END OF CHAPTER THREE:

Sheriff Daniels considered his response. "Both of them were meth addicts. Simmons' father was also a heavy bourbon drinker. He was no stranger to Knob Creek. In addition, the paranoid schizophrenic was alleged to have been divested of attention by his doddery, club-footed, mother. But, that's not all of his story."


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Beth re-positioned herself in her chair.

Sheriff Daniels continued his story, "Perceived repressed, Simmons conveyed an unhealthy desire for animals he gathered. These included carrion annihilated by traffic. He enraptured himself by dissecting and exhibiting their remains on shelves in his family's toolshed."

"Why wasn't I invited to join the fun?" Punchinello asked.

A strong woman, the grotesqueness of the details the sheriff relayed to Beth did not faze her.

Sheriff Daniels considered his illustrious career and stated, "You know, there've been other murderers I've brought to justice. But, none of them have ever compared to the Corpus Christi Cannibal...until now."

Offended by the sheriff's comment, Punchinello reminded him, "You are forgetting moi, Daniels."

Beth flashed a reassuring smile. "I have no doubt you'll capture the Astatula Assassin as well, Brock. There's not a lawman this side of Texas better than you."

The sheriff drank from his brandy snifter. "Once, Simmons decapitated a feral piglet he trapped. He chopped the critter's head right off."

In anger, Beth slapped the table with the palm of her hand. A loud thwack resonated throughout the house. "That's sadistic! It's idiots like that you'd like to do the same thing to."

"Oww, tough talk, and from such a fine lady. Maybe you'll get your chance to smack me," Punchinello smirked. "Somehow, I seriously doubt that will happen though."

Sheriff Daniels laid it on thicker than the black strap he wore around his waist, "Not contented with what he'd done, Lionel Simmons nailed the porker's body to an oak and impaled its shell on a palmetto in the woods down the lane from where he abided."

Beth covered her face with her delicate hands and asked, "How insane can some monsters be?"

"Oh, there's plenty more, Beth. Simmons father was a physicist and taught Lionel how to whiten animal bones with hydrogen peroxide and water because bleach damages their surfaces. And, when he reached puberty, Simmons admitted he was a limp wrist," the sheriff confirmed.

His revelation stunned Beth. She questioned, "A limp wrist? That may not be politically correct, but you mean he came out of the closet?"

Sheriff Daniels looked Beth squarely in her shining eyes and said, "Indeed he did. It was at this same time Simmons developed fantasies about the domination of two-legged males. Up to this point he had gratified himself with animals." The sheriff slowly shook his head from side to side and continued, "To celebrate graduating high school, Simmons committed his first violent murder because he wanted to know how it felt to kill somebody."

Derisive, Punchinello scoffed, "Ain't that a clean pile of poo?"

Sheriff Daniels reiterated, "Nineteen-year-old Mark Stevens, an indigent at the homeless shelter, became his sacrificial lamb."

"Well, the homeless do make easy targets," Punchinello mused.

Having previously read about Simmons' capture in the Astatula Gazette, Beth was familiar with this portion of the case. "Didn't Simmons bludgeon Stevens to death with an aluminum baseball bat outside the Half Acre Bar in Houston?" she asked.

Sheriff Daniels made a swinging motion with his arms as if he just smacked a homerun. "Batter up! And, he dissected Stevens in the crawl space of the house he lived in. Eventually, Simmons was murdered by Josiah Masterson, a fellow inmate in the Texas State Prison at Huntsville."

"Obla-debla-da," Punchinello leered.

The eerily similar crimes committed by the Astatula Assassin brought Simmons' memories back to the sheriff. The lawman could never completely erase those vivid images from his mind. Nor, did he want to. He suffered recurring nightmares, and many nights lost much needed slumber, because of them.