hoped as she stood beneath the hot spray that Cheryl would at least answer the door when she arrived at her apartment.
If there ever was a time that Patty needed her, it was now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kenneth Berkowitz cut through the forest, found the path he and Ted had studied countless times since they arrived in Maine, and then started to run to the marked area where they agreed Ted would dump Cheryl Dunning last night.
Throughout his life, Berkowitz had been an athlete and so he ran easily and steadily, jumping over the exposed roots of the tall pines when he needed to, but keeping his footfalls and his breathing as quiet as possible so he could remain stealth.
As he ran, he thought about Patty Jennings and wondered what she would do with her life now that the rotten truth about who she really was as a person was threatened to be exposed. Would she take her own life and burn in hell, as he knew she should? Or would she take the risk that he was bluffing and continue on with her life of sin, thus snubbing her nose in the face of God?
He’d have to pay attention to the local paper to see, but if she thought for a moment that he wouldn’t go through with his threats, she was mistaken.
Berkowitz’s mission in life was to root out whores like Jennings and Dunning, whom they saw at The Grind five weeks ago, asked discreet questions about them and then, when they had enough information, including their names, they decided to target them. So far, with a body count of only sixty-eight women, they’d barely made a dent in weeding out the women who needed to be snuffed from this world. But with Ted at his side, the notoriety they had achieved in the press had nevertheless gone nationwide, which was perhaps more important because their message was getting out there.
With each whore they killed, a note was left pinned to the body with a reason why they were killed. In many cases, that note was leaked to the press, which ran with it. When that happened, he and Ted considered it a win, because the note clearly stated that if the whores of the world would just leave their sins behind and turn their lives over to Christ, their mission would cease because there would be no need to continue it.
He remembered what his father, a longtime preacher in Arkansas who moved the family to Los Angeles for opportunities that ultimately failed, said to him once in a moment of financial desperation: “Son, you put your trust in Jesus Christ, and there ain’t nothin’ in this world you can’t fix or do. He will protect you. He will give you what you ask of Him, especially if it’s sound, just and part of His plan. I know things look dire for us now, but because of my absolute belief in Him, we won’t be in this mess forever.”
And they weren’t. Within a few weeks, his father landed a job that was enough to save their home, buy them food and keep them off the streets. For Kenneth, whose mind already had begun its turn toward madness, that moment was a powerful sign. If Jesus Christ would answer his father’s prayers, then certainly He would answer his if they were “sound, just and part of His plan.”
Even if they suspected that something was off about him long beforehand, which they did due to behaviors no one wanted to discuss but which generally left Kenneth with a blistered backside by his father for his reproachable actions, the moment he entered high school, it became clear to Kenneth’s family that something was very wrong with him.
Increasingly, he started to verbally assault his female classmates, which caused him to get expelled twice from two different schools, and which landed him in a therapist’s chair because his parents were as bewildered as they were concerned. When the therapist tried to question Kenneth about his behavior, he refused to answer her. When she ultimately gave up on him, his parting words to her was that an apocalypse was coming and that he was the lightning bolt at the center of it.
At sixteen, he started to buy pornography online. When his mother came upon the magazines while cleaning his bedroom, she was repelled to find that her son had written in black marker “words I didn’t even know existed” throughout the magazines. She showed them to her