by Rick Murcer
He watched as precious consciousness slipped from Juanita like a fast setting sun. “I am your god, now,” he sneered. “Your soul belongs to me.”
CHAPTER-7
Jenkins towered over Juanita’s plundered body. He studied his grisly, but precise, handiwork. He was satisfied. She hadn’t been the sport he had anticipated, not at first, so he had to “urge” her forward. She became responsive enough though, in the end as the drug wore off and she understood her fate. But then again, they all responded like terrified animals when they realized dying was not just something that happened in the movies or on the six o’clock news.
Closing his eyes, he recalled the precise moment her soul had merged with his, at just the right time, at the instant he determined. He was in complete control. He had become special. His evolution made him invincible.
Jenkins sponged blood from his mouth and chin with the back of his hand. He couldn’t help himself. She looked so damn good. Good enough to eat.
A moment later, he gently placed a black rose across Juanita’s body and then stripped the latex gloves from his hands, careful to avoid any contact with the bed sheet. He stood a long moment over Juanita before finally bending to her. Her expensive perfume, even as it mingled with drying blood, seemed to be everywhere.
He spoke in soft tones bankrupt of compassion; only triumph. “You didn’t think I could let you get away, did you? How could you believe that? You looked so good and, well, it was your time, our time.” He whispered as if she would answer.
The room’s balcony overlooked the wide lagoon on the south side of the hotel and he went there. The Caribbean moon mirrored against rippling water and caused little spangles of light to dance like fairies in an enchanted forest. The breeze was sweet and clean, possessing an intoxicating quality. Not like Juanita had been, not that intoxicating, but it worked.
The upcoming cruise and the carefully designed plan moved across his thoughts. It was time to take what was his and reward them with what they had earned. They were entitled to dine on what he had to serve, all of them.
His eyes reflected malicious contempt, his very soul embracing it. The hatred had boiled long enough. Too long. Juanita had been easy, and she had embodied the last trial he required.
“I’m ready for what’s next, for my destiny,” he said out loud.
What a kick it was to be able to combine his “hobby” with joyous purpose. Taking the souls of women, after they had served their function, of course, was the thrill he always knew it would be. Making the others suffer for their indiscretions would be an even more indescribable pleasure.
Jenkins reached into his back pocket and took out a worn newspaper clipping that had been carefully tucked away. It appeared to have been opened and closed a thousand times and probably had. He read each line again. Over and over. He wanted to absorb the faded script, to ensure that he never forgot what was written there or who had written it, that the details were always and forever the same. Not that that part was a problem. He had it memorized years ago.
The fifth line of the article caused him pause while the veins at his temples throbbed.
How could they quote such drivel? Such dogshit.
The source of that citation would pay oh so dearly.
Hatred rose higher and higher and he reveled in it, basked in its purity, its honesty. Why not? It made him feel even more alive, more impregnable. But it couldn’t be allowed to cloud his judgment. It had to be restrained or it could ruin everything. The process of learning that truth had been a hard lesson, but realized nonetheless.
Moving back into the air-conditioned room, he meticulously refolded the clipping and placed it safely in his pocket. He stepped closer to Juanita and slowly, like a tenderhearted lover, kissed her cooling blue lips.
Then he walked out the door whistling a Three Dog Night tune.
Eli’s coming! Eli’s coming!
CHAPTER-8
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty. You gonna lay there all day or are you going to get your butt out of bed and take me on the most wonderful vacation of my life?”
Manny groaned and shaded his eyes from the bright Caribbean sun that streamed through their room. The pesky clock radio blinked 7:15 a.m. Reading the time seemed to make the clock even more annoying.
Manny’s eyes flickered back to his wife, catching a glimpse of Louise’s face. It was all he needed to go from annoyed to a step above pleased.
“What are you talking about?” he said. “We’re going home today.”
