It’s not a secret that the government often performs inhumane social experiments when given ample funding. Such endeavors are easy to arrange, given that you’ve paid enough politicians to keep it secret and are allowed to see the experiment to fruition, to prove or disprove your hypothesis. One such experiment, I helped to arrange. I didn’t know the hypothesis they were testing. I was more involved with the logistics. I do know it involved releasing a group of serial killers in a confined neighborhood. The sociologist department had secured a grant to research what I was told was the theory of the Entropy of Evil.
We found a secluded neighborhood in the foothills of East Tennessee. There were about two hundred houses in total. We bought five houses for five serial killers. They were codenamed: Berry, Jerry, Larry, Curly, and Moe. Curly, of course, was bald. Their real names I didn’t know nor did I recognize their faces. It is a terrifying fact that America has so many serial killers, that the majority of them are simply obscure, unknown to the public.
The five were picked because their modus operandi were unique. Finding a victim and determining who had done the deed would be easier by introducing this variable. The lead researcher, Dr. Davis, was a little concerned that this may instigate an unwanted influence on the experimental parameters.
Berry strangled.
Jerry mutilated.
Larry strangled and always cut off a piece of hair as a trinket.
Curly always used a blunt object.
Moe was a wiry little fellow who was more inclined to poison someone.
I was a part of a team of so-called security experts. We had invented a story that the rate of theft had increased ‘exponentially.’ I tried to get that line out of the script. Security guards don’t talk like that. Anyhow it worked. There were five of us working in three shifts. Our objective was to find and obtain any victims for processing. Another team would come in and clean the house and put a For Sale sign in the yard. A third team would examine the body to determine which of the participants had committed the murder and I assume determine other things I wasn’t privy to.
The first two months were quiet. I worked the west sector and made sure I was on the night shift, thinking and hoping, that’s when all the action would take place.
Finally, our third month in and we found our first victim, well the morning shift did. All calls to the police were patched through to a phony 911 operator. The call came in from a Mr. Roy Williams. His wife was missing. I saw a police car come and pick Mr. Williams up from his home to take him down to the station so he could give his statement as to what had occurred in the last twenty-four hours. I never saw him again.
Mrs. Williams was found lying face down in the woods in the South Sector. Her neck had a blue ring around it and some of her hair was missing.
“Larry. It was without a doubt Larry,” Travis explained to me. He was a fellow student also disguised as a security guard. “It wasn’t just lying out in the open. They had to go deep in the woods. Damn, I sure hope we get some action. Maybe we should have chosen the morning shift. These cats are too slick.”
“What, you want to catch them in the moment?” I asked.
“Nah, I just mean. They are going to do the deed at night and then people will notice their folks are missing. That’s when you go looking. Not during the act, but after the act.”
I agreed. “We’ll get our chance. It can’t be that predictable. Bodies aren’t automatically found. The search usually extends into the night.”
“Well, they found this one pretty quick.”
The second one I was more fortunate, or should I say less fortunate. The experiment took a turn for the worse. At the beginning of our shift there was a call that a body had been found near the playground. Travis and I took our golf cart and rode around the perimeter of the playground.
“You know what, let’s ditch the playground and head over to the tennis courts,” Travis advised. “Chris, I feel like that’s a perfect place to dump a body.”
There were three tennis courts, the last sitting next to the edge of the West sector forest. A pair of oak tree branches hung over one end of the last tennis court. As we approached, I could see a body through the fence lying between the trees.
“Ah my gosh. There it is.”
“You nervous?”
I was petrified. “I am. I didn’t think I would be, but now that it’s real. I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just a body. It can’t hurt you.”
It was a man wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans. His shoes and socks were missing. Travis put the vehicle in park and without hesitation walked over to the body.
“Holy shit. It’s one of the participants. I think it’s Larry.”
It was Larry. There around his neck was broad purple ring. Larry’s modus operandi was to strangle, and he had been strangled.
Dr. Davis was furious at first but then he reasoned that this was the natural order of things.
