Rubble and the Wreckage Read online

  What people are saying . . .

  Can you trust a serial killer that has no remorse? That bathes in manipulation? I am not going to tell you if Christian trusts, believes, or falls for any of it but I will tell you it’s a drug for those who crave a dark twist in their daily reads. It’s hot between these two. It’s also suspenseful and nerve wracking. Venture outside your comfort zone for this book.

  Diverse Reader

  I don’t give away spoilers, but I will say that this book pulls no punches, makes no apologies, and basically kicks ass and takes names! Grab it if you want a mind-bending, sexy read that will leave you wanting book two . . .!

  Bike Book Reviews

  A psychological thriller, this book was a page-turner from beginning to end. I highly recommend Rubble and Wreckage.

  Joyfully Jay Reviews

  This is a wonderful book for the person who likes stories that offer in depth character studies of flawed people. Both men are very complicated and probably equally fragmented except on opposite sides of the law. Rubble and the Wreckage is a sizzling read. Nothing is what it seems; nor is it so simplistic as a killer grooming a writer to be a patsy for murder like a predictable TV movie.

  Love Bytes Reviews

  Rodd is an amazing narrator and manages to weave a thrilling and intriguing tale of sex, lust, love, mystery and danger.

  Bayou Book Reviews

  If you are looking for something sort of darkish with a non-traditional storyline that makes you think outside the box, you should check it out.

  Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents

  I think Rubble and Wreckage is my new fave by this author. It sucked me in on the very first page and kept me sucked in until I got to the last one.

  On Top Down Under Reviews

  You can feel the tension in the atmosphere, the sights and the smells. Clark has done an amazing job. It’s a fascinating book with a story that is hard to put down. The characters are written so well you can’t help liking them in some way and wanting to hear their story no matter how dark or demented it gets. The whole thing is sad and beautiful at the same time, extremely poignant and intense.

  GGR Reviews

  Author Rodd Clark grabs your interest quickly in this book and never let’s you go. (It) is a deep, well thought out, eloquent book. This book is definitely a must read if you like M/M romance, psychological thrillers.

  Rebels and Readers Books

  Copyright

  Rubble and the Wreckage

  Copyright © 2015 Rodd Clark

  Second Edition July 2015

  First Edition January 2015

  Published in Australia

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-925296-02-0

  Also available in trade paperback:

  Print ISBN: 978-1-925296-03-7

  Driven Press

  www.drivenpress.net

  Cover Art by Mumson Designs © 2015

  [email protected]

  Cover content used for illustrative purposes only, and any person depicted is a model.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The following story is set in the United States of America and therefore has been written in US English. The spelling and usage reflect that.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and for all other inquiries, contact Driven Press by email: [email protected]

  Acknowledgements

  Dedicated to the strongest woman to have supported me.

  With special thanks to:

  R. DeVoe for allowing me to have the courage to continue the plan.

  “Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.”

  Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers

  “Everything crumbles . . .”

  Gabriel Church

  Introduction

  “TELL ME YOUR STORY,” Christian Maxwell began, wetting his lips and leaning in apprehensively. He stared at the killer across the table and rested his forearms on the notepad before him, watching how those pale eyes were darting from side to side as he surveyed his surroundings. Even with his look of nonchalant detachment, it was clear he was a man who lived his life on a razor’s edge and nothing escaped his observations.

  Gabriel Church looked back at the writer. His eyes implored, practically begging for good and gory details. The man squinted a bit in excitement for that which was to follow, glassy eyed in anticipation. His expression was wanting. Gabe had seen that look many times before.

  Gabe was reminded of that old saying “Better the devil you know.” Although he barely knew this guy, he might as well be making money off his story as anyone else. Just like the first time he thought of telling his story, the memories came through as something indifferent and emotionless, more after-thought than close consideration.

  “Ever been out to the Florida Keys?” Gabe asked. When he only received a nod from Maxwell to his question, he continued absently, “For me it was like driving to the Keys, a few miles over the speed limit on that old Highway 1—you know, the one they called Highway out to Sea—under fleecy clouds with the fresh coastal winds slapping you in your face, under a vast, unending blue on blue . . . it is rather freeing.” His hands wrapped around the old dusty cover of the book he was holding, more as an effect than something to read.

  Christian listened to him speaking with a far-away gaze in his eyes. He pretended to jot notes down but concentrated more on that distant expression on Church’s face. Christian let the words take him to Florida, where he imagined the wind slapping his hair, the sun beating down as he rode in the passenger seat of Church’s mental trip along Highway 1. It was going to be a good book when he finished it.

  He didn’t want to interrupt the narrator, but he couldn’t resist. “But it didn’t begin in Florida did it? I just presumed it happened elsewhere.”

  The killer’s posture changed as he replied. He sat up straight in the chair, his eyes narrowed. “If you think you know where it started then why are we sitting around hashing old news?” The killer’s voice was cold. Dampness built under Christian’s armpits.

