Jeffrey Strater
Jeffrey Strater was a nineteen-year-old Ne’er-do-well who lived in the basement of his mother’s sorry excuse for a house in Green Brook, New Jersey. In the 1800’s Green Brook split itself off from Warren Township. It was “down the mountain” and directly across US Route 22, about a half mile away as the crow flies. The towns were neighbors.
Strater’s father died from cancer when he was ten and his mother proceeded to drink away her spouse’s small 401K from Middlesex Water Company, where he’d worked for most of his life. Soon their house fell into disrepair. Somerset County Social Services repeatedly tried to get into the structure to perform wellness checks on Mrs. Strater and her son, with limited success. The Green Brook Township Health Department piled Notices on her porch about the herds of feral cats Mrs. Strater fed on her porch – cats that later soiled and terrorized her next-door neighbor’s property.
Green Brook Police Department was a frequent visitor to the Strater shack, too. The late-night screaming and cacophony of bottles and furniture breaking wafted through evening hours and disturbed the same neighbors who were battling cat invasions. Summonses for Maintaining a Public Nuisance were served duly on Mrs. Strater – but she ignored them. Green Brook Municipal Court issued Bench Warrants for her arrest – but Cops handed that hot potato off to Somerset Social Services Chronic Alcoholism Unit. The county social workers there put it on a departmental “to do” list that was a mile long. It was a black hole of inactivity.
The only thing that motivated Mrs. Adele Strater was her walk – or wobble – every few days to Green Brook Discount Liquors up the block to buy more cheap rotgut whiskey. The meager public assistance money that was supposed to go her son never found its way to him. In the meantime, the chaos and hopelessness of Jeffrey Strater’s home life in Green Brook sent him further down the soil pipe of wretched existence. He’d been on Ritalin for ADHD since High School and took Dilantin for seizures he suffered his whole life – Petit Mal epilepsy. A poor student, he stopped attending High School in his junior year and fell through the systems’ cracks. The kid was born under a bad sign.
The Strater’s broken-down residence was at the corner of US Route 22 and Washington Avenue. It was abutted on one side by a WAWA Gas-N-Go convenience store and the other, a Econo-Rite Storage facility with acres of storage containers people rented to warehouse all the junk they didn’t want to part with.
Around his fifteenth birthday, Jeffrey Strater discovered that just beyond the gap in his backyard hedge and a stretch of ripped cyclone fencing were numerous storage units that had broken locks and ofttimes water-rotted-thru walls that he could enter at will. When his mother went on particularly bad drinking binges, he slept in these units – and made himself an alternative living environment. The shabby storage facility was a kids candy store of Coleman Lamps, camping equipment, old mattresses broken furniture and cooking utensils. He lived like a King. A dirty King.
The cherry on top of Jeffrey’s filth-encrusted get-away was free Internet. The Econo-Rite Storage facility had a strong internet signal to accommodate its customers. Many commercial storage accounts kept units for just-in-time inventory deliveries – and a strong Internet signal was critical for them to juggle their business commitments. Jeffrey Strater helped himself to Econo-Rite’s largess. Email, videos games, dark web…you name it. Jeffrey was in Hog Heaven.
Then one day Jeffrey lifted a machete from an open storage unit and hacked his mother to pieces. He left her head on the Strater’s kitchen countertop, propped up on a blending machine. He was apparently peeling her face off so he could wear it like a mask. After neighbors reported that they hadn’t seen old-lady Strater shambling to the liquor store in weeks, cops busted in the house and found the grisly trophy. They tracked Jeffrey to his storage-container paradise – still in possession of his bloody machete – and arrested him. Jeffrey Strater’s laptop was found to be crusted with his dried semen and chock-full of snuff pornography and violent video games. Dark-Web sex videos about elementary-school age girls being raped were also found. For Warren cops looking for a monster – Jeffrey Strater was dropped from Heaven.
When Heinlein’s phone rang from Green Brook Police Department, he was more than a bit surprised when his Chief loudly announced the news. “We got him! We got your skin-peeling, little girl-snatching freak!”
Heinlein and Swede were still cooling their jets in her elegant Victorian manse in Lambertville – still under all sorts of watchful eyes – when he got the call from his Chief. The catch was almost too convenient – in a macabre sort of way. Heinlein listened with rapt attention for the better part of fifteen minutes to his Superior Officer. It was a full debriefing – and the Chief was exhilarated..
“This is the guy! Jeffrey Strater! Forget about any Halloween Bullshit about Demons and lizards – this Strater guy is the perp! Take a couple of days off and chill, Heinlein…you’ve been runnin’ your ass ragged”.
