A CLOCKWORK MURDER: The Night A Twisted Fantasy Became A Demented Reality Read online

  A CLOCKWORK MURDER

  The Night Twisted Fantasy Became Demented Reality

  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

  STEVE JACKSON

  WildBluePress.com

  A Clockwork Murder published by:

  WILDBLUE PRESS

  P.O. Box 102440

  Denver, Colorado 80250

  Publisher Disclaimer: Any opinions, statements of fact or fiction, descriptions, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author, and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy, and assumes no liability for the content.

  Copyright 2017 by Steve Jackson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  WILDBLUE PRESS is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Offices.

  978-1-942266-24-2 eBook ISBN

  978-1-942266-25-9 Trade Paperback ISBN

  Interior Formatting and Book Cover Design by Elijah Toten

  Totencreative.com

  Other WildBlue Press Books By Steve Jackson

  BOGEYMAN: He Was Every Parent’s Nightmare

  Wbp.bz/Bogeyman

  NO STONE UNTURNED: The True Story of The World’s Premier Forensic Investigators

  Wbp.bz/NSU

  SMOOTH TALKER: Trail of Death

  Wbp.bz/st

  ROUGH TRADE: A Shocking True Story of Prostitution, Murder and Redemption

  Wbp.bz/rt

  Table of Contents

  PART I:WOUND UP BY THE DEVIL

  PROLOGUE:Ticking Clockworks

  CHAPTER ONE:“Pretty Strange Ideas”

  CHAPTER TWO:“My Best Friend”

  CHAPTER THREE:Clockwork Oranges

  PART II:ACTS OF VIOLENCE

  CHAPTER FOUR:The All-American Girl

  CHAPTER FIVE:“We’ll get you one!”

  CHAPTER SIX:Scenes of the Crime

  CHAPTER SEVEN:“Did she suffer?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT:“I thought it was just a joke”

  CHAPTER NINE:“Looks like a death penalty case.”

  CHAPTER TEN:“We’re psyched!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:“Not a virgin anymore”

  CHAPTER TWELVE:“Random Act Of Violence”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:“Why would I need a lawyer?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN:“How cold their hearts must be.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN:“He’s demented!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:“Death is different”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:“We grieve our loss …”

  PART III:TRIALS and TEARS

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:“Upsetting and outrageous.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN:“A case about darkness”

  CHAPTER TWENTY:“A hole in my heart.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:“A spooky stare.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:“It’s not right to question God.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:“He was not just a pawn.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:“Help them out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:“This is what I have left.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:“He’ll get his in prison.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:“The careless flow of time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:“It’s been forever.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:The “devil made me do it” defense.

  CHAPTER THIRTY:“It’s not a whodunit.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:“It’ll be over soon.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO:“All the king’s men.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE:“The more evil of the two.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR:“I don’t want to die.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE:“A new normal.”

  EPILOGUE:A note from the author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:(Written in 2003)

  OTHER WILDBLUE PRESS BOOKS BY STEVE JACKSON

  PART I

  WOUND UP BY THE DEVIL

  “If one can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.”

  —Anthony Burgess, from the introduction to his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange

  PROLOGUE

  Ticking Clockworks

  March 1997

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  The light from the television flickered hypnotically in the darkened living room of the small apartment where George Woldt and his best friend, Lucas Salmon, had settled in to watch a movie. Woldt’s wife, Bonnie, seven months pregnant, joined them, though she was the outsider in that company.

  George Woldt and Lucas Salmon were an unlikely pair of friends. Both were thin and of average height, but one was a big-talking, pornography-loving, ladies’ man, the other a quiet, God-fearing missionary. Woldt was the leader, Salmon a subservient follower, but it’s doubtful that either would have had the nerve to do alone what they would do together.

  A face appeared on the television screen. Eyes blue and chill as ice, one adorned with makeup and false lashes, looked out from beneath a bowler. They belonged to the film’s narrator and protagonist, Alex, who smirked all predatory and cunning-like as his working-class British voice cut in:

  ALEX: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie Boy and Dim. And we sat in the Korova Milk Bar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.

  The camera angle widened to reveal Alex and three other young men—all dressed alike in what appeared to be white long underwear with protective codpieces worn on the outside, as well as bowlers and black Doc Marten boots. They were drinking white liquid from glasses while sitting together on a nightclub couch.

  ALEX: The Korova Milk Bar sold milk plus— milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence.

  Woldt had seen the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange many times; it was one of his favorites, but tonight he had an ulterior motive for renting it. Call it the next step in his plan to seduce Salmon into helping him realize a fantasy he nurtured. He’d tried to recruit other friends in the past, but when they realized that he wasn’t just kidding, they’d distanced themselves from his “demented” ideas. But Salmon was different—weaker, socially inept, a twenty-one-year-old virgin, and willing to do almost anything to keep Woldt’s friendship. The perfect droog, to use the movie’s vernacular.

