{Editor's Note: This short fiction appeared in print and online in Edition #12 of The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, in 2017}
{Author's Note: Children who grew up in America in the 1970's were surrounded with stories of serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Gary Gilmore, Gary Ridgway, and Gary Bishop. It seemed the chances of being kidnapped by such a person were high. These stories, at times exaggerated, over-emphasized, and converted into omni-present lore, influenced and even created the safety culture that now constitutes an over-correction from the prior era. This story, entirely fictional in every possible respect, comes out of my own childhood fears of Bundy, some of which continue to impact me as an adult, father, and husband. Bundy was active in Salt Lake City, Utah, attended law school at the University of Utah, and murdered Debi Kent, a young woman who attended Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah. The media's attention to these stories had the impact potentially of glorifying the predators and making repeat offenses more likely. No one in the media has ever accepted any responsibility for their glamorizing criminals. In addition, the inability of police officers to collaborate with each other beyond the local level, the lack of DNA science, and the general cultural trend of not taking women seriously, were contributing factors that allowed serial killers to have success.}
When the man arrived at Valley High School to pick up his daughter from drama recital, she was not at the designated meeting point out front below the elm. He tapped his palm on the steering wheel. The man assumed as a matter of statistics that his daughter had not been kidnapped and murdered, but he could not be fully certain until he could see her. This type of thinking was paranoid, he knew, but in his youth in 1974 his babysitter Mindy Beers had, after all, been abducted and killed by Ted Bundy, after a high school musical at this same building.
The man parked his Mercedes-Benz at the southeast end of the parking lot where his daughter would easily see it when she exited the school through the front doors and looked towards the left, as planned. Although the man was unaware of the coincidence, the parking stall where he stationed his Mercedes-Benz today was the same parking stall where Ted Bundy had, decades ago, parked his dirty white Volkswagen Beetle one Friday evening, then exited and hid himself until seizing his opportunity to overpower and kidnap Mindy Beers.
The Mercedes-Benz was a restored beige 300D with a beige leather interior, purchased for a fair price for both buyer and seller. It had taken the man four years to find a restored 300D of this quality.
According to local newspaper articles the man had read, in November of 1974, Ted Bundy had found a pamphlet somewhere in town advertising that Valley High School was putting on the musical Oklahoma! that coming weekend. Bundy believed the musical would be a good place to find a pretty teenage girl to rape and murder. He had had plenty of practice by then: smile; pretend to be lost, pretend to have car trouble; wait for a teen girl to come to his aid; sudden surge of action, power, and control. Bundy’s urges towards overseeing the pain, manipulation, torture, and killing of another person pushed him savagely, irreversibly towards that end. Bundy’s mother had once told police officers that, as a little boy, as young as age three, he had enjoyed torturing and killing his own pets for no reason except that, according to Bundy’s own mother, her son’s spiritual soul must have been corrupt in its very immortal conception. “When he came out of me he was covered in black ink and was shrieking like a devil on fire,” Bundy’s mother had told police.
It had been a Friday evening, November 8, 1974, when Bundy drove to the high school, parked his Volkswagen Beetle on the far east side of the front parking lot, and waited in shadow. Mindy Beers, a high school senior, was inside watching the musical with her family. She wore a blue cable knit cardigan sweater. The sweater had been hand sewn by Mindy’s mother Lynn. Mindy left the musical a few minutes early to pick her brother up from work, telling her family she’d see them soon at home.
Pause.
No one had seen Mindy since. A long time not to be seen by anyone. Fifty years now.
And the man had read, that every night and every day since Mindy’s disappearance, Mindy’s mother Lynn had kept the outside porch light on at home waiting for Mindy to come home. Always, that light was on, and everyone in town knew why.
The man’s day had been busy with meetings at work and he was content now to let his weight soak into the comfortable upholstery of the luxury vehicle. The Mercedes-Benz was comfortable, like a leather sofa on wheels. He kept it immaculate. He liked to tell people that the engine purred like a fat cat that had just eaten a bowl full of tuna. Perhaps he had stolen the fat cat line from the man who had sold the Mercedes-Benz to him. There was so much in the world beyond his control, it was comforting to keep this part of his life in perfect order.
He leaned forward and turned on the radio. He opened the window to let in some air; closed his eyes. When he awoke, he felt refreshed. Too refreshed, he thought. He had intended to close his eyes for only a moment. His phone showed that twenty-five minutes had passed. It was also possible, but not likely, he thought, that no time had passed and the phone had malfunctioned. The man checked for any messages. Nothing. True, his daughter was not punctual, but this was outrageous. She’ll turn up, he thought, she always does. She better.
