Tracking Evil, a Podcast Pt. 07

"Yes, yes, yes. You have me there. I won't deny it." He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Yes, my unlamented late spouse did indeed hate me. Or rather, she grew to hate me, resenting the fact that I was quite happy in our relationship while she chaffed in its constraint. I read her diary, a requirement for my defence in court, and it seemed that my contentment at the simple things in life and a low sex drive were the spur for her to seek solace outside my arms. As time passed the necessity to hide her actions from me made her resent me all the more. I was the roadblock to her freedom."

Erica felt her palms itch. Despite her situation she almost ached for pen and paper to take notes. She decided not to respond, to let him talk himself out.

Butterman removed his glasses, he blinked myopically at Erica as he looked towards her, fumbling as he did for a handkerchief in his jacket pockets to clean his round lenses spectacles. She watched as he fastidiously worked on them, polishing the glass till they shone. Perching the frames back in place he offered her what passed as a shy smile.

"I don't scare you as much as before, do I? After hearing that I probably sound pathetic, someone to pity rather than fear."

Erica nodded, "I wouldn't go as far as say I could ever pity you but yeah, not as scary as before."

He didn't move an inch, displayed no overt physical threat, no brandishing of weapons or lurid threats, but Erica suddenly felt the same chill she'd felt when he'd appraised her in the restaurant when they'd attempted to entrap him. With his long limbs and cold dead blue eyes, slicked back hair, there was something almost arachnid about him. Erica had the same uncomfortable sensation that was shared by many hapless insects trapped in a web.

"Would you prefer to be scared again; would you like a reason to fear me?"

Erica shook her head dumbly, there were worse fates that dying and she wasn't anxious to experience any of them.

"Good." Butter noted, "Then perhaps you'll skip the comedy routine for a while? Perhaps offer me a modicum of the respect I've paid towards you. I didn't seek an adversary in this but you intruded in my affairs nonetheless. Now, back to my original question. The message linked the deaths, but how did you link me to the message? And also, tell me why someone possessing both intelligence and a delicate beauty like yourself allow herself to be defiled in the manner I saw at that motel with those two men?"

She meant to follow his instructions, tone her manner down a bit, answer his questions, keep him sweet but then he went and reminded her about Amos with his second question. Instead of playing ball, she leaned forward defiantly, fixing his gaze with her own. Blue eyes meeting blue.

"No, let's talk about the elephant in the room first. Why did you go on a killing spree? What happened to you?"

"Fine." he sighed dramatically, "I should have expected you wouldn't be compliant until you asked the big question as you see it. The problem with dealing with the press I suppose." He shifted slightly in his seat and then checked his watch. "Yes, yes, I suppose a moment or two spent on this will be fine." He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, long thin fingers that Erica knew were covered in the blood of innocents.

"I told you already that I was happy in my marriage and that was a truth but not the whole one. I also was afraid. Before I met my wife, I feared I would never meet anyone, despite my handsome exterior." It appeared to be a joke and yet he never cracked a smile. "Once I met her, I feared she wouldn't like me, wouldn't come to love me. When we married my fears evolved, now I dreaded the thought of her leaving me. A life spent scared, worried, anxious. And then one day all my worst fears were realised. I panicked. I reacted without thought, without plan, without malice. It was as if something, someone, other than myself guided my actions, guided my aim. I killed my wife, nearly slaying her lover as well."

He paused, clearing his throat. Erica knew that it wasn't emotion at the memory of his wife that was sticking in his gullet, it was simply a reaction to a solitary man talking more than he was used to.

"I went mad in the jail cell the first few nights. I lost my mind. It's not an easy thing to admit but it's true. I scrawled on the walls in my own filth, broke every nail on every finger clawing at the floor, at the bars on my cell. I was a broken man, shattered and facing a long prison term having lost the most precious thing that I'd ever known. And then something occurred to me. A thought. A worm of a revelation that burrowed deep into my brain and, over time, as it burrowed deeper still, nestling in my mind, I recovered, becoming the calm individual I am today. Do you know what that thought was?"

A hundred smart ass responses wrestled on Erica's tongue but she swallowed them back, settling for a simple "No".

