He didn’t know how long he had been asleep. When he woke, he couldn’t move. There was a damp, musky smell. An exposed lightbulb hung down from the ceiling above him. A headache pounded at the back of his skull. He couldn’t talk. Something was in his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but he couldn’t. He looked down at his naked body. Thick leather straps reached across his chest, hips and legs. He could feel one across his forehead.
“Don’t try to move,” a voice said from the darkness. “It will do no good.”
Then, he was standing above him, his lips pulled back across those yellow teeth in a sneer, laughter in his dark eyes.
“I left your note for your mom,” the Grassman said. “I wonder if she’s seen it yet. I always wonder if they have seen it before or after. That is the most maddening thing. I’m not sure what would make me happier. If they knew before I did it or if they didn’t know until after. I guess it is more exciting if they knew before. Perhaps she’s telephoning the police. Maybe I’ll get caught this time. What do you think? Do you think I’m going to get caught this time? No, probably not. I’ve been doing this for a long time, you know. Sometimes they just walk right up to my door and give themselves to me like you and your brother. Other times, I have to convince them. Sometimes, they walk right out of here without a scratch. I kind of like it when that happens. Gives me hope. You can talk. I’ll understand. I’ve been doing this a long time. Just keep it short.”
“My brother?” Michael asked through the ball gag.
“Yes,” the Grassman sighed. “I’ve been doing this too long. I’m beginning to repeat myself. Two from the same family. How long ago was your brother? They all kind of bleed together.”
“A year tomorrow,” Michael whimpered.
“Really? Wow. That is really unfortunate for your mother. I don’t know how she is going to make it through next August. If she makes it to then before blowing her brains out. Mine killed herself. I have that effect on people I guess.”
“Where is my brother?” Michael asked.
“Don’t worry,” the Grassman said. “You’ll be with him very soon. If I can remember, I’ll try to bury you with him.”
The Grassman reached behind him and Michael could hear the rattle of metal against metal. When the Grassman turned around again, he was holding a long knife. The joy was gone from his eyes and his lips were pursed.
“Michael, I’m afraid that this is going to be quite painful,” the Grassman said. “But I promise it will be over fairly quickly. Not too quickly, though. What would be the fun in that?”
The Grassman tightened the ball strap. Michael’s head felt like it was in a vice. Then, he could feel the metal entering his body. Michael tried to scream, but he couldn’t. There was no release for him. Just the agony and the pain.
♦♦♦
The Grassman loaded his truck up and pulled the tarp back over his lawn mowers. He got into the truck and drove down Carson Street towards the J&L Steel Mill. The stacks loomed high in the dark sky like shadows. As he slowly drove past the front of the mill, he saw two brand new cars. He slowed down to get a look at them. He had never seen anything like them before. One was a 1974 brown Lincoln Continental Mark IV and the other a 1974 red Fleetwood Eldorado Convertible. The Grassman stopped the truck to take a closer look. It was insanity to be stopping to just have a gander at two cars with the bits and pieces of Michael Borjan wrapped up under the tarp in the back of his truck, but he couldn’t help himself. He opened the door to his truck and started to walk towards the vehicles. A loud gunshot blast echoed through the night. The Grassman stopped in his tracks. Someone else was up to no good tonight. He jumped back into his truck and drove off out of town towards where Michael Borjan would finally rejoin his brother.
CHAPTER 2
August 8, 1974
The ballpark had a passive energy that night. Everyone knew that Nixon was going to resign, and that Ford would be president by this time tomorrow. The crowd was a little sparse because of that. Considering the Pirates were in the middle of a pennant race, only three and a half games out of first, it was a very small crowd. Uneasiness gripped everyone that night even though they knew what was coming. It was ladies’ night. Sam’s youngest daughter, Grace, sat beside him watching the game intently. At seventeen-years-old, she cared little about the president. Neither did Sam for that matter. Sam didn’t care much about anything these days. He filled his days with movies and baseball. The Mets had just scored two in the top of the fourth to take a three-nothing lead. Sam cared more about swinging into the Greentree Drive-In after the game. They were showing Macon County Line and Moonshine War. Grace didn’t want to go, so they would have to wait out the whole game before he could take Grace home and then head over to the drive-in.
It was a beautiful August night in the low seventies. The skies were as clear as Sam could ever remember them. Sam could remember a time when the streetlights had to be lit during the day because the air was so smoky, but regulations throughout the fifties and sixties combined with a slowly dying steel industry made for cleaner air.
The bottom of the fourth started off well with Sanguillen reaching on an infield single and Robertson taking Matlack to left field with another single putting men on first and second with no outs. Grace leaned forward a little in her seat. She loved baseball, just like her mother. Sam loved watching her watch baseball. She looked so much like her mother it was frightening.
His oldest, Deborah, was getting married in December. He had been waiting for her to ask him to walk her down the aisle, but the request hadn’t come yet. Sam doubted that it would. They hadn’t spoken in nearly six months, and even then, it was only a passing hello, with very few pleasantries. His second, William, was studying at the University of Pittsburgh. He would be graduating next year. William called him every once in a while to ask for some money, but there wasn’t much depth to those conversations either. Sam didn’t blame them. He wished he could make them understand what had happened when their mother had left four years ago, but he couldn’t. The nice pleasant conversations with Grace had turned into shorter, less informative ones over the last couple years. Soon, she would be heading off to college, too.
Sam didn’t really know how to talk to his kids anymore. He knew how to provide for them and help them through school, but Lorraine talked to the kids. That was the way it had always been. After Lorraine left, Sam had become a shell of the man he once was, a shell of the police detective he once was. He had been one of the finest detectives in homicide. Now, Sam just didn’t have it in him to do the job. They couldn’t just fire him. He was a hero cop and some old friends who knew him when he was something of a star protected him. Greg Falcone, who had been the district attorney back in the early sixties and was now mayor, had gone to bat for Sam over the years. But no one had been a bigger advocate since Lorraine left than Police Chief Jack Ballant. Now, ever since Ballant’s suicide last week, loyalties were slipping away. People were scared. Politicians were running for cover. Sam’s days with the force were numbered. At forty-six years of age, Sam’s time was about up. What legacy would he leave? That of the hero cop he once was or the burnout that he had become.