Based on the expression on the man’s face, Ryan began to feel at ease.
“Wow. Here? Shit. Yeah, by all means, come in,” the man said as he opened the door.
Ryan pushed his hands deep into his pants pockets, stepped past the man, and into the living room of the home.
“I appreciate your courtesy - especially this late at night. As this isn’t the time of year that most homes consume natural gas, we made note of the leak right away. Can you direct me to the gas furnace and gas water heater, please?” Ryan blinked his eyes and offered a small grin as he spoke.
“Sure, follow me,” the man said as he stepped around Ryan.
As the man walked toward the kitchen, Ryan reached under the tail of his Jacket and into the waistband of his pants. This practice measure provided enough reassurance for Ryan to become comfortable of his ability to retrieve the pistol from his waistband without effort or concern. After placing his hands into his front pockets again, he followed the man to the basement door located at the edge of the kitchen.
As the man began to walk down the stairs, Ryan looked down the steps and inhaled through his nose slowly. Without thought, he pulled his hands from his pockets and rubbed his palms on the thighs of his pants as the man worked his way to the bottom of the steps.
“Well, it’s down here in the utility room, you’re going to have to come down those steps,” the man chuckled.
“Sorry, I thought I was going to sneeze,” Ryan lied as he began to walk down the steps.
As the man reached the basement, he turned to the left and disappeared from view. Ryan walked down the steps, reached the landing, and turned left around the wall that separated the stairs from the body of the basement. In an illuminated room full of boxes and mechanical equipment the man stood waiting, his hands placed firmly on his hips.
“I don’t smell a damned thing,” the man sighed as he stared at the heater.
“You can’t always smell them. The leaks, that is,” Ryan assured him as he approached.
“It’s why I brought the leak detector. It can detect a miniscule amount up to 50 parts per million. Far below our nose’s ability to determine any form of leak. Step aside please,” Ryan said as he entered the room.
The man stepped to the side of the door and allowed Ryan to pass between him and the heater that stood beside the entrance of the door. As Ryan reached the rear of the heater, out of the man’s view, he pressed the test button on the detector he had purchased at Home Depot an hour earlier. The detector beeped twice loudly, startling the man on the other side of the heater.
“Well, we have one small one right here. We may need to evacuate the home if there’s many more. It’s difficult to be too certain yet. I guess now is the time to ask, is there anyone else in the home?” Ryan asked softly.
“No, I’m the only one that lives here,” the man responded as he looked at the other side of the heater.
Standing on the opposite side of the heater, out of view of the man, Ryan placed his detector back into the belt clip. Slowly and quietly, he removed the pistol from the waistband of his pants. Cautiously, he removed the safety.
“You are the owner of the residence, are you not? Joshua Volvo?” out of view, Ryan raised the pistol and waited for a response.
“Yep, that’s me,” Josh responded from the other side of the heater.
“Two more places I need to check, just a minute,” Ryan said as he stepped around the heater and into view.
“What the fuck…” Josh began to shout as Ryan came into view.
Ryan pointed the barrel at the crotch of the Josh’s jeans and pulled the trigger slowly.
The explosion was deafening, and the concussion from the recoil of the pistol startled Ryan. Quickly, he recovered, pointing the pistol at Josh’s chest. As Ryan stood pointing the pistol, Josh’s legs gave out and he slowly lowered himself to the floor.
“Don’t say a word, or I will shoot you in the chest. I prefer not to listen to you at all, so be quiet if you don’t mind. Whining has always irritated me,” Ryan said loudly.
Ryan licked the roof of his mouth in an effort to remove the taste of the cordite. The coppery smell of blood filled the air as Josh fell to the floor, groaning. As he sat on the floor, he continued to moan and press his hands into this lap.
Ryan knelt beside Josh and began to speak quietly.
