by Osborne, Jon
Nice place. Fifteen thousand square feet at a bare minimum. Thirty-foot-high arched ceilings and expensive Italian marble tile on the floors. African art and sculptures scattered throughout. I breathe in deeply through my nostrils and treat my olfactory sense to what I’m experiencing right now. The entire place smells of money.
Pretty soon, though, it will smell of something else.
Something coppery.
Gathering Dinah Leach into both of my arms now, I ascend the spiral staircase edged with a gold-leaf design that sits just off the elaborate foyer. In the master bedroom upstairs, I lay the reality-TV star’s unconscious body across the massive king-sized bed and lean over before putting my ear to her mouth, listening for the sounds of breathing.
Faint, but still there, tickling the tiny hairs on my left cheek.
Just then, a brilliant flash of lightning flares outside the second-floor bedroom windows of her eight-million-dollar dwelling, followed almost immediately by another deafening crash of thunder that gives my heart a terrible start.
I smile at my own skittishness, and then I begin to laugh.
Hurricane Allison has arrived just in time for the festivities to begin.
Humming softly to myself beneath my breath, I remove Dinah Leach’s Jimmy Choo shoes and unbutton her tailored DKNY jeans before sliding the fancy denim down her hips and pulling them over her ankles. Another powerful wave of anticipation floods through my chest at the sight of the bright-pink Victoria’s Secret thong that stares back at me.
Only the finest in lingerie for Atlanta’s queen of the boob tube, right?
Climbing up onto the bed on top of her, I straddle Dinah Leach’s motionless body and position my palms just beneath her belly button. Then I begin to push gently. Urine leaks out of her bladder and spreads across the crotch of her expensive pink panties.
Feeling dizzy, I pull off the soiled undergarments and slide the panties over her mouth and nose like a blindfold, wanting her to breathe in her own waste, to taste her own sin.
Just like I’d been forced to do all those years ago.
Swinging my feet back down onto the floor, I grab Dinah Leach roughly by her ankles and pull her body over to the edge of the bed before taking off her shirt and unsnapping her matching Victoria’s Secret bra. Tossing both pieces of clothing to one side, I remove the eight-inch-long carving knife from my waistband.
And then I begin to cut.
Dinah Leach’s bright green eyes immediately fly open shock and terror as I dig the gleaming steel even deeper into the tender flesh of her surgically enhanced left breast, my sharp knife completely overriding the effects of the powerful sleep drug. A bloodcurdling scream explodes from her mouth.
A well-placed punch to her face immediately shuts her up again, knocking her out cold.
“Just go to sleep, princess,” I whisper into her ear, stroking the woman’s hair softly. “It’ll be so much easier on you that way.”
Working the knife on her breast in a circular, sawing fashion, I wince a little at the slight popping noise it makes as it separates completely from her torso. I balance the gelatinous blob in my right hand, savor its surprising weight in my palm, enjoy its heft.
Five minutes later, her right breast and labia come off in similar fashion.
Tossing Dinah Leach’s sexual organs to the floor in a bloody pile of flesh as yet another deafening explosion of thunder rocks the mansion all the way down to its foundation; I wipe a thin line of perspiration from my forehead and glance down at my watch. Time for me to get the fuck out of here. Tyree Leach will be home any minute now following his basketball squad’s humiliating 110-79 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers earlier in the night, and any way you looked at it, tangling with a six-foot-nine professional athlete sporting an Afro roughly the size of a mushroom cloud isn’t a good idea.
Gathering Dinah Leach’s unconscious body into my arms again, I cradle her as gently as a newborn baby as I leave the bedroom and descend the staircase before exiting the house.
Out in the heart of the storm, the howling wind and torrential rain immediately buffet my body from all directions, slamming me hard in the chest and threatening to push me off balance as I struggle down the long driveway. Luckily, the added weight in my arms steadies me somewhat against the gale-force gusts. Thank God for small favors. Or thank Hurricane Allison. Either one of them would do at this point.