“You can go if you want; I’ll just find some hairy-chested local who wants to have a week of hot food, hot sun, and hot sex with a well developed cougar.” Her face was alive with pure anticipation.
“I have a hairy chest.”
“Why yes, yes you do. You’re a little older than I had in mind, but you might do. Want to be considered for the job?”
“Okay. How do I apply?”
Louise bent to Manny’s face and kissed him gently. She grinned. “Hold that thought. I need time to work out the rest of the interview process. But so far, so good.”
“Great. I’m up for the rest of it…well almost.”
She looked to the ceiling. “I’m taking a shower.”
Louise was truly excited about this trip. For his wife to outrace him to the shower was like a Republican voting for Barack Obama.
Swinging his legs to the floor, he thought again about Louise and her resolve. She was determined to enjoy this trip even though the specter of the mammogram results lingered in the back of their mind. She was one special woman. But he’d always known that.
Louise had started the coffeemaker, and the tantalizing aroma pulsed from the small in-room java machine. It had the same effect as a cobra’s hypnotic stare, inviting him to fill his cup.
He pulled on clean white briefs (always white because colored underwear wasn’t manly) and started for the balcony. Parading out in his skivvies just might hand the beach joggers their first thrill of the day.
He walked past the full-length, oak-framed mirror and did a double take. Even though his face was scribbled with sleep lines and his hair mussed, he didn’t look half bad for a cop pushing forty. It wouldn’t last forever, but he would enjoy it while he could. He just might get that job as Louise’s escort.
Manny filled his cup with coffee, cream, and sweetener, and continued his trek to the great outdoors. But sudden, rapid pounding echoing from the door said the balcony would have to wait. It sounded like someone wielding a ten-pound sledgehammer, and for a moment, the heavy mahogany seemed ready to splinter into shards. Then silence. He threw on khaki shorts and hurried to see who or what had assaulted the peaceful beginnings to his morning.
He swung the large ornate door open, panned one way then the other, seeing no one. The elevator was located twenty-five feet to his right and the stairs only about fifteen feet to his left. Whoever battered the door was now long gone.
Frowning, he came back inside. That’s when he noticed the white stationery lying on the floor with his name printed on the front. Manny unfolded the paper and read
Bon Voyage, Detective, Bon Voyage. This will be a cruise that you will never forget.
His glower melted and was replaced with a perceptive smile. Sophie. Always the practical joker, and knowing her, she’d probably been thinking about the prank since last night. Retribution for the cuff thing.
Well, missy, two can play this game.
Putting the note on the dresser, he headed toward the balcony for the third time.
Manny opened the door and the heat engulfed him like the smothering kiss from a worried mother. It felt wonderful. The Caribbean sun must be heaven sent because it caressed like no other.
The sound of the ocean lollygagging toward the shore was therapeutic. This is where he belonged. Some mystic, all knowing voice whispered to him that it was so, and everyone knows those internal gurus are never wrong. Michigan had it pluses, but what could match this? Besides no one shoveled snow in the Caribbean.
>
****************
Louise looked intently into the ornately trimmed mirror, wiping away the steam, and wondered how a woman her age could be concerned with the results of a mammogram. It didn’t add up. She was in great shape, not that old, and had no history of any problems in her family.
The mirror spoke, and she moved a little closer, gathering more detail from the doppelganger the looking glass revealed. She had been a good person, a great mother, and maybe even a better wife. But that’s how this beast howled.
Why would God allow this kind of situation in her, their, lives? Then again, maybe God had nothing to do with it. Maybe there really is an unseen war between good and evil. Maybe humans were collateral damage and cancer was just one weapon that evil used to destroy hope, the peace that God promises.
Louise Williams fought the tears and glanced nervously at the unopened letter from her doctor. She began to slide a slender finger under the fold, and then stopped. This wasn’t the time. She grinned through her tears as she thought about breaking a nail--that wasn’t going to happen before she got on the ship.