“You see, I wanted to be certain to shoot you in the groin. I have no idea how that feels, but I suspect it isn’t a great feeling. Am I correct? The detectives will look at the psychological aspect of it later. They’ll assume you were disgusted with yourself, as you should be. Well, enough of that. You have no idea what I’m speaking of, and to be quite honest,” Ryan paused and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“I am tired of looking at you and speaking to you,” Ryan stood and looked around the room.
“Oh lord, call me an ambulance. Holy shit, I need an ambulance,” Josh shouted as he pushed his hands against his groin. Blood seeped through his fingers and onto the floor.
“Enough. Stop speaking. Listen, Mr. Volvo. I am here in an effort to send you to hell for what you have done to your niece, Meghan. You, sir, disgust me,” Ryan said softly as he pointed the pistol at Josh’s temple.
“I need an ambulance,” Josh begged.
“An ambulance?” Ryan chuckled.
“Fuck it. You’re going to die anyways,” Ryan whispered.
As the Josh began to speak, Ryan pulled the trigger. Almost immediately, Josh fell backward onto the floor. As the blood oozed from Josh’s groin and head, Ryan placed the pistol in his waistband and slowly removed his jacket.
Ryan folded his jacket into a large thick bundle and placed it on the floor on the right side of Josh. After placing the jacket on the floor, he reached into his front pocket and removed a pair of rubber gloves and one cartridge for the pistol. He placed the cartridge in between his elbow and his torso, pressing it against his shirt. Carefully, he stretched the rubber gloves over his hands and removed the pistol from his waistband and the cartridge from between his elbow and stomach.
After removing the magazine, he loaded the spare cartridge into the pistol. With his gloved hands, he wiped the pistol free of all fingerprints with his shirt. He then bent over, formed Josh’s lifeless hand around the frame of the firearm, and pressed his finger into the trigger guard.
Cupping his gloved hand around Josh’s hand, he pressed the barrel into the folded jacket, and pulled the trigger. Carefully placing Josh’s bloody hand around the pistol, Ryan released Josh’s arm and allowed it to fall naturally back into the location where it had been.
After picking up the jacket, discharged round, and one of the shell casings, Ryan stepped over the body and into the doorway. The detectives would now find two shell casings, and two discharged bullets, one in Josh’s head, and one in his groin or hip. Josh’s hand would be covered in gunpowder and blood, supporting the indication that he shot himself. The amount of cartridges missing from the magazine of the pistol would precisely match the amount of bullets that were in Josh’s body - two.
The suicide note would make the investigation relatively short.
In time, the detectives would potentially find more; potentially in a matter of weeks or even months. Either way, Meghan’s mother would see Josh for who he was, and not at the telling of Meghan. Without a doubt, Meghan would feel relief from Josh’s untimely demise.
Ryan stepped over the body and around the corner of the basement, holding the jacket in his gloved hand. In entering the kitchen, Ryan removed his gloves and placed them on top of the jacket on the center of the floor. He pushed his hand deep into the pocket of his khaki pants and removed another pair of rubber gloves and slowly pulled them over his sweaty hands.
Ryan looked up from his now glove covered hands and peered down the hallway of the house. He walked down the corridor to the rear of the home, and opened each of the doors independently. The first was a bathroom. The second, without a doubt,
was Josh’s bedroom, the third a spare bed room. He flipped the light switch and illuminated the spare bedroom. As he turned to face the foot of the bed, a sigh of relief passed his lips.
The typewriter.
What appeared to be a World War II era Smith-Corona.
Ryan began opening the drawers to the desk. He smiled as he opened the lower right drawer and found a loose sheet of paper. After feeding the paper into the typewriter, he placed his gloved hand on his chin and thought. Slowly, he pressed the keys on the typewriter.
My disgust turned into shame, and the shame to pain.
The pain, now, is too much to fathom.
And with these parting words,
I become numb.
Ryan read what he had typed and smiled. He then reached into his rear pants pocket and retrieved a small zip-lock type bag and opened it. He reached into the bag and removed one of the post mortem fingernail clippings from Shellie’s fingers and dropped it on the floor. Satisfied at what was available for the detectives in this room, he turned and walked to the bathroom.