Mindy Beers had been the man’s babysitter in 1974, when he was seven years old. Years later, in 1989, Ted Bundy confessed to kidnapping and murdering Mindy, dismembering her, and burying her body parts in the hills. Had he also raped her? It was widely assumed that yes; this was part of his portfolio of torture. Shortly after the confession, the State of Florida had executed Bundy by electric chair. And not one person had cried for Ted or had missed him, or had even thought of him. And the prison executioner, just moments after executing Bundy, could not even remember having performed the deed, for it was to him nothing more than a muscular action connected to a nerve impulse, similar to dropping garbage in a garbage can.
Around Mindy, the man had felt important and handsome. Even at age seven he had felt important and handsome, in her presence. In his memory, Mindy looked like Snow White.
The man messaged his daughter in a secret code he had devised for their communications: TVWELF, meaning here. If anyone were to steal his daughter’s phone, such a message would be meaningless to the thief. At Karson Construction, the large company where the man worked as Director of Risk Management, they used similar confidential codes, also developed by him, when sending text messages. The man and his Mercedes-Benz were now alone in the southeast parking lot; the other parents had already collected their children, and departed. Sailing, by Christopher Cross, played on the radio. This song had been popular when the man was in high school.
Sailing takes me away to where I’ve always heard it could be
Just a dream and the wind to carry me
And soon I will be free
The words and melody made the man feel like he was peering backwards through a cloudy veil at something that had been lost. He wondered when exactly he had crossed through that veil. What was clear was that he was on one side of the veil, and all that had passed before was on the other side, and there was no way for him to return.
The man pictured Mindy’s body going limp there somewhere in the parking lot, after a gruesome saga. Maybe Bundy had clobbered her on the head with a lead pipe. Maybe he had just grabbed her and scared her so bad in the parking lot that she got into his car on her own, and then he took more control over her inside the car. Meanwhile, Mindy’s parents were two hundred yards and infinity yards away in the school theater, clapping as Oklahoma! came to an end. The man looked at his phone. Thirty minutes had passed; he needed to take action, he needed to go inside and find his daughter. He turned off the ignition, got out of the Mercedes-Benz, and locked the door with the key.
The 1950s-era pink brick building had light green enamel panels and aluminum-framed windows. He observed that the school was the same as it had been decades ago when he himself had attended school here. Of course it was the same, he laughed at himself. How much could a school change in a few decades?
The school had been cut into a hill. Beyond the parking lots just north of and adjacent to the school, undulating grass sloped down from east to west. To the west, the land flattened out into the football field and baseball diamond. The man couldn’t see the structures but he knew there were three standalone overflow classrooms in the rear (north) parking lot. The drama room and theater—where his daughter most likely was still tied up in recital—were also on the north side of the school, within the school of course, hopefully secure.
The man entered the school’s front doors; still open. A sign directed him to check in at the front desk, but the front desk was empty, the light off, the door locked. Although he was not moving quickly, he felt less anxious now that he was at least in pursuit of his daughter, not simply waiting in the car. Just past the front office to the left was a colossal, clean, bright aquarium. A lion fish, two clown fish, an eel, and other creatures whose names he did not know fluttered about. The man studied the aquarium. How long do fish live? He decided it was not possible that any of these creatures had been alive when he had attended school here, let alone during Mindy’s time in high school.
To the man’s right, two boys in matching gold track suits who appeared to be brothers goofed around with a basketball. The basketball was imprinted with the letters VHS.
“Have you seen Val?” the man asked the shorter of the two boys.
The boy didn’t respond and continued talking to the taller boy in what sounded like a made-up language. They were passing the basketball to each other about ten feet apart. Their bodies were perfectly square. They giggled a bit.
The man stepped in between them and snatched the ball, his gold pocket watch coming free and swinging there on its chain. The taller boy stared at him but said nothing.
“Val Taggart?” the man asked.
“She a senior?” the taller boy countered.
The man nodded.
“We’re in tenth.”
The man rolled the ball back to the boy who had responded to his question. The man looked at his phone. It had been thirty-five minutes since he had arrived at the school. Mindy Beers had been missing for ninety minutes when her parents had called the police.
