Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 46  Gacy

That year introduced me to another serial killer in Chicago. A man quite unlike suede-brown.

I was working counter-sales at Century Supply and had just walked out from the warehouse. A man standing there instantly locked eyes with me: this short, stocky man was glaring at me … he was rough looking and his eyes were focused directly at me saying, ‘take.’ My inner voice loudly said, ‘stay away from him,’ and I avoided that end of the counter until he left, but I instinctively knew not to get near him.

I’d experienced that same feeling on the road before with guys that shiver your spine, and it means only one thing: a fight to the finish. I had only one person like that come at me; when I was hitchhiking in Tennessee early one morning. As soon as he pulled to the side of the road I dropped my bag and ran back 20 feet and prepared to fly over the guard-rail and slide down a long grass berm to the creek below. He waited a moment and then drove off but I stayed in that position until he was completely gone from sight.
 
When you’re on the street constantly, you understand the feelings coming out of people and know what it means when the bristle stands up on your back … and on the street, there are people whose primary job is to measure your weakness. It’s just what street predators do, and they can never be hit hard enough to make them stop.
 
The man standing in Century Supply that day had a young blond fellow with him … about six feet tall … the usual fall-off-the-turnip-truck suburban kid. The two of them bought some supplies and left by the back door, which was odd because everybody parked out front. But I didn’t think anything more about it.

I cataloged the man however and would watch myself in case he returned.

Within a month or so the John Gacy ‘bury-the-dead-boys-in-the-crawlspace’ story broke; and the man on TV was the same guy I saw standing in the store that day. His picture was all over the news as they excavated his crawlspace in horrific disclosure of his handicraft.

John was a regular contractor at Century Supply, but almost exclusively at the other two locations; Downtown and Lombard. The day the story came on the news, the owner Frank, called our store wanting to know how much Gacy owed. A lot of the salesmen at the other stores knew him, but I only saw him the one time … but I saw more … I saw inside the man, probably because I fell within his targeted audience of young men.

It’s interesting to note, the police followed John constantly the last few months before his arrest … and John complained of being made paranoid … which explained why he came to our store instead of his regular store, and also why he left by the back door … because police paranoia causes guys like Gacy and Scott Peterson to change their usual routes.

Chapter 47) Dusty Gray
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