by Don Potter
“My God. What have I done?” Bill looked at her lifeless form and held his shaking hands close to his face. He broke down and cried. Suddenly the rage returned. “One more time a woman has ruined my life. This will stop. This harlot is the first but won’t be the last. My time has come.”
Bill’s behavior had gone from hysterical to controlled anger. Within moments, he surveyed the situation and developed an instant game plan.
He decided to make this look like a break-in and robbery. She was taking a nap. Heard someone at the door. Without thinking, she opened it and her attacker forced his way in and killed the woman in the ensuing struggle.
Bill was about to wipe off finger prints from anything he might have touched. Then he realized his DNA on the sheets and in her. So he decided to leave everything alone. Without a police record, his name was not in the system. So if worse came to worse and his name came into the case, he would tell them the story about how she picked him up, they had sex, and he left never to return Most of the truth will work, he thought. Of course, he’d be in trouble at home, but he was always in trouble at home.
Bill stood over his victim and studied her as one might study a work of art. He felt physically powerful and in complete control. This change was welcomed, but Bill also realized that something else was changing. He didn’t know what it was, but it was coming on with a force of its own.
After a few moments, he looked at his watch then stroked his chin as he contemplated his next move. His mother might provide the perfect alibi. Her fuzzy memory could work to his advantage. He left, making sure no one saw him, and soon was on the 101 Freeway headed toward Tarzana less than five miles away.
He parked around the corner from the senior home and walked in the front door. The receptionist was talking with a guest, so Bill moved briskly down the hall to his mother’s room.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I had a few minutes and thought I’d drop by. Let’s go out to the visiting area.”
“Not dressed like this.”
“You look fine. Come on I’ll help you.”
Once they arrived Bill checked his watch and said, “Sorry, but I have to call Sharon.” The call ended quickly.
“Hate to do this, but I’ve got to run. Forgot we had plans.”
“But you just got here.”
“I visited with you longer than you remember.” He said it loud enough for several residents and attendants to hear.
“I think I may have forgotten to sign in,” he said to the woman at the front desk.
“That’s all right. I’ll sign you in and out to keep our visitor record in order.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“And what’s your excuse this time?” Sharon asked.
“No excuse. I busted my butt to get my project completed today so we might spend some time together tomorrow.”
“Count me out,” Emily said. “I’m going to the Promenade with my girlfriends to shop and see a movie.”
“I can’t make it either. You said you were working all weekend, so I’m going to Malibu for brunch with a couple of the ladies from my book club. You should have told me sooner,” his wife added.
“You girls will be sorry. I had wonderful plans for us. Maybe we’ll do it another time or not. Tell ya what. Get dressed and we’ll go over to Kate Mantilini’s for dinner.” Bill reasoned that if anyone there remembered seeing him it would be for being there on Saturday for dinner with his family rather than having a drink with a woman at the bar on Friday.
Bill did not usually drink much with his family around, he abandoned that for the night and ordered a few drinks too many while waiting for a table. He made it a point to have a confrontation with the same bar tender who served him the night before. Bill rectified the problem by giving the targeted bar tender a twenty dollar tip.
“How embarrassing that was,” Sharon said when they were seated. “This is a very nice restaurant. Why would you invite us here and then act the way you did? No more drinks for you.”
“I hope none of my friends or their parents are here,” Emily added.
“I don’t care what your friends think, Emily. And, Sharon, if I want another drink I’ll have one. Maybe two.”
There was little dinner conversation that night. Bill was pleased that it carried through until his wife went to bed and pretended to fall asleep instantly. He liked his newfound power and the freedom that went with it.
On Sunday morning, Bill walked the dog and was out of the house before anyone was up. He stopped at Coco’s for breakfast and picked up copies of both the Sunday LA Times and Daily News. He rarely even looked at the latter paper, but it had more Valley news than the big metro publication. Neither paper had anything about the murder of a woman found in her Warner Center condo.
The lack of anything to report suggested that nobody noticed anything suspicious. Bill convinced himself the longer her death goes unreported, the less chance there was that anyone will remember seeing him in the area. The woman probably didn’t have any friends except for the ones she picked up in bars and took home with her. Probably no one will miss her until she doesn’t show up for work tomorrow. He refused to think her name in order to disassociate himself from the dead woman.
Bill had an extra cup of regular coffee as he leisurely scanned the papers. Sharon only served decaf and allotted him one cup in the morning. So he decided to indulge himself even more and ordered a crumb Danish, heated with butter on the side. Life was getting better.
It did not take long to edit the report he prepared the day before. He ran off copies, punched the holes, and put them in hard-back notebooks with the ten page analysis in the front and twenty-five pages of supporting data in back. There were a total of six copies, five for the meeting and one for his files. The boss’s door was open, so Bill decided to put the meeting copies on Vivian’s desk. This would let her know he spent the entire weekend on the project.