Fifty feet away from the ambulance, the sharp edge of an airborne street sign suddenly whistles through the air and catches me just above the left eyebrow, opening up a wicked red gash that instantly starts gushing bright red blood.
Stumbling forward, I nearly drop Dinah Leach’s body to the ground. Still, I’m not in the least bit concerned about the possibility of leaving any of my DNA behind. No worries here. The rain is my friend. Hell, all of nature is my friend tonight. The rain will wash my blood away.
But never – not in a million fucking years – will it ever wash her blood away.
Finally reaching the ambulance forty-five seconds later, I dump her unconscious body onto the ground like a sack of drenched potatoes and fight with the powerful wind to open up the back doors to the ambulance. Ten seconds after that, in she goes.
Stepping into the back of the vehicle after her, I place her body inside an unzipped body bag that I’ve positioned on a waiting stretcher, pausing a moment and looking around at our surroundings. Nowhere near as comfortable as the fancy limousines she’s used to riding in, of course, but almost dead people can’t be choosers, now can they?
Of course they can’t.
Especially on a night like this.
CHAPTER 35
Hitting the flashers and siren again, I back the ambulance carefully down Dinah Leach’s driveway and turn on the windshield wipers full-blast to whisk away the torrential rain.
God, it’s a mess out here.
And I fucking love it.
I concentrate on the road in front of me while the frenetic sound of the wipers fills my brain like a million swarming mosquitoes. The only other vehicles on the streets right now belong to emergency responders on their way to various points of trouble all around the besieged city – exactly the reason my mother and I had chosen to put our beautifully crafted game plan into action under these very specific conditions and on this very specific night.
With law-enforcement officials and emergency responders already stretched to the point of snapping dealing with all of the fallout from Hurricane Allison, I can really take my time here and get everything exactly right. Not only am I a kid in a candy store right now; I’m a kid in a candy store with what amounts to an unlimited budget.
I can take whatever I want.
An Atlanta PD patrol car whizzes by in the opposite direction at seventy miles an hour, blue-and-red lights flashing and its powerful sirens screaming bloody murder to let everyone in the vicinity know that the men inside the vehicle are in a goddamn hurry here.
I smile so widely that it makes my jaw ache.
Hey there, officers! Got some pretty interesting cargo in the back of my rig here if you’d care to take a look. No? You’re too goddamned busy right now? What about a murder? Would something like that interest you at all? How about if the victim is famous? Still no? I see. Well, I understand, officers. Have a nice day. And thank you so very much for your service to our community.
Leaning forward and adjusting the police scanner to the correct frequency, I listen in joyfully as the reports crackle over the electrified airwaves.
“Flooding at 187 Mockingbird Lane. Infant trapped in an upstairs bedroom. Mother’s frantic and screaming that she can’t get to her baby”
“Broken leg and multiple contusions at 23 Jamaica Way. Address belongs to City Councilman Bryan Manlow. If you’re a Republican, head over that way.”
I wince at the ill-timed joke. There went somebody’s job.
“Call regarding a ninety-one-year-old man having trouble breathing at 19420 La Serena Drive. History of heart problems. Bett
er hurry.”
Half an hour later, I pull the ambulance over to the side of the road about a quarter of a mile away from the hospital and make my way into the back of the vehicle. Unzipping the body bag constructed of industrial-strength rubber that I’ve left open just a sliver, a hot rush of adrenaline bolts through my veins at the sight of Dinah Leach’s lovely face.
There she is, just waiting for me.
The woman is conscious now, but just barely. The reality-television star gasps for air through the soiled panties covering her face, but she is far too woozy to do much of anything else.
When I slide the panties up onto her forehead, she widens her bloodshot green eyes in confusion. “What’s happening?” she breathes. “Who are you? Where am I?”
I smile down at her. She looks so goddamn beautiful in this state that I can’t resist the urge to lean in for a quick kiss, tasting her expensive lipstick on my tongue as I do so. Once again, much like the woman’s jeans and perfume, she’d obviously bought the good stuff. Estee Lauder, judging by the flavor of it.
