A Fatal Obsession

by James Hayman

  She looked directly into his eyes. “A little later Desdemona asks Othello about her death. A guiltless death I die. I’m sure you remember that line. Is that what you have planned for me?” she asked. “A guiltless death?”

  “Guiltless?”

  “What else but guiltless?”

  “Hardly guiltless,” he said with a creepy smile. “After all I saw you just last night coming on to not one but two men in plain view on the sidewalk just days after breaking up with your doctor friend.”

  Two men? What two men? Could he be referring to the innocent kisses she shared with Luke Nichols and Randall Carter? She supposed he must have been hanging around out of sight as she walked out with Carter and then followed her from the theater to the Toad. And the comment about breaking up with Alex added to her certainty that he’d been stalking her for a while. At least for weeks. Had he also been peering in her windows from his apartment in the building on the corner across the street? Or maybe from the roof? She was usually pretty careful about keeping the shades pulled. But was she always? Could anyone make out the shadows of bodies behind them? It was a disturbing thought. So was the idea of how much time he might have spent in her apartment while she was lying there helpless, taped and wrapped in her own Navajo rug. Had he gone through her private things? Searched through her computer? She didn’t think there was all that much to hide. Still, it was disturbing.

  “It seems you’ve been spying on me.” She spoke the words lightly. Almost as if spying was a harmless and silly thing to do. “Still, those kisses you mentioned were innocent. Not in any way sexual.”

  She sensed his body stiffen as she spoke. Had she made him angry? If so, it was an anger too easily induced. “And, I should remind you, I kissed those men before I had even met you.”

  He seemed to relax as he considered that. “True,” he said. “But we both know you’re not as guiltless as Desdemona. And I think that makes you, how shall I put it? A bad girl who should be punished.”

  She forced a deep-throated sexy laugh. “Punished how?”

  “What would you suggest?”

  She tried to think of something that would amuse him. “Perhaps a spanking?” she said.

  “A spanking? I’ve never tried that. It might be fun. But not nearly as much fun as smothering you on stage would have been. Have you pray’d to-night, Desdemona?”

  Othello’s lines from the play. Spoken just before he’d killed her. Was that what was going to happen now? Was he ready to kill her? It seemed far too soon for any final curtain.

  “Ay, my lord,” she responded.

  “If you bethink yourself of any crime,” he said, “Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,/Solicit for it straight.”

  “Alas, my lord, what do you mean by that?”

  “Well, do it, and be brief; I will walk by;/I would not kill thy unprepared spirit;/

  No; heaven forfend! I would not kill thy soul.”

  “Talk you of killing?” she asked.

  “Ay, I do.”

  Zoe lowered her head and spoke Desdemona’s next line: “Then heaven/Have mercy on me!”

  Tyler raised his right hand as if to strike her. She lowered herself to her knees, sat back on her heels, closed her eyes and waited for the blow. It didn’t come. A minute passed. And still the hand hadn’t struck. What was he waiting for? She opened her eyes and looked up into his face, which wore a commanding smile.

  “For two weeks now I’ve dreamt of nothing so much as playing the Moor to your Desdemona. So no, I’m not really going to kill you. I love you far too much for that. Though in the end I just may have to. After all, that’s the way the play always ends, isn’t it?”

  “Since you know the play, you also know that Desdemona was never faithless. She never cheated on Othello. It was only the lies and jealousy of Iago that made it seem so. Her death was nothing less than the death of innocence.”

  “Sadly, my love, in this house, on this stage, none of us are innocent. Now let me remove your handcuffs so we can enjoy our wine.”

  “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die?”

  “Something like that. But probably not tomorrow.”

  Tyler removed a nasty-looking knife from his pocket and unfolded a black carbon steel blade. She wondered for a moment if this was how it would end.

  “Hold your hands out,” he said.

  She obeyed, and he turned the knife so the sharp edge faced up. He touched the blade against her throat. He seemed to be debating something. Was he fantasizing about gutting her with the damned thing? She stood frozen in place, feeling the point of the blade on her neck. Just as frightening as the knife was his expression. His face had taken on that strange, lost intensity she’d first seen when she’d looked at him across the room at the Laughing Toad.

  “Tyler? Are you all right?” she said, managing to hold in the terror that had begun to overtake her.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Tell me. What’s the matter?”

  Again no answer. Was this the way it was going to end? The way the curtain would come down on her life? She held her breath and waited, her heart beating, her brain frozen, not knowing what he was going to do with the damned thing.

  Finally his face relaxed. His smile returned. He pulled the tip of the blade from her throat, slid it between her hands and pushed up against the plastic. The razor-sharp steel sliced through the flex cuffs as if they weren’t even there. The plastic pieces dropped to the floor. “You know you’re even more beautiful when you’re frightened?” he said.

  And you’re even sicker than I imagined, she thought. I’m going to have to kill you sooner rather than later if I’m to have any chance of survival.

