Clayton Mulligan hated leaving things to chance.
Thanks to the early summer, the renewed miracle of blooming plants, ice cream trucks at every street corner, women in skimpy dresses strolling downtown, and America in all its splendor, he had enjoyed nature's scents while crossing the suburbs, with the window rolled down and '70s music playing on the car radio. Frank Valli and The Four Seasons had sung "December," followed by "Long Train Running" by the Doobie Brothers, the Bellamy Brothers, and Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.
In the air, a triumph of fragrances, a wonderful mixture of wet earth, tender grass, and pollen. They decisively won over the smog and exhaust fumes that had worked throughout the cold season, laying a black blanket over the rooftops.
Clayton Mulligan, who hated leaving things to chance, had parked far away and headed to the villa through the park, hands in his pockets and a thug's gait that had stuck to his legs since he was young.
At that evening hour, he hardly met anyone.
On the bench, under two layers of filthy blankets, a sleeping homeless man announced himself with his foul odor. At the edge of the small lake, reckless lovers gave the impression of being in a hurry, tense from fear even more than excitement. From the woods, which had grown spontaneously around a stone-paved path lined with plain rows of red bricks, the yellowish lights from the windows were already visible.
He gripped the handle of the pocket knife in his pocket.
Hard, made of plastic covered with synthetic mother-of-pearl that was already starting to peel off, it kept company with his erection. It had begun the moment the details of the murders he was about to commit had taken shape in his head, when the image of blood spurting from the jugular had filled his dreams' screen with red, when the screams of terror had died out in a gurgle like a radio running out of batteries.
Clayton Mulligan was unknown to the police.
He was just the profile of a face with a big question mark at its center, a code name, photographs of locations pinned to the dusty board. He was a collection of newspaper articles, clipped and left to yellow in dossiers that had been piling up for years, one on top of another.
Clayton Mulligan was that, a sum of hypotheses, the frustration of common police officers, investigators' careers running aground in sandy shallows. Mulligan was a balaclava and a pair of latex gloves, he was the one seen only from behind, the one I don't remember, the one with all different composite sketches. Clayton Mulligan was white, black, yellow, and Eskimo. He could come from another world or be your next-door neighbor, the one who cooks pots of beans every evening. Maybe he was the virgin daughter of the cobbler, who armed herself with all her repressed energy and descended upon the city with a serial killer's temperament, or the blessing priest who stinks of that omnipresent incense smell. When Clayton Mulligan left traces, they were the wrinkles on the district attorney's furrowed brow or the nervous strokes the commissioner made with his pen on the blank page of his investigation, until tearing it.
Clayton Mulligan was uncatchable.
He had been when he had raped and killed those women on the outskirts of a provincial party, when he had robbed banks and fled with the loot before the employees had even realized they had wet their pants. He had been in a hundred other occasions, morning, afternoon, and evening, when the doors of the houses he burglarized yielded lasciviously to his tools and opened onto entire worlds to explore.
That evening, opening the gate wasn't a problem. The lock's click was barely audible, and the gate swung open without creaking.
From the house came the sound of a TV turned on, and silhouettes moved across the space behind the curtains. Hidden in the shelter of a corner and dressed in darkness, Clayton forced himself to listen.
He could hear her voices, her husband's, and a jury that was judging aspiring chefs using solemnity that would have seemed excessive even at the Nobel ceremony. He crawled under the windowsill, pressed his ear to the door, and got confirmation: two people.
The plan was simple. It called for luring the first one outside, disposing of them with a knife to the liver, dragging them behind the bushes, and taking their place when returning.
"Everything alright, dear?" she would ask, rising from the couch with a glass of Glen Grant on ice, not yet started.
And then he would rape her, not once but twice.
During the break, he would drink the Glen Grant while listening to her cry, and the second time, he would take all the time necessary, maybe undressing first and carefully placing his clothes on the back of some chair.
Things couldn't go differently. The important thing was not to leave his fingerprints impressed somewhere and the prints of his feet, a size 42 so common that investigators would surrender to panic even before beginning their useless work.
And blood.
He wanted to leave lakes of blood, attract vampires asleep for millennia, rather, but Clayton Mulligan loved seeing light bulbs sparkle on blood's homogeneous expanse, perceiving its smell and taking it home like the olfactory memory of a fine wine.
The investigators, those useless and pathetic men with ties borrowed from bad taste, would have to arm themselves with rags and buckets and overcome the swamp he would leave as a memento.
He knocked over a vase to attract attention and waited.
Inside, a light came on, reinforcing that timid luminescence that barely crossed the windows, the television went silent, and the door locked with an electric click.
