by Tim Kizer
He stared at the body for a while, formulating the plan of action. When he was done thinking, he poured some bleach on the tips of the fingers of the dead man’s right hand and then spent two minutes scrubbing under the fingernails with the toothbrush from the mirror cabinet. There could be bits of Richard’s skin or traces of his blood under the man’s fingernails, which could lead the police to him, and they had to be cleaned up. He repeated this procedure on the man’s left hand and took the bleach back to the kitchen.
The man in the trunk was not Don, as you might think. The guy's name was Stan. Richard killed him five and a half years ago, when he lived in Buffalo. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, by the way. Stan turned out to be a tough guy; he even managed to tie Richard up. He had met Stan in a bar. They had been friends for three months before he killed him.
You want to know how he managed to free himself and dispatch Stan? He got lucky. He put an expression of excruciating pain on his face, pretending to have a heart attack. The trick worked; Stan became curious and bent over him, at which moment Richard grabbed him by the T-shirt (that was Stan’s big mistake: he had tied Richard’s hands in front of him instead of behind his back), pulled him closer, and dug his teeth into the guy’s ear. He almost bit the damn ear off! Stan squealed with pain and started to punch him. Richard brought him down to the floor, rolled him onto his back, and then pummeled him on the head with his interlocked hands until he lost consciousness. Then he strangled Stan, without waiting for him to come to.
He had killed Stan at his own place, which wouldn’t have been a problem if he lived in a house with a garage. But since he resided at an apartment complex at the time, he had to find a way to move the body to his car without anyone noticing. The good thing was that there were no security cameras in the complex.
Richard was glad the body fit in the trunk, because if it hadn’t, he would have had to cut it in two. It sounds disgusting, but what about, say, the valorous John Rambo, one of the good guys, who tore his enemies to a dozen, or more, pieces with grenades and bazookas? If he can do it, then Richard Brower can do it, too. Irrefutable logic, isn't it?
Richard cast his mind back to the moment he had first seen Stan naked. His tanned body was superb—muscular chest, washboard stomach, brawny legs. It deserved to be on the cover of the Playgirl magazine. He wished he had a body like that.
Twirling the knife in his hand, Richard asked himself whether he should cut off the bitten ear now or right before he dumped the body. There was no question that the ear had to be removed: it had his teeth marks, which could be used to identify him as the killer. He picked the second option. He figured that the less blood was spilled in his apartment, the better.
He placed the zipper bag and the knife in a duffel bag, which also contained Stan’s shorts, T-shirt, and underpants, and closed the trunk. Then he pushed the trunk on the cart, moved it to the front hall, and returned to the bedroom to get the duffel bag. He set the bag next to the cart. Before departing, he checked the living room and the bedroom for any incriminating evidence he had missed while vacuuming three hours earlier.
It was ten minutes to midnight when he left his apartment. No one saw him roll the cart with the trunk down the hall to the elevator. He was alone in the elevator all the way to the parking garage. He didn’t feel nervous as he hauled the cart to his Ford Explorer. The garage was deserted and quiet, the tapping of his footsteps and the squeaking of the cart’s wheels the only sounds. It took him some effort to load the trunk into the SUV, but he enjoyed doing it. Handling the bodies of the people you had defeated was the most pleasant thing in the world. After closing the Explorer’s back door, he folded the cart and put it in the back of the car. Starting the engine, Richard thought that the city should be praising him for what he had done. However, he had no doubt that people wouldn't even think of doing it. As he drove through the parking garage, he decided that it was too dangerous to return to his apartment. He would have to spend the night at a hotel. He would leave the state tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
He dumped Stan’s body in the woods near Orchard Park Reservoir, twenty miles southeast of Buffalo. He elected not to bury the corpse. He didn’t care if the body was found since it would be practically impossible to prove that he had killed Stan. He breathed a sigh of relief when he got back in the car and headed for the highway. Later that night he chopped the trunk to pieces, which he then tossed into a garbage container in Lackawanna. As for the ear he’d bitten, he cut it up and threw it in the river.
Stan’s body was found two weeks later.
As far as Richard knew, Stan’s case remained unsolved.
2.
Susie went to bed at half past midnight.
"Maybe this guy will call tomorrow," she said to Richard as he stood at the doorway of the second-floor guest bedroom.
"Maybe.”
“Don’t forget to check the locks on the front door and the windows. That woman might come back."
Susie didn’t have to advise Richard to check the locks since it was already in his plans. The mention of the mysterious woman made him think about the shoe: he should take it with him to his bedroom.
Walking downstairs, Richard asked himself if there was a way to ensure that the hooker wouldn’t run away. He believed she was unlikely to do it—after all, getting two hundred dollars a day for sitting on your ass was a great deal to someone like Susie—but the chance still existed. The most effective measure Richard could think of was to cuff the prostitute to the bed. That, of course, would have scared Susie and made her uncooperative, so he rejected this option. In the end, he figured that it didn’t really matter if Susie stayed or left. He would find a replacement within a couple of hours if he needed to.
