Free A Killer Like Me by Chuck Hustmyre

underestimated his own cunning.
    The killer stirs his coffee and gazes absently into the cup. In the new Sodom, as in the old, the harlots and sodomites see themselves as quite distinct and separate. It’s only in God’s eyes that their sameness is revealed. They are dizygotic twins, wallowing in their own apostasy. In order to be saved, both must die.
    As the warm liquid from the first sip of coffee slides down his throat, he gazes again at the headline.
    SERIAL KILLER STALKS CITY
    How sensational. He wonders if the reporter who wrote the story also wrote the headline. Probably so, he thinks, because he detects the same alliterative prose in her lead sentence: “A serial killer is stalking the streets of the Crescent City, mutilating and murdering women.”
    The story is good, if not completely accurate. He can hardly wait to hear more official reaction from the police department and city hall. Reading the article, it’s obvious the police chief is in denial about the presence of a wolf among his flock of sheep, a wolf masquerading as a lamb.
    But what of this detective, this Sean Murphy, who defied his superiors and told the newspaper about the killer and his work? The flatfoot was at least clever enough to finally link the harlots’ deaths, though their connection could not have been more obvious, but he apparently was not clever enough to link those killings to the deaths of the two sodomites.
    Maybe what this detective needs is a little push in the right direction. Maybe what this city needs is a message, a warning. After all, didn’t God warn Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom before he rained brimstone and fire down upon it?
    The cop is no Abraham, nor Lot, but maybe he can be useful.
    At least he finally recognized my work.
    The killer rises from the table and walks down the short hallway connecting the two rooms of his small apartment. His bedroom walls are lined with shelves, stacked with more than a hundred books, many on religion, many on . . . other topics of interest to him. As he brushes past them, he traces a hand over a hardcover edition of H. Montgomery Hyde’s
A History of Pornography
.
    The killer sits down at a small writing desk wedged against the wall next to his bed. On the desk sits a Royal typewriter, circa the 1930s. On a shelf overlooking the desk stands a five-by-seven-inch frame holding a black-and-white photograph of a young woman with long dark hair and dark eyes. His mother in her early twenties, taken almost forty years ago.
    The killer has decided to write a letter, but he hasn’t yet decided to whom he will send it—the police or the newspaper. After a moment’s thought, he realizes that the police may bury the letter. The newspaper will likely print it.
    From a drawer beside his right knee, the killer pulls a pair of thin cotton gloves, the kind darkroom technicians once used to handle color enlarging paper, before everything went digital. He slips the gloves onto his hands, then pulls a plain sheet of twenty-pound paper from the center drawer and rolls it into the typewriter. For several seconds he holds his index fingers above the keys, mentally composing his letter, the first he has ever written about his work. Briefly, he considers the enormity of what he is about to do.
    Writing to the police or to the newspaper, essentially the same thing, is fraught with danger. Look what happened to Kaczynski with his rambling manifesto. And to BTK after his taunting missives.
    But I am doing the Lord’s work.
    Still, he realizes that making his words public is a dangerous game.
    Something tickles the back of his subconscious, something he has read. That phrase,
dangerous game
, where is it from? The word
game
certainly has more than one meaning. He bends over and picks up a dictionary from the floor beside his desk. He thumbs to the Gs. There it is.
    game (noun) 1. a form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or