With an iron clatter, the armored shutters came down, and a powerful spotlight illuminated the garden. Motion-sensor cameras framed him and followed him across the freshly mowed lawn. Even the gate closed by itself, imprisoning him inside: four walls of rough stone, garden plants arranged in precise geometry, statues, cherubs, and questionable Peynet lovers' benches. From the balcony, a drone took off, a small plastic quadcopter with a tiny camera mounted under its belly. It started circling around him like an annoying mosquito. Even when he tried to escape the merciless eye of video surveillance, Clayton was followed by that buzzing monster.
The police didn't take long to arrive. They materialized beyond the gate.
Two men got out of the car and took up positions in safety while from a helicopter, this time real, three specialists descended with ropes. The first and second targeted him with firearms, crossing their laser sights in the garden's clear air. The third approached with large steps and struck him with a taser.
"Mulligan, you're under arrest!" barked one of the men while he couldn't control his convulsions. He was spraying saliva like a field sprinkler and uttering inarticulate blasphemies from his contracted mouth.
The inspector, light blue jacket, tie of a darker shade, and impeccable charcoal gray pants, approached and looked down at him. He wore glasses with thick lenses that reflected the spotlight's beam. The wind tousled his brown hair, beating it under the storm of the blades. In one hand a dossier and in the other his smartphone. Next to him was probably his lackey, a man with as much nose as face and a hint of redness at the tip. He wore his thick blonde hair styled by a many-dollars-per-cut hand, but nothing, that unfortunate nose catalyzed all possible attention. Mulligan folded like a closed book and tried to control the pain in his belly.
"Yes, yes, yes!" And saying it, he nodded his head. The inspector was in seventh heaven. He was probably enjoying his upcoming promotion and the lay he would score that very evening bragging about his exploits with Katya, the big-breasted black woman from the anti-drug department.
The deputy made Mulligan turn with a kick. The teeth of that son of a bitch smile were no less artificial than that hairspray-heavy hairstyle.
"Now we're going to take a trip to the police station. What do you say, asshole, I bet you couldn't wait to visit one?" He bent down and let a spit fall on Mulligan's face. "So we can tell you your rights and show you the evidence..."
The pain, the daze, and that world-championship-level hangover nausea calmed down, while the helicopter abandoned the site and the drone returned to its nest like an eaglet to its mother. Mulligan waited for some saliva to lubricate his tongue, then spoke.
"And what are you accusing me of? Desecration of English lawn, skillful theft of garden gnomes?" The nausea worsened again, first from the effort, then from the kick the bleached blonde gave him in the stomach. The inspector put the phone in his pocket and looked at him like a quarter of beef. He had the light behind him creating that religious icon halo.
"Murder, rape, armed robbery, and breaking and entering with attempted murder. But don't worry. The electric chair is comfortable in our parts. If you want, you can ask to put a cushion under that flabby ass of yours and you'll see: they have such big hearts at the county jail!"
Clayton Mulligan had that fat, full laugh. When he laughed, he used his two lungs to their maximum capacity. That night it was difficult and he had to endure some pain but he didn't give up the laugh, which burst forth like a salvo of cannon fire.
"Oh yeah, inspector. And what do you have in those girly hands of yours to nail me to the electric chair, let's hear..."
The first piece of evidence fell on his teeth.
It was a ring-bound file. Mulligan, with difficulty, sat up and leafed through it.
There were incomprehensible graphs and small captions at the bottom of each one. None of it had any meaning for him. He threw the file to the ground and spat in its direction.
"I'd wipe my ass with it..."
The inspector lit a Pall Mall and offered the pack to his big-nosed colleague who refused.
"Ever heard of DNA evidence, deoxyribonucleic acid?"
"No, little shit, but I've heard of incompetent inspectors who ended up opening a truck stop..."
The second piece of evidence was similar to the first, but with more pages. You could see aerial photos of the city. Some of the streets were traced with colored lines, red or blue. Some ended with a small circle and others with a small photograph. Mulligan sent the file to join the other one.
"In my time they called them collages, and they made retarded children do them."
The inspector moved, and suddenly the cutting blade of the spotlight hit Mulligan in the center of his retinas along with a metaphorical slap. The subordinate, the deputy or the lackey with the unfortunate nose, stretched his legs to go talk to one of the raiders. He had rolled his balaclava above his head and was scratching a scar on his chin.
"These are your cell phone movements, idiot! You should have turned it off before doing all those dirty deeds. Look: this and this are the bank robberies, this is your wild evening of rape and murder. This is your last trip, the one you took tonight to come here..."
Mulligan squinted at that document and nervously leafed through it, back and forth. With his lips still numb and his hair disheveled from the electric shock, he looked like a hopeless madman faced with an impossible aptitude test.
"I don't know what you're talking about, inspector. I don't know what a cell phone is, and I don't even have any idea how it moves like you say. These are just homework bullshit for cops without talent." He stood up with great effort supporting his back and a raw cry of pain humiliated him in front of everyone. "Next time bring me some evidence, cop! I'm going to my lawyer now who will find a way to rip that badge off your tits..."
