EPISODE XXXII-B
Now the eyes were on Sam. Sam, however, was undaunted. He poured another cup of coffee and before he took a sip, looked Kenny square in the eye and said:
"If you waiting for theatrics and for my calling for you to write fiction, you'd be wasting your time."
"So you're admitting it?" Kenny said.
Sam laughed and took a sip of his coffee. The smugness was what bothered Kenny.
"Aren't you going to tell us how you arrived at your conclusion that I am this heinous person?"
Kenny hated to be upstaged by a suspect. He paused, then turned to Cliff. Sam sat back waiting for another narrative. He was not nervous.
"I really didn't consider you a suspect until yesterday evening when it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was difficult not to separate Stephen from the rest of the murders, but again, for simplicity sake, I will deal primarily with the Jockey Hollow sweetheart. When I first questioned people, I thought of many suspects, Patrick, Seth, and even Cooper. But I kept going back to the question, `Could this person have committed the murders in the other states?' The answer was no for most. Seth stood out as the prime figure.
"My first impression of you, Mr. Gehlen, was of a nice person, talkative, but nice. The Sheriff even spoke highly of you. You were a back burner person throughout my investigation. It never entered my mind that you were even remotely connected to Stephen. But then you abducted me and started giving me clue after clue. You said a three year old could have identified you by now with all the clues you gave me. However, it was slow going. When we started chatting on-line, you fed me stories. You lead me to UCLA, our old alma mater. You said you "MADE HEADLINES." But all we could find was a blurb buried in the back of the November 1, 1980 edition of the Los Angeles Times reporting on an incident in which a UCLA student was found having oral and anal sex with as many as twenty men. It said a line ran outside your dorm room and you were collecting money. But no "Headlines." I assumed you made headlines in the UCLA newspaper, but school archives only went back 10 years. But it didn't matter, the trip to UCLA proved to be but a diversion from what was happening in Jockey Hollow. It helped in telling us the age of the killer. We knew it could not have been Patrick or Cooper."
"So you don't remember your neighbors?" Sam asked.
"Why should I? I was in the dorms a semester before I moved into off campus housing. I do recall a shower stall incident, overhearing a hustler getting jammed."
"And you didn't help him?"
"Not anonymously, I couldn't. But all that was for naught. The diversion was from an incident that happened while we were in LA. Patrick was being stalked on-line by `itsme.' Somehow the stalker knew all about what Patrick was up to. You had a hidden camera in Patrick's apartment that was hooked to your computer. The scene inside Patrick's apartment served as your desktop theme. That's how you knew he was talking to us and what he told us. That's how he knew everything that went on in Patrick's apartment. When we questioned you that day you jumped up to turn your terminal off, remember? You were so afraid of us seeing it because Patrick had come on the screen. I also noticed that your living room was a carbon copy of Patrick's, right down to the type of computer. That was one of the clues you gave me, wasn't it? You played with my mind, you gave me bizarre feelings of deja vu. Then there was clincher."
Kenny stopped and took a sip of his coffee. He was on a roll now, words flowing. Sam sat upright, enjoying the story in silence. The rest of the audience was into it, hanging on Kenny's every word.
"Before we left for UCLA," Kenny continued, "you sat at this counter and described a sexual event that occurred in college. You said that you were fucked simultaneously by your roommate and his buddy. You boasted on how you were able to fit both of their cocks in your ass. A sure sign of just how promiscuous you really were. This was another clue for me. We discovered that there was a murder at the Two Buddies motel chain. The manager had been killed after asking couple to quiet their lovemaking down. Apparently, you were with a hustler and was fucking him so hard his screams were disturbing the other guests. The manager saw you when he asked you to quiet down. This happened at Two Buddies -- my roommate and his buddy. But I didn't get that connection until I was on-line with itsme' yesterday morning. Itsme' told me a story about his sex life as a hustler. He said he paid his tuition with the money he made by hustling. He also said his promiscuity was taken advantage of and one afternoon his roommate and his roommate's buddy fucked him simultaneously, just like you were in college. Coincidence? I don't think so. `Itsme,' and his hustler are the same person and that person is you Sam Gehlen. Then to tie these into the other murders, you left a golden stud earring at each site, just like the one you wear in your left ear. "
Sam said nothing for a moment. Then he applauded and stood.
