Urban Legends pt. 2: Hunting the Black Widow
Saturday night in the rain. Arnold and James walked up Bill McDonald Parkway—the long hill along the Arboretum towards campus. They walked with a drunken, slow gait—both resigned to their arduous fate, glad they had each other to share their struggle with, although they both tried hard to conceal their feelings for each other. Cars passed them unnoticed. It was three a.m.
The Black Widow drove up the same hill. Windshield wipers banged back and forth, even though it was just a drizzle. She had to see the sidewalk clearly.
She pulled up and stopped next to the two young men. She leaned over the passenger’s seat and asked them if they wanted a ride.
To the freshmen it appeared that an attractive, older woman with dark makeup was offering them a ride up to campus. The smile on her face suggested more.
James said yes and started for the car. Arnold held back.
“C’mon man.”
Arnold shook his head and mumbled something about meeting him back at the dorm.
“Suit yourself.” James got in the two-door black Honda with the Black Widow and slammed the door.
The car sped off with new life, leaving Arnold blinking in the rain, pains in his legs rising again.
Arnold trudged home, all the way across campus to Mathes Hall. The hallways were empty, the parties had waned an hour ago. As he turned his key in the lock, an image flickered in the dark before he flipped the light switch. His hand on James’s neck. Feeling James’s mouth on his. Their bodies pressed together. He had switched on the dim lamps in Arnold’s forgotten rooms.
Arnold stood next to the bunkbeds and thought about this. He hoped it wasn’t a real feeling. He heard someone walking down the hall and for a second he thought it was James. He stood up straight and looked behind him at the door in anticipation. The footsteps passed. He undressed and climbed to the top bunk to sleep.
*
Arnold knew James wasn’t there when he woke up the next afternoon. He climbed down to the floor and dressed as quickly as possible. Outside the gray clouds were lit brightly by the unseen sun. The constant glow above him hurt his head. It felt like the sky pushed down on him.
He arrived late at his large lecture hall class. The professor didn’t seem to notice him slip into the back row. He pulled out his notebook and phone to text James. He typed “Where r u?” Before he could hit send, movement distracted him at the front of the lecture hall. A severe man in a suit and tie flanked by two uniformed campus policemen whispered to the professor, who stopped his lecture midsentence.
“Is Arnold Grace here today?” he asked the class in a clear voice. Arnold twitched in his seat. “Arnold Grace?”
Students looked around and few who knew him turned in their seats and stared up at him. He felt like he was in a bad college comedy movie. He raised his hand, blushing.
“Would you kindly join us down here, please?” the man in the suit said from the bottom of the room.
Arnold gathered his things, his every movement echoed in the silent hall. He could feel everyone staring at him as he clopped down the steps one by one to the stage.
“This way, please,” the man in the suit said. He guided him through a door.
The man led him through a door near the stage into a dark hallway deep within the building. The man probably weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds with a crew cut and no neck.
“I’m Detective Dave Wallace. I’d like to speak to you privately about your friend James.”
Arnold found himself sitting in an empty conference room deep in the belly of the building alone with Wallace. He thought about James. He looked at his phone which still had the unsent message on its screen. He slid it back into his pocket.
“Don’t you guys work in pairs?” Arnold said.
“Yeah, my partner is out canvassing downtown.” He flashed a crooked grin. “Looks like you and I are stag today.”
Arnold squirmed.
“Now, first of all, I’d like you to know that we don’t consider James a victim in any crime. Right now he’s just a strange missing persons report.”
“Missing person?” Arnold wanted to ask who reported him missing if not him, but he held his tongue.
“That’s right. You were the last one to see him that I can find. What happened on your way home last night?”
Arnold told Wallace about the sexy older woman who stopped and coaxed James into her car.
Wallace wrote something in his notebook.
“Did you see the woman? Do you remember the car’s make and model?”
“I didn’t see the woman that well. It was an old black Honda Civic I think.”
Wallace looked at Arnold with cold eyes. Then he turned them down at his notebook. His frown deepened as he wrote.
“I probably shouldn’t show this to you, but you’re gonna see it anyway somewhere. Somebody’s been posting them all over town.”
Wallace reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out a white sheet of paper. He put it on the table between himself and Arnold. It was a picture of James. His eyes were swollen shut and his nose was bloodied. Written in all black capital letters above the picture : “I dumped James into Bellingham Bay this morning.”
“Someone’s been posting these all over town,” said Wallace.
Arnold leaned over the picture of his friend. His stomach dropped into his bowels. He squeezed his eyes shut against tears. He never should have let James get into that car. He knew it seemed wrong. Worse was that he knew he should have been in the car with him to be beaten and even killed alongside his friend. Instead he abandoned him to his fate alone. When he opened his eyes again and saw James’s swollen face the tears sprang free, this time from deep inside his chest. He clapped his hands over his eyes.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him. She usually trolls Bill McDonald Parkway at night, from what we can tell. She hasn’t appeared to have killed anyone yet.” Wallace collected the flier and slid it into his briefcase and stood to leave. He glanced at Arnold. “Need a minute?” he said.
Arnold nodded. He sat weeping at the table for a long time. Wallace handed him a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Bill McDonald Parkway is a long road. We’ll have patrols out there but we have to cover our bases, too. It might be a while before we catch her there, especially since we don’t really have anyone to lure her out. We just don’t have anyone who’s her… type.” Wallace smiled. His face reminded Arnold of the way the Black Widow smiled at him and James the night before. “Anyway, you’re free to go. Be safe out there, kid.”
Wallace left Arnold with a copy of the poster and stepped outside into the drizzle. He pulled out his phone and called his partner.
“Did he buy it?” his partner asked.
