Innocence Kills

The area of Bostwick where Eric Hermann lived was a string of cookie cutter, pre-fab ranch homes, of the sort that had sprouted up like mushrooms just after the War, so that returning G.I.’s could buy a cheap first house, and have a place to eat TV dinners and get to work on the Baby Boom. In the late Forties and early Fifties, such houses had been one of that era’s examples of high tech. Now, at the birth of the Twenty-first Century, the neighborhood was showing its age. Sinking foundations, chipped paint and yards given over to weeds were the norm, and the sidewalks were cracked and jutting up at all angles. It was as if not just the people, but the town itself, had seen the future and decided that it just wasn’t worth the effort.

When Murdock turned north onto Jackson Street, he found Eric Hermann’s house on the east side, set well back behind a rusted, chain link fence and a screen of bare elm trees, their leaves piled around their roots. Directly across from this residence was a lot that held a swing set missing seats at the end of its chains, and a small merry-go-round with tall grass poking up between its wooden slats. Murdock figured that with the local psycho within walking distance, the playground had probably been derelict for years.

This line of thinking reminded Murdock to check his pistol, and make sure there was a round in the chamber. Satisfied that he was ready if the worst came to pass, Murdock lifted himself into his wheelchair and made his way towards the fence. He raised an eyebrow when he noticed that the gate before the gravel driveway was open, with the chain and padlock lying in the grass. As he continued on to the house, Murdock passed the black bulk of a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6 motorcycle, lying on its side and giving off the faint tick...tick...tick...of a cooling engine. The machine was a combination of gleaming chrome and deep black; even the leather saddle looked as if it had been cleaned and oiled on a regular basis. Someone had obviously lavished a lot of time, energy and money on this bike, so Murdock couldn’t understand why it had been dumped on the ground like a child’s bicycle.

The garage door was open, revealing the battered, back end of a white, Chevy pickup. As he drew closer, Murdock also saw that the sidewalls were brown with several years’ worth of salt and rust. The rear bumper held three stickers: a Confederate battle flag, a fist gripping a large revolver, beside the words: I DON’T DIAL 911; an atomic mushroom cloud, along with the highly imaginative slogan:  KILL ‘EM ALL!  LET GOD SORT ‘EM OUT!

Yikes. Must be a tough guy, Murdock thought. When he saw that the door leading from the garage to the house was swinging open, Murdock’s danger sensors kicked into overdrive. Even though his unease begged for him to beat a hasty, intelligent retreat, Murdock nevertheless decided to take advantage of this convenient entrance, tipping himself onto his back wheels in order to go up the one, short step.

Murdock now found himself in a small room, mainly taken up by the tan cubes of a washer and dryer. Several shirts hung from a clothesline that stretched across the room, and brushed the top of Murdock’s head as he pushed himself forward. Having such close contact with a stranger’s clothes caused the hairs on Murdock’s neck and arms to go taut with revulsion; he also decided to draw his weapon, since the house’s silence became more foreboding with every passing second. Pushing his wheelchair one-handed was an ability that Murdock had perfected over many years, so he proceeded through the opposite door.

A kitchen. Not only that, it was a clean, orderly kitchen. No pile of dirty dishes in the sink, no rotting food stuck to the counter. In fact, the room looked so neat and spotless that it served to confirm Murdock’s growing, mental profile of Eric Hermann: he was a control freak who needed everything, and everyone, to conform to his insane standards. Indeed, Murdock almost had to squint against the sunlight that streamed in through the window above the sink and reflected off the brightly polished table, chairs and appliances, all of them white. Then Murdock looked down, and saw a blemish on the kitchen’s sheen.

A broken drinking glass lay on the floor, reduced to a collection of sparkling chips. There were also the shattered remains of what looked like a green mixing bowl, and several oranges. Amidst this wreckage were several droplets of red liquid. Murdock didn’t need any lab reports to tell him what this was, or where it had come from. Murdock continued through the kitchen...taking care to steer himself around any evidence.

When he saw the devastated living room, Murdock immediately brought his Glock up in a two-handed grip, then swung it...and his eyes...in a left-to-right search. Brown cushions had been removed from chairs and sofas, bookcases had their contents strewn across the floor, some books reduced to empty bindings, their pages ripped out and scattered. In the corner of the room was a black cube of a television, its screen shattered and innards revealed. Above the room’s stone fireplace hung (crookedly) a tacky, almost cartoonish portrait of Robert E. Lee, sitting ramrod straight aboard his warhorse, Traveler. A ragged hole pierced the general’s gray beard.

Continuing to follow the blood droplets across the gold carpeting, Murdock registered that most of the books appeared to be about the Confederacy, but weren’t by any historians or, for that matter, publishers, whom Murdock had ever heard of. When he saw titles like Why New York Is a Confederate State, and The Hidden Benefits of Slavery, Murdock figured that he was seeing the works of self-published cranks. He then found a copy of Mein Kampf, biographies of many top level Nazis, as well as a large collection of so-called “Christian” fiction. From a scan of the jacket blurbs, Murdock saw that all of these novels concerned the Apocalypse which was, apparently, just around the corner, and the adventures of True Believers battling the Anti-Christ’s gay, Jewish, liberal minions. Murdock sat up straight and released a quie