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I pulled out the gun, flicked off the safety, and yanked open the trunk in one go. The music hit me like a howling wind. On the floor of the van, the woman’s face was turning red, her eyes bulging toward the ceiling. A hand with every vein, tendon, and bone standing out clutched her throat. If it squeezed harder, it would’ve taken her head off.

On the man’s bald scalp, hundreds of pores dotted the skin. A missile-shaped sweat stain darkened the back of his T-shirt. His skin was bleached pale in the shape of underwear, extending from his waist down his thighs. His pants were bunched around his ankles.

Too many men in vans with their pants down.

I raised the gun toward Richard Alcala’s back while he twisted around, shoving his left hand in the way. I pulled the trigger. The blast rattled me as if a bell had tolled right by my ear. My vision blurred, and my eardrums throbbed. I blinked at the hazy shapes, my nostrils lined with the smell of gunpowder.

Richard Alcala shoved me. My back slammed against the side of the trunk, but my right hand still gripped the gun’s handle. The killer, on his feet, hunched in a cloud of smoke, eyes flared as though he’d lost his eyelids. On his raised left hand, the middle and ring fingers were gone. They ended about an inch from the knuckles in two bloody stumps.

As I straightened, something crunched under one of my soles—the aviator sunglasses—and my foot slipped. When I was about to aim at Richard Alcala, the woman kicked him in the ass, propelling the killer through the open door onto the pavement. The snapshot of his bald head and white butt cheeks pitching out of sight stayed fixed in my mind for a second. Too long.

I sucked in air. Over the ringing in my ears, I heard the jingle of a belt buckle and a guttural groan. The woman propped herself up on her elbows. Her face was flushed from the near-strangulation, but she looked at me calmly, as if waiting for me to answer a question. Her dress was hiked up and wrinkled under her navel, and blonde pubic hair peeked out over her tanned thighs.

When I spoke, it sounded like scraping rust from a pipe. “Go home, you idiot.”

As I climbed out of the trunk, I tripped over the record player and went sprawling on my chest. The impact knocked the wind out of me. The gun bounced free, but with a slap of my hand, I pinned it against the rough asphalt.

I got up, panting. On the pavement, a finger gleamed in the sun amid blood spatters, a bit of bone sticking out the bloody end. Richard Alcala was running, hunched forward with his left hand jammed into his pants pocket. He passed through the gate to the street and vanished from sight.

I went after him. The music spilling from the van drowned beneath the whine in my ears, replaced by the swell of voices, traffic, honking. I slowed near the gate as if I might trip—was he waiting on the other side with a brick in his hand? No, he was running off to lose himself in the crowd. I clicked the Smith & Wesson’s safety back on, then slid the barrel behind my belt and covered it with my shirt.

I was sweating, my chest hurt. I hurried to the sidewalk, drawing looks from passersby. At the far end of the street, toward Venice Beach, his hunched shape with the shaved head grew smaller. People stepped aside without really looking at him, like he was a homeless man.

As I threaded through pedestrians and their clouds of musk and patchouli perfume, I pictured myself catching up to Richard Alcala, whipping out the Smith & Wesson, and blowing out the back of his skull, replacing his nose with a crater. How hard had it really been to aim at the bastard before that woman kicked him? And she—why had she hauled a record player into the van of a shady guy in disguise? I lived among babies who’d stick their hands into a chainsaw, then act shocked when it chopped their fingers off.

The hairs on my arms still stood on end. I craved a release, that rush of relief I always got when the week’s target lay splayed out like a puppet with its strings cut.

A police cruiser made its way up the road. Before it got close to him, Richard Alcala slowed and mimicked the casual gait of the other people around him. A darkening stain spread across the left pocket of his navy-blue pants, but did anyone notice? Should I alert the police? Rage rippled through me. I clenched my teeth. Let the cops botch the arrest again, and I’d be stuck waiting for another ambulance.

Dozens of people walked by Richard Alcala—fliers with his mug shot stapled to posts and storefront windows—and they didn’t even glance at his flesh-and-blood version. I matched his pace, crossing walkways and heading under archways. If this society would wise up and pay attention, I’d turn and disappear. Even if the cops questioned who’d blown off two of the killer’s fingers. But if nobody took note, I’d decide how to squash this cockroach.

Sunlight dazzled off car hoods and windshields, half-blinding me. Richard Alcala wove through a crowd that neither saw nor sensed him. A man I’d almost taken for a plainclothes officer was leaning against the entrance to an alley, scanning the street. Richard Alcala slipped right past him like a ghost.

