Beautiful No More

by MJ Nightingale

  “We’ll have to come back tomorrow and finish the wiring and alarm the system after we get the permits.” One of the men huffed as he carried a large silver case and placed it outside the apartment door. Noticing his friend already in the elevator, he picked it up once more, calling, “Ralph. Hold the elevator.”

  The man inside the open elevator swung his beefy hand out and held the doors that were beginning to slide shut twisting himself around the large rolling cart that was loaded down with equipment. The man with the heavy silver case pulled Cat’s door shut, but in his haste he rushed and did not wait for the door to close all the way.

  Sal prayed. He pulled back and took several steadying breaths. Stay calm he repeated, still not knowing what he would do next. Catarina was getting a security system. That much was obvious. It bothered him. Did she know he had been watching her, or was it just the murders of her girls that prompted this? And the note he had taped to her door? He did not know. How was he going to get close to her now? He chanced another look and the elevator was gone. The light above indicated it was going down.

  He took the opportunity to walk by her apartment still not knowing what to do. He could leave her another note perhaps. As he passed thinking about what he should say, once more his heart leapt into his throat. Her door was ajar. He touched the handle, and it felt warm. His blood turned to fire. He pushed and it opened silently. He heard the elevator ping announcing an arrival and made his decision rashly. He went inside and quickly and quietly closed the door behind him glancing around her living room. All was quiet. He was in! Her fucking sanctuary. His cock began to stiffen in his pants. He closed his eyes and imagined her here greeting him in nothing but a thong, perky breasts and tight nipples as she opened her arms to him. His cock was harder than stone, the fantasy so real.

  But he couldn’t enjoy it for long. Someone might return, and he wanted to explore. Sighing, he opened up his eyes. He recognized the floor plan. He went directly to her bedroom, knowing he could touch her things. It was a good thing too. He was half way down the hallway when he heard a man’s voice by the door, “I had to check. I wasn’t sure I locked it.”

  “Good thing you did,” came another voice. “Andreas would have had our asses, let alone the boss.” Then the voices began to fade as a bead of perspiration trickled down his face. He was frozen in place. He waited a minute, or longer. He wasn’t sure. His eyes closed tightly until his heart returned to normal. He took several calming breaths, and he inhaled her scent. It washed over him, and he was able to open his eyes once more. He was in her apartment surrounded by her things, her essence. Then slowly he walked to her bedroom. This door was open too. He was in her fucking room. There was her bed. He took it all in, turning and smiling, feeling closer to her than he had ever been. His eyes feasted and his hands began their exploration. He touched her perfume bottles, her decorative bits, her remote control. He imagined he was touching her. This was the room he had only seen at night in the dark with the only light coming from the glow of her television. He approached the bed, legs trembling. He ran his hand over her comforter. White and soft like her skin. He looked at it a moment longer and then climbed on, careful to keep his feet off the side. He sank into its softness and imagined himself sinking in to her.

  He could feel himself getting hard again. He wanted to jerk off and he would, he thought smiling as best he could, feeling the pull at the corners of his mouth. He forced himself to not smile remembering his dad yelling at him, calling him clown face. He didn’t want to think of his father now, so he quickly got off the bed, and went directly to her chest of drawers. He wanted something. A token of her. He opened drawer after drawer until he found it. Her underwear. He took a pair of silk underwear from the bottom of the pile in case she missed something. Then he went to the bathroom. Standing over the toilet he quickly fiddled with his pants. He pulled out his already engorged cock, and began to stroke himself with one hand. He lifted her silky pale blue panties to his face with his other hand and inhaled deeply. Sandalwood. He exploded on the spot. His cock grew lifeless in his hand. It was over too soon. He used her underwear to clean himself up and the feel of it on his already sensitive shaft had him semi aroused once more. My God, what a thrill. He stuffed the underwear deep into his pocket.

