Killed Before

I watched him walk across the floor and turn the knob that locked the door. I wondered what was on his mind Now he and I were locked inside. I would have been alarmed for sure if I had known he’d killed before. He’d called me to his room that day to take some papers and my pay. We spent some time just talking stuff but what I told him was enough to make him want to lock the door I did not know he’d killed before. Confused but unconcerned that day I told him what I’d heard folks say. There is a rapist in this town and I’m not free to walk around and that had made him lock the door. I did not know he’d raped before. I said “The rapist looks like me”. And that is when he set me free. For he was maybe six feet four and I was five foot eight, no more. I left but did not know the score that he had raped and killed before. He had raped and raped again. And that was not his only sin. He had a van that I’d been in. What happened there I can’t begin but girls he pulled inside those doors he killed and he had killed before. But no one knew about him then. He was free to rape and kill again. Until one day they found a gun. The search for him had soon begun. They had to catch him now for sure or he would rape and kill some more. Twenty years had come and gone. I had been working all along. Then one night on the TV his face was there for me to see. They walked him through the jail house door because they knew he’d killed before. And that is where the story ends or that is what I thought back then. For twenty years he was inside I don’t know what made them decide to let him slip outside the door but now he’s free, he’s killed before.