Chapter 1

Billy Bob Baxter looked just about as normal as any human being could possibly look.

Well, that is to say, for folks down in Needles, California, anyways.

Most of the old-timers around these parts hardly remember what Billy Bob looked like even though he went through the elementary school and the high school along with most of the other young ones that lived here with their parents in the mid-nineties. Of course, there is an entire new crop of young ones making trouble all over the county now and the ones from that time have moved away to one of the big cities like Los Angeles, San Diego or even up in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada.

My name is Doris Night and I am the resident funeral director up in the north side of Needles. I deal mostly in taking care of the Caucasian population of this side of Needles, the south side is done either by the Martinez brothers or that crazy old man Pancho Diaz with his two weird daughters that do all the body fixing and even help with the visiting friends and relatives.

In my capacity as the head of the undertaking facility for deceased white folks in Needles, I got real familiar with the supposed victims of the serial killer known as Senor Shoe Thief who was a notorious for stealing kisses along with unhappy women’s high heels. Considering how expensive women’s shoes had gotten lately, it was easy to understand why the females were excessively irritated at the theft of their foot-gear.

In the early years of his run as criminal, Senor Shoe Thief was more of a subject for amusement because all he seemed interested in was relieving the females of their leather footwear and kissing them flush on the lips, using tongue and all, after he blindfolded them so they couldn’t see his face when he took his pleasure in their mouth. Most folks thought it was funny rather than wicked because there never was any mentioning of anything of a sexual nature other than kissing even if it was without the victim’s consent. Of course, it was all considered a felony assault according to the laws of the State and he would be treated as a full blown sexual abuser if we ever caught him. In fact, it could also be considered kidnaping and illegal imprisonment just by not letting the young ladies go about their business instead of being used like some plaything for the unknown Shoe Thief’s fun and games. When I caught onto the fact that almost everyone assumed it was one of the bad boys from south Needles with total lack of manners living in a lawless environment south of the border, I put forward the idea that it was just as likely to be one of the north Needles male populace because we had our own share of crazies with unusual thoughts about making females bend to their will just because they were men and deserved to be treated with respect by females educated to be obedient above all else.

Since I was the only female member of the town council, you can easily understand why I was the only vote that we should expand our investigation to the entire city limits and part of the suburbs. Of course, we didn’t call it the suburbs back then, it was called the “unincorporated part of the county”. I personally remembered Billy Bob Baxter real well because I was acting as a school monitor and caught him hoarding a backpack crammed with female footgear inside his smelly locker. That dreadful locker was so ripe that it that brought frowns to the faces of anyone that opened it for inspection. In fact, he was my first real interrogation subject on an actual case and I remember with great clarity how he looked me straight in the eye and told me,

“If you are asking me why I steal those girl’s shoes, I have to admit they turn me on big time. I like to hold one up to my nose and sniff that schoolgirl scent of teenage skin and mama’s lilac bath soap. Then, I can hold the other shoe under my happy cock and shoot all my cream inside for her to get smeared all over the bottom of her foot when she gets them back.”

I was sure that I was blushing because such a confession was entirely unexpected and I had only hoped to catch him in a lie about his motivations. When he tearfully told me how his stepmother would step on his cock and his sensitive balls with her high heels and make fun of his inability to find a girlfriend, I empathized with him in the sense that he was also a victim of our changing society. Apparently, he had been abused by his stepmother and his stepsister ever since his father re-married just to have a housekeeper to do the cleaning and cook the food. Both the mother and the daughter counter-claimed that Billy Bob’s father had been beating them for years and had sexual knowledge of the under-aged girl right with his stepmother in the same room. The up-shot of all that was that Billy Bob’s father went to jail for the next eighteen months and the two females moved out to parts unknown before he got back in town. The father blamed Billy Bob for all his troubles and made him sleep out in the shed in the back yard so he wouldn’t have to look at him day and night.

I graduated out of the school shortly after and never saw Billy Bob again until we got an expanded list of suspects after the State investigators told us to get our shit together and do a proper job investigating the murders of at least three young women in the last two years. He was on that list because he was listed as a sexual predator even though his crimes were not actual felonies and was not supposed to be considered in current cases. There was no mention of his shoe stealing escapades from the school years, but there were several incident reports of stolen shoes and stolen women’s undies taken right out of their laundry rooms under their noses when they were looking the other way with him being considered the primary suspect.