  He turned once more and saw a flash of red. A tube of lipstick. He was tempted to put some on, to imagine she had kissed him and left the proof on his lips. He touched his face, and imagined her doing that. When he opened his eyes he looked at the pristine white tile behind him in the shower. He would leave her a message. Yes, Catarina, his love, needed to know he missed her. Sorely.

  He scrawled the message across the tile, and then left her room, her apartment, and the building. Taking the elevator straight down to the lobby, he waved his wallet at the doorman twenty-five minutes later than when he had entered. The doorman nodded briefly still standing at his usual spot waiting to open the door for someone.

  Making his way to back to the parking garage, he waited. All day.

  * * *

  Each time he got impatient he took out her panties and inhaled. He wished his come wasn’t on them, but he could still smell the sandalwood. It soothed him for a while.

  But by ten the fury was upon him once more. Two days. Where was she? Probably holed up in a hotel somewhere he tried to tell himself. He was about to give up when he saw lights. The lights of a car approaching and relief swept through him. But it wasn’t her. It was that old couple who lived next door. They were chatting about a movie they had just seen. And in an instant he was angry once more. It was all their fault.

  If they had not returned to Florida so soon, he would never have had to go back to killing girls. Imagining they were Catarina. But they weren’t her. Just poor substitutes at best. They didn’t have her eyes and they didn’t look on him kindly like she had. They screamed and yelled and called him names. Said he was a monster. Looked at his lip and turned away in disgust. She had never turned from him. She had seen beyond his deformity. Even his own father had been ashamed of him. But not her. Not Catarina.

  It was his rage that made him do it. He followed them. He had his jacket on, and in the elevator he politely nodded. The old woman looked away quickly. He murmured to the old man. “There is a light out on the tenth floor. Just checking the wiring.” The old man nodded seemingly buying his story.

  He allowed them to get out first.

  “I don’t see a light out,” the old woman spoke the words as he followed behind them.

  “Doesn’t look like it. I’ll just walk the hall, ma’am. Make sure.” He bobbed his head at them when they both turned around to gaze at him over their stooped shoulders.

  Mr. Burbank pulled out his key and inserted it into the lock. The handle began to turn Sal noticed as he peered over his shoulder now. He’d walked about six feet past them. As soon as the door opened he rushed them, and forced them inside. The old woman fell to the floor and the old man stumbled onto one knee.

  Sal kicked the door behind him. “What the hell?” the old man muttered out of breath. Sal reached for the lamp on the table. It was close, and with all his force smashed it on the man’s head. The old woman screamed and tried to reach him from her position on the floor. He pulled back his leg and kicked her. He heard the crunch of steel toe boots meeting her head. She collapsed and was quiet. But the old man was stirring.

  Sal rushed to the kitchen, and grabbed a knife out of the butcher block and ran back. He plunged the knife into the old man’s gut and twisted. The man didn’t even scream. Just let out a gush of air as his eyes stared at him in fear, and then the life went out of him. Blood poured from the wound and Sal pulled out the knife and plunged once more for good measure. Glassy accusatory eyes stared back at him. Straddling the old man, Sal inhaled the scent of the blood.

  The thrill of the kill had him breathing hard, but he had to be sure the woman was dead. He walked over to her and looked down. She was breathing. But not for long.

  He grab
bed her by the hair, and pulled. She groaned, but was still semi-unconscious. He dragged her down the hallway, and half way he felt her begin to fight back, and cry. He stopped and helped her to her feet, and showed her the bloody knife. She began to cry louder and tried to turn. But he held fast.

  “Shush now Mrs. Burbank, he’s already dead. And you will join him soon.” His crooked smile, the evilness she saw in his eyes, and his confession sent her into hysterics. She began to cry louder, but his arms like steel pulled her along unwillingly. He was at the door to her bedroom, and with one push he threw her across the room. She toppled onto her bed. In an instant he was on her. He backhanded her with the hand holding the knife leaving a spray of blood across the window. Her head twisted sideways and she was unconscious once more. Climbing off of her, he pulled up her dress, and pulled her panties down and then he fumbled with his own pants and climbed back on. He needed to do this. He always did.

