Albert had been somewhat enjoying the assignment Josephine had given to him. He was glad to have a break from his regular routine, even though most of the surveillance recordings were boring as hell—try listening to hours of cable channel talk show babble droning from Frank’s TV—and had nothing to do with Kelly. Tonight, he was going to tell Laura that he would be spending most, if not all, nights away from home for the next two weeks. He didn’t know for sure if his wife had bought his explanation for his extended absences, but what else could he do to make her believe him? If Laura suspected that he had been partying with hookers the last few nights, then so be it. He would deal with it later.
5.
As Albert washed his hands after getting off the toilet, he thought about Frank’s new car. This pompous moron must think he was too good for a Camry, or a Focus, or a Civic, cars regular folks drive. No, he had had to get this expensive German import. How much had it cost him? Fifty grand? Sixty?
You see, Albert most likely had the same income as Frank—courtesy of the generous Ron Buckhaus—but you don’t see him driving a luxurious vehicle. Maybe that was because his dick was bigger than Frank’s. And can you believe the nerve if this asshole: instead of frantically looking for his wife, Frank was boning another woman!
Enjoying the restored peace in his stomach, Albert wiped his hands on the towel and headed to the living room.
By the way, he had seen a couple of cute female joggers in the neighborhood yesterday. He still got a hardon every time he thought about that hot chick he had snatched three weeks ago in Gardenville, when he had pretended to have a car trouble. Too bad, they were currently on a hiatus from kidnapping.
What had caused them to take a break? Albert put the blame squarely on Kelly’s bad judgment.
To be honest, Kelly was a real dumbass! A bitch if you will. She’d been holing up God knows where for almost two weeks now and had never bothered to call and let them know what she was up to. In Al’s book, her behavior was absolutely self-centered and irresponsible, especially taking into account the fact that she knew that they needed her badly now that the boss was gone. Well, Tony could actually be dead if Kelly’s last text message to Josephine hadn’t been an idiotic prank, which it could have very well been, you know.
Was it possible that Kelly and Tony had simply gone on a spur of the moment vacation to some tropical paradise? It sure was.
Could Kelly and the boss have skipped town for good? That was possible, too, in his opinion. In fact, it would have been one of the better case scenarios, which was why Josephine, who preferred to expect the worst while hoping for the best, didn’t have high hopes for it.
Most of them believed that the boss was dead and had forced themselves to accept this sad fact. Now they were focused on bringing Kelly’s ass back to Buffalo. Did he believe Tony was dead? You could say he was hiding his head in the sand, but he intended to remain an optimist until he saw Tony’s remains.
Back to Kelly. Back to this selfish bitch. With all due respect, she was a selfish bitch. Albert had previously considered her a decent person. It turned out he’d been wrong. Was he supposed to overstrain himself in their search for Kelly? To stress and develop more grey hair? Hell no! She didn’t deserve it. First, she was a grown woman, not a helpless baby. If she had even one shred of a brain in her head, she wouldn’t be chopped to pieces by some psycho, or drown in a lake, or get decapitated in a car crash, or end up in some other type of extreme trouble.
Second, Albert was not her nanny and had a hundred personal matters to worry about. Tony was the only reason he’d been putting forth an effort to look for Kelly. If he hadn’t thought that she knew where Tony was—or what had happened to him—he would have been less enthusiastic about all this. Josephine also had hinted that Tony might have made Kelly his successor of some sort, but he had big doubts about it, even though he had noticed that Kelly had been Tony’s favorite. Well, of course she was his favorite: why wouldn’t a guy with a healthy sex appetite be biased towards a young hot woman?
Stupid broad. How the hell had she managed to vanish without a trace in a place where it took very little effort to survive. It isn’t a war-ridden Somalia we’re talking about here. Millions—dozens of millions—of women in America had enough brains not to go missing and thus not to make other people nervous about it. Was Kelly dumber than these women? If she was, then Albert had no words. If you are an idiot, that's forever, Madam. There’s no cure for it.
That was what he had told Ron, Josephine, and Graham a few days ago when they had discussed Kelly's disappearance for an umpteenth time.
“I think you're panicking too soon,” he said. “She could be working on her tan somewhere in Cabo San Lucas right now, for all we know.”
“Al, it’s been four days. She and Tony would have never left for four days without telling us,” objected Ron. “When someone is missing for that long, it’s time to worry.”
“Time to worry? I know her very well,” Albert said. “She loves having a good time. And Tony likes to hang out with her, you know that. If you want to find Kelly, let’s check Cancun first.”
“Why didn't she tell us she was leaving?” asked Graham. “Why didn't she tell her husband?”
“She doesn't give a shit about Frank. And it seems like she doesn’t give a shit about us, either. Maybe she’s bipolar. Who knows?”
They didn’t listen to him. They wanted to worry and began doing just that with gusto. Josephine, with her penchant for voodoo crap, claimed she had actually sensed Kelly getting murdered the day she had gone missing.
“I still have a headache when I think of her. It has to mean something,” she said. “Her life must be in danger.”
“Come on, people!” Albert said. “I’m sure she'll be back pretty soon, stop being such worrywarts.”
“I’m very worried,” said Josephine. And then Graham suggested a theory that caused Albert to laugh. Graham thought that Kelly could have been murdered by Frank. Yes, that Frank, her husband.
After hearing Graham blame Frank—a chickenshit who was afraid of his own shadow—for Kelly’s disappearance, Albert almost fell from the chair.
“You’ve watched too much Law and Order,” he told Graham. “Guys like Frank don’t run around killing women. You, of all people, should know that.”
“Men kill their wives all the time,” remarked Josephine. “Jealousy, life insurance, stuff like that.”
“I’ve met this moron,” Albert said. “He’s a coward. He won't hurt a fly.”
“How do you know this?” asked Graham. “When a woman goes missing, the first person the police suspect is usually her husband. I don’t see how this case is different.”
“Call it a hunch.”
No, they didn't listen to him. And he couldn’t help laughing: Frank had murdered Kelly? This mild-mannered paper pusher who wouldn’t dare stand up to a pair of twelve-year-old muggers had taken a human life? You’ve got to be kidding.
No, Frank wouldn’t have run the risk of going to jail; this guy was too used to comfort to have committed murder. Frank would piss his pants at the mere idea of killing a human being. He probably wouldn’t even have the balls to skin a rabbit.
However, if it turned out Frank had indeed murdered Kelly—such a possibility still existed after all—he’d have to pray that he was dead by the time they laid their hands on him.
End of sample
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Kizer, Tim Page 13