What unconscious filters were turning this serial killer into harmless scenery? He was oozing a tar-like trail that people stepped in, that clung to their soles like fresh asphalt, yet they moved along as though it had cooled and hardened. A myriad globs of seething tar, steaming like a compost heap, roamed in search of their next victim to swallow.

Richard Alcala waded through tourists pawing at trinkets in the boardwalk shops. A pair of street musicians sang while playing timbales and a harpsichord. He hurried past the outdoor gym, where shirtless bodybuilders lifted weights. He skirted the basketball courts. Then he headed toward the sand, crossing the bike path. He zigzagged among towels and groups of people, dwindling in size against the waves that, after crashing, draped foam along the wet sand.

I rushed after him. Richard Alcala kept opening and closing his right hand, maybe trying to shake off the nerves. His left pocket, bulging with his injured hand, had darkened to near-black, and thin ribbons of darkness trailed down that pant leg.

Walking on sand, I drew even with the killer.

“Nice mustache,” I said. “Almost looks real.”

He glanced at me sideways. The wrinkles that framed his mouth when he smiled looked like fissures and aged him.

“Pretty stupid showing yourself to the public,” I said.

“You won’t shoot me here.”

He’d hardened his voice, but lacked the confidence that usually charmed unsuspecting women.

“They’ve plastered your face all over the streets.”

“They took that photo back when I still had that blond mane I hated keeping up. People see what they want. They’ll figure I fled to Mexico.”

“You’d like it down there.”

As though ashamed to be walking hunched over, he straightened. His left arm trembled, and his eyelids twitched in sync.

“They’re watching the exits. Buses are out of the question. I should’ve guessed a man from the future would know I’d intercept that woman before she reached the fake address.”

“That has nothing to do with me being from the future, and everything to do with you being a moron.”

He laughed as though his mouth were full of sand.

“Anxiety makes me hungrier. And the cops must’ve impounded my Ford Thunderbird. God, I loved that car.”

“Not surprising.”

“You dirtied its trunk with corpses.”

“You’re the one who turned them into corpses.”

Richard Alcala shrugged and let out a sigh as if to say, what can you do?

We passed two women in their twenties lying facedown, their faces buried in folded arms. The sun gleamed off their oiled skin, and the smell of tanning lotion hung in the air.

“So, you’re from the future,” the killer said. “How is it?”

“Worse.”

A shirtless man walked by kicking up sand while carrying a candy-colored surfboard under one arm. We heard shouts from a nearby volleyball match.

“What do you think the people looking at us believe?” said Richard Alcala. “They’re thinking we’re veterans stuck in overseas horrors. Today’s convenient rationale moves us out of their heads.”

“Except you’re part of the horror those veterans have seen overseas.”

He let out a laugh, cut short by a cough.

“I get it, man. You don’t like me. Can’t please everyone.”

He flexed his left arm. For a moment, he pulled the hand free of his pocket to glance at it. I caught a blood-smeared blur before he stuffed his mangled hand back inside the soaking pocket.

“Maybe you did me a favor,” he said. “Women will see I’m missing two fingers, and pity me. No cast needed.”

“If you survive.”

His face twisted. His gaze swept the beach. He picked up his pace, then gave it up a few seconds later.

About thirty feet away, a couple swayed in a close embrace, whispering kisses, feet sunk in the damp sand.

“What good do you think you’ve done by saving her, Man from the Future?” he asked.

“You mean the girl on roller skates or your wannabe model?”

He raised his right hand and wagged the index finger at me.

“You put the kid in your car.”

“Sure did.”

“What a hero, distracting me from strangling her. What do you think you achieved by interrupting my fun? That girl’s dumb as a stack of bricks. She was born pretty and well-built, so she thinks the world exists to shower her with gifts. Why? Because packs of men—and maybe a woman or two—treat her like a goddess in hopes of undressing her one day. Now she’s free to spread her stupidity. Ten years from now, when her flesh sags by fractions of an inch and that endless parade of men seeking comfort in her holes turn to girls in their twenties, she’ll see the party’s over. She’ll spend the rest of her days crying, paralyzed by fear. She’ll wear herself out with makeup and surgery to fight the passage of time. Because what else is she good for? In three or four decades, sporting an old-lady hairdo and skin spotted with age, she’ll die without having developed another talent beyond having once been hot. Why let a person like that pollute the world?”

