PROLOGUE

“I grew up in a strict Catholic family. It was surprising to them that I would become a cop. I never knew how badly off my life really was until I went to college. I guess my mom assumed I would become a priest. My life sure was different.”

 

“You look in the mirror much?”

“Everyday.”

“Do you like what you see?”

“What?”

“That scar.”

“What about it?”

“Do you like it?”

“What do you think?”

“Some men would find it a sign of virility.”

“How?”

“Well, think about how you got it.”

“I got it catching your sadistic ass.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you showed great power. You showed the world that you are smart and that you are strong. You caught me, the world’s most heinous serial killer.”

“You give yourself too much credit.”

“You don’t give yourself enough.”

“We’re done here.” Sam stands up. He is in the interrogation room. He is a seasoned detective, but the crime he just solved is something more than what he expected. The man that was sitting in front of him was known as “Butcher Bob.” He traveled the country as a culinary knife salesman and murdered thirty five people. He took his act to Canada and killed another fifteen before returning to the States. Sam was on his trail since the second victim. Five years of his life was spent tracking Bob.

He walks to the door, comforted by the fact that Bob will be getting the death penalty. Texas loves nothing more than killing those that kill others.

“Hold on,” Bob looks at Sam once more with the stone cold eyes of a man who no longer feels, while Sam’s eyes look sunken, like those of a dead man.

“What?”

“Look at me,” Sam turns around, “that scar on your face is nothing compared to the one I have left on your soul.” Bob smiles with the deadliest smile, the kind that the devil shows you just before he takes your soul. Sam can say nothing. He just turns around and walks out. “Enjoy the rest of your life.”

As Sam walks to his Captain’s office, all he can think about is what he meant by “a scar on my soul.”

“It is my understanding that you have some time coming,” said the Captain.

“Yeah, about three weeks.”

“My suggestion to you is to take it, all of it.”

“Is that an order?”

“You have devoted five years of your life to catching this psycho butcher. It is time you took some time off. He’s caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. There is nothing more that you can do. Go home. Go back to your girlfriend. This couldn’t have easy for her. The two of you were supposed to get married, what, six years ago?”

“Life got in the way.”

“It always does. That’s why you need to put a wedding ring on her finger. She’s had to put up with a lot.”

“I think I just need some sleep.”

“Take the three weeks. Come back when you are ready.”

“Okay.”

 

CHAPTER ONE

A BEGINNING LIFE

 

“What makes a man? Is it his sexuality? Is it his strength? I don’t know. I learned a lot as a cop in the New York Police Department. I saw a great many things. Some things can never be unseen.”

 

Sam returns home to his girlfriend. She is tall for a woman. In her late twenties, she is as beautiful now as she was when they met in college. This would be the first time that he would come home on time. For the past five years she had to endure sleepless nights, not only from him, but also from her. You don’t know that things that affect you affect everyone around you. Their love had seemed to fade in recent years, but when the case broke and Sam knew how to catch Bob, things were getting better.

“I have a gift for you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, come inside and get it.” She leads him inside.

“What’s it for?”

“For being the best cop ever.”

“I don’t know if I should get that distinction.”

“I do.” She closes the front door and locks it. She turns around and wraps her arms around him. She begins kissing him. They haven’t been intimate with each other in some time. Usually, the skip the foreplay and just get straight to the action, but this time, the gift would be something she hasn’t done for him since their third year in college.

She kneels down in front of him and unzips his pants. He feels himself getting hard. She pulls him out.

“Gina.” She takes him into her mouth. Things begin to happen. It begins to hurt, and then the pain goes away. Thoughts begin to flood his mind. They are random. Ideas of stuff that shouldn’t get in the way do. He begins to lose it. She can feel him slipping, going soft. She starts to jerk it, thinking that that will help the situation.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

“I’m just tired.” She stands up and he puts his pants back on. “I’m sorry.” She kisses him on his cheek.

“It’s okay, I understand.”

