Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  Wagner looked at the girl. You could see he was sharing her pain. Afraid for her.

  "Don't touch her," Wagner said.

  "Anything you say, pally," Foster said.

  Wagner rolled his wheelchair out of the living room and down the corridor to a darkened doorway. He turned to look back at ' Foster. "Don't hurt her anymore. I mean it"

  "You're a real tough bastard."

  "You heard what I said."

  Then he was gone. Inside. A light came on and made a yellow oblong of the doorway. After a moment or two Foster heard the wheelchair move across some more of the room. Then he heard a squeaky bureau drawer opening and closing. There. At last. The tape.

  Foster looked at the girl and said, "Come here."

  "Are you going to hurt me again?"

  "I didn't ask you to talk. I told you to come here."

  "No."

  He pointed the gun directly at her face. "I want you in front of me when he comes back here."

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't trust him."

  "There's nothing he can do to you."

  "Oh, yeah? Well, maybe not But I'm not going to take the chance. Now get your ass over here."

  He leaned down and took her wrist and snapped her to her feet. Then he pulled her in front of him just as Wagner was returning in his wheelchair.

  As Wagner rolled down the hallway toward the living room, Foster could see in the man's hand the outline of a videotape. There it was. Without the tape Brolan would spend many weeks trying to convince the police that he was not the killer after all. By that time Foster would be in South America with plenty of cash-enough to buy a new identity.

  Foster kept the gun at the girl's temple. He said to Wagner, "Put the tape down on the edge of the coffee table."

  "Let the girl go first"

  "You're a real macho little bastard, aren't you?"

  "The girl. Or I don't set the tape down," Wagner said. Foster laughed at the absurdity of the little man's being so tough. But he was. He really was.

  To the girl Foster said, "Now, when I let you go, you walk over to the couch and sit right on the end of it and keep your hands in plain sight Do you understand me?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Then you're going to do what I say?"

  "Yes."

  Foster kept looking to see if Wagner and the girl were exchanging any messages through their eye contact. He was getting increasingly paranoid, and he knew it

  He let the girl go, shoving her toward the couch.

  She did as he'd told her. Sat right on the edge. Almost primly. Watching. Waiting.

  "The tape," Foster said, snapping his fingers and pointing to the coffee table.

  Wagner held up the videotape. "This isn't going to help you now. I hope you know that The police will no longer believe that Brolan is their man."

  "Oh, no, pally? Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?" He snapped his fingers again. "Put it down on the table and push it over to me."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then I'll blow your fucking brains out right on the spot." The girl sounded as if she were going to cry. "Please, Greg. Please do what he says."

  "You better listen to her, Wagner. She's got the right idea." Wagner said, "All right"

  The way he laid the tape down on the table, you might have mistaken him for a poker player about to play his trump card. He set it slowly, carefully, down.

  "Now push it over here," Foster said from the other end of the long glass table. "Now."

  Wagner pushed the tape toward Foster.

  "Good little boy," Foster said.

  When the tape reached his end, he started to lean over and pick it up, and that's when the gun appeared at the side of the wheelchair.

  The little bastard wasted no time in firing.

  Foster dove for cover behind a leather recliner. A bullet had nearly caught him in the shoulder just as he was jumping.

  The first thing Foster did, once he got his bearings, was say, "You fucked up, little man. You really fucked up bad. I'm going to make you pay for what you just did."

  With that he raised his head slightly behind the arm of the recliner and shot the girl once, twice, three times, in the chest. She had still been on the couch; she rolled off, in a mixture of cries and blood, to the floor.

  Wagner cried out, too, and started blindly firing toward the recliner. He needed to use both hands, and he wasn't much of a shot-he was better at hitting the wall decorations than anything else-and about all Foster had to do was wait till the little pecker ran out of bullets.

  Which came soon enough.

  Knowing he was safe, Foster stood up in the echoes of gunfire and Wagner's sobs and went over to the man and slapped him hard across the face.

  "I told you I'd kill her, you little prick," Foster said. "If you'd done what I said, she'd still be alive." He wasn't excited. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact, and his breathing was quiet and regular.

  He had never heard a man sob the way Wagner was sobbing as he wheeled his chair over to Denise, who lay sprawled and unmoving on the floor. Blood was everywhere in small and large pools, in flecks that had spattered the furnishings.

  Foster wasn't unsympathetic. He felt sorry for the little prick. "You should have listened to me," he said again. "I wouldn't have had to kill her if you'd just listened to me. Don't you understand that?"

  Foster snapped up the tape, dropped it in the pocket of his overcoat.

  And then he was gone, the door banging behind him, Wagner's sobs raging against the vast, empty night.

  34

  AT THE LAST MOMENT Kathleen decided to pack the doll, which was her way of admitting to herself that her flight from Minneapolis was probably not going to be temporary after all.

  There was nothing special about the doll. It was a Barbie from the early sixties, one of the few expensive gifts her impoverished parents had ever bought her. She'd kept it with her all these years. Once, a lover who found her unfaithful had tried to smash the doll with his fist but before his knuckles reached its face, Kathleen had struck the man across the back of the head with a large clock radio. The pleasure she took in this violence almost shocked her. It felt good to strike the man, to feel the intersection of clock and skull, to hear his cry of pain and to see him sink in a heap to the floor.