Why would I argue? We’d wander the beach another five or ten minutes.

Some kids had gathered around a woman seated on a backpack, strumming a Dylan tune on her guitar. If we stood by them, their weed smoke would probably get us high.

“You know,” said Richard Alcala, “I agree with what you told that idiot I was trying to rid the world of. But hearing you say it irritated me.”

I struggled to recall what I’d said yesterday when I barged in on them, but being this close to a killer—and needing to keep an eye on his hands—warped my thoughts like a pirated transmission.

“You revealed the trick while I was in the middle of it,” he said. “They believe in good intentions, in warm smiles. They submit blindly to these principles and rationalize any intrusion that sparks doubt. Something good must balance out the bad, they’ll say, so their world stays intact. What good counters what I do?”

“You mean raping and murdering women and girls?”

Richard Alcala smiled like we were sharing a private joke.

“Yes, my little hobby.”

“I don’t think like they do. There’s no balance.”

“But you still step in for them. You save them. You feed their fantasies. You must respect them a lot.”

I was shaking my head before he finished talking. Each laugh from the beach, like seagull squawks, raked at me, and I wanted to scream for them to shut up. Riding their surfboards, floating on their backs, climbing onto each other’s shoulders then jumping into the water—seals at an aquarium performing stunts for an invisible trainer.

“Respect? None. They don’t deserve it. Anything that unsettles or saddens them terrifies them, which includes most of what goes on. They’d rather drown the background music in noise. They wander with eyes shut and fingers in their ears. The more of them cluster together, the dumber they get. If evil blows up in their faces, they lock themselves in a shell of comforting platitudes and leave factual reality behind. They recast surrender as a virtue so they can still think of themselves as good people. Then when the inevitable happens, they’re shocked. They whimper, wondering how they could’ve foreseen it, even though they silenced anyone who tried to warn them. After a short time of mourning, back to business as usual. Life’s too short, right? Let’s keep believing in a nice world where prayers get answered and goodness reigns, and an invisible father in the sky makes sure disasters happen only to other people—who surely deserve them. Humanity is led by the nose toward complacency like cows. Locked in a psyche that survives by bouncing from one pleasure to the next, they see everything else as a minefield. Uncharted territory they sometimes refuse to even admit exists. They modify their beliefs to match public opinion’s definition of decency, and band together in righteous fury against anyone who names the darkness closing in, with the calm conscience of those who know they’re the majority. So no, I don’t respect them. I can endure five minutes around people before I feel nauseous. The world’s a puddle of vomit, and you, knowing that, still stomp on it and make the mess spread. I can’t fix humanity, but I can clean up some of your stains by wiping you out.”

“You think that’ll revolutionize the world? I barely matter.”

“All that pointless butchery. Breaking into homes and hotel rooms, abducting women and girls, raping and sodomizing them, killing them—sometimes torturing or mutilating them first—for what? You hardly ever stole money. The thrill was your drug, your pleasure. And that’s all there is to it. You did it because you needed to.”

Richard Alcala lowered his head. He slid along like a monk in a procession; all he lacked was a hood to hide his face.

“Do you have any idea how easy it was?” he asked. “They thought I came up because I was nice. I pretended I’d broken my right arm, so they saw me as harmless. My record was four women in one day. All it took was a dazzling smile, and they followed me to the slaughter. The killings they read about happen to other people, and they forget them by flipping the page or turning off the TV. They’ve convinced themselves the universe will protect them from guys like me. They’ve earned it, right? They glaze over the filth because their worldview depends on staying blind. If they really saw me, every pillar holding up their mindset would crumble. They’re dodos—like those birds wiped out in colonial times.”

“I know what the damn dodos were.”

“They exist to waddle until a predator guts them. In the last moment, right when I flash them that final smile, their expressions shift. They become different women. They’d have learned a lesson for next time—except there is no next time. Terror contorts their features as if the glass pane in their minds just got shattered. And when I squeeze their throats, their faces turn red and their eyes search around. They struggle to let some cry for help slip out, but even if they could, none of the people they love and who love them will save them. That just universe they believed in keeps on drifting by inertia, and that nasty business that only ever happened to others—who must’ve deserved it—winds up happening to them. As their brains shut down, they realize that God only ever looked down upon us with hate. I promise you, man, no other look gives me that kind of high.”

When I came back to myself, I was stunned to see we were still on the beach, kicking up sand. Everywhere I looked, the sun flashed on white smiles. Some couples sitting cross-legged or stretched out on towels laughed. But my awareness was tearing down centuries of dusty spiderwebs where I’d been hanging all this time.