“I just…”

“You don’t have to explain. I know you are tired. Come on, I got a real present for you.” They both walk into the living room. There is a gift sitting on the coffee table.

“What is it?”

“You have to open it silly.” He tears into it like a kid on Christmas. It is a book. Actually, a book on tape. “It’s the autobiography of Sherwin Goodman.”

“The cop who caught New York Sub Sniper.”

“Yeah, I know you like serial killer books. I’ve heard you talk about him before, so…”

“I love it.” He kisses her.

“I think we have a walkman in the closet.”

“Yeah.”

“Have fun with your time off.”

 

CHAPTER TWO

AGONY

 

“There are ideas, to be sure. But, there is nothing better than the love a great woman. I could never have gone as far as I have without the love of my wife.”

 

The lines are huge at every gas station. The lotto prize is upwards of two hundred million. “I’ll take seventy two quick picks,” says one patron. Sam is grabbing a soda. He doesn’t like just coming to the gas station just to buy quick picks. He comes all the time and he doesn’t want the cashier to think he is some kind of addict. There is a number on the back of each scratch off game and lotto ticket to call if you suspect that someone is an addict. Sam always thought that he would be found out.

He pays for his drink and his quick picks and drives home. He walks in the house from the door in the garage. He had accidentally left it open when he took the car out. He still didn’t close it. He was going to come back and wash the car after giving Gina the lotto numbers. She is upstairs on the phone. “He’s been home for three days now and we still haven’t had sex yet.” He hears the one side conversation at the base of the stairs. “No, I actually kind of like that he’s gone soft. I know that is a terrible thing to say, but I’m at a point in my life where I can’t risk having kids. Despite what people say, there is still a glass ceiling for us women and I don’t want anything to jeopardize my opportunity of making vice president. It’s kinda weird though. I pinch him at night, when I know he’s asleep. They say that a guy can’t control his erections, especially at night, so I wanted to see if I could get him hard. I couldn’t.”

Sam decides to just leave the numbers on the coffee table. He goes back outside to wash the car.

 

CHAPTER THREE

A COLD WINTER’S NIGHT

 

“Certain aspects of police work take a toll on a person. Seeing all the dead bodies and then discovering that they were killed senselessly takes a toll.”

 

Sam was reading over his case files of Butcher Bob. The deaths were so random. It ended up being that Bob picked his victims from those that came to watch his demonstration. People are asked to leave their contact information and he would remember the faces with the names and he would go from there. Senseless.

That wasn’t the only thing he was thinking about. He remembered that this case made him think about his past. The things he wanted to forget. He remembered having a drink during this case. He had been clean and sober for ten years until he got assigned it. He tried to remember things. But, one thing dominated them all.

He had had a problem before, but that was when he was younger, around fifteen or so. His parents were very religious, and they were very strict. That probably contributed. Sam is a very good looking guy and ladies started coming around early. His mother used to yell at him about how it would be disgracing the family if he were to have sex, it didn’t matter where. His first girlfriend tried to have sex with him, but he was so self-conscious that he couldn’t perform. She was a lot older than him. She was eighteen and just looking to fuck whatever she could. She had tried to put a condom on him, but Sam just went soft. It wasn’t that the condom made him, so much as it was that is was a definite sign that action was going to commence. He could only hear his mother’s voice and no matter how much he drank, it would never go away.

There was a victim. She looked just like his mother. She was brutally killed, worse than any other victim. For a while, it was thought that she wasn’t linked, but Bob confessed to killing her. She was actually the first one killed, even thought she was the tenth one found. He said he had performance anxiety.

“Ever have that Sam?” He had to find a way to overcome it. Bob wasn’t sure how to actually go about killing her. It wasn’t like he fully fleshed out his plan before showing up on her doorstep. “Ever have that Sam?” He was just going to show up and see what happens. “Ever have that Sam?”