She took one last look, dried her eyes, and put on more eyeliner. Then she stuffed the letter back in her travel pouch. If the enigmatic dispatch was bad news, it would be bad news after the best vacation of her life.
****************
Louise emerged from the bathroom wearing only a black bra and lace panties, just as Manny sauntered back into the room. The coffee had helped, but the sight of his wife brought him fully awake.
They were to meet the rest of the Lansing crew in the lobby in about forty minutes and head over to a small local breakfast nook whose reputation for great food was next to none. But she looked so good, and he was feeling his oats.
“I think I’m ready for part two of that interview thing.”
“Manny, I just took a shower and we have to meet the group soon,” Louise protested without conviction.
“Yeah, but we may never spend another day in San Juan,” he said as he drew her into his arms. “When we get old, we can say we did it in Puerto Rico.”
“True, unless you count next Sunday when we get back from the cruise. But you do seem like a good candidate.”
She pressed closer, teasing him to an even harder state.
He flicked his fingers. Her bra went slack as he pulled it away from her with a sweep of his hand.
“You are good at that,” she laughed. “I think the job’s yours.”
They fell back on the bed in the midst of a long, passionate kiss. In the enthralling ambiance of Puerto Rico, Manny and Louise Williams made love the way new lovers do.
CHAPTER-9
Fifty-six-year-old Gavin Crosby stood beside his wife, Stella, shifting his considerable weight from left to right. He chanced a quick glance at his gold watch. Manny was late.
He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. But maybe that was a good thing. The boy just might be learning to lighten up.
The colorful tropical fish tank, part of the hotel lobby’s wall, caught his attention. Blue angel fish trimmed in black circled with yellow striped sergeant fish and narrow pipefish as each one eventually took the other’s place in the tank’s endless carousel of motion. He hoped to see some of that kind of wildlife when they snorkeled at Trunk Bay.
His eyes darted around the rest of the room, and he found himself doing a quick exercise observing human interaction.
Alex Downs and his wife, Barbara, stood near the concierge’s desk carrying on a conversation with Mike and Lexy. Thinking of the day Alex was hired made him shake his head. Alex had just earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in Criminology and Forensic Science. Bright man. He, however, knew doodle squat about office politics, and he had gotten his proverbial tit in the ringer more than once. The CSI had come a long way, but kissing fanny was never going to be a long suit.
A short, balding man with an overlapping belly, Alex proved the notion that you can’t judge a book by its cover because he hardly looked like an expert in his field. Hell, in any field. But he was one of the very best.
Alex’s wife of twelve years looked like she belonged on the arm of a Hollywood movie star. Taller than Alex, she was slim, and her legs went on forever. But the adoration for her husband was obvious. He was her one and only. Love indeed made strange bedfellows.
He switched to his son and new daughter-in-law, and chuffed a sigh of relief. They had pulled it off. The newlyweds would never forget yesterday’s ceremony. And that’s what weddings were all about.
District Attorney Liz Casnovsky and her husband, Lynn, were engaged in a giddy conversation with Sophie Lee, Manny’s partner, and Sophie’s husband, Randy Mason. The group huddled near the glitzy bronze and gold entrance of the hotel smiling like Cheshire cats. Liz suddenly released an air-splitting laugh. He cringed. Vintage Liz. She sounded like a mad dolphin, but it was always good to hear her laugh. Well, almost always.
The DA was a bulldog prosecutor, and with Lynn’s investment company growing in leaps and bounds, they lived the life of flourishing professionals. Not to mention they looked like a tanned Ken and Barbie. Yet, there was a wisp of sadness that seemed to haunt Liz. He thought it had to do with the appointment with motherhood she never had time to keep.
Gavin rolled his eyes as he watched Sophie interact with the others. She was always the comedian, the unofficial smart-ass in the crowd. She was from the City, San Francisco, and the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She had moved east to marry the love of her life, but the petite detective divorced him after the first year. Sophie found him “hanging out” with a couple of guys in a sleazy motel room on Cedar. She joked that she couldn’t compete with the men. Bring on the women because she could, and would, do anything any woman could do. But men, that was incomprehensible to her. Sophie laughed about it, but the scars would never really go away, not completely.