  She watched closely as Tyler refolded the knife and slipped it back into the right side pocket of his pants. She dared to glance down for a split second at the bulge it made and then looked quickly away. Was the knife her best way out of this? If she could somehow get her hands on it, she knew she could do serious damage. Maybe even finish him off. But, big as he was, the only way she would be able to do that was to catch him in an unguarded moment of sexual eagerness. She pictured herself slipping down onto her knees. Unzipping his trousers. Taking him in her mouth and giving him the best blow job in American history. And while she was busily keeping him in the throes of ecstasy, would it be possible to pull the knife from his side pocket?

  Open it. Push it into his gut. And slice it upward as hard as she could. Totally eviscerate him if possible. Do it now, she told herself. Reach for the zipper now before he decides to kill you. But before she could move he smiled at her in a way that made her wonder if he loved her as he claimed or merely loved the idea of cutting her throat.

  Tyler walked back toward his chair to the right of the fireplace and sat down, his eyes never leaving hers.

  Her hands freed from the cuffs, she followed him, took the chair to the left of the fireplace. Picked up the glass from the table next to her. She took a sip of her wine and waited. He took his glass in his hands but didn’t drink right away. Instead he closed his eyes, his face squeezing in on itself just as it had done—could it have only been last night?—for those few moments at the Toad. Then his face relaxed and she could hear him taking long, slow breaths. Trying to calm an anger? Or control his lust? Or silence voices in his head? Perhaps it was the voice of jealousy? The voice of the vengeful Iago? Had she said or done something to set off some kind of seizure? If so, she had to figure out how to keep that from happening again.

  It suddenly occurred to her that by giving him what he wanted sexually, had she then become, in his eyes, a slut? A deceiver? Someone he’d want to kill? The virgin and the whore. He seemed to want it both ways. And that was a problem.

  Chapter 32

  She waited until he opened his eyes again before speaking. “Hasn’t anyone ever loved you, Tyler?” she asked. “Really loved you?” The words came out unplanned. Ad-libbed, as it were. She had no idea how he would react.

  “Yes. Of cour
se. Lots of people.”

  She detected a defensive undertone to his response. “Women?”

  “Of course, women.” The defensiveness was still there. Sexual insecurity? It felt like it to Zoe, but that seemed odd in somebody as strong and relatively attractive as Bradshaw.

  “I’m glad,” said Zoe. “Because you know that you’re worth loving. You’re very smart and you’re very good-looking. You have beautiful brown eyes. Did anyone ever tell you how beautiful your eyes are?” she asked.

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  “No. But if you weren’t keeping me prisoner, if you weren’t threatening to kill me, it wouldn’t be out of the question.”

  Was it hope she saw quickly flitting across his face? Was that cause for her to feel hope as well?

  “If you drove me back to New York, back to my apartment, perhaps we could start over. Rewrite Act I of our script, as it were. Maybe make it a love story instead of a tragedy.”

  “I’m afraid that can’t happen, Zoe. It’s too late. The action has already taken us beyond the point of no return.”

  She looked across at him and smiled gently. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see how it plays out. Meanwhile, let’s enjoy our wine. I think it’s important that I get to know you a little better now that we’re together. And that you get to know me. Not as Desdemona. But as the person I really am. Zoe McCabe.”

  “And why do you want that?”

  “Because Desdemona was a victim. And I am anything but.”

  “A survivor?”

  “Yes.”

  “A survivor who thinks I might be worth loving?”

  “Ultimately, yes. I think you’re a very interesting man.”

  “A leading man?”

  “It’s possible.” At least, she thought, that wasn’t totally a lie. He was interesting. Weird. And scary. But also interesting. She held up her glass. “To you and me, Tyler. To us. Let us not speak of killing, but rather of loving. It doesn’t have to end the way it did in the play.”

  He hesitated.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no way I could possibly hurt you,” she said.

  “Don’t you know you’ve already hurt me? You and those like you. Damaged me deeply. More than once.”

  More than once? Me and those like me? What was he talking about? Should she apologize? She sensed that what she had to do was to soothe his fragile ego.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you. Biting your thumb was the only thing I’ve done that was meant to hurt you. And I only bit it because you frightened me. Terrified me, in fact.”

  “You know perfectly well I’m not talking about my thumb.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t really you. It was others.” They both sat quietly for a moment sipping the wine. Zoe trying to figure out what would happen next. What she should do or say next. She’d always done well at her improv classes at Juilliard, but knowing how to handle Tyler Bradshaw without setting him off was tougher than any improv scene she’d ever played. She took another sip. The wine was delicious. The glass she drank from was long-stemmed, thin and delicate. Was it another potential weapon? She toyed with the idea of tossing the wine in his face, breaking the glass and while he was wiping it out of his eyes, slamming the long, slender shards into his wine-blinded eyes. What then? Run like hell? Or finish the job with the fireplace poker. Even if it didn’t kill him, it would at least give her long enough time to find a way out of the house and out to the road before he caught her. Still, she hesitated. She’d never killed anyone. As a well-brought-up young lady, she’d never physically attacked anyone aside from biting Bradshaw’s thumb and slapping Alex’s face when she walked in and caught him in bed with Call Me Bella. Didn’t know if she could. She glanced again at the bulge the knife made in the pocket of the faded red trousers.

  Getting it and using it seemed like such a long shot. It might be better to play to her strengths.

