Chapter 7: The End of the Beginning

I explained everything to Sergeant Roy Cooper as I showed him the cracks in the brickwork in my garage. Roy started to poke around. I didn’t tell him about Gary or the Carsons, just about Becky and her mother. “You know it sounds crazy, Rick,” he said flatly. “Although it would explain a lot. The Carson brothers. Your boy, my boy, Ken Blankenship’s boy...”

“Eric?” I asked, and Roy nodded.

“Broke his arms in three places. Wouldn’t tell us what happened.”

Becky Finklestein happened. I was sure of it. Eric Blankenship was an All-American wrestler, but Becky could break an All-American wrestler’s arm with one of her dainty fingers. Maybe her pinky if she was showing off. And she was always showing off. “She’s not a bad kid, Roy,” I said. “She just needs guidance. She needs a normal life.”

“Rick, if this girl is as big and as strong as you say she is, she’s never going to have a normal life. And now she’s a murderer. Killing changes people, Rick. Maybe not right away, but it sets a time-bomb of crazy inside you.” Roy looked at my weights. “And how many people do you think she could kill, Rick, if she really wanted to. Like if she got them trapped in a cage or a basement?”

“Roy, she’s a normal girl. She just had a rotten childhood.”

“Sounds to me like her childhood’s over,” Roy said as he turned to leave. “But I choose to believe you, Rick.”

“Thanks Roy.”

“No need to thank me. That bar over there tells the story.”

After Roy was gone I wandered over to my weight set. What story did it tell, I wondered? Then I saw what Roy was talking about. The weight bar that Becky Finklestein used to effortlessly curl three hundred pounds sat gleaming in the light, and pressed into the steel as if by a die were the impressions of eight tiny fingers and two tiny thumbs. I felt light-headed. How strong was she actually? What was her limit? Did she have a limit? And who would control her now that her mother was gone?

A week later it was Saturday night again, and I was in my garage with Stewart Reed and Ken Blankenship, two guys from work. We had just finished putting new tires on the ‘Vette. I put in a new engine over the summer, and a new transmission in September, and that car had more torque and horsepower than a stock car. I sat in the driver seat, drinking a beer, when Sergeant Roy Cooper came to the door. “Fellas,” he said, tipping his cap. We all waved. “Hope you’re not thinking of taking that thing out after enjoying a beer, Rick,” he chided.

“No sir,” I said.

“Well I just wanted to tell you that we couldn’t find any family for little Becky down the street. Apparently she’s been in and out of juvie homes since she was eight, if you can believe that.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Not much,” Roy said. “But I talked to Child Protective Services and they agreed to take her in despite her suspected criminal record.”

“Where-”

“Some group home somewhere in the Midwest that specializes in dangerous teenagers and young adults. I’ve got an undercover car picking her up right now.”

“Roy, that girl needs a family,” I said. I was going to continue, but a deafening crash from outside stopped me cold. It sounded like a car hitting a tree. But I knew what it really was.

In a second, my automatic garage door ripped out its track and flew across the street. Standing in the middle of my driveway was Becky Finklestein, wearing a field hockey skirt that was laughably inadequate to cover her thighs, and a sleeveless field hockey blouse that couldn’t sufficiently cover any part of her bulging torso. And she looked pissed.

“We were supposed to be friends, Mishhhter Parker,” she spat. Her muscles were twitching, seemingly involuntarily, as if responding to the rage that was reddening her face. “You ruined my life, Mishhhter Parker,” she said. “Mom was right about men all along!”

Roy Cooper pulled out his nightstick and put his hand on his handcuffs. “Hold it right there missy,” he said. “We don’t want things to get ugly.”

Becky laughed in disbelief. “Serioushhhly?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at an overturned sedan in the street. “Look at that car. I just did that. And it was easy. Do you serioushhhly think you can hurt me?”

And in seconds, Becky’s blouse and shirt were in shreds on my driveway as she hit one bodybuilding pose after another. She laughed as Roy dropped his nightstick in fear, bringing her arms up into double biceps pose that made Ken Blankenship scream out in disbelief. Then Becky flexed her abdominals, causing an eruption of muscular power around her thin waistline. “Do you serioushhhly think you can hurt this body? I’m invincible. I’m unshhhtoppable.”

And then Becky, moving so fast I could barely see her, grabbed Stewart by the ankle and swung him overhead, smashing his skull on the driveway in an explosion of blood. “I’m going to kill you last, Mishhhter Parker,” she growled. “I’m going to make it slow. We were supposed to be friends.”

Roy pulled his gun. “Freeze,” he said. He was shaking, but he was on target. His gun barrel pressed against Becky’s chest, where her collarbones met her neck.

“Back up, Roy,” I said.

But it was too late. Becky brought her pectorals together with a ‘thump’, squeezing the barrel of the revolver closed, and flattening it out like a penny on railroad tracks. Roy didn’t know how to react. And he didn’t really have time to react, anyway. In a second Becky holding Roy’s service revolver in her hand. “Watch very carefully,” she said. And a smirk crept across her face as she squeezed the gun into a deformed lump of metal and plastic. “I told you,” she said coldly, “I am invincible.”