  He looked over to see if Salmon was paying attention. The dialogue in the movie could be hard to understand with its futuristic slang and British accents. But the script wasn’t what really mattered to his plan.

  The tone he wanted to set began with the scene at the Korova Milk Bar where the glass tops of the tables were supported by alabaster statues of nude women lying on their backs holding the tops up with their hands and feet, breasts and pelvises thrusting up, white legs akimbo and genitalia exposed. But that was just scenery, a taste of what was to come. Woldt was anticipating his friend’s reaction to what Alex called “the ol’ ultraviolence” … and especially “the ol’ in-out.”

  The film quickly shifted to a scene of a drunk lying in the gutter of an alley, singing with his hand on a paper bag containing a bottle. Trouble appeared in the form of four dark figures wearing bowlers and carrying sticks, silhouetted against the glare of a streetlight. The drunk stopped singing at the approach of the smiling Alex and h
is gang. He smiled back and held out his hand.

  With the suddenness of a cobra, Alex struck his cane hard into the gut of the old man, who cried out. The four hoodlums then set upon the old man with their clubs and chains, kicking his prone body with their big, black boots as they shrieked like delighted apes. Granted, nearly thirty years after the film was released, the savagery of the attack was somewhat tame and not as graphic as were current movies, but there was still something about the randomness and conscienceless implementation of the “ol’ ultraviolence” that appealed to Woldt.

  The narrator, Alex, continued his monologue as the camera shifted to a trashed stage in an abandoned theatre where a young woman was being stripped and ravaged by a different gang of young men dressed in various pieces of World War II German uniforms. As though in a dance performance, the assault was set to classical music and carefully choreographed. The victim even pointed her toes like a ballerina as she struggled to get away from her attackers, only to be carried to a mattress on the stage floor where the gang prepared to rape her. “A little of the ol’ in-out, in-out.”

  The rape was interrupted by the appearance of Alex and his gang. The young woman escaped as the two groups of young men clashed with knives and clubs. Again, the violence was set to music and performed with a comic flare.

  After the gang rumble, Alex and his droogs drove out into the countryside where they rampaged through the home of a writer and his wife, who let them into the house when Alex said that there’d been a traffic accident and he needed to use the telephone. While Alex sang and danced, the writer was stomped, bound, and gagged, and then forced to watch as his wife was cut from her clothing with a pair of scissors and then raped.

  All of this had occurred in the first half hour of the film, and that was enough for Bonnie Woldt. “This is sick,” she said. “I’m going to bed.” With a baby due in May, she was getting a little fed up with having Lucas Salmon as a constant houseguest. He’d moved in shortly after she and George got married in February and didn’t appear to be leaving any time soon.

  Moreover, Salmon had changed since she’d first met him in 1995. Back then he’d been a shy but intelligent and well-mannered young man who talked a lot about God and how he and his father and brothers were active with their church. His particular brand of Christianity was strict; he did not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, and he was still a virgin— a fact her husband was constantly mocking him for, not that she had been above joining in the teasing.

  Initially, she’d hoped that some of Salmon’s better traits would rub off on her husband, but the effect had been just the opposite. Now, Salmon was foul-mouthed and coarse. He drank several beers a night, smoked cigarettes as if making up for lost time, and was preoccupied with sex and his lack of conquests.

  After several unsuccessful attempts to set Salmon up with young women friends, she wondered if he was a homosexual. He wasn’t bad-looking—just geeky and plain with his thick lips, slightly bulbous nose, and pronounced male-pattern baldness; his hazel eyes protruded a little,

  giving him a deer-in-the-headlights expression, especially in the company of girls.

  There was no denying that her husband was a bad influence on Salmon. George was a womanizer before she met him and, she suspected, was still on the prowl, especially with her being pregnant. Her husband was obsessive about his appearance; even at home while he was relaxing in front of the television with his friend and wife, his dark hair was exquisitely combed, his fingernails immaculate at the end of his carefully scrubbed hands. There were stranger aspects, too. He insisted on symmetry when it came to his appearance—his hair was split straight down the middle, not an extra strand to left or right; and if he wore a Band-Aid for a wound on one part of his body, he’d put another on the opposite side. He also had an almost absentminded habit of sniffing everything he came into contact with, including other people, while at the same time his omnipresent cologne hung in the air like a bad dream.

  If he was slavish about his appearance, he was even more obsessed with sex, the rougher and kinkier the better. He liked to watch pornography—especially the kind that depicted rape or some other sort of violent acts—and his favorite time to have sex was after they fought. It seemed that the anger and even the occasional bit of physical violence between them aroused him.

  She wasn’t surprised that A Clockwork Orange with all its beatings and rapes fascinated and sexually aroused George. But it was obvious, tonight anyway, that he was less interested in her than Salmon, whose pious personality seemed to be getting further submerged, like a drowning man going under for the third time. So she waddled off to bed.