"AMEN!" he said. "Yes, I did everything you described and murdered all those people. But they deserved it. Sam Gehlen kills no one who doesn't deserve to be killed. I don't waste my time. Yes, I was a hustler, I was a damn good hustler. I made money hand over fist. I was ambitious. I was at frat parties where I would bet the straight guys fifty bucks that I could give them a better blow job than their girlfriends. I never lost the bet. It was so easy, I was so easy.
"That's why I started to hate hustlers. After college I went into my chosen career, but kept up my hustling as a side job. It was good, but with the AIDS scare I found the business was getting slower. I began to practice safe sex. I was comfortable enough to give up the hustling by 1987 and started using them for my own pleasure. It was fun at first, but it got tiresome, so many of the LA and Vegas hustlers were wimpy. Hustlers who'd take $500 just to suck your cock. Bullshit to that. High priced, but low rate. They weren't will to do ordinary sex acts like get fucked. I was pissed and started to abuse them, hit them, deny payment, anything to get them to do what I wanted them to do. After all, I had hustled my way through UCLA and did EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING the john wanted he got. That's first rule of hustling, even a third rate prostitute on 42nd Street will tell you that.
"Then I got so frustrated with this one hustler and killed him, shoved that baseball bat so far up his ass, it came out his mouth. It was easy and it made me come. I got to Jockey Hollow and fucked Stephen my first night here. He was a good one, he did what he was told and had reasonable prices and he was likable. Then I saw him in action that night I killed him. I had arrived at Maggie's a little past 3:00 a.m., home from a meeting in Topeka, and was eating dinner. I saw him work the poolroom like I would, collecting twenties for cocks. Then he blew it. I was so enraged that I had to kill him.
"He met up with preppies. You remember this type of guy, Kenny. Khakis, Polos, and no socks. Rich daddies who gave them too much spending money to walk around with. I was sitting in a spot where I could hear them. They wanted Stephen to do bondage games, for $500. Stephen agreed at first, but when I followed them out, he backed out. This angered me. Stephen could have taken both these wimps out tied up if they tried anything. The idea behind hustling is to do what the john wants. You shouldn't care what it entails, just do him or them, take the fucking money and run. Five hundred for an hour or two is worth it. Then he approached me, he was sick from all the cum he swallowed in the poolroom. I helped him into the woods and where I had stashed my murder apparel. I began to take his clothes off and the fuck had the damned nerve to say he got paid for taking his clothes off. I didn't like hustlers anymore and hustlers with attitude I hated even more. So I killed him."
The room was frozen, Wade and Nicky stood and approached Sam, who held his wrists out. Kenny approached him and they stared at each other. The mutual eye contact spoke the words neither could get out. The deputies led same out the door. A tear feel from Zina's eye. The Sheriff comforted her. Kenny sat on a stool and glanced up at the oversized clock above the counter:
"2:40," it said.
Ken was on time.
Outside, the deputies put Sam in the back of the Sheriff's car. At the edge of the driveway, where the gas station met 77, a shadowy figured lurked in the darkness, a careful onlooker on what was happening. The lights came on in the station, signifying the re-opening. Kenny stood by the window and watched the car drive away, by this time, the shadowy figure at the edge of the driveway had vanished.
STAY TUNED FOR EPISODE XXXIII, WHICH WILL BE POSTED ON MONDAY DECEMBER 29, 1997. I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS TWO-PART HOLIDAY SPECIAL AS WELL AS THE WHOLE MURDER STORY. (WERE ANY OF YOU RIGHT???) ALL OF THESE EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE ON THE NIFTY ARCHIVE: http://www.nifty.org/ UNDER THE BISEXUAL CATEGORY.