The man walked deliberately in the direction of the theater. He soon arrived at the art room, which was open to his left, with lights on. Inside, a boy in a wheelchair was painting. The boy had his back to the door. The boy wore a white shirt that was splotched with color from his work. The tile floor of the room was a collage of spilled paints. The man quietly examined the floor. He recalled Mindy’s mother having been quoted in the newspaper in connection with Bundy’s execution about how Mindy, in addition to drama club, enjoyed painting. The man came to a splotch of faded gold paint on the floor. The paint seemed to be worn and old. He knelt down before it and extended his right index finger to touch it. A pain stabbed his finger. Without warning his mind opened to a vision of a classroom of art students in some distant time. He was in the back of the classroom and no one seemed to notice him. In his vision, Mindy Beers sat close to him on a tall metal stool, painting with oils on canvas. She painted an image of a cottage at night. The cottage was made of stone and protected by trees and shrubs. In the man’s vision, Mindy used white and yellow paint to create a warm light that glowed from the front window of the cottage. Inside the front window, staring outwards, stood a balding gentleman and a brunette woman with her hair in a beehive. The man saw that these were Mindy’s parents. Mindy stood up now and walked to another art table. Mindy was wearing a blue sweater and a tan skirt. The sweater was buttoned with six large brown buttons. Mindy’s calves and ankles were bare. She collected a tube of gold oil paint from a neighbor and turned to return to her seat. Suddenly, the tube of gold oil paint, still open, fell to the floor, and bright paint splattered on the tile. Mindy went to the back corner of the room, grabbed some paper towels, returned, and blotted up the spill, but it did not come completely clean.
“Mindy,” the man said, trying to get her attention. She did not respond.
“Mindy,” the man said louder, but she could not seem to hear him. The man now remembered that her name was spelled Mindi, with an i instead of a y. Perhaps if he called her name a third time, with the correct spelling in mind, she would hear him.
“Mindi!” the man hollered desperately. “Be careful!” He kept yelling until his voice was hoarse. Still no response. The vision closed and the man found himself kneeling before the gold paint stain on the floor. His right index finger was bleeding. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the finger. The white handkerchief turned bright red in a circle the size of a dime.
He stood up, dusted off the knees of his brown suit pants, and left the art room. The man wandered further down the hallway. He heard music playing and descended some stairs. He arrived at the doors to the school gymnasium. He pushed open the door and the sound increased. Three cheerleaders in black and gold uniforms were dancing to a song playing on a boom box. They were all barefoot and had their backs to him. Their skirts seemed a little high to him. He recalled half a dozen cases at Karson Construction involving partial foot amputations related to improper footwear. One of the cheerleaders had blonde hair, one red, and one black. Their hair danced in every direction to the beat. He walked over close to them and shut off the boom box in mid-song. The three cheerleaders froze. When they turned towards him one at a time, he asked about his daughter.
“She said she was going home,” the blonde one offered.
“With whom?” he pressed. “She doesn’t have a car.”
“Dunno,” the blonde one said.
“Is anyone in there?” he asked, motioning to the girls’ locker room.
“It’s just us,” the black-haired one said.
“So no one’s in there?” the man asked, again pointing to the girls’ locker room.
The cheerleaders all shook their heads no.
He looked at them for a minute. Then he stepped into the locker room. The air was dank. The
lights were off and all was quiet.
He cupped his hands together and bellowed, “Anybody there?” Just an echo.
“No one’s there,” the black-haired cheerleader repeated. "See for yourself, fucking weirdo." The girls all laughed.
If he were a murderer in search of a young female victim, he thought, the locker room about this time of day would be a good place to start. The man walked the length of the locker room. In one of the lockers a wet green towel hung over a hook. Water dripped down from one corner of the towel. He rung out the towel over a drain, mopped up the excess water, rung out the towel again, and hung it over a bench to dry. He took his phone out of his suit pocket and messaged his daughter again: MGAGM—meaning call me immediately. His daughter was certainly in trouble now for failing to respond to his messages. After two minutes the man called his daughter’s phone. No answer. He left a voicemail. “MGAGM,” he said, and hung up.
When he emerged from the locker room the three cheerleaders were gone. He could smell their woodsy perfume. He found a basketball in the bleacher seats. He dribbled it on the wood floor a few times. The sound echoed loudly in the empty gymnasium. The man’s phone buzzed and he let out a sigh of relief. He let the basketball roll away. He looked at his phone but it was just his work. What his work wanted could wait. He stood there for a moment, unsure what to do next. He counted four separate doors in the gym in addition to the two locker room entrances. He suddenly felt tired. His gut told him to exit the gym to the outside.
Outside the air was still warm. The man now turned slightly to his right. His views were blocked by the three standalone classroom buildings in the parking lot. A multitude of voices came from that direction.
He walked over and peered around the first outbuilding. Nine boys formed a circle and they were all yelling and gasping.
“Come on Shiloh!” a boy yelled.
“Hit him!” another boy hollered.
In the middle of the circle two boys were fighting. One boy wore a plaid shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots; the other boy wore a white t-shirt and a black leather jacket. The boy in the plaid shirt had a bloody nose and the other boy’s t-shirt was ripped at the collar. The circle urged them on and they lunged at each other.
