The Good Neighbor by Kimberly A. Bettes

Bernie slip inside his house and close the door behind him.
     
     
     
24 Owen
    The sound was one I’d never heard before. No
matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t place it.
    Around Jenson’s house, only inches from the
ground, were basement windows. I walked from one to another,
peering inside. I tried to see what was going on in there. The most
I saw was the back of Jenson’s head once, and a few times, I saw
his arms making wild, dramatic, over-the-head movements. I couldn’t
tell what he was doing.
    There was light in the basement that would’ve
been sufficient for me to see, but the windows were filthy from the
rain splattering dirt on them.
    I finally realized that no matter how hard I
looked, no matter how long I squatted here beside his house in the
middle of the night, I’d never know what was going on in there. I
was frustrated by this realization, but there was nothing I could
do about it.
    I decided to go home, try to sleep to get
back on schedule, and tell Andy everything I’d seen as soon as he
came home from work in the morning.
    Some of those things were easy to do. I got
home easily enough. I even went to bed with no problem. However,
going to sleep was proving to be far more difficult than I’d hoped.
After all, I’d been awake for less than six hours. My body didn’t
need sleep and apparently wasn’t going to get any.
    I stared at the ceiling, waiting.
    I waited for sleep to come, which wouldn’t. I
waited for an answer to the Jenson puzzle to come, which didn’t.
One thing that kept coming was the thought of Carla. More
precisely, making love to Carla. I replayed it in my mind again and
again. It was something I definitely hoped to do more of in the
future.
    Carla dominated my thoughts all night. I lay
on the bed with my eyes closed, letting the thoughts have free
range in my head. It wasn’t until someone rang my doorbell that I
opened my eyes and realized it was morning.
    I went downstairs, rubbing my hands over my
face as I went. I opened the door to Andy.
    “I came right away. I sensed a lonely porch
that needed my help,” he teased.
    “I got to grab something to eat,” I said,
stepping aside, allowing him to enter.
    Andy followed me into the kitchen where I
made an egg sandwich. It was one of the few things I could actually
cook. While I cooked, I told Andy about sneaking around Jenson’s
and what I’d seen. Or more like what I hadn’t seen.
    “Shit, man. What do you think he’s doing down
there?” I shrugged my shoulders. Andy thought for a while. “What if
he’s hacking up the bodies in the basement?”
    “Don’t you think that’s crazy?”
    “Why’s that crazy? Isn’t that where the
killers hack up the bodies?”
    “Yeah,” I said, putting the egg on the bread.
“If they’re not old. You’ve seen him drag those bags, Andy. It’s
not easy for him. You really think he’d do the hacking in the
basement, drag the bags up the stairs, through the house, across
the porch, down the steps, across the yard, and then pick up the
bag and put it in the trunk? Doesn’t that seem a little much to
you?”
    “Yeah, it seems crazy. But Gacy was old. That
Fish guy was old as ass and it didn’t stop him from killing. That
couple from Missouri was both in their seventies. With killers, you
have to think crazy. You have to get to their level, think like
them. Expect the unexpected.”
    “Andy, you’re getting carried away. You don’t
even know he’s a killer. There’s never anyone over there. Who are
these people he’s killing? All we know for sure is he’s weird.”
    “Yeah. And that’s the first thing you have to
be in order to be a killer.”
    I laughed, taking a bite of my sandwich. I
shook my head at him while I chewed, but he was serious. “You’re
suddenly an expert on murderers, huh?” I asked him as I finished my
sandwich.
    “I studied killers and psychology for a while
in college. Thought about going into forensics, but Jill didn’t
like the thought of me