  * * *

  When he finished he stabbed the whimpering woman several times while watching her eyes until she was silent. The eyes were the mirrors to the soul. In them you could see if a person was good or bad. Evil or kind. This woman was evil. They all had been. His father had been. Only two people had never shown disgust in their eyes. Catarina and his mother, God rest her weary broken soul. He reached for his pants on the floor, and took out his jack knife from the pocket. He looked at Mrs. Burbank, and then placed one hand on her face. Using his knife, he cut with precision. First removing one eye, and then the next. Oh God, she was a disgusting, filthy pig. He tossed the eyeballs onto the floor. Those eyes were not the ones he wanted to see. They were not grey. And they were not kind.

  Afterwards he went into the bathroom and removed his clothes. They were a bloody mess. He dropped them onto the floor, and climbed into the older couple’s shower. He would bag his clothes later and take them home to burn. He would wear some of the old man’s clothes to get out.

  After he was dressed, he looked at the mess on the bed. He dipped two fingers into the woman’s wound in her stomach and using her own blood scrawled his message on the wall. Something his father had always said. He had told him many a time that he was cute as a baby, but now, he would spit, and then finish his statement; “Beautiful, No more.” His father had said that about him. But to Sal, now, it meant something else. The beautiful people, the ones who despised him for no reason than a stiff upper lip, were no more.

  He looked at his handy work one more time, and was about to leave when he heard a scream. It was coming from next door. Catarina. His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. It must be her. She had come home. She must have gotten his message. He scrambled to the closet. He pulled out the now dry putty, and knelt, eyeball to the wall. Yes. There she was. His cock got hard. But then someone else was with her. A man. He nearly choked and had to swallow the bile threatening to come up. She had never had a man in her room before. Who was he?

  He could not make out what they were saying. But he was holding her. He saw red once more. Who was he? Who in the hell was touching her? They turned together, his arm wrapped around her back supporting her. NO! Not him. Not him! God no, not him. He pressed his eyes closer even though it was the most painful thing in the world to watch. The man was touching her, pressing her body into him. He saw the man inhale the scent of her hair, and Sal felt the fires of hell burning him alive. It could not be! Not him. No, not him.

  He began to cry; the tears of fury blinded him, and he had to wipe them away. Pulling back he used the rolled sleeve of the old man’s sweater to wipe away the moisture. When he stopped to look back through the hole, they were gone. Sal knew that instant as he pulled back and stood after crawling out of the closet, the world had gone crazy and fate was against him. There was nothing and no one he hated more the man he had seen in that room with Catarina. No one. Not even his father. The man that held Catarina had destroyed him once. That man was in all of his worst nightmares. It still boggled his mind that he had been standing in that room with her.

  As he tramped towards the exit in the Burbank’s apartment, he vowed that this time Andreas Marino would lose it all. Not a trace of Marino blood would be left on the face of the earth. Andreas and his entire family would pay.

  He felt the dry heaves come upon him, and he tried to breathe through it. But it didn’t work. He wretched once, right beside the old man’s body by the front door. Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of the sweater he wore, he glanced through the peephole and saw Andreas and Cat stepping into the elevator across from him. He counted to ten with his head pressed up against the door, then he fled. Walking out the door, he locked it behind him, and took the stairs using the emergency exit to escape outside onto the streets below. He needed just one thing right now, he thought, while his fury warred with his deep despair. Just one thing. A plan.

  Chapter 15

  A Kiss

  Andreas called in to let Angela know he would be late and Blaze would be handling his appointments that morning. He and Nikko waited at the house for the police to arrive and it was well after midnight by the time they left. He had called them in the lobby of her hotel, and informed them he was bringing her here, to his house. They had dispatched a car to the scene, taken photos, and the crime scene investigators had done their thing. The detectives had come here after seeing the scene for themselves.