Fifteen minutes before heading for the master bedroom, he checked the locks on the front and the back doors and every window: all of them were engaged.
In the middle of the night, he was awakened by a cold and wet sensation on his arm. He opened his eyes, switched on the lamp, and scanned the bed for the cause of that sensation. When he found it, he grimaced with disgust: it was a dead mouse whose belly had been ripped open. He saw its blood on his forearm.
"Shit," he muttered. "What the hell.”
With a wry face, Richard picked up the mouse by the tail and tossed it out the window. As soon as he did it, a gray cat hopped up on the windowsill. It stretched out its neck, probably looking for the mouse. Richard reckoned it was this cat that had brought the mouse to his bed. He had never seen it before and had no idea whether it was stray or domestic.
The cat meowed and jumped down on the floor.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" Richard asked, staring at the cat as it walked toward the door. "How did you get here?"
He brought his blood-stained forearm to his eyes. Then he sighed, got up from the bed, and headed to the bathroom. Frankly, the sight of the dead mouse had scared him, and he was ashamed of that.
Keeping his eyes half-closed in order to prevent himself from fully waking up, he washed his arm and returned to his bed. He quickly fell asleep, but a few seconds before he did, he heard a strange knock. Without lifting his head from the pillow, he looked at the door. It was open; there was a woman in the doorway. The woman stepped into the hallway and disappeared. For a moment, Richard thought he had just seen Mary. This thought went away as soon as he lost sight of the stranger's silhouette.
"Who is it?" Richard asked in a whisper.
The only answer was the soft slap of bare feet on the wooden floor.
3.
He jumped from the bed and darted a look at the clock, feeling disquieted. A quarter past nine. Had he missed Don's call?
He stepped out of the room and called out loudly, “Susie, are you up?”
As he walked towards Susie’s bedroom, he heard the hooker’s voice from downstairs: “I’m here.”
Richard turned around and went to the top of the stairs.
“What are you doing?” he asked, leaning against the ba
nister in the second-floor hall. He still couldn’t see Susie.
“I’m having breakfast.”
“Did anyone call?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Richard returned to the master bedroom and got into the bathroom. Standing under the jets of water in the shower, he mentally reconstructed the dream he had had last night. That woman had been a dream. Of course, she had. It was all because of Susie's bullshit about a woman in blue jeans.
When Richard walked out of the bathroom, he saw Susie. She was standing in the hallway, smiling, with a beer bottle in her right hand.
"You’re so sexy, honey," she remarked. “Those boxers look good on you.”
For some reason, Richard felt a prick of shame for being almost naked in front of Susie. Good thing he didn’t have a boner at the moment; he would never have heard the end of it from Susie if he had.
He should have put the robe on.
On the other hand, it was his house and he could be as nude as he pleased.
"Want some beer?" Susie asked. "You don’t have to get dressed. I’m used to seeing men in their underwear."
Richard put on shorts and accepted the bottle from her.
"How did you sleep, honey?"
They headed for the stairs.
"Some cat got in the house and brought a dead mouse to my bed," Richard said.
Susie laughed. "A mouse?"
"Yes. A mouse."
Susie went on laughing.
"What's so funny?" Richard asked. "Yesterday you told me about that woman, and last night I saw her in a dream. Are you trying to drive me insane?"
"You still don't believe me, do you?" Susie sighed. "Honey, you’re as stubborn as... Why are you so distrustful?"
"Just forget it." Richard waved his hand.
"By the way, where is that shoe?"
"What shoe?" Richard yawned.
"The shoe that woman lost. Where is it now? Did you take it to your bedroom? Did you throw it away?"
Richard stopped, then turned around and went to the master bedroom, where he was surprised to find that the shoe, which he had left on the nightstand last night, was gone. Frowning, he came back to Susie and asked, "Did you take the shoe?”
“Have you lost it?”
“It was in my bedroom and now it’s gone.”
“I didn’t touch it.”
It suddenly occurred to Richard that without the shoe he might start doubting Susie’s story about a woman in blue jeans.
But it will only happen if I forget that I’ve seen that sneaker with my own eyes, Richard thought. My memory is not that poor.
“Who took it then?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was that woman.”
Could he afford to purge the woman in blue jeans from his mind?
Not if she was plotting against him; not if she was a threat.
“How did she get in? All the doors and windows were locked.”
“Maybe you misplaced it? It happens to everyone.”
Richard ran his hand over his forehead and let out a sigh. "All right. Never mind."
He motioned Susie to follow him to the living room, where he handed her the telephone receiver and said, “We’re going to call Don. If he says he’s busy, you’ll ask him to call you back. If a woman picks up the phone, you’ll hang up.”
“What do you want me to talk to him about?”
“You’re going to tell him that you miss him and that you want to meet him tomorrow morning.”
“At Olive Garden?”
“Yes, at Olive Garden, at eleven o’clock.”