“Yeah,” Wallace said. “I still don’t like this, Bob.”
“I know. But you know how it is.”
“I know.”
Wallace looked at the picture he showed to Arnold. A picture some intern prepared for this operation. Wallace shook his head. “What’s the word from the mayor?”
“Same old shit. ‘Catch that fucker’, et cetera.”
“Can’t say I blame him. She—he? Took advantage of his son. His son, man.”
“I’d want to catch the fucker, too.”
*
The mayor sat nervously at a table next to a fogged up window staring at his coffee mug. He hadn’t fidgeted like this since he was fourteen years old. This was a moment he never dreamt of having. The dread crept up from his gut; he sipped the bitter coffee to keep it down.
The commissioner entered the restaurant and sat down with an air of unusual heaviness, feeling the mayor’s wounded, hateful eyes on him as he hastily ordered a black coffee from a passing waiter.
The commissioner didn’t know what to say. He had dealt with the parents of rape victims before, but never a public official and never a friend. He waited for the mayor to compose himself. He knew salutations and the normal small talk were useless. He tried to appear relaxed but focused.
“You wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?” the mayor said loudly when the waiter came back with the commissioner’s steaming mug of black coffee.
“We have your plan in place,” the commissioner said. “I’m very sorry.”
“You said that already,” the mayor snapped. “It took my son—my fucking son—to get date-raped for you guys to do something about this freak.”
The commissioner relaxed under the mayor’s anger. This was a normal reaction. He sipped his coffee. “We’ve been after the Black Widow for some time. You know that. And you know how I feel about this operation.”
“I want this shemale fuck off the goddamn streets. I could give a fuck about your moral feelings.”
“We already talked to the kid’s friend. He’s hooked. My best officers are tailing him. They say there’s no way he’s gonna abandon his buddy. My detectives practically told him to take matters into his own hands. The power of suggestion is very effective.”
“It goddamn better be.”
“Have you spoken to your son? We’ll get this guy, but we won’t be able to punish him enough to make you or your son feel better.”
“How the fuck is he gonna feel better? Are you kidding me?”
“Catching the perp and getting him off the streets is our priority, his punishment is up to the law.”
“Just get him,” the mayor said. He got up and left the commissioner to his coffee.
*
The watchtower had a beautiful but haunting view of the city, the Black Widow thought. She always started here, although she didn’t know why. Her weekly prowls were like a pilgrimage to the temple of the God of Lust. She praised him, as always, from this shadowed, forested hill, the lights of the city and surrounding towns twinkling in the distance. Here she reached into her elaborate panty hose for her penis, strapped to her smooth leg. She took it in her hand, her biological, false identity. She was her real self now—in her dress, her makeup, her lipstick—seductive as ever.
The God of Lust whispered to her as she climbed down the wooden stairs of the structure back to her black Honda Civic to satisfy her appetite.
*
Arnold waited for the Black Widow on the gradual lonely hill that led to campus. He walked up and down Bill McDonald Parkway starting at midnight. No rain fell, but fog settled in and made the air seem colder. The street lights were so dim that the fog seemed to obscure them. Couples walked arm in arm, their faces hidden by darkness and he didn’t smile at them as he normally did.
The best weapon Arnold could find was a switch blade from a forgotten corner of his desk drawer. He squeezed it in his pocket. He didn’t know what he would do exactly if he saw the Black Widow. He couldn’t picture himself stabbing her, the blood running into the grooved metal handle of the rusty blade. Detective Wallace had invited him to go wait at the police station, but he declined. Wallace acted like he understood.
Arnold reached the bottom of the hill and turned back to climb once again to the top. The aching in his legs returned and the stirring in the pit of his stomach continued. After he passed the first driveway that turned into the Birnam Wood student apartment complex, a car slowed and, turning its headlights on, emerged from the dark mist. It was the same black Civic he had described to Wallace.
For a second Arnold could only see his breath steaming in the Civic’s headlights. He didn’t think he would actually see her.
“Need a ride?” said the Black Widow.
Arnold blinked at her, his hand in his pocket clutching the knife.
Her voice sounded like a woman’s, no underlying bass.
She got out of the car. Her face glowed in the reflection of her headlights off the fog. She wore dark eyeshadow and black lipstick under her pitch black wig and a tight black dress. He could see her manliness now. The telltale wide shoulders on an admittedly slight frame. She spoke in a heavy Vietnamese accent.
“Where is my friend?” Arnold said. The Black Widow smiled.
“Which one?”
Anger surged through Arnold and made him grip the knife hard. He forced himself to keep it in his pocket.
“This one,” Arnold said. He released the knife and pulled out the poster Detective Wallace gave him from his back pocket and showed it to the Black Widow. “James,” he said. “What did you do to him?” Arnold’s voice cracked in the cold.
“Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t take that picture. What is this? Where did you get that?”
Arnold studied her face. She didn’t know what it was he was showing her.
A cop car came screaming out of the night from down the hill, all lights and siren. Another came down the wrong side of the road from the hill’s summit. Officers sprang out and pointed guns at the Black Widow.
“You shit! You set me up! I did nothing!” she screamed.
“Get down on the ground.”
Wallace rushed over to Arnold and hustled him out of the way. The Black Widow knelt shivering in the cold fog, crying as the cops approached her.
*
After his role in the mayor’s operation and his night with the Black Widow, James packed and moved back to his family. Arnold heard from him less and less. He tried to be understanding, to make it clear to his friend that he didn’t think any different of him after that night on Bill McDonald Parkway. But James never revealed his true struggles to Arnold, and Arnold tried his best to not feel betrayed. Eventually Arnold moved on with his life. He never knew if James ever had.
No comments:
Post a Comment