"That when I killed her, when I killed my cheating wife. I wasn't afraid anymore. I wasn't happy that's true, but I wasn't feeling scared for the first time since I was a young child. No, I felt powerful. Power is not an easy thing to surrender once you've tasted it."

"And now you kill, to feel, what? Powerful? Alive?"

"Yes, exactly that. Does that disappoint you? Were you seeking some earth-shattering revelation to make sense of everything? The prison psychologist would probably have any number of labels for me, sadist perhaps, sociopath maybe, psychopath... who knows? But what I am, what I really am is simply greedy, greedy for that which makes me feel good. Now, I've told you my truth, tell me yours."

Erica threw up in her mouth, a sliver of vomit escaping her lips. Butterman rose swiftly, a disgusted look on his face. Clasping a hand to her mouth she rushed to the wall nearest her, heaving up, voiding her stomach of the food she'd eaten only minutes before. He disgusted her, the simplistic view he had on the value of his needs versus the lives he'd taken. Her body had reacted to her mind's revulsion, a sudden violent expulsion of the food he'd offered her. She spat a number of times, clearing the acidic taste from her tongue and lips as best she could. Then, she walked back to her chair, head held high.

"You want me to share?" Erica asked, standing behind the wooden chair, resting her hands on the back on it, leaning forward as if for support. "Fine I'll share. But you don't want to know about Amos and Duncan, the two guys you saw me with that night."

"Don't I?" Butterman asked, his voice placid but one eyebrow crooked questioningly.

"No, you don't." she answered firmly, "You told me your 'origin story' so here's a taste of mine. Since I started following this story, following you I suppose, I've had sex with sixteen different men, fifteen of them were black. It started out as sort of a necessity, call it a barter system. Each sexual experience brought me closer to the truth of the story, closer to catching you. I weighed up the right and wrong of it. I figured breaking the story, catching you was worth whatever I had to do. But I admitted to myself in the end that I enjoyed the sex. Not all the time, but for the most part it was a price I was more than happy to pay."

"Fifteen..." he hissed as Erica paused for breath.

"Yep, fifteen big... black... cocks. You know how you liked feeling powerful? Well, I LOVED feeling helpless, impaled and fucked on long lengths of meat. I fucking loved it! Let me tell you something else since you are so keen to know my mind. You said you didn't feel fear during the killing, well here's a worm for your brain. I reckon you felt fear, fear then, fear now and fear every moment in between. I think you are scared of that place between a woman's legs and your total inability to do anything worthwhile there."

Erica was in full flow now, gripped by the need to tell a tale, her voice her instrument in lieu of her laptop. Butterman her unwilling audience as she saw his clear blue eyes widen at her words. She pressed on, heedless to whatever consequences lay at the end.

"You thought you were being charming, suave even, telling me how I was like your dead wife, sharing brains and beauty... your words. Well, we shared something else besides that. We also shared Randall, he was one of my fifteen, we both came hard on the same black dick. That's how I matched you to the killings, by getting screwed by your wife's lover."

Butterman rose to his feet, pacing away from her, truly agitated now. His right arm flapping in the air as he stalked away.

"I don't want to hear this." he declared.

"COWARD!" Erica yelled at him.

Butterman stopped at once. His back was to her but she could read in the tension of his stance that he was at war with himself. Finally, he turned slowly back to her. His face was calm but there was a wildness in his eyes, Erica finally understood the expression 'if looks could kill'. He didn't return to his seat but he did move a pace closer. Still, she took it as a signal to continue talking.

Erica took a deep breath, closing her eyes, casting her mind back to the night spent with Randall and his nephew Andre.

"He was big, you probably saw that right? Well seeing isn't the same as feeling it. Feeling that cock prodding against you, trying to push itself inside your body. The little you saw before you killed her wouldn't help you to understand how she felt, how I felt as his dark shaft pushed remorselessly inside, spreading the tight pussy beyond anything it had admitted inside previously."

She opened her eyes, Butterman was still rooted to the same spot. His glasses now gleamed with reflected sunlight so she couldn't tell if he was watching her, if his eyes were open at all, but instinctively she knew they were, that he was staring at her intently. She pulled her top off, a slight quiver from the statue that was Butterman confirmed he was looking. Erica unhooked her bra and as it fell to the ground. She began kneading her own breasts.