Limping, he tried to make his way and pass beyond the inspector. The moon-nosed deputy stood in front of him with his arms spread.
"You decide Mulligan, this can be the end of the line for your career or the width of your ass at the end of treatment, or the sum of both things. You decide. And now, be good, put your hands behind your back." Two Sidol-polished handcuffs sparkled jingling between his hands. Mulligan, still wearing latex gloves, planted his eyes in the cop's eyes. That look usually preceded a murder by a few seconds.
"I told you, I don't even know what DNA or cell phones are. What I know about cells carries around the idiots who let themselves get caught by you, and it surely doesn't sit in people's pockets."
The handcuffs clicked behind his back, tightening. They did so after a rough jerk.
Mulligan didn't react, not with the rifle barrel aimed at his chest. The man with the rolled-up balaclava pulled his scar into a grin.
The inspector, who had handcuffed him treacherously, walked around him and adjusted his jacket collar. With a skillful and quick move, he slipped his hand into the front pocket of his pants and pulled out a cell phone: silver Honor 7. Mulligan's eyes crossed, surprised, in the direction of the device. That hard thing next to the knife hadn't been the erection, evidently.
"Anything to say in your defense, killer?" He remained silent. If he had had the strength, he would have let himself evaporate into a cloud. At first his lips trembled in an attempt to utter a word, then they mumbled a sentence with little sense.
"But, but, then..."
The inspector dismissed the special forces men with a gesture. They left towards the flashing lights that could be glimpsed beyond the wall. The man with the enormous nose, repentant, asked for a cigarette and got it along with the zippo.
"And so you're fried like a breaded eggplant, friend, get used to it."
"But then," he looked at his hands. "My gloves to not leave fingerprints, the balaclava, the knife that I cleaned every time. The letters I sent typed on a machine..."
"We got you friend, your DNA on the victims' bodies, your phone movements, the interception of your emails, highway passages, ATM withdrawals. You showed up in the videos of half the city's cameras. You're fucked!"
Mulligan thought about the electric chair, about that burnt smell he would have time to smell in his agony, about all the nerve-wracking wait in death row. He thought about the last meal, the confessor with downcast eyes, and the green mile. When the deputy pulled out his wallet and showed him the rather worn Mastercard, he gathered himself in a kind of prayer.
"I, I..."
"You must have ended up in the wrong story. Is that what you suspect, Mulligan?"
He nodded, and a tear of anger streaked his face.
"Holy shit, yes..." He thought about the small flying object, the red rays that tore through the darkness, the cameras that had followed his movements. Even that electrical energy weapon that had made his scrotum shrink had seemed like something out of context. "I... I must have ended up in the wrong story, in the wrong era..."
When he had the courage to look the inspector in the face again, tears were flowing without restraint. The man with the big nose showed some emotion too.
"We're in 2019..."
"Not in 1971?"
The police officers looked at each other. They didn't know how to tell him.
"You ended up in the wrong story, we're sorry. One Sunday afternoon someone who was bored wrote it..."
"And who... who was it?"
The two briefly consulted, speaking in each other's ears. The deputy looked at him with watery eyes. "Roberto Capocrisiti, someone who never gets tired of writing stories and novels and everything that passes through his head..." Mulligan nodded. "In any case, he's someone who wants to complicate his life and never writes stories set in the '70s or earlier, when plots were simpler and criminals so hard to catch." Added the inspector, almost ashamed.
The deputy tried to sugar-coat the pill. "I know Mulligan, it was a low blow. At first the writer wanted to set his story in the '70s. Elephant leg pants, shirts with huge collars, and cocaine that cost an arm and a leg. He had even invented a parallel story of prostitutes with perms, cars with six thousand cubic centimeters, and cigarettes smoked in the cinema. A fascinating thing, I must say..."
"And then he stuck me with that idiotic name, Clayton Mulligan!"
"Yeah, a real mess! I'm sorry, he's like that. He changed his mind, he wanted to complicate his life with all this technology that makes it difficult to articulate a credible plot without weak points. In short, whatever you write, there's always the danger that an invention comes up that cuts the legs off your story. It went badly, Mulligan!"
A veil of sadness dropped the curtain on that contrite face. Clayton: a criminal from another time catapulted into 2024 without a shred of warning. "So the gloves to avoid leaving prints, the balaclava, and all those..."
"Precautions?" The inspector intervened. "Old stuff that doesn't hold up anymore..."
When Mulligan climbed into the van to be taken to jail, his dignity disintegrated. A thousand confetti that the wind was scattering around on the sidewalk.
A court awaited him, stern jurors, obtuse and full of prejudices. Many years in prison awaited him before a spot would open up on that chair.
For Clayton Mulligan, multiple murderer with overwhelming evidence against him, there would be no clemency.
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