I cleared my throat.

“A lot of those women and girls you killed grew up with people who loved them. Adults who took care of them. They didn’t see you coming. You, and monsters like you, thrive in this society because it has no clue how to process you. But I see what you see. On every street I walk, I have to know where I’d escape, how to keep someone from jumping me. If a stranger steps too close, I picture how to counter any attack, which nearby object I could use to stop their heart. I see myself yanking back their hair and landing a punch that shatters their windpipe. Or plunging a pair of scissors into their arteries, jamming them into their eyeballs. The techniques I’ve learned—and performed—loop in my mind over and over in detail. So I see you. And I used to spare people from seeing monsters like you, handing you over to the cops. I thought I was punishing you, forcing you into the system’s jaws, but you’d be coddled by psychs and sociologists who twist language so that you come out the victim. Their weakness seeped into the law. You served ten years. They shaved more time off because you kept busy knitting scarves or some other bullshit, and you walked free as the misunderstood victim, with your identity protected. Some of you went on to kill again. The fools on their thrones who let you back on the streets kept quiet. No one took responsibility. No one even apologized. After all, those rapes and murders happened to other people’s daughters. Our societies have gone soft, adopting the mindset of slaves. They think they’re riding a wave to a brighter future, guaranteed by God, or karma, or progress, or any made-up cosmic payback. Otherwise, they’d have to face that they survive on blind luck. Their sugar-cube minds would collapse. By the time they leave school or college, most have learned all they’ll ever know. They can’t even process new data unless it’s shoved up them like a suppository. Talking is the only tool they’ve got. When evil smears a tarry hand across their faces, they turn into a dog cowering under its master’s beating. Whimpering, tail between their legs, begging, “What do I have to do to make you stop hitting me? Name it.” In their so-called just universe, they must have deserved those blows. Stockholm Syndrome on a societal scale. They figure they’ll fix evil by hugging it, by giving away more of the taxpayers’ money. They feed a beast that dresses in designer brands and uses the latest phones, free to spread darkness 24/7. But I remember that only a sharpened stick keeps predators at bay—and there will always be predators and a flock that needs protecting, because the flock doesn’t know or doesn’t want to protect itself. You know that as well as I do. Even if you picked the other side, you understand.”

Richard Alcala cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice.

“I didn’t choose anything.”

“You should have.”

By then, we’d wandered below the fishing pier, held up by pillars, some angled, that had blackened and thickened at the base from shell encrustations. The pier’s shade spread over us, cooling me down.

I watched Alcala. Would he try to attack me or run?

He limped along, staring at the waves crashing against the pillars. A surfer balanced on his board and glided between the slanted beams as if racing a course.

We passed the pier. With the sun at that angle, every little dune in the sand cast a shadow, highlighting each lump and hollow like a pockmarked surface.

Then Alcala spoke again.

“Why’d you let me kill so many people? What, to teach me a lesson?”

“Cassie was the first victim of yours I found out about. I can only jump back in time if the right combination of rage and despair hits me the moment I learn about a specific victim’s death. That rarely happens when I read about the others. Also, the last time I meddled with the past, there wasn’t even a Richard Alcala killing dozens. Maybe you weren’t even born.”

He lowered his head, frowning, mouth half-open, as though struggling to grasp the joke.

A homeless man was asleep on the sand, using his backpack for a pillow.

“That’s how it goes,” I said. “I hear about some person who fell into a pit. If I care, I jump back and nudge them out of the way. Sometimes I kill the pit itself. If the ones I saved figure out I stepped in, they often get pissed. The rest of the time, I hear them chirp about how we should all be positive, how the universe blesses the worthy. But the universe killed them, and they’d have vanished had I ignored the news. I move on, trying to forget what I’ve seen and done, until the next person drops into another hole. A lot of times it’s just bad luck. But in cases like Cassie’s, if she’d thought twice before getting in your car, she would’ve skated home. And sometimes these same people later stumble into some other hole—because I kept them from learning the hard way. I’m sick of babysitting so many kids at play. If they’d stop running around blind, I wouldn’t need to guard the edge of the cliff to catch whoever’s about to fall.”

Richard Alcala smiled like a terrible poker player holding a winning hand.

“You’ve built a complicated reason for doing what you need.”

“And you cooked up some justification for doing what you want.”