"Eleven inches." she said softly, she knew in the echoing chamber of the warehouse that her voice would carry to him. "Bitch is literally loving eleven inches. That's what he said when he fucked your wife, that's what you wrote near all those people you killed. You know, he said the same as he fucked me and I did, I loved every... single... inch."

Her nipples were hard now, Erica's body responding to her own words, her memories, her touch. She dropped her hands to the waist of her pants, loosening them.

"Stop!" Butterman said, she ignored him, pushing the heavy canvas pants down over her hips, the weight of the material pulling them down to her ankles. Her panties followed and she could hear Butterman's breath catch as he saw her shaved pussy. Was it glinting with moisture in the sunlight? Could he tell at that distance?

"First, first he pushed a finger inside me, like this." Erica's own hand dropped to her crotch, she slid a finger, then a second inside herself, moving them in an out steadily. Her body trembled but it wasn't her strained and fatigued muscles at fault this time, it was excitement that caused her to shiver.

"He told me how Kristine, your wife, had been a good little cock slut, just like me. He made me admit I wanted him, even though he was so much older than me. He made me say I wanted his cock, just by fingering me...uuh." Erica moaned slightly at the end, her fingers probing away inside her, she brought her other hand into the fray, returning it to her breasts, rubbing and pinching her own throbbing, sensitive nipples.

"Then he made me ask him, beg him, to fuck me bare, told me to say I was a slut and I did. Uhhh, ooooh, anything to get him to put his cock inside me. Did your wife say that? When you were getting the gun. Was she begging for his cock?"

Danger, imminent violence, the thought that this was probably her last moments in this world, her last words... Erica found it as intoxicating a sensation as if Randall himself was stood beside her, pushing his big black cock deep within her.

"Uh, uh, uh, yes, I begged him, called him my big black Daddy and he made me cum, over and over. He pushed my body.... ohhh, hard, so hard. I came all over that cock so many times, bigger and bigger orgasms, so big. I can remember his touch on my skin, the feeling... oh god... of his cock... uh, uuuuh, cock pulsing as it unloaded, deep, deep inside me."

Erica moaned. In her minds eye, she pictured some of her former lovers. Tiny, the heavyset young man who had pumped and ridden her in his grandmother's basement. Elias, the career criminal, fucking her on the pool table. Amos and Duncan filling her ass and pussy at the same time, her body sandwiched between the two old men.

She had stopped talking but she hadn't stopped masturbating. She hadn't fallen silent, inarticulate moans of pleasure streaming from between her lips, but there were no more words. No more taunts for Butterman. He had ceased to be the purpose of her performance. It was all about her pleasure now.

Erica closed her eyes, hand flexing rapidly as it moved her fingers in and out, the heel of her hand scoring across her clit, her nipples gripped, pulled and tweaked. She lifted her leg up, resting it against the seat of the chair so that her legs spread further, opening herself up to her animalistic needs. Erica had passed beyond thought and reason, her hands moving under their own device, individual beings, pleasuring the body attached to them.

She shuddered and gave a long low moan, tinged with despair as well as pleasure as she came for possibly the last time in her life.

"Uhhhh, sooo, uh, so good."

A slow hand clap echoed like thunder in the big empty room, the sharp detonations of flesh striking flesh bouncing off the walls. Erica didn't open her eyes at first. She sought to keep a hold of the fading orgasm, to use it as a barricade against the fear. The applause didn't slacken however, the jarring sounds continuing until she reluctantly opened her eyes to face her captor.

Butterman had moved further still from where she stood, hands now hanging by his side as the last echoes of applause faded.

"Yes, just like my wife. Beautiful, brilliant and a slut. For that reason, I should kill you right now. Wash your filthy existence from this world." He paused then, looking at her almost expectantly, searching her face for terror, waiting for her pleas for mercy. Erica swallowed hard, determined to give him no such satisfaction.

"Reminiscent of my wife, but... I also find you to be like me." Erica grimaced at this but Butterman paid no heed as he continued. "You are cruel, you are very, very cruel. You saw a weakness and you exploited it. You were placed in a prison, faced with a superior threat and you overcame it. Yes, very like me, kindred spirits almost."

Butterman gave Erica a mocking bow, an old-fashioned gesture that suited him. "Congratulations on your story, I can't wait to read it."