  “Because no one has ever asked you for your side of it. Usually a serial murderer doesn’t get a chance to explain why he kills. But I”—pointing to his own chest—“I want to give you that opportunity.”

  “Mighty big of you.” Gabe leaned back in his chair and smiled a grin that could cut through glass; his mocking words and expressive eyes said it all: this might just prove to be an interesting way to spend his free time. He rubbed his rough forefinger across the lip of the wine glass as a carnal abstraction as he watched Maxwell jot his notes, even though they hadn’t even begun his tale. “Shouldn’t you wait till I start to speak before you scribble down all those pretty words?”

  Christian looked up and smiled sheepishly. “It’s just mood stuff. You’ll have to get used to that, meaning my process, early on.” He put his pen down and folded his hands neatly to hide his notes. “I’m a little fastidious or obsessive at times.”

  “No worries. The same has been said of me.”

  The bent smile of a killer reappeared and twisted Church’s face into a mocking evil caricature, sending a shiver down Christian’s spine. He smiled back and returned a look that seemed to place them on equal understanding. It was going to be tough but totally worth it when
he had a book out of it. Christian picked up his pen and sent an imploring gaze at his subject of study.

  Gabe recognized the untidy anticipation, and reluctantly continued, “Actually, it began in Texas, but we need to go back to where the . . . umm, desires, I guess is the word, first came into clear focus don’t we? I mean, you want the full picture don’t you?”

  When the man didn’t offer a conciliatory gesture, Gabe continued, “Before Florida, before Seattle, I had been somewhere else . . . It was a better place for me because it still held some type of promise. Nothing had been carved into stone . . . if you’ll pardon the pun.” Church’s head lolled back as if he were about to break into a hearty laugh.

  He was a dangerous, sick man; Christian could see that. His reference to the markers of his varied victims, as well as his nonchalant manner in describing his affinity to murder, was unsettling, even for someone as akin to pathology as Christian Maxwell. In college, his dark sense of humor and an uncomfortably quiet nature was off-putting to most. His so-called friends would jokingly offer that it was going to be Christian who would be famous, but more for the salvo of bullets that hit other students from his safe vantage in some random clock tower or rooftop.

  The look on Maxwell’s face, as he sat across from Gabe, was pensive as if he were about to interrupt again but questioned the insolence. The killer had nothing but time, but he didn’t like breaking his train of thought so early.

  “You’re looking like you want to derail the train, my boy. So what’s your affliction, Adelaide? You have some thoughts you wanna share?”

  Christian hung his head in shameful anticipation of the words that would follow. His efforts in getting the interview were substantial, and he didn’t want to fuck up before he even got the first few chapters down on paper, but he had the desire to drag out the tale, to capture every nuance. He thought the killer might become agitated with schoolboy innocence and enthusiasm.

  In truth, Gabe was enjoying the salivating younger man hanging on his every word, like a lover anticipating their next stimulating, wet kisses.

  “I’m sorry. I apologize, I do . . . I just wanted to ask you about the first time you killed?”

  Gabe laid the book on the table at his side and crossed his arms. “Patience is a virtue, son. To know the story, we have to go back. Back to before I would gain fame with my exploits.”

  Café patrons brushed past their table on a regular basis. Each man and woman who walked by seemed absorbed in their own dreary lives; each one seemed conjoined to a cell phone that was fused to their ears. The killer took a sip of his wine and gestured to the throngs of people around him. “This is why it’s so easy to become a killer,” Gabe offered, waiving a hand to indicate the self-absorbed masses at his left and right, “because no one seems to be concerned with anything but their own mundane lives. None of these assholes have a life that warrants their constant connection to offices and friends. Nothing they have to offer is worthy of their inscrutable attentions. What did Ezra Pound say? ‘Where the dead walked and the living were made of cardboard?’”

  Christian looked up from his notes, catching the man staring intently at him.

  “What? You think just because I’m a killer I can’t be well-read?” Gabe asked, smiling. Leaning in closer, he rested his wine glass down between them, grinning to show he understood that both men shared a common epiphany. He was quickly carving out how they would react to one another: him with nothing but a sardonic grin and Maxwell with a glint of understanding in his eyes.

  “The secret to moving so unobtrusively through life without being caught as you commit such horrible crimes is to act like a moron. Just pretend your life is as important as the sacks of shit that surround you. It’s hard to look pomposity directly in the eye. Given any other option, a person will choose to look away just to ignore it.” Turning back to his wine, he said, “It’s all the settling of dust and too many days. You wipe it, and it just gets dirty again. People think their lives mean a good goddamn, but they don’t. If you know this certainty, you can move through the crowds as quietly as a mouse in a barn filled with cats.”