Ryan stepped into the bathroom, to the shower, and pulled the shower curtain open. Carefully, he removed a few of the strands of Elena’s hair from the small plastic bag and dropped them in the bathtub. After tossing a few strands onto the floor, he stepped into the hallway pleased of his placement of clues.
As Ryan walked down the hallway and toward the kitchen, he zipped the plastic bag and placed it into his rear pants pocket. After recovering the jacket and gloves from the kitchen, he walked to the van, opened the rear cargo doors, and placed his items in the rear of the van. As he walked to the front of the van he considered potential forgotten items. Convinced that he remembered everything of importance, he opened the door, got inside, and removed his gloves.
A sense of satisfaction filled Ryan as he started the van. He felt satisfied, in a somewhat sickening sense, that he and Meghan were now equal. Satisfied he had accomplished his goal, and satisfied that Meghan’s abuser would not be capable of harming another.
Ryan backed the van out of the driveway, drove to the rural location where he had left his bicycle, and parked the van. After retrieving his bicycle from the fence it was locked to, he walked to the rear of the van and opened the cargo doors. A back pack and a can of gas sat inside the doors. Ryan gathered his backpack, unzipped it, and removed his sneakers. He then removed his outer khaki shirt and boots, and placed them in the back pack with his jacket and gloves. After he laced up his sneakers, he zipped the backpack and stood up.
Ryan walked to the bicycle and hung the backpack on the handlebars. As if he’d done it a hundred times, he walked back to the van, opened the driver’s door and removed a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from the glove compartment. He felt awkward lighting the cigarette, but fumbled through the process, knowing the night was close to being over. As the cigarette dangled from his lips, he puffed on it and walked to the rear of the van.
After placing the matches in his front pocket, he doused the interior of the van in gasoline and tossed the can inside the vehicle. Knowing that a cigarette alone wouldn’t ignite the fuel, Ryan removed the book of matches from his pocket and folded the paper cover of the matches around the burning cigarette, leaving the glowing tip an inch from the head of the matches.
The cigarette would burn, and within about five minutes, it would reach the match heads. The temperature of the burning cigarette would then ignite the potassium chlorate in the match heads, and cause the book of matches to combust and burn. The gasoline fumes in the fuel soaked van would explode as soon as the cigarette caused the matches to ignite.
Carefully, Ryan placed the burning cigarette and matches in the rear of the van and closed the door.
Without much effort, Ryan would be two miles away by the time the van exploded. As he climbed onto the bicycle and secured the backpack, he realized that he was breathing without trying, without effort. The majority of the latter part of the evening, to him, was without thought.
As Ryan pedaled the bicycle toward his home, he began to realize that he felt no remorse for the killing. For now, all he felt was a form of resolution that he attributed to making the world a better place.
And he began to wonder.
In which direction his life was headed.
CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO
MOTHER, I HAVE A QUESTION.
TWENTY-TWO. “The bagels are multi-grain. I don’t know the difference between those and whole wheat.”
“Mother, it’s simple. Whole wheat bagels are prepared using whole wheat. Multi-grain are prepared using wheat as well as grains other than wheat. Multiple grains, mother,” Ryan sighed as he sat down and looked out the window.
“Are you pleased that I bought the cheese, Ryan?” his mother asked as she walked toward the table.
Ryan stared out the window at the flowers and smiled. His thoughts were elsewhere this morning. There was no manner of living or doing that would change Ryan’s past. Attempting to forget what had happened would certainly be his best step, he thought; but doing so had proven difficult at best. Ryan’s knowledge of the human mind afforded him a very detailed understanding of what the future should hold in mental health. As he stared out the window, he wondered what he could become, at his best. What he feared was also what he seemed to desire.
The deal that Ryan had struck with his Japanese business partners after the debacle of his game ended would be difficult to organize, but rewarding if implemented.