Bill went around the desk and put the reports in the middle of the desk. He was about to leave when he noticed the top drawer was open. Since no one else was on the floor, he let his curiosity take over and slid open the drawer. It was a typical catch-all drawer except for a file folder sitting on top of the miscellaneous items. He opened the folder to discover a recommendation to promote someone to his supervisory position and transfer Bill to another department.
“That bitch,” he screamed out to the empty office. “I do the work around here while she talks on the phone all day with her friends about shopping and hair styles and spa treatments. How could she do this to me? She won’t get away with it.”
An idea struck him that reduced his boiling rage to a simmering frustration. He gathered the five copies from the desktop, put them in a large brown envelope and headed for the elevator. Bill signed out with the weekend guard, took another elevator to the subterranean parking garage and drove out of the giant office structure to the 101 Freeway, south. It was 11 AM and already his day had gone from pretty good to very bad, but he had a plan to fix that.
He exited the freeway at Van Nuys Boulevard and drove to an area where a number of mid-rise luxury condominiums were clustered together. Vivian’s building was on the corner. He drove past it and parked two blocks away.
Bill walked up to the front door still pondering how he was going to gain access to the building. He knew there was no doorman and that her unit was on the sixth floor in the back. He was about to push a number of buttons and hope for a buzz-in when a young woman with a baby stroller came through the door. He held the door open, but the mother never looked at him since all her attention was directed downward to the child.
He kept his head down and had donned a baseball hat stashed in the trunk of the car to avoid easy recognition by anyone or the watchful eyes of security cameras. Just to be sure, he walked up the stairs to the sixth floor and made his way back to Vivian’s unit.
His heart beat faster and seemingly louder as he rapped on the door. He heard foot steps inside.
>
“Yes, who is it?”
“I’ve got your reports.”
“Bill? How did you get in here?”
“Let me give you these and I’ll be on my way. Haven’t spent anytime with my family this weekend.”
“This could have waited until tomorrow at the office,” she said and opened the door.
“No it couldn’t. Too many witnesses.” Bill rushed through the door and hit her as hard as he could with the stack of reports in their three-ring binders. She fell to the floor. The door swung shut as he leaped on her, placed both hands on her head and pounded Vivian’s skull on the parquet entry hall floor until she was unconscious. He opened a nearby closet and spied a long scarf which he used to strangle the life out of the woman who was now his former boss.
It was curiously satisfying to take the life of another, particularly one who wronged him the way Vivian did. But the feeling went beyond that. He was beginning to think of himself as God-like. And, whatever he did was justified because he thought it to be right. As Bill stared with hardened eyes at the body and registered the scene in his mind he proclaimed, “That’s two down.”
He took the reports with him, put them in the trunk of his car and drove back in the direction of Woodland Hills. Bill felt confident no one had seen him close up or long enough to say he was the one that had been in the building around the time of Vivian’s death.
Just before reaching the Reseda exit on the 101, Bill decided to pay another surprise visit to his mother. Once again he skirted past the receptionist’s desk and went directly to her room. She had just finished lunch and was half-dozing and half-watching television when he walked through the open doorway.
“And how are you today, Mother?”
“You sound like one of the care-givers here. Of course that’s a misnomer. Can’t say they give me much care.”
“This is one of the best senior facilities in the Valley, maybe in all of Los Angeles.”
“Well no one asked for my vote. I don’t know why we didn’t find a place closer to the house. Studio City or Sherman Oaks would have been my preference. Even Encino. But all the way out here in Tarzana is too far for my old neighbors to come see me.”
“They don’t come because most of them have moved into senior places, and I hate to say this, or died.”
“Well I feel isolated here. It’s very lonely.”
“That’s because you don’t mingle with the other residents by going to meals early and chatting with them. Or you could play cards in the afternoons. And you could volunteer to read to those with bad eyesight. There’s plenty of opportunity to get involved.”
“Why do we have this conversation every time you come, which is not very often? Weren’t you here yesterday?”
“Yes, but I had to leave early, so I thought I’d come back today.”
“Nice, but don’t try to sell me on how wonderful this place is because I won’t buy it.”
“Let’s go out to the sunroom. It’s such a beautiful day.”
“Why do you always want to go someplace else? What’s wrong with my room?”
“You spend enough time here. Let’s get you out. Who knows you could meet someone you might eventually learn to like.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
After a half-hour of small talk, mostly complaints from her, Bill excused himself to go to the restroom. When he returned, his mother was unconscious in her chair, and an attendant was trying to revive her.
Within minutes the paramedics were there and hooked her up with oxygen before taking her to the hospital just a few blocks away. Bill followed them in his car. The emergency room doctor said she had suffered a massive stroke and admitted her immediately into intensive care.
Before they took her to ICU, he had a discussion with the doctor.
“Mother has left instructions that say DNR, do not resuscitate. As the one with power of attorney, I want to be sure her wishes are followed. So no extraordinary measures on the hospital’s part. Understand?”