  Church’s eyes shone like diamonds as he recalled his life. He was just as happy in telling the tale as Christian was to listen. He drained the last remnants of his wine and handed it empty across the table. “To keep talking, I need a drink” he said with some authority.

  Christian took his cue and grabbed the glass and hurried to the counter. He wouldn’t wait for table service. It was just a high-end café, and a waitress wouldn’t be handy. As he slunk off like a servant to do his bidding, leaving the killer alone at the table, he had forgotten to carry his notepad along. When Christian returned minutes later, he saw his companion scanning his notes, smiling. He was nervous about what Church would say after he had finally written the story out.

  “You’ve already decorated some broad brushstrokes of my life,” Church said as he tossed the pad back onto the table and whisked the glass of chardonnay out of Christian’s hand.

  “What is your religious stand?” Gabe asked. As Maxwell seemed dumbstruck by the random question, he continued, “Do you believe in God?”

  “Err, well, I guess I was raised Protestant, but I haven’t been inside a church since before college. Why do you ask?”

  “A faith in God may be an intricate aspect to our time together, one never knows . . .” Gabe trailed off, distracted by the crash of other ideas racing in his head, waiting impatiently to escape. “I wasn’t always a killer as you know, and you may want to know what drives the beast before you hear about my first endeavor with murder.”

  Maxwell seized his chair and pulled the legal notepad closer. With a pen in hand, he looked at Gabe: the face of an infamous murderer. Maxwell appeared much like a begging waif; those words “May I have another, sir?” just waiting to fall from hungry lips.

  For the next hour, Christian Maxwell wrote furiously as Gabriel Church told his story. The die had been cast in those sixty minutes or so. He was a killer who was regaling his student, all to the creation of a madman and the events of murder. As he spoke, even he could see the transposition from disciple to something more. The look in Maxwell’s eyes was proof—he was breathing in the contagion with every word the killer uttered.

  Chapter One

  WALKING THROUGH YOUR dreamy memories might be a favored pastime of the old and the weary, but for Gabriel Church, it was a drain. He had pocketed those recollections away where they couldn’t be found easily. But now he was sifting through the decay, retrieving them for his obsessive confidant. He enjoyed talking about his life, at least how it ended up during these last few years. He enjoyed seeing astonishment on the face of his audience; however, having to dredge up the past was exhausting. But he understood it was good to begin a story from the beginning. How else could he explain his life, without explaining where he had escaped from? He knew his father was a big part of the equation of what was to become Gabriel Lee Church, so he began with him.

  Bennett Church wasn’t a kind man; he specifically wasn’t kind to his children or his wife. His family was forced to receive the brunt of his emotional instability. They accepted their fate with every backhanded swing or disdainful look. The public saw a much different persona in Bennett, and when Gabe arrived at school with occasional blue bruises, black eyes, or tiny scratches, no one could have envisioned just how he got them. “Boys will be boys,” they would say, but the secretive, shameful looks from the Church children should have been ample reason to question what lay before them, exposed, like an open nerve.

  “You need to build up your character,” his father would say as he set unreasonable tasks as punishments for the smallest of infractions in his daily routine. When Gabe had been six or seven years old, Bennett found him playing with his tools on the garage floor one Sunday afternoon and lit into him with a vengeance. A man of reason might see that as a potential bonding moment between a father and a son who was obviously emulating the man he admired. A sane man of reas
on might laugh at the sight of such a small boy playing at the pretense of hero-worship or developing strong masculine characteristics. But Bennett didn’t see things the same way most fathers did; instead, he slapped the boy on the back of his neck and let fly the wrench Gabe had been holding in his tiny hand.

  Gripping the boy by the nape with a single arm, he yanked him quickly from the concrete floor and pulled the boy’s pants down, then gave him a sound thrashing on his bare bottom. But that alone wasn’t his punishment. Instead, he forced Gabe to clean the gutters for the remainder of that once lazy Sunday, and the image of that diminutive lad dragging a ladder around, weighing nearly as much as he, and struggling to prop it against the house was saddening to watch. Gabe’s mother had witnessed his punishment from her position at the kitchen window as she was washing dishes. Gabriel glimpsed her eyeing him as he stoically dragged the ladder from spot to spot, pulling gunk and dead and rotting leaves from the trough. His eyes seemed to beckon to her, but she instead chose to look down and focus all her concentrations on soapy glasses and dinner plates. It was about that time where the boy learned the first of many tragic lessons to come.

  Little Gabriel Church may have cried that afternoon, he couldn’t quite remember, but he had stared at a red Popsicle he had pulled from the fridge before he first found himself playing in the garage. He had forgotten about it because of his whipping and subsequent punishment. He stared at the large red stain as it dissipated down the driveway and melted from the humidity. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away. It was as if the pooling red had somehow fractured his mind, and he found comfort with that. It may have been but a single moment in time, but it was a moment that would have lasting effects.