It was hard to picture the pussy-whipped teenaged boy as an adult serial murderer of pretty young women, but in my mind it sure did give him a lot of motivation for the terrible crimes against the adult female population of Needles, California. I had come into close contact with all three bodies of the female victims and saw the way the perpetrator had toyed with their sexual parts after binding them tightly so they were unable to escape. I didn’t have to read a coroner’s report to discover that they had been interfered with post-mortem both anally and vaginally after being the life was choked from their vibrant young bodies. Other mutilations were present without going into specific details but it was similar to the modus operandi of the famed “Ripper” of London legend.

I got my chance to “interview” Billy Bob again the following morning because we were shorthanded in the jailhouse due to a major traffic accident up on the main interstate that brought tourist and travelers through town on a regular basis. I guess they figured you can’t make much money if your customers are getting themselves killed under a semi falling asleep from the monotony of straight line driving. I was one of the general public that had the suspicion the fault was in the driving skills of the average citizen rather than blaming the autos or the road. It seemed that years ago most folks were more cautious than all in a rush to get somewhere like there was reward for getting there in record time.

At the time of my first interrogation of Billy Bob, I had sensed he was a confused soul but still had a sense of humanity and with a pretty good grasp on “right” and “wrong” that filled him with guilt at the right times and tended to keep him from going off the rails with doing anything serious.

The updated Billy Bob was more a shadow of a human being with those blank eyes that stared off into the distance seeing things he couldn’t relate because his broken mind was filled with crazy thoughts about making all females pay for his pain. I could see the hatred for my sex in his eyes and it scared me a little even though he was handcuffed to the table and I knew Jethro the guard was mighty quick with his stun gun and had no hesitation to inflict pain when he thought it was needed to diffuse a tense situation.

“Billy Bob, do you know why you are down here at the courthouse?”

He looked in my direction, but I sensed he was not really all there. I didn’t know if it was drugs or that his brain was scattering from too much booze and pornography. When he did focus on me, I saw his glance fall to my shoes and frown at my patrolman’s boots with the steel tips for industrial insurance purposes. I could tell I was a disappointment to him in the feminine sense and that he dismissed me as not being worthy of his interest in matters of sexual release.

“Everyone knows you are looking for the serial killer that takes the victim’s shoes. I don’t know anything and even if I did know something, I wouldn’t tell you bastards a damn thing because you shot my dog when you arrested me at my mobile home.”

I didn’t know anything about that incident and decided to just ignore it because it would distract from the purpose of tying Billy Bob to the bodies of the three pretty girls that were raped, sodomized and mutilated right in our little town that didn’t get many murders or violent incidents. Of course, we had our “cartel” problems, but in all honesty, I don’t think even us in law enforcement considered that part of the “normal” society and that it was something that the folks south of the border had to straighten out with the least impact on honest American citizens.

“Billy Bob, you don’t remember me, but I was the one in school that talked to you about what you did with those high school girl’s shoes. I heard tell that you graduated to panties later and liked to make those girls kiss you and tell you they loved you if they didn’t want to get your fist in their face.”

He looked a little bit closer at me but I didn’t see even a hint of recognition in his eyes. In any event, I pressed him a little harder on what he needed those shoes and panties for and watched his face go through a series of emotions that ranged from downright evil satisfaction to fearful guilt that made him shake like he was suffering from flu-related chills.

“I remember you, Miss Doris, you were the one with the running shoes and you liked to wear the smiley face panties best of all.”

It was a bit of a shock to realize Billy Bob was not as crazy as I thought and that he had a fine memory that remembered things right down to the last detail. Suddenly, I was wondering what the pervert had done with my beloved yellow panties that I had grown fond of and had worn all through my high school years. I wondered how many other females in Needles had their panties and shoes as their identifiers in his twisted mind and why they seemed to stimulate him into perverted sexual actions that might mean he had already graduated from shoe sniffing and panty stealing right on up to kidnapping, rape, sodomy and multiple serial killer of young girls.

I was glad his long fingers and hands were chained to the table because I was certain he would be happy to add me to the list of his victims if he was actually the man we were looking for.

Unfortunately, at this point, with no real forensic evidence and no confession from his own lips, there was no valid cause to point the finger of guilt in his direction. Still, my gut reaction told me he was the guy we wanted to send away forever and a day or even, hopefully, send off to another state with a valid death penalty for execution as an example for perverts hiding in places yet undiscovered.