Free I Would Find a Girl Walking by Diana Montané, Kathy Kelly

“Indian jewelry.”
    “Do you remember what age she may have been?”
    “Roughly between 19 and 23.”
    “Did she ever indicate that she might be a hooker, that would go out for money or anything like that?”
    He coughed. “Excuse me. Something, part of her wanted to, it looked to me. Part of her looked, you know, like she might be like that. The other part didn’t, you know, her personality, the way she handled herself.” That was the usual fantasy dichotomy he projected with his potential victims.
    “She never approached you for any favors for money or anything?”
    “No, nothing like that. For a little drink, though.”
    “She wanted a drink?”
    “Oh man!” He whistled for emphasis, then laughed, unaware as to where the interview was headed and just reveling in the moment. “I remember I was pretty well gone by then, and I just told the bartender that was there to go ahead and give the young lady a drink.”
    “Okay, all right, after you struck up a conversation with her, did you dance with her?”
    “I believe we did, I believe we did. Because I like, I like music, I like to get out there and dance a little bit when I’m loaded and I know I gotta drive. That helps, you know, sober me up a little bit.”
    “Then what did you do?”
    “I said, ‘Hey let’s go for a little ride,’ and she said yeah, and we left the bar together. We get in the car, we went west to U.S. 1. Well, before I got to U.S. 1, my car had a uh . . . tendency to pull into ABCs by itself, with a little help from me.” He chuckled again, a self-deprecating laugh; and the account of the trip to the liquor store was told with utter detachment, as if his actions had nothing to do with him. “And I pull in there and got a . . . another six-pack.”
    “After you bought the six-pack, did you continue west of 520?”
    “We come to the intersection of U.S. 1 and . . . By that time she was talking pretty good and I was too, and I just made a right-hand turn and went on my merry way on U.S. 1 going north, but it was a little way up, and the heated argument started.”
    “What was that about?”
    “Oh slightest drop of a pin I guess, at that time.” The interview was finally leading up to the juncture where, as Manis by now realized, there would be that trigger, the one that made Gerald Stano snap and turn into what he called “Jerry the serial-killer.” “Because we’re both dipping into the six-pack, and uh, I pulled over the side of the road; I just lost my senses and I killed the young lady.”
    Stano said he had a gun in the car but that it wasn’t his, that he had borrowed it from a friend. He said it was a .22, a six-shot revolver.
    “I pulled off, you know, like I had a little car trouble. We just pulled off and I had the gun out of the glove box. It was loaded, all six chambers were loaded, and I uh . . . I pulled the gun out and I said, ‘This is the end of the line.’ ” His face became distorted. Cathy Lee Scharf must have been paralyzed with fear.
    “Is she out of the car, the girl?”
    “Uh . . . she’s getting ready to get out of the car. I said, ‘Let’s go.’ By then I reached over and unlocked the door, and both of us got out on her side.”
    “After you both got outside, did you walk to the back, or the front, or . . .”
    “Well, the passenger side was left open, and I took her down at gunpoint a little way, so that the car traffic couldn’t see us. And from there I uh . . . proceeded to pull the trigger, I believe several times.” And again, a different method of murder from most of the other victims, who met their fate by being drowned, strangled, or stabbed.
    “Did she ever say anything that you remember? After you shot her the first time, for instance?”
    “Not really. I don’t know. No she didn’t say anything.”
    Manis breathed in and out slowly as he mused about what Stano would recall. Oh, she must have said something. She had to have said something. What had she said to him?
    “All