To Probe A Beating Heart (14 page)

             
“I am not happy with the way that went. I want to change things,”

said Averell.

             
“What sort of changes are we talking about?,”
inquired Stelian.

             
“Well first, Sleepy was big, bulky, you know, hard to move around.

Then Marlene was smaller and easier, but still difficult. That leads me to
consider only smaller people that we can easily lift and carry until we get better at this. We had the right tools, we had a decent place to work in and we planned for the clean-up alright, but—.”

             
“Okay, I can see that, perhaps someone like a younger Sarah or Ellie would be easier,”
said Stelian.

             
“Yeah, a younger Sarah. I would enjoy that, the little b—.”

             
“She’s not little anymore, my friend, she’s grown,”
replied Stelian.

             
“You’re right, she has grown up. And the both of them are still the

objective that we are planning for, I hate them, and they will pay, when we
are all ready. They had too many laughs at my expense.”

             
“Them and Steve too.”

             
“I told you, I don’t care as much about Steve, it’s them that I want to do. Steve would be an add on, but not a primary target. So then where do we go next? Ellie and Sarah are out of the question, for now. We need to have this procedure down the right way before we do either of them. Steve could be a problem, he is a tough piece of work, no, I think we should go for the younger, female, Sarah type. Someone much smaller, easy to handle. A little girl, to start with, then an older one, until we have the process all worked out. Yeah, all worked out—.”

             
“Yeah, and after a bit we can move on to the real Sarah and Ellie type.”

             
“So let’s have a plan one that covers all the bases. We should also hide our work, If we leave any trace of what we are doing, we could be found. We have to hide them when we are finished with them.”

* * *

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

No, we should follow the plan . . .

As he was driving along interstate 90 from Rochester toward Buffalo,

Averell was thinking that he had been lucky as much as he had been clever
about the first ‘session’ with Marlene. He was also very lucky with ‘Sleepy’, but luck was a gamble, smart was not, at least not as much. He wanted to be smarter and gamble as little as possible. “Better planning, that’s the magic we need.” Traffic was light and the conversation with Stelian was very relaxed and directed at finding a solution to a few of his greatest concerns. First was a place where they would not be bothered while they did their work and second was a means of disposing of the remains.

             
“Planning, Magic, explain please.”

             
“Okay, if we were to find another ‘subject’ today and do our thing, we know that we would not want to leave him, or her, somewhere they can be found. That’s taking a chance, and I don’t like taking chances.”

             
“So, what do you propose?”

             
“Well, we are going to pick a smaller subject, one that we can move around and control easier. One that we can also dispose of easier. So where do we put them?”

             
“I don’t know, in a river, or bury them.”

             
“Bury them where? In a field, in the woods, or in a cemetery. In a

cemetery, yeah, it’s a natural.”

             
“Okay, I’ll buy that, but how?”

             
“I’ll work on that, maybe if.”

             
“Well what about a place to do our thing?”

             
“We should have a place that we can use and know that no one will interrupt our session.”

             
“Yeah, agreed.”

             
“And I like the idea of using a cemetery, we have to have a place to put our subject when we are finished so that she won’t be found.”

             
“Okay, I get that too.”

“So before we do another one we should take care of those basics. First
a place where we can work, a laboratory. Then, we find a cemetery, or two, or more.”

             
“Just one or one of each in each town from here to Albany”

             
“Let’s concentrate on one laboratory and at least two cemeteries,

around Syracuse to start with.”

             
“Okay, I like that, a laboratory. But why Syracuse, maybe we should look at a site farther away from our home base, like in Ohio, what do you think? Then we find a cemetery near there, but how do we make that work for us, I don’t understand?”

             
“I’m not sure yet, but maybe, if we find a cemetery that is out of the way, more country than town, and the place is not locked up at night, maybe we could dig an old grave, make our deposit and fill it up again.”

             
“Or if it’s a big enough place, they may not be ready to use all the parts of what they have, maybe an acre or two won’t be dug up for twenty years or more.”

             
“Or maybe we find a grave that has just been filled and the ground is still soft and easy to dig and we come back after hours and dig down to the vault and drop our package in and refill the hole.”

             
“I like that.”

             
“Yeah, it could work, we’ll see.”

Averell drove around each city as time allowed, looking for suitable

locations. Not much appealed, too many people, locked fences and

guard dogs. He looked each weekend and other free days and was getting
nowhere. August became September, September became October and his mind drifted to other things. Winter was coming, he had a number of appointments that would require him to be there when planned and no late arrivals could be tolerated. All this time spent searching for a place to hold another session had made him less clock conscious, and that had to change. More discipline in his routine was in order. He began to schedule appointments, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, four per day, minimum, and try to be 15 minutes early for each one. It sometimes meant spending an extra day somewhere to assure being on time, but it would set a pattern that he could carry through the winter months.

             
“We could do another one, it’s been over two months.”

             
“No, I told you, we need to plan, to take care of some basics.”

             
“When then?”

             
“Basics first, then fun time.”

             
“Okay, okay.”

             
Averell’s routine forced him to work full weeks and travel on weekends, but the job was important, and he was doing fairly well. As a result of this better organization of his time and regularity of appointments, he was increasing his sales and he qualified for the quarterly bonus, each quarter. A plus for his savings account and his retirement program, also opening the doors to nicer vacations. Kind of a toss-up for Averell. If he could arrange a two week vacation in the summer, he might be able to arrange a really good session with two or maybe more subjects.