  Andreas knew the man who had arrived to question them, it was a Detective Ortiz, and he promised to follow up with them in the morning and let them know what had been found.

  At the crack of dawn, Ortiz had called to let them know he would be stopping by around ten to discuss matters further, but he had spoken to the security people who had been in her apartment and the wait staff at the restaurant confirming the times they had been there. Ortiz told him another detective would be coming with him as well, the one handling the murder investigation of the Tampa woman. They wanted to talk about last night, and to see if Catarina could recall anything else that might help the progression of their investigation.

  Andreas and Nikko were drinking coffee in the study discussing the need for tightened security around the house, when Cat walked in. She looked amazing, as usual. Refined, elegant, but that quality of mystery surrounded her and made her even sexier to him. But he did notice the darker circles under her eyes. It was obvious she had not slept well. This latest incident hit close to home. Her sanctuary had been breached. The place where she felt the safest.

  She gave him a smile as she entered the room and he patted the seat next to him. As she approached he could not help but notice the woman she was. Her thick lustrous hair was tied up in a complicated twist, held in place with small gold clips. Her trendy silk, off-white jumpsuit hugged her figure whispering along her lean shapely lines without clinging. Slits from the shoulder to the wrist along the sleeves revealed a hint of the honey skin below. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

  Last night, she was hurt, but when she threw herself into his arms he felt something. Something more than lust. He felt it yet again when she gave him a less panic stricken hug at his bedroom door after he walked her up so he could retrieve a few things for himself. The hug was friendly and quick, and then she pulled away and thanked him for being there. He was about to leave when he saw the tormented look in her eyes, and he could think of no way to make it go away other than a kiss. It had been something he wanted to do most of the day. The urge overpowered him and he stepped closer, and stooped down. He didn’t know what possessed him other than the thought, but as soon as his lips touched hers she pushed back. He saw the look of confusion in her eyes, and she backed up clasping her hand over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry . . .,” he muttered taking a step back realizing the moment had been wrong. Cat turned her head away and simply closed the door softly behind her. He stood there rooted to the spot for a moment in frustration feeling like a fool. He turned on his heel and left. He really hadn’t expected that. It was a complete shutdown. They had both admitted their attraction to each other, and th
e rejection stung even though his mind knew the timing had been all wrong.

  After making his way down to his study, he poured himself a drink. Memories came flooding back to him. When Aliya, his ex-fiancee, left him he understood. Fear made her run. Fear of his job, fear of the crimes he investigated and even before his parents had been killed, the threatening letters Romeo sent him scared her off. She ended their engagement and went off to Vegas to pursue her dancing. He didn’t blame her in the least. He understood, and was actually glad she escaped. He loved her, but it hadn’t stung as badly as he thought it would. He thought back to their time together; she had just moved into his neighborhood, and was six years younger than him. Meeting her at a block party they hit it off. He proposed on a whim, a year later just after he made detective. She was a young 21 but said yes. They were in wedding preparations when he was put on the Romeo case. The notes terrified her, and then she asked to end it. He had to let her go. Maybe Cat felt the same way. Until Romeo was caught, she was terrified to become involved with the man who had a vendetta against him.

  Andreas poured himself another drink. Aliya, her long brown hair, and hazel eyes. She had been such an innocent. He hadn’t thought about her in a while. Not since he found about his nephew, Johnny. When he was first informed he was an uncle to a nine year old, he remembered his last conversation with Aliya. When she called him she was drunk, feeling guilty and told him that when she got to Vegas, she found out she was pregnant. She ended the pregnancy without letting him know first. She begged his forgiveness.

  He swallowed past the lump in his throat thinking about it. He had just buried his parents two weeks earlier. He supposed she had heard, and felt guilty for leaving him, but he lied and said he understood, and to forget about him, and live her life, happy and safe. But knowing that he could have had a child was his second biggest regret in his life. His first had been not catching Romeo. Until he did, he would never be able to have a normal life.