  She brought the doll in its blue taffeta dress to her face and kissed it as tenderly as she would a sister. Parts of the doll's forehead had started to crack. Kathleen smiled wryly about this. So, even Barbies got age lines.

  She set the doll down carefully among the blouses, skirts, and two pairs of designer jeans she'd stuffed into the single piece of carry-on luggage. Her flight was less than an hour away. She had to hurry.

  The sound of a car door closing startled her.

  She ran to the window of her second-floor bedroom and looked below to the driveway and then to the street.

  In the house directly across from hers, a man and a child bundled up in a snowsuit were exiting a large green van. The headlights lit up the front of the garage so that it looked like a cave of light in the wintry darkness.

  She put a hand to her heart. Her pulse was racing, and she felt sticky and dizzy. She'd been afraid it was Stu Foster. At one time their plan to get big league clients by blackmailing them seemed smart. As did having an affair with Brolan. He was a nice guy, and fun to be with, and there'd really been no reason not to… But Brolan had made the mistake (a mistake for both of them) of falling in love with her… And the other night Foster had killed a woman… Emma the strange, quiet, sad hooker they'd gotten to know through Charles Lane. After killing the woman, Foster had changed. She'd always sensed the violence in him, but then it surfaced completely. Violence had always been a part of their lovemaking but the other night… An image came to mind: his squeezing her breasts until they hurt, until she had to scratch his back bloody before he stopped. And then his laughing and staring at her, obviously aware that she'd seen him for the first time as he really was.
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br />   She couldn't go to the police. She was too much a part of all this. But neither could she trust Foster. She was the only other person who knew he'd killed Emma. Which meant he might well decide that now he must kill her, too…

  Then she heard it.

  A creaking on the stairs.

  True, this old house made many plaintive moans and groans on freezing winter nights, but she knew that the sound hadn't been made by the house but rather by somebody creeping up the stairs.

  Looking toward the partly opened door, she listened once more. Hard.

  It was amazing how many things you heard when you really listened. The blower in the furnace. The creaking of the roof under the burden of a sheet of ice. The distant sound of a siren.

  And footsteps.

  Coming up the stairs.

  Coming after her.

  Kathleen laughed aloud. "My God," she said to herself. "My God, what a stupid, frightened little girl you are."

  She went to the door and flung it back and walked out into the hallway and over to the head of the stairs.

  Empty. Just as she'd expected.

  She'd left the vestibule light on downstairs, so she could see, even from here, that the front door was snugly closed and the front part of the house empty.

  She felt so relieved, she was practically light-headed, and that was when he grabbed her.

  From behind. Wearing gloves.

  He clamped one hand hard over her mouth so she couldn't scream. With the other hand he put the small butcher's knife to her throat.

  She could hear him gasp and feel him sweat. He was pressed tight to her backside, and she could also feel the hardness of his erection.

  "You fucking bitch," he said. "You were going to walk out on me, weren't you?"

  He drew a little blood, then, from a spot right next to her jugular.

  "You fucking bitch," he said.

  ***

  By the time Brolan finished with Charles Lane, the motel owner was bleeding from his mouth, nose, and ear. Brolan hadn't shown much patience or sympathy.

  In the car Brolan thought about the most astonishing part of Lane's confession… that Kathleen was working with Foster.

  As he moved onto the Crosstown, heading toward Kathleen's place, he thought of all the elaborate ruses they'd used to convince him that they hated each other. He should have asked so many questions… How could they both go out and do what nobody else in Twin Cities advertising seemed capable of… steal some of the largest accounts in the area, in some cases, accounts that had even been held by New York and Los Angeles agencies.

  So stupid… stupid.

  He was almost afraid of seeing Kathleen. Afraid of what he might do when he saw her beautiful, lying face. He'd never struck a woman… and he did not want to start.

  He gave the car more gas… and hurried.

  ***

  Foster threw her on the bed, held her captive, and mesmerized her with the knife he held out in front of him.

  She could see in his handsome features a different man… the crazed man who had been hiding inside Foster all these years.

  He grabbed the large glass lamp with the rattan shade and hurled it into the corner. The noise it made smashing against the wall made Kathleen clamp her hands over her ears.

  "You bitch," he said again, moving toward her.

  "Stu, what's wrong with you? We're supposed to be working together." The closer he got, the more she scrabbled up the bed to huddle near the headboard.

  "Yeah. And that's why you were packing your bag, huh?"

  She tried to find her voice. Her whole body seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Her throat was dry; her bowels felt loose; her breathing came in ragged, painful bursts. "I just wanted to get out of here so I could take a little time off and-"

  His first swipe with the knife came perilously close to tearing a gash open on her throat

  "Stu, please; please, listen-"

  Without quite being aware of it, she'd begun sobbing, her words lost in her cries.

  His second swipe cleaved the shoulder of her mauve silk blouse and cut a thin, hurting line along the flesh of her upper arm.