             
A lot to think about. He continued his search for a laboratory in Syracuse, Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo and discounted the other, smaller cities and towns in between. Cleveland and Buffalo had a number of vacated warehouses and factories that should be a good for his purposes. As he narrowed the search, he was honing in on an industrial park off the Interstate 90 corridor north and east of Buffalo. He still took a side route periodically and as it turned out, he found a deserted farm house south of Cleveland, almost to Portage County where he could park the van and be undisturbed for days. All planning suddenly concentrated on this remote farmhouse. He decided to experiment with that first. He pulled into the driveway leading to a barn that was close to the house and surrounded on two other sides with overgrown bushes and a thick stand of trees. He got out and walked around. If anyone saw him, he was prepared to say that he was in the market for just such a place, but this one needed more work than he wanted to do and just might deplete his finances.

             
He surveyed the lot with his eyes and went over to the doors on the barn. They opened easily, but with a bit of a squeak. He then pulled the van into the barn and dug out a container of motor oil, for his old car, and applied a little oil to each hinge. Two or three swings of the doors and the squeaks disappeared. The barn was empty except for several empty wooden crates, a broken coal shovel, an old broom, a pitch fork, some straw in the stalls and three bales in the center, odd bits and pieces of rope and baling wire and his van. There was plenty of room to be used as a laboratory. He closed the doors and walked over to the house, looking toward the neighbors on either side. He couldn’t see their houses until he was well in front of this little gem and went back to a side door. It was secured, locked from the inside with a bolt. He walked around to the rear and tried that door. Again, locked, so he went to the front door. Locked.

             
“Why do they bother locking this place up, it’s a wreck?”

             
“Who knows, why don’t we just bust in the door?”

             
“You are a barbarian.”

             
“Ha, yeah.”

             
Averell went back to the rear door and shook it as hard as he dared, trying to loosen a bolt or whatever was holding the door closed. It seemed to shake more than when he started. He gave it one more frustrated type shake and the door opened.

             
“So who’s a barbarian now?”

             
“We’re in.”

             
Averell walked from room to empty room. Everything was covered in dust, floor boards creaked and door hinges screamed for a touch of oil. The windows were surprisingly in-tact, dirty, but whole. As he entered a bathroom on the second floor, the odor was strong, almost overpowering. He looked in the toilet bowl and lifted the lid to the tank. There was water in the tank and he turned the lever to flush and water flowed into the bowl. He let it settle and flushed a second time, the batch of water was brown having sat in the pipes for an unknown period of time. He went through the entire house turning on all the water taps and flushing all three toilets. After a while, the water was running clear. A small victory.

             
There was no power to the house, thus no lights or any other electrical convenience. He went back out to the barn and sat on a wooden rail thinking. As long as no one noticed his presence, this could be a great ‘laboratory’.

             
“I think we have a winner.”

             
“Yes, you may be right, but I think we should watch this for a while, to be sure nobody else comes here.”

             
“Yeah, okay, we watch, but how long?”

             
“For a while, I don’t know, but now we should go.” With that Averell opened the doors and backed the van out and clear of the doors. He closed the doors and leaned a long stick against the latch holding both doors closed. He got back in the van, turned around and drove out the driveway. Back on the road he decided to check the stick each time he came to the Cleveland area.

             
Averell decided to drive past the farmhouse and seek out the nearest cemeteries each time he was in the area. The weeks passed and winter approached, the stick stayed against the latch and Averell identified three cemeteries within reasonable driving distance of the farmhouse and noted that each one was large enough that he could visit one in the middle of the night and remain unseen from the streets on each side. The gently rolling landscape together with the trees and bushes provided very good cover and reduced the risk of being seen. Thanksgiving was approaching, the evening dark came earlier than in the summer and Averell was considering what time of year was truly best suited for his sessions and disposal.

             
He drove past the farmhouse, noted the stick and also the leaves falling from the trees.

             
“Nobody has been in there. It’s perfect.”

             
“Yeah, but, It’s cold and I prefer the leaves on the trees not on the

ground, better cover from the neighbors and sooner or later, somebody is
going to come here and we have to have a plan to address that.”

             
“We could do them, you know, DO them.”

             
“No, we should follow the plan, so we don’t do anyone if we don’t

have to. If somebody shows up when we are working, that would be bad,
so we only do this work when we are sure nobody would come here.”

             
“Like when?”

             
“Initially, I would guess after dark, there’s no power, and who ever

owns this place would know that, if they saw lights in here. Someone

would investigate, and we do not want that.”

             
“Yeah, so probably best in the middle of the week during the day time, they would be busy at whatever job they have.”

             
“Now you’re getting it. Probably later in the day rather than early, if someone was going to come here, it would probably be with enough time to do something while they had daylight.”

             
“So when do we do it?”

             
“Well, we should not be doing it when it could snow, there would be tracks in the driveway, and we would be seen.”

             
“So now, before it snows?”

             
“We haven’t selected a ‘subject’. No, we will wait and be sure about this place and take the time to look around for a couple of routes in and out of here. We should also make the run to all of the cemeteries that we selected and case them so we know what ever routine they may have. Then we can find a ‘subject’.”

             
December 1990 and snow was lightly sprinkled over the ground. Averell took the opportunity at least two times each month to search for cemeteries in the area around the farm and drove slowly past the house on each occasion. Each visit to the farm he noted that the stick was still against the latch and there were no tracks in the driveway. In the week just before Christmas, the snow was about a foot deep and the plows had been down the road. The stick was still there and no tracks in the drive. Four more visits during January and February and still no tracks in the drive and the stick remained against the door. The snow starts to diminish through March and is usually gone by April in the northeast part of Ohio. As spring brought warmer weather and leaves returned to the trees, the farmhouse became more and more attractive to Averell. Visibility from the neighboring farms was minimized and sound would not travel to unfriendly ears. Averell had driven the routes to the cemeteries in the area and established alternate routes between cemeteries so that he could adjust his plan on the fly. He began to watch the obituary notices defining when funerals would occur and a fresh grave might be available.