Twisted Soul – Installment 3

Twisted Soul

By

D.M. KURTZ

Installment 3:

The Second City

June 19th, 2014

Dreary skies: it seemed to Jess that they had become the norm since the all-too-famous verdict over six months prior. It could have just been his own gloomy spirit that had caused his perception of reality to have become skewed, but he felt that it was much more. It was as if creation itself had begun to cry out in mourning over the injustices that were allowed to run rampant across the nation, with grief that manifested itself through cloudy skies, severe rain and windy thunderstorms. Weather patterns had been growing altogether strange for years before that day, of course, but Jess was certain that the case of state versus Randy Jameson had been the tipping point.

The tall man sighed and rolled his neck as he moved through the pawn shop he’d selected in the northern part of Texas: the second of many such stops. He slid his hands into a pair of dark black, form-fitting leather gloves with a yellow sticker on the rightmost that simply read “13”.

Perfect, he smiled and removed the coverings before he proceeded to the counter with a nod to the thin cashier behind the glass.

“Find what you were looking for?” The woman’s voice was soft and polite beneath her slight southern accent; a cheap, plastic tag identified her as Crystal. Jess forced a smile as he choked down his emotions and quickly banished brutal images from his mind of the child that had also carried that name.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied as he set the gloves on the smooth surface, careful not to let envious eyes be drawn to the glamorous items beneath. Crystal returned his look with a sheepish smirk of her own.

“All that time browsing just to buy some gloves?” she asked with a glance up to his sharp, hazel iris’ from her own deep wells of blue.

“Had to find the right fit.” Jess held back a chuckle at the rosy red flushing of her cheeks when she averted her gaze.

“That’ll be… $14.08″,” she told him after she’d typed rapidly on a bulky calculator. Jess quickly withdrew an old and worn wallet from his charcoal colored coat and handed her a crisp, twenty-dollar bill.

“Keep the change,” he said with a wink as he grabbed the gloves and turned on his heels.

“Thank you,” Crystal stammered to his back while he walked away. “Do you need a receipt?” Jess simply shook his head and pushed through the heavy door of the establishment. He breathed in the clean evening air as he removed the price tag and threw it into a garbage can near the entrance before he slipped into the comfy gloves. A chill breeze tugged at his light jacket as he moved across an asphalt parking lot and entered a black Audi S5. The door thumped softly when he closed it, and he sighed as he depressed the brake pedal and pushed the small button on the console that caused the car to hum to life.

This is taking too long, he thought as he shook his head and grimaced. His grip tightened around the steering wheel until several of his knuckles cracked lightly from the strain.

Stay the course, the notion drifted into his mind and he took a deep breath. Patience was key to the success of his mission, and though he knew this, it did not make the slow calculations any easier. The families of Randy’s victims would not know peace until that sick man was in the ground with one of the soon-to-be purchased lead rounds lodged in his demented brain. It was that image, violent though it certainly was, that had kept Jess going down such an ominous and tedious path. The handsome man sighed again and rubbed his forehead in frustration before he opened the glove-box to his right and removed a laminated map. He scanned it for a few moments as he mentally calculated the miles to the city in western Alabama that was his next destination.

He sat for a few seconds in quiet contemplation before he returned the map, closed the storage compartment and put the vehicle into reverse. Moments later and the humble pawn shop was in his rearview as he drove through the busy streets of Dallas, TX. First thing in the morning, he would check out of the Marriot hotel that had housed him these past few weeks and be on the road to Birmingham.

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