The man’s daughter was not in this group but the man continued watching the fight from his hidden vantage point. With a howl, the boy in the leather jacket and white t-shirt tackled the boy in plaid to the asphalt. The boy in plaid fell on his shoulder and yelled out. The man suspected a possible dislocation. At the same time, the other boy’s hand seemed to be jammed awkwardly in the melee and he yelled out too. Probably a simple wrist sprain. The two boys lay there on the ground writhing about and cursing.
The fight apparently over, the group of observers gathered their backpacks and jackets. Out of nowhere the man’s daughter appeared. The man exhaled with relief. She must have been watching the fight, too. She reached into her backpack and looked at her phone and, he imagined, saw his messages for the first time. She hurriedly organized her things and ran off towards the building’s northeast entrance by the theater.
The man emerged from his hiding spot and yelled his daughter’s name. She didn’t turn around. He followed her into the building, down the hallway, and out the front door, yelling her name again and again.
When he finally caught up to his daughter at his Mercedes-Benz, a sense of rage came over him. Now that she was safe, he realized how scared he had been. She should acknowledge that she had me worried, he thought.
“Get in back,” he suddenly said to her.
She looked bewildered. He opened the rear driver’s side door.
“Just get in,” he roared. “Now.” His voice was angry.
She sat down in the rear of the car behind the driver’s seat.
“Stupid!” he yelled. “Never get in a stranger’s car! You’ll be raped. You’ll be murdered!”
She tried to get out of the car.
“You stay put,” he said, “you need to think about this.” He stood in her way. He closed her door, opened the driver-side door, and got in. He started the car and drove off.
“You’re not a stranger!” his daughter screamed from the backseat.
He said nothing.
“You’re my Dad!” she screamed louder.
“Val,” he said, “if a man comes up to you and asks for help with his car, don’t go with him.”
“What’s this about?”
“Even if that man is Jesus Christ Himself!”
Their home was a five-minute drive from the high school. They lived in a neighborhood four blocks south of where the remaining members of the Beers family still lived. His home had a horizontal feel that he liked. It seemed to him that the home was crouching, making itself less visible. The man pulled the car into the garage and parked. The man and his daughter got out of the Mercedes-Benz. His daughter ran into the house. He closed the garage, and went out back to prune a few trees while there was still light.
Much later that night, long after the sound of music and television had ceased, the man walked quietly into his daughter's bedroom. A street lamp lit up her sleeping face through an open curtain. He walked to the edge of the bed, stood there watching over her. Her chest rose and fell. He held his palm an inch from her mouth and felt the warm air escaping. After a while he closed the curtain and returned to his bed.
***
In bed, the man tosses and turns. He dreams of Mindi in a blue sweater in a parking lot. Ted Bundy approaches Mindi and asks for help with his broken-down Volkswagen. Bundy has an excited glimmer in his eye. Mindi somehow knows everything. She kneels down and pretends to adjust her shoelaces. Without Bundy noticing, she removes a boxcutter from her shoe. She stands up now with her arms folded. Bundy reaches both arms around and grabs Mindi. Mindi’s arms are pinned at her sides. Bundy begins to tighten his embrace. But Mindi is holding the boxcutter, with blade open, in her right hand. She brings her right wrist upwards, turns and twists her body so she's facing Bundy, and jabs the boxcutter forward into the left side of Bundy’s neck. Mindi saws her hand jaggedly around now, opening a hole in Bundy’s jugular vein and carotid artery area. Blood gushes from Bundy’s neck. Bundy goes pale and falls to the ground wimpily. Not a single living thing in the universe, nor any molecule of energy, nor any cell of light, nor any inanimate object, observes or notices or is any way impacted by the death of Bundy. Except that Mindi is safe.
Still inside the dream, Mindi now turns around, her right hand and arm red with blood, and looks straight into the eyes of the dreamer, perhaps with gratitude. Their eyes lock for a time. Mindi disappears from the dream.
The man wakes up in bed, short of breath. He gets out of bed, grabs his car keys, and runs to the garage in his pajamas. He opens the garage door, gets in the Mercedes-Benz 300D, and turns on the ignition. The engine purrs. He backs out of the driveway and closes the garage door by remote. He pushes in the clutch and revs the engine. The engine responds. Now he puts the Mercedes-Benz in first gear and races off down the street. It will take only a minute to drive the few blocks to the Beers’ home. He knows his chances are slim, but he prays that once he arrives there, the porch light will be off. If so, he will park his beige Mercedes-Benz, knock on the front door, and wait for his babysitter Mindi to answer.
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