  As for Woldt and Salmon, they’d certainly seen more graphic and violent sex acts in vivid pounding detail in more current films they watched. But again, there was something about the almost comical portrayal of the rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange that seemed to blur the line between fantasy and reality. The movie made rape look like a fun outing in the park.

  Many lines were blurring for Salmon, especially between the teachings of his church and what he knew to be sinful. He’d told friends before that Woldt was “bad news,” and yet he wanted to be like him, even if George didn’t always treat him well.

  So what if George made fun of him in front of other people, especially about his virginity? And so what if every time George wanted something or felt he should punish Salmon for some transgression—real or imagined—he only had to say “we’re not friends anymore” and Lucas had to crawl to get back in his good graces? The fact remained that he’d asked him, Lucas Salmon, to be the best man at his wedding.

  And so what if George had strange, sinful fantasies? That he liked to talk about sexually assaulting and sodomizing women? Or that he’d even suggested that they rape a woman when they were in Delaware for the wedding? After all, George smiled when he said those things so that Lucas would know that he was “just kidding.”

  Anyway, Salmon found all the talk about sex—even about forcing himself on a woman—exciting. Every day that passed in the company of Woldt made it easier to ignore the voice of his conscience complaining that even thinking about such things wasn’t right. Indeed, he had a few dark secrets of his own that he hadn’t shared with his “best friend” George.

  Woldt had taught him a lot, exposed him to a world he would have otherwise never known. Such as the film they were watching that ended with Alex imagining having sex in the snow with a beautiful young woman, who was obviously enjoying the event, while spectators on either side of the couple clapped in appreciation of the performance.

  As the two young men concentrated on the women’s breasts and pubic regions, neither of them understood—or they chose to ignore—that the film and the 1962 novel upon which it was based was a satire about the aestheticism of violence and the objectifying of women. Lost in their heated brains was the movie’s pointed commentary about the politics of a justice system that couldn’t decide whether its purpose was to punish or rehabilitate. Nor when it was over did they debate the film’s ultimate question of whether moral choice could exist without both good and evil in the world.

  The rapes and violence fed Woldt’s fantasy, whetted his appetite for blood, or what Alex referred to as “the old red red vino.” But he wanted an accomplice, someone with whom to share the excitement, as well as the risks, of his fantasy.

  Salmon imagined himself in place of Alex—the happy woman, the applause … his friend would have to stop teasing him about being a virgin. He felt himself slipping further into the dark places of his mind. He was still resisting but every day he spent with George, it became easier to disregard the voice that warned him about the wages of sin.

  Life was imitating art. George Woldt and his droog, Lucas Salmon, were clockwork oranges. Outwardly they were just two rather ordinary young men, working menial jobs but with their whole lives ahead of them. Internally, however, they were wound up like toys and set in motion toward a monstrous act of evil. An act George Woldt now innocently couc
hed as a way to solve his friend’s dilemma about still being a virgin.

  “We need to get you one,” he said, smiling, “for a little of the ol’ in-out.”

  Salmon smiled back. He was thinking along the same lines, but leave it to George to put the fantasy into words. Of course, Lucas knew that his best friend was still just kidding.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Pretty Strange Ideas”

  February 1997

  Wilmington, Delaware

  The young woman turned the key in her car’s ignition. The engine chugged a couple of times and then gave up. She tried again with the same results. Getting out of the car, she heard a man’s voice from the yard next door.

  “Need some help?” George Woldt called over to her. He and his friend, Lucas Salmon, were staying in the house next to where the young woman lived. They were awaiting Woldt’s marriage the next day to his pregnant girlfriend, Bonnie.

  Neither he nor Salmon, who was standing next to him, knew much about cars. But that didn’t matter; he’d noticed that the woman was attractive and figured her troubles were a good excuse to introduce his best man to a little fantasy he nurtured.

  The woman shook her head as she headed back into her house. “No, thanks,” she called back and smiled.

  Nudging his friend, Woldt nodded towards where the woman had disappeared. “Let’s go inside and rape her,” he said. He laughed at the look on Salmon’s face, but noticed how his friend’s eyes had followed the woman. His plan was working.

  Woldt had been born November 8, 1976, in South Korea, near the U.S. Army base where his father, Bill, was stationed. His mother, Song-Hui, was a local girl and eight months pregnant with George before Bill felt obligated to marry her. Part of his hesitation had to do with the erratic, emotional outbursts exhibited by Song-Hui and the other women in her family.

  Song-Hui doted on George, who for his first five years was primarily raised by the Korean side of his family. In fact, he did not start speaking English until he entered school. He was a healthy, attractive boy, whose mother dressed him effeminately and entered him in children’s beauty contests, several of which he won.