Now & Wow Fitness was, in the words of the bored black man who handed me a towel and “gym kit” upon entering, “A fat farm. All Polack chicks lookin’ to get skinny so they can glom themselves a steelworker, then eat themselves fat again when they get married.” The two rooms full of chubby women in pastel Danskins confirmed his appraisal, and I walked back out immediately, returning my towel and gym kit still fresh. “I told you so,” the man said.
The Co-Ed Connection, a block away, had the feel of instant paydirt. The cars in the parking lot were all sleek late models, as were the instructors of both genders who waited in the foyer to greet prospective members. Again handed a towel and “workout kit,” I was led into a football-field-size room filled with gleaming metal equipment. Only a few men and women were straining under bars and pulleys, and the instructor noticed my look and said, “The after-work rush starts in about an hour. It’s wild.”
I nodded, and the sleek young woman smiled and left me at the entrance to the men’s locker room. The sleek young male attendant inside assigned me a locker, and I changed into gym shorts and a tank top emblazoned with the Co-Ed Connection logo — a sleek masculine silhouette and a sleek feminine silhouette holding hands. Checking my appearance in one of the locker room’s many full-length mirrors, I saw that I was more large than sleek, more blunt than stylish. Satisfied, I pushed through the door and started pumping iron.
It felt good, and I was pleased to know that I could still bench-press two hundred and fifty pounds twenty times. I moved from machine to machine, experiencing pleasant aches, getting in sync with the jar of metal, the hiss of pulleys, the smell of my own sweat. The room started filling up, and soon there were lines forming in front of the various contraptions. Bluff-hearty macho men were offering encouragement to pushing, pulling, squatting and lifting macho women all around me, and I felt like a visitor from another planet observing quaint earthling mating rituals. Then I saw THEM, eased my shoulder-press load down and said to myself, “Dead.”
They were obviously brother and sister. Both clad in purple satin instructor’s uniforms, both blond and superbly shapely in classic male/female modes, both slightly more than vacuously pretty, they breathed a long history of familial intimacy. Watching them explain the benching machine to a skinny teenage bey, I saw how their gestures accommodated each other. When he used a chopped hand for emphasis, she repeated the motion, only gently. When he brought flat palms up to show how the pulleys worked, she did it just a little bit slower. Staring hard at them, I knew that they had performed incest early on, and that it was the one thing they never talked about.
I dismounted from the shoulder-press machine and walked to the locker room. Sweating from exhilaration now, I discarded my gym outfit and put on my street clothes, then strode back through the workout area. The siblings were explaining muscle development to a group by the jogging treadmill, pointing out laterals and pectorals on each other, letting their fingers touch the places. Touching the same parts of myself, I felt my sore muscles throb, then beat to the word “Dead.” At the front of the area I noticed a picture roster of the club’s instructors. George Kurzinski and Paula Kurzinski smiled side by side at the top. I dated their death warrant nine months in the future — June 5, 1982, fourteen years to the day since I saw my first couple make love. Leaving the Co-Ed Connection, I turned on my mental stopwatch. Pleased with the sound of its spring-loaded movement, I let it run continually while I activated my plan one step at a time.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.
September, 1981:
Learning that the Kurzinskis live together, sleep in separate bedrooms and visit their widowed mother at the sanitarium every Sunday. Tick tick tick tick.
November, 1981:
Surveillance reveals that Paula Kurzinski sleeps over at her boyfriend’s house on Wednesday and Saturday rights; George Kurzinski’s girl friend sleeps with him, at the siblings’ apartment, on those nights. Tick tick tick tick tick.
January, 1982:
Securing the floor plan of the Kurzinskis’ apartment from the Sharon Office of City Planning. Tick tick tick tick tick tick.
February, 1982:
Becoming expert at picking locks identical to the lackluster “Security King” on the Kurzinskis’ front door. Tick tick tick tick.
April, 1982:
Disguise, drugs and weaponry procured; escape route and four alternates mapped out. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.
May 15, 1982:
Run-through of the Kurzinskis’ apartment successfully executed; auxiliary blades stashed under bedroom and living-room carpets; loaded .25-caliber Beretta found in Paula’s top dresser drawer; loaded .32 S. & W. revolver found under George’s mattress. Tick tick tick tick tick.
May 28, 1982:
Second run-through of Kurzinskis’ apartment; blank cartridges placed in both weapons; as added precaution both hammers bent ⅛" to the side to ensure misfire.
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick........
From Law Enforcement Journal, May 30, 1982, Issue:
Quantico, Virginia, May 15:
Criminal phenomena, however long-standing, are not really certified until they are given a title. “Mass Murderer” and “Thrill Killer” are old staples of public and law-enforcement jargon, used to designate, respectively, people who murder more than one person in a one-time-only fit of rage, and people (almost always men) who kill for no apparent reason. Recent revelations, primarily the Ted Bundy case (See LEJ 10/9/81), have spawned a new title, a “buzzword” that seems certain to capture the public’s imagination. The F.B.I., cognizant of the phenomenon for some time, will be the likely instrument of popularizing the title, for they are the first American law enforcement agency to concertedly “attack” the type of criminal the title designates — the Serial Killer.
According to F.B.I. Inspector Thomas Dusenberry, the serial killer is defined as: “A perpetrator who kills repeatedly, one victim or set of victims at a time. Our statistical prototype serial killer is a white male of above average to high intelligence, twenty-five to forty-five years old. That is a constant, while everything else regarding this type of perpetrator isn’t, which is what makes them so difficult to apprehend.
“For one thing, serial killers often alter their M.O. to suit their victim of the moment. They may kill one person for sexual gratification, one for money. They may strangle one person, shoot another. Serial killers have been known to rape a half-dozen women victims, then sexually ignore a half-dozen others.
“Also, these men tend to travel and tend to dispose of their victims so that their bodies cannot be found. Aside from the complex serial-killer psyche and M.O. patterns, it is their often transient life-style that adds to their elusiveness — they play on the inadequacy of American police communication systems.
“There are fifty states in this country, served by untold thousands of police agencies. Agency-to-agency communication within individual states has been adequate at the identification level for years, but state-to-state communication of information is a joke, and is the number-one impeding factor in the investigation of possibly related homicides and disappearances.”