  Blood bloomed immediately. She clamped a hand over the wound and rolled sideways on the bed just as he was plunging the knife downward toward her chest.

  "Stu! Please! Don't!"

  She rolled until she was off the bed, scrambling on her hands and knees across the hardwood floor.

  She was trying to reach the door before-

  This time the knife cut a long, curving arc across her back. She screamed. The odd thing was the delayed response of her flesh. She knew she'd been cut, but the pain did not come for long moments after.

  His foot caught her in the stomach and rolled her back against the wall.

  This time, when she started to crawl away, he was too quick for her, his foot against her chest pinning her against the edge of the door frame.

  There was no more pleading on her part. Terror had overcome her ability to make any kind of protest. All she could do was huddle into herself and keep her eyes closed and wait for the final moments.

  ***

  Brolan was driving too fast down the side streets. When he reached Kathleen's, he found that the car had gathered too much momentum to be stopped. He slid past, nearly ploughing into another car parked kerbside. The faint moonlight through the dead, black branches of winter trees did not lend much help. In a pocket of deep shadow, midpoint between the grounds of two large houses, he brought the car to a stop. Within a quarter minute he was on his feet and sliding along the ice-covered street. Foster's car was in Kathleen's driveway. The prospect of finally confronting Foster drove Brolan as nothing else could.

  Then he heard the scream.

  Raising his head, Brolan saw that the only light on in the house was in the rear-Kathleen's bedroom. It was not too difficult to imagine what Foster was doing to her; not when he thought of how lovingly Emma had been cut up.

  Slipping on the stairs, having to grab hold of the black iron railing for purchase, Brolan went up the walk.

  Just as he reached the front door, pushing his way in, he heard a second scream.

  ***

  In the end Foster was about to cut her throat.

  Hearing somebody pounding up the stairs-and suspecting it was Brolan-he found there was no time for real pleasure here. Just expediency.

  He leaned down, grabbed her hair, put the knife to the centre of her throat, and started to slash but-She startled Foster by grabbing on to his leg. As he tried to run from the room, she clung to him like a weight that had been permanently affixed.

  He hit her on top of the head, hoping to break her grip. But still she held to him. He had to drag her to the doorway as he tried to see who was pounding up the stairs.

  "Foster! Foster!"

  So, it was Brolan.

  At Foster's feet, Kathleen now made a series of horrible gasps like that of somebody trying to vomit. He felt her grip loosen as she gave herself entirely up to her death.

  Brolan was on the staircase.

  Coming up fast.

  Foster had to make a quick decision. There was a gable off one of her bedroom windows. He could smash through the glass and land on the gable and let himself down to the ground.

  Or he could-

  As Brolan reached the last step, panting, face sleek with sweat, rage turning his handsome features into a grotesque mask, Foster realized that he had no time to do anything except stand there and defend himself.

  Brolan had decided to leap at him, even though Foster kept his bloody knife in full view.

  He tackled Foster around the waist, trying to get in under the knife Foster wielded. He wasn't quick enough. The knife ripped a bloody trench in his back, running along the left side of his spine. He dropped to one knee just as Foster moved forward, ready to finish him.

  Foster raised the knife over his head and brought it down with slashing fury.

  Brolan hit him directly in the crotch. This time h
e acted quickly enough to inflict damage. Foster screamed and fell back half a step, just enough to make the arc of his downward slashing knife useless. He missed Brolan's shoulder by half a foot.

  As Brolan jumped to his feet, he smashed Foster in the mouth with a quick punch and then grabbed Foster's hand, trying to pry the knife loose.

  But as he moved in, Foster lunged forward. This time he cut Brolan right across the chest. Brolan fell against Foster, once again finding the man's wrist, and twisting it so he could shake the knife free.

  Foster tried to raise the knife at such an angle that he could cut Brolan again, even though Brolan still had hold of his wrist.

  He was just about to do this when Brolan surprised him, snapped Foster's wrist around so that the knife was now pointing to Foster's stomach.

  "You son of a bitch," Brolan said. "I owe you this."

  Brolan concentrated all his weight and motion into the knife handle so that when it tore into Foster, it went in deep, ripping through vital organs in its path.

  Brolan watched blood bloom in Foster's mouth and nose. Foster's eyes got huge and ugly.

  Brolan kept ramming the knife in.

  "P-please," Foster said, blood so thick inside his mouth that his tongue could scarcely form words.

  "Is that what Emma did, Foster? Begged you to live?"

  Deeper, deeper the knife went, cutting, killing.

  "P-please," Foster said again.

  But it was too late. Blood had started coming from his ears now. His pants were filled with a horrible stench.

  Brolan let him slip to the floor.

  From Kathleen's bedroom door he could see a hand flung carelessly, like the limb of a doll that had been tom off and cast down.

  Chest heaving, his wounds starting to hurt, Brolan stepped over the bloody form of Foster and made his way down the hall to Kathleen.

  Death had robbed her of beauty. She lay in her own blood, staring up at the high ceiling. He tried not to notice how viciously her throat had been cut.