Ryan wanted more than anything to wash his hands of all of his memories of the events that were beginning to haunt him. The memories, oddly enough, weren’t as much of the abductions and killing as they were of his father. Strangely, he felt that killing had become an option for many of life’s difficulties, and he struggled with forcing himself to think otherwise. The events associated with the abduction seemed to allow him to forget his father’s actions. Possibly, he finally decided, the killing made his father’s behavior seem miniscule.
Once the human mind crosses the boundary of killing and processes the emotion associated with it, it often becomes a future desire. Continuing to kill allows the mind to believe the severity of killing isn’t as great as it believed prior to the first killing taking place. Ryan knew this. The mind forcing the body to perform the act again, all in an effort to manipulate the brain to trust that killing was in fact not as heinous as it originally believed it to be. The result often produced serial killers and career criminals.
Ryan reached for his plate and realized that he had eaten his entire bagel. He looked out the window and blinked, attempting to focus on the flowers. The flowers provided a level of solace that he could not find elsewhere.
“You’re not even listening, Ryan,” Ryan’s mother breathed as she tipped her coffee cup to her lips.
“Mother, I have a question,” Ryan turned to face his mother as he spoke. It was important that he see her eyes as she responded.
“How aware were you of my abuse as a child?” Ryan looked into his mother’s eyes and waited for her to respond.
“Well. I don’t guess I know what you’re asking,” His mother responded as she placed her coffee cup onto the saucer.
“Mother, listen. When I was a child, father used to take me into the basement and abuse me. I have always told myself that you didn’t know. I wonder, however just what you did know,” Ryan crossed his hands in his lap and relaxed as he waited for his mother to respond.
Her eyes moved up and to her right as she began to speak. Ryan, aware that she was right handed, knew that this indicated she was telling a lie. He watches her facial expressions as she spoke.
“Ryan, your father didn’t abuse you. He took you to the basement and talked to you. He taught you important lessons. He raised you with a stern hand and your success is a result of that upbringing,” her shaking hands quickly moved to the coffee cup.
“Mother, stripping a child of his clothes and belittling him, telling him that God did not love him and that he wa
s worthless is abuse in a grand degree. Do you disagree?” Ryan felt relieved to be speaking of this to his mother after all of the years that had passed.
“Your father loves you, Ryan,” she picked her cup up from the saucer and looked into it. She placed it back onto the saucer and turned to face the window.
“Your father is a man of discipline, Ryan. His father was a man of discipline. You’re a very disciplined man as a result,” his mother paused and turned to face Ryan.
“Like father like son,” she nodded her head in Ryan’s direction.
Ryan felt as if his body temperature was beginning to rise. He detested thinking of becoming anything like his father. Desperately, he wanted to be different, to be normal, to be responsible for his successes and to feel successful. His financial endeavors had proven to him that his mind’s perception of success did not lie in the form of monetary gains. It was merely a distraction and false form of satisfaction. A mask.
Desperately, Ryan wanted to believe that his mother was not aware of what happened to him as a child. As he sat in the chair across from his mother, he began to wonder. Loyalties, devotion, love, and commitment came into question. As he turned to look out the window, he began to feel betrayed.
“Mother, I am going to go now,” Ryan said as he stood from his chair.
He looked down at his coffee cup and crumb covered plate, exhaled, and shook his head lightly.
“I’ll tell your father you stopped…” his mother began.
“Tell my father nothing,” Ryan snapped, interrupting her mid-sentence.
As he stood on the porch, Ryan inhaled slowly, taking in the scent of the flowers. He turned his left wrist up and looked at his watch. He stepped from the porch and walked toward the flower garden enjoying the sweet aroma with each step.
As he stood amidst the flowers, he smiled. Here, and only here, he was able to lose his sense of what was real. Here, as a child, he was able to come to believe that there was a being greater than himself. Here, he was able to relax. The smell of the flowers, to him, was proof of an existence of a higher power.