“We need to explore what this means. It’s not like there’s a sniff test for other serial killers to use to identify other serial killers. Serial killers can be victims as well. Fascinating.”
He added fascinating to every other sentence.
Things got quiet again. Another month, no action.
The fifth month the same sort of thing happened with the second victim. One of the participants was bludgeoned t0 death. His face was beat in with a baseball bat. Once again, the call came in to the morning crew and once again Travis knew exactly where to look.
“Check the house across the street from the school. Where did they even get that?” he murmured staring off into space, as if I wasn’t even there.
“Travis, what are you talking about?”
“Oh nothing.”
We knocked on the front door of the house at the address we were given. An elderly woman with thin hair cracked opened the door leaving the security chain in place. “Yes.”
“Mam, we got a call that there was a disturbance at this address. Can we come in?” I asked politely.
“Well…”
“Lady, open the door!” Travis demanded.
“No, not if you’re going to be like that.”
“Open the damn door or I’ll ram it in.”
“Travis, calm down!”
“Fuck you!”
The lady slammed the door shut. I could hear her talking through the door, threatening to sue and take legal action.
“Bitch.”
“Damn Travis. She’s just scared.”
“Forget this, let’s go check in the schoolyard.”
“Why?”
“Just come on.”
We drove up onto the sidewalk next to the front entrance and got out. We methodically checked every corner of that building until we got to the back where the basketball courts were.
“Look, there it is.”
I heard Travis but I didn’t perceive his message. I was mesmerized by a child’s too realistic picture of a lion eating a gazelle hanging in the window. It still had the qualities of a child artist, but it was unusually good for a second grader.
“What?”
“There’s the body.”
About fifty yards away, lying under the basketball goal was a robust man with a big pot belly. His socks and shoes were missing. Travis ran to the body, but I trailed behind, taking my time. I didn’t really want to see another dead body.
“See that tattoo? The rose and the cross?”
“Travis, is that Curly?”
“Yep. Wow. What are the chances?”
My mind was racing. Once, ok, but twice, not a coincidence.
Later that afternoon I made an appointment to speak with Dr. Davis on campus and voice my concerns.
He had an office on the second floor of Peck Hall. It was an awful looking building and had an unusually long meandering set of stairs. The architect must have been a cruel and sadistic.
Winded and tired from my trek, I knocked on his door. “Come on in,” I heard him yell.
His office was like any other research professor, filled with books and papers, disorganized and cluttered with a few family photos.
“What can I do for you Chris?”
“I have some concerns, some suspicions about Travis.”
“Yeah, about what?”
“I know this sounds crazy, but I think he’s a serial killer himself.”
He laughed. “Oh man. Is it that bad in America? We can’t even hire someone to research serial killers without themselves being a serial killer. Well, what makes you think that?”
“He knew exactly where to look on the second and third killings. He knows stuff he shouldn’t know. He’s too fascinated by all this.”
Dr. Davis rolled his eyes. “Chris, you wanted to participate yourself. Doesn’t that make you insane, insensitive? You wanted to see the Devil and lo and behold now that you’ve seen him, you feel guilty? Well, we already knew about Travis. It wasn’t planned, but a happy little accident- a sixth serial killer thrust into the equation. Isn’t that fascinating. We were just going to let it play out and see what happens.”
I was shocked. “You mean you were going to let me get killed!”
“Possibly, but that’s the price we pay for knowledge. And, looks like he’s already struck again. They found some elderly lady in her home, strangled, laying out in her backyard, with her shoes and socks missing. I mean not just the ones on her feet, but the whole damn house cleaned out. He’s got a thing for shoes and socks. Fascinating.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“No Chris, you are just as much a son of a bitch as I am. You were just as willing to see innocent people die. Good day. I understand if you don’t want to participate anymore. Please close the door on your way out and remember, mums the word. You signed a waiver.”
I didn’t go back. In fact, I moved far away. I hope and pray Travis doesn’t know where I live, but worse than that, I hope the neighborhood I just moved into isn’t under a government grant to study the effects of evil confined to a closed space.