While the Detective certainly appreciated his Chief giving him some time off – he wasn’t convinced Strater was their Pidgeon. Yeah – the kid was a hard luck case right outta’ Central Casting…but he had no history of harassing young girls or incidents of violence. Facts could suggest that he’d suffered some bad reaction to his prescription medication and just went nuts on a mother who neglected him. He never ventured out of Green Brook Township. He didn’t drive. He didn’t even have a bike. Yes, he could have walked across US Route 22, up the mountain through Chimney Rock Park to Warren, abducted those little girls and skinned Mrs. Shinski…
But…somehow…it all didn’t hang right. This Strater guy was an easy Collar – a serendipitous find to Perp Walk in front of Media cameras and do a victory lap. A quick file closure to make everybody look like law enforcement heroes. Of course, his Chief was over the moon. Closing a case involving three abducted and probably forever-lost little girls – as well as an old woman on Mt. Horeb Road flayed to pieces…. outstanding! Cases closed! Warren PD rocks!
In the brief euphoria that Warren PD was basking in, the Chief almost forgot to tell Heinlein that their file room had been broken into and trashed. By the time he got around to instructing Heinlein to file his reports at another – more secure – location, he’d melted back into his Manage-by-Misery personality. He moaned like an aged parent about his lot in life.
“And your workstation got it the worst! Your sorry excuse for an office looks like a bomb hit it! Who the Hell would tear apart a Police Department Record Room and a Detective Unit workstation? What the Hell is this world coming to?”
Heinlein’s gut was churning. The File Room? His workstation? And – if anything could get him yanked off the Yakwahe investigation, the arrest of Jeffrey Strater was icing on the shit-cake…
Swede heard most of the conversation – the Chief believed that any conversation over a Cell phone was not worth having unless he screamed his way through it – and poured Heinlein a glass of wine while they waited for their Door Dash Veal Francese from lbertos of Lambertville.
“Somebody wants you off this investigation” Swede observed. “And I hope they just didn’t railroad some poor patsy to do it”.
“That’s what I’m afraid of…but if they did, this Strater kid got everything going against him. A Jury will lock him up and throw the key away.”
After dinner Heinlein and Swede drank more wine and hit the sack early.
“What say you – how about a road trip tomorrow? I want to eyeball a crime scene in Warren. 7332 Mt, Horeb Road – the home recently deceased Pyotr and Magdalena Shinski. Magdalena was murdered – skinned and torn apart. I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that some bad hombres are going to be sniffing around there. That’s where the Yakwahe last emerged from his subterranean slumber to find food.”
Heinlein saw that she liked the idea.
Sharing her bed was a new experience. He’d forgotten just how nice it was to have somebody next to him at night. Somebody special. He was holding her as they both stared out of the upper floor bedroom bay windows at the stars beyond and historic 1800’s buildings that surrounded them. Yeah…he was falling for her. Hard.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you….” Heinlein whispered as she snuggled into his chest.
“Oh, Christ…here we go” she said, sarcastically. “What are you going to ask me next, how I lost my Virginity?”
Heinlein laughed out loud at that one. “No. No Virginity questions. I guess I’ll just pick up stuff about you day by day.”
They snuggled under the regal duvet for another ten minutes before Heinlein spoke again.
“By the way…how did you lose your Virginity?”
Now it was Swede’s turn to laugh out loud. But her answer was serious.
“God took it”.
Heinlein didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable – he was only busting her balls. Trying to lighten up the mood.
“Forget it, Swede…I’m just kiddin’ around…”
Swede propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him with an earnest, humorless face.
“When I was sixteen years of age I was presented to the Viking Temple – the Gamla Uppsala at Uppsala, Sweden – and presented to Odin, Thor and Freyr. My hair was braided, and I had flowers in it. I was barefoot and wore a sheer silk wrap with a gold waist-tie…songs were sung in the Old Norse language.
You see, Virginity is considered so sacred to the Norse that no mortal man is worthy of claiming it. Only Odin is worthy of it. My Hymen was sacrificed to Odin in a traditional ceremony. The Priests tore it with an “Ahldus” – a phallus made out of sanctified Ash, the wood of Yggdrasil – The World Tree. A Viking Priest or Godar inserted the Ahldus into me, penetrating my Hymen. I felt pain – and then the blood ran down my legs, consecrating my sacrifice to Odin. The Priests marked my face with my virgin blood, and I wore it proudly all evening. My family hosted a large “Coming of Age” Celebration afterwards. All congratulated me on becoming a woman. At that point the Goddess Freyr became my protector – and I became her Shieldmaiden. I am blessed to have presented my most precious gift of purity to Odin. Odin was my first.”
Heinlein was speechless. And – for reasons he didn’t quite understand – he was suddenly Horney as Hell. Swede smiled as she immediately recognized “that look”. A good night followed.
Copyright, Jon Croft 2025
www.bogironpatriot.com
vlchek1@gmail.com