Regretfully breaking the kiss, I slide the panties back over her face and shut the body bag once more, zipping it up all the way this time. No need to make a big show over our good-byes, right? After all, I wouldn’t want anyone to feel embarrassed here.
Making my way back into the driver’s seat up front, I quickly trade in my bloody clothes for a pair of brand-new scrubs, knowing that I’ll need to the look the part for what will come next. Hell, looking the part is half the battle here.
Ten minutes later – having given Dinah Leach sufficient time to suffocate inside the body bag – I wheel the vehicle up to the emergency-room entrance of the hospital and take my place waiting in line.
The scene around the hospital is an absolute madhouse, but it isn’t very long before three EMTs come hustling up to meet me.
“What do we have here?” one of the EMTs asks me as I roll down the driver’s-side window. He’s shielding his eyes from the pounding rain that’s still pouring down from the heavens above.
I shake my head sadly and tell the man the bad news in a solemn voice. “I’m afraid this one is just a drop-off for some post-mortem work,” I say. “Forty-two-year-old female. It’s that Dinah Leach chick from the Real Housewives show.”
The EMT lifts his eyebrows in surprise. “Holy shit. You don’t say. You’ve got to be kidding me. How’d she die?”
“Overexposure.”
“To what?”
Me, I think.
Out loud, I say, “Hell, I don’t know, pal. Too much excitement, I suppose. Heart gave out on her, is my guess. Anyway, the docs are going to have to cut her open to find out for sure. They don’t pay me enough to make those kind of calls.”
The EMT laughs. “Yeah, I hear ya there. Me either.”
He pauses and studies my face. “Hey, are you new around here or something? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”
Like everything else in my mother’s flawless plan, my lie has been prepared well in advance. “Just helping out,” I say, just another good ol’ boy commiserating with a colleague deep in the heart of Dixie. “Studying to become an EMT at the community college. They said they wanted me to get some real-time experience and lend a hand because of the storm and all. Pretty exciting job you’ve got here, huh?”
The EMT nods. “Yeah, too exciting sometimes. Anyway, pop the locks on the back doors here and we’ll take her off your hands.”
I do as I’m instructed. A moment later, the other two EMTs extract Dinah Leach’s lifeless body from the back of the ambulance before slamming shut the doors again and wheeling her into the hospital.
The remaining EMT pounds once on the ambulance’s roof to let me know I can take off. “Thanks a lot, buddy. Good luck in school. I guess I’ll see ya around whenever you graduate.”
I smile at him and press down my foot lightly against the accelerator. My heart thrums gleefully in my chest as I pull away from the absolutely perfect final act of my absolutely perfect first murder.
See me around? I think.
Not if you’re lucky, pal. Not if you’re fucking lucky.
PART VI
TROPICAL DEPRESSION
“Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: In My wrath I will unleash a violent wind and in My anger hailstones and torrents of rain will fall with destructive fury.” – Book of Ezekiel, chapter 13, verse 13.
CHAPTER 36
More than a year after my exquisitely flawless murder of Dinah Leach down in Atlanta, Georgia, I sit in my rental car outside the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office in Cleveland, Ohio on a snowy winter’s night and idly thumb through a slender copy of People magazine while listening to Boy George work his way through a soulful rendition of “The Crying Game”.
The cover of my magazine features a very pretty woman about the same age as me. Her short blonde hair frames a beautiful face punctuated by a pair of pale blue eyes. Her milky-white skin would have looked right at home in a Noxzema advertisement within the glossy pages of my magazine. A small brown mole sits just above the right side of her mouth. Her lips appear thin-but-kissable – if you’re into that kind of thing, which I most certainly am not, my brief lip-lock with Dinah Leach all those months ago notwithstanding.
But Dana Whitestone is a good-looking woman, no debating that simple fact. Hell, she’s almost as beautiful as my mother.
Almost as beautiful as me.