Sam was supposed to be studying for a midterm for his freshman English class. But he and Gina just decided to fool around. It was then that he knew that he loved, but he was too scared to tell her. She would give him head that night. She sucked him so long that the insides of her lips were rubbed raw. He had porn star stamina. He was at ease with her.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL

 

“I knew it would come down to him or me. I chose me.”

 

There was the sound of glass breaking. Gina was the first to wake up. She had been awake. She had pulled the sheets off and was looking at the naked body of her boyfriend. She remembered what his penis looked like when it was hard. It was so long and thick. When he was on, she could barely fit it inside her. She remembered the times that they had sex, not so much sex, as just fooling around, in her parent’s living room. She loved looking at it. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen one before. It wasn’t even that this was the biggest she had ever seen either. It was that this one belonged to a guy that she actually loved.

She wanted him to love her, but wasn’t willing to go all the way until they knew that their relationship was something other than sexual tension. “Baby, wake up.” She pushes on him.

“What?”

“There is someone in the house.”

“What?” He’s awake.

“I heard a window break.” He gets up and grabs his gun from the nightstand. He leaves the bedroom. She follows him to the door, closes and locks it. She runs back to get the phone and shuts her self in the bathroom. She has never been more excited.

Walking down the stairs, Sam begins to think about Bob. Bob had entered a house late at night while in Canada. Sam begins shaking. He can’t walk down the stairs.

Bob had decided to go into the fridge and grab something to eat. How could he eat? He was about to kill a family of five, but decided to eat a bologna sandwich just before. Sam began to think about the family. About how peacefully they were sleeping before the mad man entered their home. About how they never saw it coming. Some punk kids were throwing rocks into houses. That was the noise, but it wasn’t Sam who found out. It was the uniform police officers who came after the set time limit of ten minutes had expired and Gina called the police. Sam had wet himself trying to get halfway down the staircase.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

A FIVE ROOM HOUSE

 

“I figured that my life occurred in five stages, with retirement being the fifth. So, I decided to write this book in five chapters. Celebrity made me a better cop, because crooks knew that I would catch them. Celebrity made me a worse cop, because the normal person knew the most personal things in my life. It was my life that they had exposed. I just wanted to do the right thing, not be judged by those who know nothing of the life.”

 

Sam walked around the house with a condom on. He was tired of not being able to get hard. Gina always wanted him to have a condom. It wasn’t like it mattered. He couldn’t get hard anyway. He would just walk around the house naked, save that condom. He wondered what his mother would think if she knew that he was walking around naked with a condom on. He began really thinking about it. What does it matter? He’s just tired. He is allowing thoughts to get in his way. He’s done. The case is over. He goes into the bathroom to throw the condom in the toilet. He does and flushes it.

He watches it swirl around the bowl and then sink into the abyss. He is somehow satisfied with that. He goes to wash his hands and looks in the mirror. “I don’t care what she thinks. I don’t care what’s been said about me in the past. I love Gina. I don’t want to get in her way. I don’t want to keep her from doing the things that she wants to do. I don’t want to be a burden. But she deserves a man. A man who can please her the way she wants to be pleased. I am that man. I just need to relax. I just need to breathe. We’ve had plenty of opportunities and we have made the most of them. She hasn’t left me because of this or anything else. If she wanted to leave me she would have done it by now. I love her and I want to marry her.

 

EPILOGUE

 

“For all those that have read this, I leave you with this: Find out who you are and be that person.”

 

On the day of Bob’s execution, Sam and Gina were getting married. That night would be the best night that the two would have sexually. The two were comfortable. It was that comfort that had been missing. Foreplay is one thing, but sex should be about being the closest with the person you love. You have to be comfortable. It is sweet and fitting that on the day of Bob’s death, Sam would be the most comfortable. Sam regained the life in his eyes. The terror of the mind was over. Bob continued to plague him, but no longer. All of that is done. Bob left this world with his last words being:

“To Sam, I can’t see you, but I know you are listening, I have made you a better cop. The day you die, you will understand what I mean.”