Chapter 73
The caterer showed up. The bartender showed up. Even the jazz combo showed up. Peter schmoozed with the band and learned that the trumpeter doubled on sax. That was a bonus Peter had not expected. His refrigerator was stuffed with his second-favorite champagne, Iron Horse Russian, and he had a half-dozen bottles of a 1999 Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin for himself and the guests who showed up early enough to share it. This was Peter’s return to life and society.
Guests began arriving soon after the appointed hour and Peter greeted them with a glass of champagne - one for them and one for himself. Peter had no special talent for drinking although he was usually able to hold his booze. Tonight, he drank well beyond his modest ability and blacked out. The last thing he remembered when he woke up was dancing with the Polish reporter from Chicago.
When Peter opened his eyes, for some reason he expected to be in bed and see the Polish reporter next to him. But he was not in bed, he was on the living room sofa, fully dressed. And the woman he was seeing through his bloodshot slits looked like Kathryn. She was staring at him from an overstuffed chair that she had pulled right up to the sofa.
Peter was very booze sick. He hurt more than he could ever remember hurting from booze. He hurt in places he didn’t even know existed. His teeth hurt. Seeing Kathryn made him even sicker. He closed his eyes hard and opened them slowly, thinking she might not be there when he opened them again.
She was still there, but he could see, when he opened his eyes again, that it wasn’t Kathryn. She was wearing Kathryn’s clothing, her hair was done identically to Kathryn’s and her makeup was the same. She wore Kathryn’s glasses and jewelry. She had Kathryn’s overstuffed tits, but it was not Kathryn.
“I waited for your guests to leave so we could be alone,” said the familiar voice. Peter was frozen in place by pain and fear. He could see that the woman was holding a knife. He didn’t answer and he didn’t move. He continued to stare at the woman and especially at the hand with the knife. It was his 8-inch Henckels Professional S chef’s knife, which he prided himself in keeping as sharp as a razor.
“We can be together now that she’s gone.”
Suddenly, Peter knew that this was Kathryn’s older sister Candace. He had only met her a few times early in his marriage to Kathryn. Candace was nearly always in a “supervised setting” as a guest of the state. No one was supervising her now. Peter knew then that he was going to die. She had been stalking him and trying to drive him mad, and now she was coming to finish the job in person. This realization focused his damaged mind as much as was possible after a torrent of champagne.
Peter still didn’t move or speak, as if that would protect him from harm. He thought of the woodcock that he hunted with Rex. The little game birds would often freeze in place when Rex pointed them. He would find Rex nose to beak with them, neither animal moving a muscle. Peter was the little woodcock, about to die.
“I know you didn’t love her. You told me that all the time, but she made you stay with her, didn’t she? Oh, I know how bossy she could be, Peter. Kathryn and Mama made me go away all the time. Kathryn was a bad person. She called me a witch whenever something broke or got spilled. She told Mama that I did it because I was bad. They made me go away. But this time, I made her go away. I made her go away for us. We can be together now.”
“Bed. Red. Dead,” Candace whispered seductively as she stared down at Peter’s ashen face.
“I knew you wanted me and not her. You told me that time and time again. I listened for your voice, and your voice always came to me. It’s magic, really.” Candace was speaking in a singsongy voice, the kind of voice a little girl uses to talk to her dolly.
Peter said his first word since waking up: “Magic.”
“Yes, magic, Peter. Do you know what I hated most about her? She was fake. Let me show you how fake she was.” She reached into her blouse with her free hand and fished around inside her bra. She pulled out a breast implant. “This was hers.” She fished around awkwardly again and removed another one. “So was this one.”
Peter’s body heaved and heaved and he threw up in his mouth - a few ounces of acid and bile. He let it dribble out of the side of his mouth onto the sofa.
Peter managed to say, “Water.”
Candace seemed unfazed by, or unaware of, Peter’s distress and brightly chirped, “Let’s go to the kitchen. I can make you a nice cup of tea. You need a lot of looking after.”
Peter managed to stand. His stomach was still heaving out of control. He was dizzy.
Candace said, looking Peter in the eye, “We can go away together and no one will ever keep us apart again. Kathryn’s sleeping, Peter, and she won’t wake up. Mama’s sleeping now too. We’re both free.”
Peter took a second to grasp that his mother-in-law was dead - that Candace had killed her, too.
Peter’s brain began to function again and he said weakly, “I’ll make the tea.” He thought, “Maybe I can hit her with the pot or throw boiling water at her.”
