the little boy and headed across the road. Without thinking, the child went right after the dog into the highway

“My God Kirk!” Tacy screamed as the child’s body hit the front of the speeding van, and sprayed blood on her side of the windshield. The impact caused Kirk’s hand to jerk the wheel and the van’s right tire went off the road and clipped the mailbox which sat atop an ancient ceramic pipe. There was a crunching sound and then the van thudded along with a now punctured tire.

“Damn! I guess we will have to head down to the railroad track and catch us a train,” Kirk said as he slowed the vehicle and turned down a dirt road to the right which cut through a swamp past the railroad. “But we will have us some fun first,” he said, roughly putting his hand between Tacy’s legs. “After I kill that doctor, of course,” he said looking in the rear view mirror.

Jack looked over at the screaming children who had pulled the child’s body from the road. An elderly black woman had emerged from the house and was crying with her hands to her face. He turned his car down the dirt road and managed to get within two hundred yards of the van.

Kirk somehow continued to drive the van down the dirt road. The blown tire thudded as the van cut through the dust of the road, causing the vehicle to slow. “These vans are supposed to run on three tires. I have heard the officers say that,” Kirk shouted at Tacy over the thudding. “This one seems to be having a little trouble,” he said as he slowed to cross the railroad tracks. Across the tracks was a field and then the tangled growth of a swamp. “I want to get in that swamp to deal with your doctor,” he continued, pausing to see Jack’s car gaining on the van.

About a hundred yards past the tracks Kirk pulled the van into the field and maneuvered it behind a large oak tree at the edge of the swamp. He slammed on the brakes and looked around the van. “There is a freight train headed for Savannah that will be coming through here in about thirty minutes. I have watched it from the prison many times before they put me in M building. There are always open box cars from deliveries in Brunswick and Jacksonville. You and I will be on board and having a fine time. But first, I do need to kill this damned doctor,” he said, as he opened his door and pulled Tacy behind him. Tacy tried to fight back, but he knocked the wind out of her with one fast slap from the back of his hand. Kirk then positioned them both beside the van and began to take aim at Jack’s car with the pistol resting on the hood of the van. Tacy could see Jack’s car pulling into the field and heading toward the van. Kirk slowly squeezed the trigger and Tacy winced as Jack’s windshield exploded on the driver’s side. Kirk grimaced as the car continued toward them. “Damned lucky bastard,” Kirk yelled as he watched the car approach with just the top of Jack’s head visible above the dashboard below the shattered windshield. Kirk aimed carefully again and squeezed off another shot which clipped the side of the steering wheel about two inches from Jack’s head. Tacy watched as Jack’s car still chugged toward them. Kirk pulled out the handmade knife, cut a piece of the rope which attached the tennis ball and tied Tacy’s hands, leaving about two feet as a leash. “We going to the swamp, Nursie! I still got one more bullet, and I am going to let him get real close this time,” Kirk screamed to Tacy as he pulled her along behind him, waving the pistol and returning the knife to his back pocket.

Jack slowed his car as he came within fifty feet of the van and peered out over the dashboard. He could see Kirk waving the pistol and pulling Tacy into the swamp. He also noticed some movement in the lower, twisted branches of some trees and in the saw palmetto scrubs among the thick vegetation. He noticed further back in the swamp there was a patch where the ground was turned up like it had been plowed. He could see a huge oak which had fallen in a recent storm. It was directly in Kirk and Tacy’s path and lay horizontal on the ground with its load of Spanish moss still hanging from the downed limbs.

Jack pulled his car right up to the van and, using it as a shield, opened his car door slowly and moved at a crouch on the ground beside the vehicles. He peered out to the swamp but now Kirk and Tacy were nowhere to be seen. Jack waited and watched quietly. There was no sound from the swamp but the screech of a few birds. Cautiously he crawled forward toward the felled tree. Jack continued his approach to the swamp, stopping from time to time to listen for signs of Kirk or Tacy. Listening carefully, he heard the crack of twigs and a rustling of underbrush, but when he looked into the swamp he saw no movement, only the slight swaying of the Spanish moss on the downed tree before him.

On the other side of the tree, Kirk was on the ground and finishing tying Tacy to a thick, moss covered branch. Her mouth was stuffed with part of a tennis ball which been cut and secured by a piece of the rope around her face as a gag. Completely immobile, her eyes were filled with tears of fear and rage. Kirk made a gesture of silence with his finger and ran his coarse tongue down her neck as his hands groped her elsewhere. His eyes laughed as she bit into the tennis ball in disgust. Peering out from a place under the tree where a rock pushed a section slightly above the ground, he could see Jack slowly approach. Kirk checked his pistol and tightened his grip on the knife. Kirk watched Jack step up on the trunk of the tree holding a knife and pause to look around from the higher vantage point. Kirk slid his knife into his pocket and coiled his muscles as Jack stood on the tree. In the far distance the sound of the train whistle miles away could faintly be heard.

Jack looked around and suddenly heard a muffled sound. He looked down, but it was too late. He saw a flashing glimpse of Tacy as Kirk grabbed Jack’s belt and flung him over the tree onto the moist spongy ground. Jack’s arms flailed out in an ineffective defense and his knife clattered on a stone on the ground near the tree. His next sight was Kirk standing over him, his shoe on his throat and the pistol pointed directly at his face which was turned slightly toward the swamp.

“I got one bullet and I wanted to save it for your face. Then I will have some fun with your girlie here on that train,” Kirk said, his jaw quivering slightly in anticipation. With slightly dimmed vision Jack again saw movement in the scrub behind Kirk. Jack’s hand eased into his pocket and grasped the striped pink plastic pig on the key ring from the Maximum Pig. He remembered the warning from the owner not to be using it in the woods. He pressed the little plastic pig several times with his thumb. The high pitched squeals penetrated the quiet of the swamp. Kirk looked puzzled and bent over and pressed the pistol closer to Jack’s head. “What the fuck is that?” Kirk spat, as Jack managed one more, long, loud squeal from the little device, pulling it from his pocket. Jack looked up at Kirk and the oiled steel of the pistol. Kirk was smiling as he squinted at the striped plastic pig in Jack’s hand. He did not notice the movement behind him.

There was the scream from Kirk and the sound of tearing and penetration as the tusks entered his chest from behind. There was the blast of the revolver which went a foot to the side of Jack’s head. There was the deep, growling snarl of the giant hog as it lifted Kirk up with its tusks and dragged him back toward the swamp. There was the warm wet feel and smell of Kirk’s blood on Jack’s face and shirt. Then there was the high pitched squeal of several piglets scattering throughout the brush. One disoriented little fellow ran over Jack’s leg, bounced off the tree, and headed back into the swamp. Jack turned his head and watched the huge hog continue to gore and stomp Kirk’s now grotesque carcass. It was then joined in the kill by the equally large female.

Jack and Tacy watched for at least a minute as the animals had their way with Kirk before leading their brood back into the swamp. Jack and Tacy looked at each other quietly and thankfully for several minutes to avoid attracting the animals’ attention before speaking. Slowly, Jack retrieved his knife from the ground and cut Tacy loose. Pulling her up, they walked over to Kirk’s crumpled body and stared at this shredded face and broken limbs.

“I will never eat pork again!” Jack said, holding the porcine key chain in the air as Tacy hugged him tearfully.