  “You’re thinking about it again.”

  “What?”

  “Ways of killing me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I always know what people are thinking.”

  She let the comment pass. “How did you get that scar? The one on your neck? It looks quite old.”

  “It is quite old. I was twelve at the time. In the seventh grade.”

  “What happened?”

  “My father tried to rape me,” said Tyler, staring into the glowing coals of the fire and sipping his wine.

  “Dear God. How?”

  He turned and looked at Zoe with what could only be called a sardonic smile. “How? The regular way. At least it’s the regular way when you’re doing it with boys. In the ass, bent double, with my pants down. Don’t look so horrified, Zoe. He did it quite often. Although when I got the scar was the last time he tried it with me. Tucker was easier. He was smaller and didn’t fight back so hard.”

  “And the scar?”

  “It happened the last time. I managed to wriggle free. Ran to the kitchen as fast as I could with my pants and underpants down around my ankles. He leapt up and followed.”

  “He didn’t catch you?”

  “No. His pants and underpants were down around his ankles as well. It’s funny when you think about it. The two of us teetering along mostly naked, one chasing the other, we must have looked like the clown act in some kind of pornographic circus. Anyway, I got to the kitchen first and grabbed a chef’s knife. I turned and slashed at him. I was going for his neck but only managed to cut his cheek, and not very deeply. He grabbed the knife from my hand and slashed back. He didn’t miss.”

  Zoe looked at the long, white scar that ran from Tyler’s left ear all the way down to the bottom of his neck. “He might have killed you.”

  “He might have but I don’t think he wanted to. Not that time. Though I’m sure he would have killed me if it happened again.”

  “Did it?”

  “No. That was the last time he tried raping me. Like I said, Tucker was easier. He wasn’t as dangerous as I was. And the old man knew it.”

  Bradshaw picked up the thousand-dollar bottle of wine and emptied what was left into their two glasses, giving himself about twice as much as he gave her.

  “This is quite a house,” she said, feeling a need to change the subject, to make meaningless conversation. “Very grand. I feel like I should be ringing for the butler.”

  “Sorry. No butler. But the bell for calling one is still here. It’s the buzzer on the floor under one end of the dining room table. The end where the mistress of the house was meant to sit. Still works, though we have no servants to answer when it rings.”

  “Have you always lived here?”

  “Yes. I was born here. My great-grandfather built this house back in the 1890s. It passed from generation to generation and now it’s mine.”

  She sipped again at the wine. Rose from her chair. “May I look at some of the things you have in here?”

  “Of course. You’re my guest.”

  She went to the wall to her left and began a slow circuit of the room, studying the paintings and some family photographs that hung on the walls. A few of what she guessed were Bradshaw’s mother and father. Some without children. Some with two little boys. Some of a couple dressed in the clothes of the 1930s. Bradshaw’s grandparents? Probably. She moved around toward the fireplace and pretended to study a painting that hung over the mantel. A shepherd herding sheep over the brow of a hill. A brass plate on the bottom of the frame identified the work as Day Is Done by someone named Paul van der Vliet. Well painted. Very traditional. And, in Zoe’s view, very boring.

  “Is this a well-known artist?”

  “Yes. Quite. Almost famous. If you like nineteenth-century Dutchmen. A lot of his work hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.”

  As she stood there pretending to study the work her eyes slid to the set of fireplace tools on the hearth. She imagined herself grabbing the poke
r, racing toward her captor and swinging it like a bat against his head. She switched the glass of wine from her right hand to her left. Allowed her fingers to brush against the top of the poker. Could she grab it? Could she do it? Turn and bash his head before he could stop her? She tried to calculate her chances of success. Poker versus knife. Six foot three and two hundred and twenty pounds versus five foot eight and one twenty. She knew even with the element of surprise it wasn’t a battle she was likely to win. And it wouldn’t be much of a surprise. His eyes were no doubt following her every move.

  Probably watching her hand as it touched the poker. But more than that and in its own way more worrisome, she found part of herself wanting to comfort this wounded creature that had captured her more than she wanted to kill it. That was a dangerous feeling. Possibly even suicidal. She took another, longer sip of the expensive Bordeaux, not certain whether she was capable of committing murder.

  In the meantime she supposed the best thing she could do was distract him with conversation and words of love and make sure his glass was always full. Hers as well. She took another sip. The alcohol was calming her nerves. Slowing the beating of her heart. She took another mouthful and told herself to slow down. The idea was to get him drunk. Not herself.

  “Does the house have a name? I always thought houses like this had names.”

  “It did once. My great-grandfather called it Rose Hill. I’m told he was an enthusiastic horticulturist, and the place had large beds of hybrid roses. The name sort of disappeared with the roses. Both were long gone before I was born.”

  “Are your parents still alive? Do they still live here?” And if they do, do you have them locked in one of the bedrooms or maybe even in the hole under the basement floor?

  “No. My mother died when I was nineteen. So did my father.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess we have that in common. My mom died when I was twelve. Automobile accident. How did yours die?”

  Tyler stared into the fireplace. “My father killed her.”

  Zoe frowned. “An accident?”