She had met Randy a few years later. And even though she had fallen in love with him, Sophie had changed. She had kept her maiden name because it made her feel secure and independent. No man would take her dignity again and Gavin applauded that.
He didn’t care for Randy much. Maybe it was because Randy possessed the social skills of a doorjamb or because Sophie’s roly-poly husband, adorned with the red Afro, had never cared for anyone except himself, until Sophie.
The elevator bell rang and mirrored doors parted like the red sea. Manny and Louise stepped energetically from the elevator. Manny first, dressed in a loud blue tropical shirt and Ray Ban sunglasses caught in the nest above his forehead. Louise was dressed in a straw hat, blue and white striped midriff shirt, light blue shorts, and white Tod sandals. They were smiling like they had won the lotto.
“Where in hell have you been? You’re four minutes late,” said Gavin, tapping his watch. “And you look like a couple of damned tourists to boot.”
By then, the rest of the couples had migrated to the elevator.
“What’s that saying? You can dress ’em up but you can’t take ‘em out,” chimed in Sophie.
“Ahhh, have you losers looked in the mirror?” Manny chided.
After a quiet moment, laughter rippled through the group. They all looked like tourists.
“Let’s go eat, I’m starved,” encouraged Stella.
****************
No one noticed the big man leaning over the mahogany railing of the second floor balcony. He stared down at the lobby with black eyes and scorn to match. “This is going to be one hell of a vacation,” he clenched. “At least for me.”
CHAPTER-10
Sarah Cummings glanced nervously down the fifth-floor hallway. Oh man, she was in deep. Juanita was going to kick her ass up and down the steps of the hotel’s marble stairs. Kick her ass? She was going to kill her.
She had left Juanita sitting in the testosterone-infested bar when Hector and she left for his room. Despite her guilt and dread at facing her best friend, she gave soul to a no-regret-time-of-her-life grin. Hector.
&n
bsp; What a night.
A vision of Juanita’s pissed countenance stabbed across her mind and the grin disappeared, almost.
Good going, Sarah. You left her alone the whole night and most of the morning.
Juanita’s first night in San Juan, no less. “I’ll make it up to you, Nita, I promise,” she vowed, picking up the pace.
As she got closer to their room, the Latin lover’s performance from the night before strolled dreamily back to her. Strolled? More like rumbled.
Maybe she was in love. Well in lust, at the very least. It had been her first encounter with a Latin man and her eyes must have looked like small breakfast saucers after he’d stripped out of his clothes. Her greedy ogle had mapped every detail of his body. Not one ounce of fat, and that wasn’t all. He had all of the equipment any woman would ever require. She put her free hand to her mouth and giggled. She had certainly experienced the full extent of his offering, several times.
Vivid recall caused her temperature to rise. “Woooo! Down girl.”
Then, for a second time, culpability for leaving her friend at the bar interrupted last evening’s perfect picture.
Juanita did tell her to go ahead and that she would be fine. It’s what most good friends would have said, even if your BFF didn’t really want to be alone the rest of the night. Juanita and she had formed an unmatchable bond since third grade, right after the two girls had beat up that fourth-grade boy. There had never been any bullshit between them. They were like sisters and wanted each other to have a good time.
“Hey, you just got lucky first. My turn’s coming. Don’t worry, I’m a big girl,” Juanita had said.
She stopped moving along the burgundy carpet and searched for her room card in her large handbag, wondering if Hector really would call her. Sarah wanted to see him again. Maybe he was the one. He was definitely brighter than she had first imagined. He was on vacation before he went back to the University of Miami to finish his master’s degree in Environmental Science. Hector wanted to save the world, well, at least Puerto Rico. It sounded so--noble.