The doctor explained that without putting her on a respirator his mother would surely die.
“That’s the way she wants it.”
Rather than sit by his mother’s side, Bill went to the ICU visitors’ room to await the news. He called Sharon to tell her what happened. Then he picked up an old copy of Sports Illustrated to divert his attention away from the bizarre, but fascinating, events of the past twenty-four hours.
He was unable to keep his mind from drifting back to the two murders that were redefining him as a person – a powerful man to be reckoned with because he no longer would be a doormat to be abused by women as they pleased.
A few hours later his mother was gone. He did not go back in the room to say ‘goodbye’ or to view the body. Bill showed no signs of emotion. He experienced no sadness and felt no loss. What he did had to be done – no question about it.
Bill signed a few forms, contacted the mortuary where pre-arrangements had been made, and was on his way home to face the two remaining challenges in his life.
“I want to speak to both of you.” Bill shouted as he walked into his home.
“It’s understandable that you’re upset about your mother, but you don’t have to take it out on us,” Sharon complained.
“I’m not upset about her death, but I am upset about what’s going on around here. Where’s Emily? Get her now!”
“What’s gotten into you?” Sharon asked.
“Yeah, don’t be such a grouch. Nobody did anything,” his step-daughter said as she sauntered into the living room.
“That’s exactly the point. Nobody, particularly you, young lady, does anything for anyone around here except me.”
“You’ve gone off the deep end. If you want to talk with us, do it when you can be civil,” Sharon said.
“No. Now is the time to straighten things out. From now on, Emily will take responsibility for her dog. That means walking Baby every morning and night, cleaning up all messes as well as brushing and bathing her.”
“I have homework and drama class and lots of things to do,” Emily protested.
“This makes one more to add to your list. And while you’re at it, it’s your job to keep your room clean and in order. And, since you eat here, you will clean the table and wash the dishes after every meal.”
“Is that all?” Emily asked flashing a smirk on her face.
“If you want more, I’ll be happy to accommodate you.”
“That’s enough, Bill,” Sharon said.
“No, I’m just getting started.”
“Well you can do it alone. Emily and I are not going to stay here and be ridiculed. We’re going to the kitchen for a dish of ice cream.”
“Fine, walk away. Sooner or later you’ll have to face the reality that the rules have changed and I’m the one who’s in charge.”
“What brought on these delusions of grandeur? Is it the inheritance your mother left for her little boy? The body’s not even cold and you’re already counting the money. Is that the way you mourn?”
“How did you come up with such a warped idea? It has nothing to do with mother’s death and everything to do with attitude and cooperation in my home.”
Bill stormed out of the room, hurried down the hall to the master bedroom and slammed the door. He flopped on the bed, put both hands behind his head, looked up at the ceiling and wondered what he needed to do next to make life conform to his wishes.
“Could you put these in the conference room?” He took the wrapping off the reports and handed them to Vivian’s assistant first thing Monday.
“Better hold one back for the boss to review before the meeting.” Bill arrived at the office earlier than usual because he did not have to walk the dog this morning. “Where is Vivian? She’s always the first one here. Better call her to make sure she doesn’t have the stomach flu that’s going around.”
After doing nothing all morning, Bill walked over to the food mall at the Promenade. Upon returning he noted t
wo police cars in the no parking area directly in front of the main entrance. “Cops have it made,” he said under his breath. “They can do just about whatever they want without having to take crap from anyone. Being in charge is good.”
“What’s with the police?” he asked. “Somebody steal a purse or something?”
“Vivian’s been murdered,” a woman said.
“No way. Where? When? This is terrible.” Bill tried to act as concerned as the rest of the staff seemed to be.
The rest of the day was spent talking to associates and making a brief statement to a tough female detective when the homicide unit arrived. He said he had to work all weekend and showed the report folders to prove it. When Bill informed the detective of his mother’s death on Sunday, she pulled back on the questioning. But he knew the request to transfer him, which sat in the folder in Vivian’s desk drawer, was one reason there would be more questions for him to field.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Emily said. She and her mother could not stand to face Bill. So they stole away to the local Cheesecake Factory and shared one of the restaurant’s over-sized entrees.
“He certainly has not been himself lately. And his bossy attitude has gotten worse in the last few days,” Sharon observed.
“Like that thing with Baby. He always took care of the dog. I don’t think she enjoys walking with me. And picking up her poop with a baggie is disgusting to say the least.”
“Yeah, it’s not my cup of tea either. But for the time being, you’ll have to stick with this chore until I find out what’s going on with him.”
“But...”
“No buts. Do it, or I’ll be on your back too.”
“Okay, but I hope I won’t be doing it very long.”
“Good. Now that we have an understanding on that subject, let’s move on.”
“If his control-freak behavior isn’t because of the inheritance, what could it be?”
“You’re not asking me are you? I never liked him. Why did you marry Bill in the first place?”