Capitol murder

Chapter Sixteen

Every day on death row was mind-numbingly similar. The lack of intellectual stimulation had been torture for a man with Clarence Little’s IQ, so Clarence had distracted himself for large parts of each day with mental reenactments of the slow torture and ultimate death of his playthings. Clarence never thought of the women he killed as victims. Victims were human beings. He thought of Winona Bedford, Carol Poole, and the other women as toys he used to act out his sexual fantasies.

Clarence had felt intense pleasure and an explosive sexual release whenever his playthings screamed or pleaded for mercy or died. Strangely he did not experience sexual pleasure while he was strangling Millie Reston. Maybe that was because he found her repulsive. He actually wondered if putting Millie down wasn’t a humanitarian act. The poor simpleton had no life and had been so easy to manipulate. He didn’t even have to waste a bullet on her. He shook his head in wonder. She was really like a cow in a slaughterhouse, following instructions without a thought as she was led to the abattoir.

Clarence marveled at the fact that she was so blinded by love that she hadn’t thought about how she was going to explain the gun. Millie had to have known that Clarence would be searched thoroughly before he was brought to court. She was the only person who could have smuggled the gun into the courthouse. She would have been asked to take a lie detector test, which she would have failed. If she had refused to take the test, her refusal would have confirmed the suspicions of the police. And Millie was weak. Eventually she would have cracked. Then she would have been arrested, disbarred, and put in prison. Clarence honestly believed that putting an end to Millie’s pathetic existence had been one of the few good deeds he had ever performed.

Clarence opened the elevator door and stepped out into the alcove on the fifth floor. Then he peeked into the back hall. There were a few people in it, but he didn’t think he would attract attention in a business suit, carrying Millie’s attache case.

Next to the alcove was a little-used set of stairs. Clarence didn’t meet anyone on the way down, but he discovered that the stairs were blocked off below the second floor. He nudged open the door to the second floor. His luck held. There were very few people in the corridor. Clarence walked to the end of the rear hallway and turned right into the corridor that ran parallel to Salmon Street. Then he turned right again and headed down the marble stairs to the courthouse lobby. He was in luck again. Most people took the elevator, so there were few people using the stairs. They were either engaged in conversation or focused on their own problems, and no one gave him a second look.

The front door came into view. Clarence headed for it, keeping his head down so it would be difficult to see his face. Seconds later, Clarence Little was breathing fresh air for the first time in a long time.

Millie’s car was exactly where the map said it would be. Clarence slid behind the wheel and breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t home free, but he was damn close. He left the parking spot and headed for the I-5 bridge that crossed the Columbia River into Washington.

Clarence assumed there would soon be an APB out for Millie’s vehicle. Just before he reached the bridge, he drove off I-5 into the Jantzen Beach shopping center and parked in the middle of a crowded row in the center of the large lot. Until someone discovered that the car was abandoned, the police would believe he was driving it.

Two large SUVs flanked Millie’s vehicle and shielded him from view. He took the clothes Millie had bought for him out of the trunk. They were on a wire hanger, and there was $1,000 in cash in a wallet in one of the pockets. He changed into jeans, a flannel shirt, and a leather jacket before donning a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. He pulled the bill down before wandering around the parking lot until he found a car to steal. He used the wire hanger to break in and was back on the road to Seattle twenty minutes after he’d turned off the highway.

It took a little under three hours to drive from Portland to Seattle. Once he was in the city, Clarence planned to ditch the stolen car and get a room in a cheap motel. Then he would withdraw the money he kept in several Seattle banks in accounts he had set up under aliases. He hadn’t lied to Millie about the money. He was well off financially. There had been an inheritance, and his engineering firm had done well. He also had several passports under different names in a safe-deposit box. He would lie low until the initial furor died down. Then it was off to South America to visit a plastic surgeon who asked no questions if you could pay his fee. And then…? Then there would be a world of possibilities. His priority after he was sure he was safe would be to buy an isolated house. In it he would construct a secret room where he could entertain. Spanish was a more melodious language than English, and Clarence wondered if the screams of Latin women would sound different from the screams of his American pets. He smiled as he contemplated answering that question.