The White Ripper

1.

Bruce Gomer plopped his fat and hairy body onto a threadbare swivel chair in his decrepit trailer in the woods of Stuttgart, Arkansas, forty-five miles southeast of Little Rock. Wearing nothing but a dirty wife-beater T-shirt and torn socks, he played with his cock then turned on his PC and went to the Facebook page, Don’t Tread On US!

He yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” to his two pit bulls chained outside in the early February twilight. The dogs kept barking until they fell dead quiet, each having been shot point blank with a silenced Colt .45. The sound of crickets filled the air as the murderer, his face hidden under a ski mask, moved stealthily toward the trailer.

Bruce read a racist rant by the group’s moderator then typed: nigger and faggot Jew votes at the poles is where we at!!!

The six-foot man who had killed the dogs opened the unlocked trailer door and stepped inside.

Bruce jerked his chair to face the intruder and struggled to stand.

He needn’t have bothered.

The man with the gun shot Bruce in the forehead with a hollow point bullet that blew out the back of his head. He shot him again for good measure, this time in the chest. With a gloved hand, the killer withdrew a baggy from his jacket, scooped blood and viscera from the baggy and smeared it on walls, furniture and Bruce’s computer. Satisfied with the planted forensic evidence, he gathered bits of Bruce’s brain and skull, placed the gore in the baggy then headed for the door.

Outside, the killer zipped his jacket against the cold and looked up at the darkening sky. He wondered if Vicky had her eyes on him. How would that even be possible? He took a few steps then stopped at having nearly forgotten an important element of the mission plan. He went back inside the trailer, pulled a business card from his jeans and stuck it in Bruce’s mouth.

The card read: U Hate – U Die.

2.

Wolf Blitzer looked into the CNN camera and said, “We’ll return to our discussion about the coronavirus in a moment. Right now, we’ve got breaking news. The White Ripper has struck again, bringing the total number of victims to twenty-three. The latest victim is from Stuttgart, Arkansas, and he, like The White Ripper’s other victims, was also believed to be a white supremacist active on social media.

“Joining us now is John McKenna from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Agent McKenna, thank you for being here. Polls show The White Ripper is gaining ever-increasing support from the American people. But let’s start with an obvious question. The FBI believes these many murders, including today’s most recent victim, are the actions of a lone gunman. Accepting that as true, why can’t you catch this guy?”

3.

Karen Cole drove her 2018 Dodge Ram pickup off I-79 and merged onto Washington Road. Asleep beside her in the passenger seat, her father-in-law, seventy-eight-year-old Clyde Cole, stirred.

Karen glanced at Clyde and wondered if his latest round of chemotherapy had taken more of a toll then she realized. She contemplated if her late husband Casey would’ve looked like his dad had he lived to be as old. She smiled sadly at the notion and turned her eyes back to the road.

Clyde woke and sat up. “How long was I out?”

Karen replied, “Since West Virginia. It must’ve been quite a dream you had, the way you were squirming over there.”

Clyde said, “I don’t remember my dreams. Almost never.”

But if he had remembered this dream, Clyde would’ve found himself back in Vietnam, back in the Mekong Delta, back in the moonlit jungle of countless patrols and countless deaths.

Clyde’s prowess as a reconnaissance specialist and prolific killer were renowned in his platoon. His legend spread Army-wide when his sergeant nicknamed him The Ghost in an interview with Stars and Stripes.

Karen pulled the Dodge onto the driveway of their home on Cardinal Drive in St. Clair Heights in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She pressed the garage door opener.

Clyde got out of the truck and stood on the driveway. He hadn’t thought about being called The Ghost for awhile but now found himself thinking about his sergeant, a gregarious black officer who said to him in 1968, “Ghost, man. You’re the best at this shit.”

Clyde shelved the memory of his sergeant and thought the more things change, the more things stay the same. But for him there was a difference. Over fifty years ago, most everyone knew him as The Ghost.

Today, only Karen and Vicky knew him as The White Ripper.