Richard took the piece of paper with Don’s number from his shorts pocket.
“What if he can’t meet at eleven?”
“Then any time between eleven and four.”
“Okay, got it.”
Richard dialed Don’s number and headed for the kitchen, where the second phone was located. When he was one step away from the doorway, Susie announced, “It says that the number is no longer in service.”
“What?”
Richard took the handset from Susie and dialed the number again. He received the same message as Susie: this number is no longer in service.
Well, it looked like he had no choice but to wait for Don to call.
4.
Don must call today, Richard had no doubt about it. If Don loved Mary, he ought to feel the need to talk to her every day. Yesterday, something must have prevented him from calling. He might have been out of the country.
Maybe he had been in jail.
All in all, everything was going fine. Today Susie and Don would set the place and time of their meeting. Richard decided to capture Don in the morning because he believed there would be fewer potential witnesses. Catching Don would be a piece of cake, thanks, in part, to his marvelous disguise.
Richard got a cold feeling in his stomach when he thought that he was incredibly close to capturing Mary’s lover.
The plan was simple. First, he was going to lure Don into the car. Then he would put him to sleep with chloroform and haul him home.
Now he had to figure out the specifics.
What was he going to do with Don when he brought him home? He would interrogate him. After that, he would play it by ear.
What was he going to do about Susie? Would he just say goodbye to the hooker and never think about her again?
Richard squinted at Susie, who was watching a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond.
She lived a dangerous lifestyle. One of these days a client would stab her to death or break her neck in a drug-induced rage. No one would be surprised if something like that happened to her. She might eventually catch AIDS. Or die of a drug overdose. God knew how many prostitutes had died of a drug overdose.
Dammit! When the hell is this asshole going to call?
The telephone rang.
"Susie," Richard called loudly. "Pick up the phone."
While Susie made her way to the phone, Richard went to the kitchen, grabbed the cordless handset, and returned to the living room.
"Hello." Susie spoke in a hoarse voice, just as they had agreed.
Richard pressed the Talk button and put the handset to his ear, his hand covering the mouthpiece.
“Hello. Mary, is it you?”
Richard immediately recognized Don’s voice. Looking into Susie’s eyes, he nodded, letting her know that she was speaking to Don. Susie winked in response.
"Yes, honey, it's me,” she said into the phone.
“What happened to your voice?”
“I caught a cold a couple of days ago. Just my luck.” Susie eased into the chair. "I missed you so much. Sorry I didn’t call you. I was visiting my mom in Fresno.”
“I missed you, too.” Don sighed. “You didn’t answer my text messages.”
“I lost my cell. I’ll get a new one today or tomorrow.”
“I thought something bad happened to you. You really scared me, Mary.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I should have given you a call. I promise not to do it again.”
Holding the receiver with his right hand, Richard made an okay sign with his left hand to indicate that Susie was doing a good job so far.
“It’s all right,” Don said.
What was he going to do if Don asked Susie about the plan?
"I thought of you the whole time I was in Fresno."
He would ask Susie to tell Don that she didn’t want to talk about it on the phone.
“I can’t wait to see you. Are you busy right now?”
After a short pause, Susie replied, “I’m not feeling very well. Let’s meet tomorrow.”
“Okay. You should drink lots of hot tea with lemon. It always helps me when I have a cold.”
“I’ve been drinking gallons of tea with lemon.”
Richard tapped his watch with his index finger.
“What time can you meet?”
"Let's meet at an Olive Garden in Lynnwood tomorrow morning at eleven.”
“Do you know the address?”
“I’ll look it up.”
“See you tomorrow, honey. I love you.”
“I love you, too. See you tomorrow.”
Richard gestured Susie to end the conversation.
"Good bye, sweetie.”
“Good bye."
Susie hung up and looked at Richard, her eyes shining with excitement. “How did I do, honey?”
"You did well.” Richard put the receiver back in its cradle. “You’re a natural born actress.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. The phone call had gone much smoother than he had expected.
Susie took the TV remote and switched on the TV.
"Do you want me to leave now or—?” She turned her face to Richard.
Richard thought for a few seconds, then glanced at his watch and replied, “I’ll give you a lift home in an hour.”
He suddenly realized that, even though he had known Susie for a few days, he had somehow gotten attached to her. He might even miss her when she was gone.
When Richard pulled up in front of the apartment house where Susie lived, Susie said, “If you need a housesitter again, call me, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Would you like to have a cup of coffee at my place?”
Richard accepted the offer.
CHAPTER 9
1.
Kathy entered the room a few minutes after the waiter brought Richard his shrimp pasta. She was sporting a new dress, or maybe Richard had already forgotten what she had been wearing on their previous encounters. She had a pearl necklace on, which he had not seen before.
"What a nice surprise!" Kathy said. "I haven't seen you in a while. Can I sit with you?"
"Sure. I'm glad to see you, too."
Richard looked at his watch. A quarter past seven.
What was he going to do if Kathy blackmailed him?