A Killer's Touch. Michael Benson
***? What am I supposed to do, you know?”
“No, you did the right thing. I couldn’t have called without him knowin’.”
“Was he colored? Mexican?”
“He had a ski mask on. I don’t know.”
“How did you get involved with these people? You just got back into town, right?”
“I pulled over. I thought they were broke down or something. As soon as the door opened, something hit me in the head with the heel of his palm—so hard I saw white specks. Then something got pulled over my head, tight here,” King said, gesturing with his cuffed hands toward his neck. “I think he knew somethin’. Karate or somethin’. One time, he hit me in the gut and I couldn’t even breathe.”
“When you were at my house you should’ve written something down, let me know what’s going on.”
“I should’ve thought of something, dude. He said, he promised, if we did everything, he said he was going to let this girl go.”
“I don’t get it. What would he gain? Holding on to you. Holding on to her. What would he gain? I can’t see what gain there would be.”
“Maybe he was sick, man. Maybe his was a totally different world from ours. You could tell by the way he talked and the shit he said.”
“Just one guy?”
“Well, there had to be somebody else. He was talking to someone on the phone. ‘Where you at now? Where you at now?’ I couldn’t hardly hear him. They put earplugs in my ears.”
“Why’d they let you go and not her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. They probably let her go, too. Shouldn’t they? I don’t know.”
“If they do find her ...”
“Then I can get out of here,” King said with a note of hope.
“If they find her—I mean, I hope they find her alive... .”
“Thank God!” King exclaimed.
“But if something did happen to her, they got forensics now, and they can tell.”
“That’s good. That’s good. That’s what I need, man. They find her—I’m good to go.”
“What did you need the flashlight for?”
“He told me. That and the shovel and the gas can. I don’t even have a f***in’ riding mower. He just told me to say that.”
King began to describe what his abductor did to him, making him lie on the ground, take his shoes off. Put cuffs on him.
“The guy or the cop?” Harold asked.
“It was the same,” King replied.
They talked about King’s problems with women. It was one thing after another.
Harold said, “They say this girl got snagged. They took her right from her house. She had two kids, two little ones. They didn’t take money. Nothin’.”
“That’s crazy,” King said.
“How this girl get in your car, though?”
“I pulled over and they weighed me down, and that was it, you know. Stupid, man, just stupid.” King complained about the rough treatment he’d received when arrested.
“Can you blame him? Twenty-one-year-old girl kidnapped and you’re the last one seen with her. When the guy let you go, you should’ve flagged down a cop right away.”
“There’s a lot of things I should’ve done,” King said with a sigh.
“What would your brother Gary have done?”
“He thinks faster than I do. He’d’ve taken the guy. He was in the military.”
“What did the guy have? A gun? A knife?”
“I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It’s not good, dude. You’re not in a good situation. So what did this guy want with a shovel for?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him, and he didn’t tell me.”
“You’d better take a lie detector test, dude. If you don’t, you are going to be screwed. It looks bad. I keep thinking what if it was my daughter that got snagged. How would I feel? Now, if they find her alive—”
“Thank God.”
“But if they don’t, the parents are going to need relief. They got to find her body. Otherwise, you got to live with that—live with that for a long time. Otherwise, her parents always be wondering, ‘Where she at? Is she still alive?’”
“Right.”
“Is she buried somewhere? You would want to know. I would want to know. It would haunt you for the rest of your life until you find out exactly... .”
King told Harold how he’d tried to use his cell phone, to call Tennille, his girlfriend, but the guy caught him and threw the phone into the backseat where the girl was.
“She made a call,” Harold shared.
“She did? Thank God. Because that was what I was trying to do, you know?”
“Her dad works for the sheriff’s department. That’s bad for you. They got to find where she’s at.”
“Exactly.”
“There ain’t nothin’ you remember that might help them?”
“I tried,” King said, shaking his head. “It was like a roller coaster.”
“If you told them where the part of the road was where you pulled over, maybe somebody would recognize something.”
“It doesn’t help when you got that stupid thing on your head. Everything was black. Why me?”
“Were you wearing that shirt earlier?”
“Yeah.”
“You weren’t wearing something white?”
“No, I do have a nice white T-shirt, short sleeve, but I only wear that once in a great while.”
“You got to piece it together and get ’er done, man. Eventually they will find her, but till then, her dad and her husband are probably going nuts, not knowing. I would be that way,” Harold said.
“I would, too—you know,” King replied.
Harold tried to get King to remember landmarks. After all, there was no hood on his head when King came to his house looking for a shovel. All King could remember, he said, was he thought he was at his house at one point because he heard his garage door open and close.
What kind of car did his abductor drive? King thought he might’ve said something about it being a Sebring, but he couldn’t be sure. Earplugs, you know.
“You got to take a lie detector test because this ain’t going away. She called 911 on your phone. It don’t look good. You better figure out something, dude. You got to take the test soon, before you get a lawyer. Once you get a lawyer, he won’t let you take the test. Your mom and dad ain’t too happy,” Harold told his cousin.
“I understand that.”
“What about the lie detector test?”
“They stick needles in you for that, right? I don’t like needles.”
“No needles. They just put a thing on you [and] ask you questions. The machine says if you’re telling the truth. It won’t hurt you. Can only help you. God knows what really happened. Nobody else.” Harold Muxlow shook hands with his cousin and left. It was almost 5:00 A.M. Again, Michael King was alone in the room.