Candace said, “That would be lovely. I know you used to take her a latte every morning in bed. She bragged about that to Mama. You can make me a tea, sir. That would be lovely.” She still had the 8-inch chef’s knife in one hand and one 375cc Mentor high-profile saline implant in the other. She was squeezing then releasing it like an exercise ball.
Peter saw the implant had dark bloodstains on it. He threw up again, this time into the sink. He managed to fill a saucepan with water and put it on the stove.
Candace said, “You’ve been really quiet, Peter. Why won’t you talk to me? Come over here and sit down while we wait for our tea.” She chose the ladderback chair that Peter had been meaning to fix for months. The chair collapsed and Candace along with it. Peter, working on pure animal brain, rushed at her as she lay on the floor and leaped on her like a tiger. He felt a pain he would never forget as the 8-inch chef’s knife plunged into him and his head cracked on the floor.
Peter came to briefly from a semi-coma. He was face down on the floor. He opened one eye and all he could see was a sea of blood as far as the wall. There was a breast implant in the middle of the sea. He felt cold, but no pain and no fear. He couldn’t move and it didn’t bother him. He was bleeding out and didn’t care.
Epilogue
Peter opened his eyes again and saw a lot of little holes. Some lines. A ceiling. The line where the ceiling met the wall. The wall was light green. There were fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The lights hurt his eyes.
“Do you know where you are?” asked a man’s voice.
“Under a ceiling?”
“In St. Mike’s Hospital. That’s where you are. And you’re alive, in case you’re wondering.”
“Nice. Alive. Who are you?”
“Detective Sergeant Mason. I’m the guy who saved your miserable life. No, don’t thank me, it was an accident.”
“I was in an accident?” Peter was pretty drugged up.
“No, someone tried to murder you, and I saw it live on video.”
“What the fuck? I’m thirsty.”
“Here’s some water. I was in our communications room to move a piece of equipment to another location. We had quit real-time active monitoring of your place, but had never turned off the monitoring machines. On our screen, I saw you leap like a tiger on some woman with a knife and I called the EMTs. We have the whole show on tape. After we do all the legal things with the tape, I might give you a copy. That was a hell of a party you had there the night before. Who was that you were banging on the sofa after everyone left? Some young blonde with nice tits.”
“I don’t remember anything. I hurt in places that I didn’t even know I had places before,” Peter groaned. Sergeant Mason looked unimpressed.
“You know, you’re lucky that crazy sister showed up and stabbed you. We would have been on your case for the rest of your life, you sick puppy.”
“I got cleared.” Peter remembered that detail.
“Yeah, that turd-on-a
-stick district attorney dropped the charges, but we know you did it. I guess nobody told you the details of your ex-wife’s murder. Somebody beat her to death and then cut out her breast implants. That’s not a street crime; that’s a hate crime done by a real pervert. All your friends were happy to tell us about your little fetish for breast implants. Us oldtimers on the force remember your lady lawyer from years ago when she was as flat as a board. And your little hooker friend - how do you think she has managed to stay in business so long and not get busted? She was doing favors for a few guys in the department. More fake tits …
“To us it all added up to you doing the crime, buster. No matter what motivated that coward political fuck in the District Attorney’s Office to drop the charges, the department was still gonna get you eventually. Who knew there was some bat-shit crazy sister hearing voices! No, mister, you musta had a horseshoe up your ass to beat that charge, then cheat death, then get the real killer to confess on video and then get enough publicity from it all to sell your bullshit book. By the way, I read it, and it’s crap, but I’ll bet you get on Oprah ’cause you almost died and all. Hey, maybe you could take me on Oprah with you, ’cause I’m the one who saved your miserable life. Whaddya say?”
Peter stared at the holes in the ceiling and asked, “Do you really watch Oprah?” He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
About the Author
James Hockings is a renowned master photographer-turned-writer. He holds a BA from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and an Ontario College Graduate Certificate from the elite Creative Writing program at Humber College in Toronto, Canada.
How to Kill Your Wife is Hockings’ second novel. He has also written Surfing Vietnam, a biographical account of a young man’s coming of age in the U.S. during seven years of the Vietnam War, and two screenplays.
He is currently working on a series of detective novellas, the first will be published soon under the title Four Johns and a Jill, featuring a charmingly mismatched pair of sleuths.
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Table of Contents
Other Books by James Hockings
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Epilogue
About the Author
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