"Wha...?" Erica asked, her stunned response partly from her orgasm, partly from his words.

"You are free to go. Publish your story, reunite with your friends, get a dog if you choose, I don't care. I'm going away for a while. It seems I need to rethink my strategy, my tactics, now that you have discovered me. Don't you worry Ms Anderson, as much as you can't help being a reporter, I can't help being a killer. I will return, whether you choose to oppose me when I do, well that's entirely in your hands. However, if you do, well... I make no guarantees for your safety beyond this day."

With that he turned on his heel, striding from the empty building.

Erica stood there, fingers still inside her, idle now, unmoving as she processed what had happened. Slowly she withdrew her digits from her moist pussy, rubbing them absently on her thigh. Beneath the chair he'd been sitting on, Arlene's phone still lay on the ground.

She moved to collect them from the floor, slipping the SIM card back inside. The battery life read eight percent. Erica hit redial, the phone only ringing once before it was answered.

"Hi" she said in a dull voice.

Erica held the phone away from her ear as the loud babble of voice's blared out from the speaker. Arlene's and Sondra's, the loudest, the bass tones of the men in the background, unintelligible with the two women talking over them. She let them talk for a full minute, not listening, just letting the sound wash in one ear and out the other.

"Stop. Just stop talking." Erica muttered quietly.

The voices stopped. She was surprised they'd even heard her.

"Track the phone. Come get me." Erica hung up as she finished.

She was weary, not just from last night or the hunt over the previous three days. She was weary from the hundreds of hours spent in company and alone, searching, researching, tracking an evil presence that always seemed one or two moves ahead. She was tired from simply enduring as well, enduring the emotional pain of others as well as her own, victims had been touched by this evil, suffered loss and bereavement from the evil that had stood before her, mocked her. Erica was so very tired.

Episode 3: "Then up she took her little crook

Determined for to find them.

She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed..."

The overcast sky had shut down the weak rays of the evening sun. A light mist of rain, the type that fooled some into thinking a raincoat was not necessary, draped across the landscape, glistening on the grass and leaves. The damp greyness of the day matched Erica's mood to a tee.

Graveyards can be different experiences to different people. She had arrived at the large well-kept cemetery a few hours previously, arriving to a dull but dry afternoon. Erica wandered aimlessly through the neat rows of gravestones; she had a destination but was in no hurry to reach it.

She passed a young couple in their early twenties, a brother and sister judging by their similar features. They were busily engaged in tending to a plot, going about their work with what seemed a light heartedness coupled with a respectful dignity. Whatever loss they may have felt for the person or persons in the grave had been mollified by the shared familial responsibility of looking after it.

An older woman caught her eye a while later. Stooped in frame by the passing of years, her face was ragged from grief, the lines of age accented by the rawness of her sorrow. As Erica passed by, she could hear the soft whispers of her prayers, for her or the departed she couldn't tell.

Just before the rain began Erica had been stopped by a woman her own age. Clad in garish neon pink leggings with a matching crop top the dark haired stranger asked Erica to take a photo of her. Bemused, Erica did so, taking a number of shots of the woman posing beside and kissing a tombstone. The stranger thanked Erica, cooing over the pictures as she did so.

"It's for my Instagram followers." was the explanation, "Want them to see my sensitive side."

'Miss you Dad. My heart tells me you are only in the next room waiting on your precious daughter.' the stranger tapped in as a caption to the selected photo, showing it to a now irked Erica, proudly.

The rain drove people away. Soon enough Erica had the entire cemetery to herself. Even then, her feet dragged as she walked to her journeys end.

Amos's grave was still waiting on a permanent headstone. For now a simple wooden cross with his name and date of death served as a marker to his passing. She thought she might cry, she'd been sure of it on the journey but now, despite standing here for nearly twenty minutes Erica still couldn't summon tears.

Arlene and the others had found her, dressed once more, sitting on a low wall outside the long abandoned building. The gutsy deputy sheriff had enfolded her into a rib crushing embrace, JP hanging protectively behind them. Sondra, Trent and Lincoln had moved into the building, hands filled with weapons as they swept the area for any sign of Butterman. Erica noted the casual confidence each of them showed, confident in their own capacities for violence and lethal action. A voice in her head however weighed them against the evil man she'd just met and found them wanting.