According to the article I’m reading at the moment, the FBI agent has never been married. I wonder why. Someone as attractive and successful as her should have been hitched years ago. The combination of her youthful good looks and cerebral nature would have presented quite the catch for most men: a real piece of arm-candy with a highly functioning brain to match.
I shake my head to chase away the thoroughly insignificant thought. Isn’t any of my business why she’d never gotten married. I’m sure she has her reasons. We all have our reasons for what we do. Still, the FBI agent is another one of those people who doesn’t quite deserve all the publicity she’s been getting lately. For what? For doing her job? So she’d caught a few serial killers over the past couple of years and had bumped her head in a minor plane crash where hardly anybody had died at all. BFD. What was all the fuss about?
I press my painted lips together in irritation, knowing that it’ll take a lot more than just a few magazine articles singing her praises as the top law-enforcement official in the country to escape my special list.
Though Dana Whitestone doesn’t know it yet, she’ll be the one to ultimately ensure my own fame. And I know exactly how she’ll do it, too. Exactly when she’ll do it, as well, for that matter. My mother has spelled out everything for me in excruciating detail, right down to killing blow. And the climax my mother has penned for this story is an absolute beauty. A worthy conclusion to this thrilling ride. Pretty soon, Dana Whitestone will know how the story ends, too. Know it until she begs for me to just put her out of her misery already and let sweet, sweet death take her away.
I narrow my beautiful green eyes when the celebrated FBI agent finally steps out of the coroner’s office twenty minutes later, punching in a number on her cellphone as she does so. No doubt the self-absorbed bitch is giving yet another interminable interview to the press, gleefully recounting her hopelessly boring story for the billionth goddamn time and grinning like the goddamn Cheshire Cat the entire time.
Big mistake, honey, I think. Because I’m not the sort of woman you should fuck around with. Neither is my mother, for that matter.
I chuckle softly as I watch her. I just can’t help myself. I’m feeling especially catty tonight, that much seems apparent. As catty as I’ve ever felt before in my entire life. And why not? I’m looking good tonight. My dress and shoes and jewelry have been selected precisely for the occasion, as have my hair, makeup and underwear – a bright pink Victoria’s Secret thong and matching bra worn in honor of the late and not-so-great Dinah Leach. Any way you looked at it, I was
ready for this.
Still, Dana Whitestone represents the last name on my list. If she’s really lucky, she might even survive the night due to that annoying little technicality. No guarantees, though, of course.
For now, though, I’d simply need to content myself with watching her from a distance. Watching her and waiting. When the time is absolutely right, that was when I’d spring out from the shadows like a rapist in the night and catch her completely off-guard. Teach her the lesson that my mother had taught me so well all those years ago.
Pride cometh before a fall.
That being said, it doesn’t mean I can’t have a little bit of fun with her right now, does it? Of course it doesn’t. Why the hell should I wait any longer? Why not get the festivities underway while I’m looking this good?
Stepping out of my rental car, I approach the two men in overalls who are loading boxes into the back of the coroner’s office building while the FBI agent continues to gab away into the cellphone at her ear, much too preoccupied with her own story to notice my movements. The men’s pupils widen in admiration as they take in my stunning feminine beauty, causing me to shake my head in bemusement.
Men. They’re all the same. Only interested in one thing. Eight years old or eighty, some things never changed.
“Hey there, boys,” I say, sounding exactly like the confident woman I’d always dreamed I’d be. “You two interested in making a little bit of money tonight? If you play your cards right, there might even be a couple of blowjobs in it for you, too.”
***
As the older and taller of the two workers present in the parking lot of the coroner’s office – not to mention the tougher of the pair – Larry Randle spoke first.
At fifty-seven years old and on work release from prison for the ninth time, he’d begun to suspect lately that working for a living just wasn’t going to cut it. Too much bullshit to deal with. Too many asses to kiss. Hell, being in prison was actually easier than living in the real world. He wanted to go back to the joint. After all, three hots and a cot were certainly nothing to sneeze at.