“I’m doing the universe a favor. I’m filtering out the idiots who can’t see danger. Like killing spiders that run along the walls instead of hiding. A few years down the line, only the cautious ones remain. I’m strengthening the human race, friend. These dummies who trust without a second thought, who live in fairy tales—I dole out the fate they deserve. The rest survive to spawn a better generation.”

“You’re a real philanthropist.”

“I’m as vital as a shark. Nature made me. If you kill me, you’ll upset the ecosystem.”

“I’ve met too many serial killers, though none ever begged me to respect biodiversity as an excuse to spare them. Most adopt some moral code in which their murders represent the universe self-correcting. You kill because your brain wiring rewards you with an orgasm. The rest is just an excuse, a balm for whatever faint echo of conscience you have.”

“You don’t know what it’s like. I feel nothing for anyone. When some chick comes up to me at a bar or the office thinking I’d make a nice boyfriend, I feel like I’m hearing a robot talk.”

“I know exactly what that’s like.”

“But when I corner another idiot and the moment comes when I’m inside her and her life flickers out, I’m flooded with a pleasure not of this world. I see heaven. I see God. Why would He condemn me to a numb existence, if all I have to do is smile at a pretty, brainless woman and lure her someplace no one can hear?”

“I’m sorry you were born that way, or raised that way, or both, so that killing is the only thing that gives you feeling. I’m sorry because otherwise I’d be spending my day in a hotel room, discovering music and movies. The universe doesn’t care. You picked between being miserable and being slightly less miserable at the cost of destroying dozens—maybe hundreds—of lives. Those you killed deserved to live more than you deserve a climax.”

He muttered through breaths, like blood loss was making him groggy and he could barely form words.

“All this because I saw that roller-skating kid and wanted her. Cassie, you said. If you’d been one minute late, that kid would’ve climbed in my car like the others I’ve had fun with. She’s nothing special.”

“One among millions.”

“You think she deserved saving more than the others?”

“I don’t know. She’s of average intelligence. She’ll turn into a decent woman, like her mom. Go to school for something ordinary, work some job persuading strangers, or maybe stay home raising kids. Like most, she’ll toss aside her dreams to pay rent and serve others. A couple decades after she dies, all that’s left is a fuzzy memory and a row of photos gathering dust on someone’s table, little stabs of sadness at how time rots everything.”

Alcala let out a groan.

“None of this makes sense. Being born just to die. Such a waste. The more damage I do, the better. It can’t get worse.”

“It can. And some things are worth saving.”

“Like what?”

He asked it in a hollow tone, like he needed a reason.

“Curious people who seek answers, who unveil hidden truths. And art—literature, film, music.”

“I don’t kill musicians.”

“Right, you only kill stupid women. While you were raping and strangling them, did you pause to ask, ‘Sorry, by any chance do you play an instrument?’ When you destroyed a child’s innocence minutes before ending her, did you ever consider what person she might’ve become? You never cared. Don’t lie to yourself.”

He was trudging along like he’d been hauling a hundred pounds for half an hour.

“This is all God’s doing. I’m a demon who escaped from hell, and He sent you to drag me back.”

“Dangerous for me to believe that. You’d probably turn hell into a holiday.”

We’d reached the end of the beach, blocked by a narrow walkway, a breaker, and about three hundred meters of water where a white yacht was heading toward Marina del Rey. We either had to retrace our steps or move onto the walkway.

Richard Alcala halted a stride away and turned to me. His left arm was shaking. With his shaved head white as though it’d never seen sun, and his features twisted in pain, he looked like a patient fresh out of brain surgery.

“What do you think happens next, pal?”

I brushed my jacket, feeling the shape of the Smith & Wesson beneath.

“I’m done debating philosophy with a serial killer. I’m taking you somewhere nobody can hear you. Then I’ll slice off one of your fingers. Tomorrow, I’ll take another. Then another. When you have no fingers left, I’ll hack off an arm. I’ll use a tourniquet so you won’t bleed to death. A few days later, the other arm. Then a leg. Then the other one. Once you’re flopping around like a worm in a puddle of your own fluids, I’ll cut off your balls and make you swallow them. Then I’ll tear out your tongue, gouge your eyes. Finally, I’ll peel off your skin. If you’re still breathing, I’m sure I’ll think of something else.”

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Author’s note: this story was originally released in Spanish about a decade ago. It’s contained in my collection titled Los reinos de brea.

The Deep Dive couple produced a very intriguing and often on-point podcast about this part of the story: