by Lee Goldberg, Scott Nicholson, J A Konrath, J Carson Black,
Still in marvelous physical condition, his appearance was more civilized and handsome than in the desert. He radiated charisma, and his eyes sparkled.
“Pour yourself a glass of wine!” he yelled. “There’s a pinot noir in the wine rack!”
Orson opened a dresser drawer and perused it for a moment, finally lifting out a gray box cutter. He exposed the razor, a small blade that obtruded no more than an inch from its metal sheath. Fingering the edge with his thumb, he smiled at himself again in the mirror.
“You behave.” He giggled. “You behave tonight.”
“Dave?”
Orson spun around. “Arlene. You scared me.”
Her voice came from the top of the stairs. “Where’s the wine rack?”
“Kitchen counter.” He held the box cutter behind his back. From my angle, I could see it in the mirror as he fidgeted with it, pushing the blade in and out. “Oh, Arlene. Put on some music, will you? Miles Davis, if you don’t mind.”
Retracting the blade, he slipped the box cutter into his back pocket, and continued to primp.
Through the dormer window, the last strands of sunlight receded behind the Adirondacks. It was tempting to hide in that closet for the entire night, cloistered safely behind hangers, between smelly old garments. But I steeled myself, pushed my way through the clothes, and stumbled at last out of his closet.
Their voices rose to the second floor. I heard my brother laugh, and the tinkle of silverware on china. It’d taken me an hour to summon the nerve to walk out of the closet. Thank God they’re still eating. It suddenly occurred to me: The broken glass. Please don’t go into the sunroom.
Since I had his room temporarily to myself, I took the opportunity to check the dresser, the bookshelves, and the closet for the pictures and videos of the desert. I found nothing, however, to substantiate his hobby, not even a journal. In fact, the only item in his bedroom that reflected in a small way Orson’s taste for violence was an enormous William Blake print hanging on the wall across from his bed — The Simoniac Pope, a pen and watercolor hellscape of Pope Nicholas III in a vat of flames, the soles of his feet on fire. I knew this work. It was an illustration of Hell, Canto 19 from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Those who didn’t know him might be perplexed at Orson’s morbid choice of wall decor.
I walked down the hallway and entered the guest room. It was impersonal, filled with ill-matched, eclectic furniture. The closet was empty, as were the two drawers of the bedside table. I doubted if anyone had ever slept in the single bed.
Slinking back into the hallway, I turned and went down several steps. Orson spoke softly in the dining room. Chairs moved, and I heard footsteps heading toward the foyer. I retraced my steps, and when their footsteps continued in my direction, I clawed my way up the staircase, raced back down the hallway, and hid again in his closet.
They entered the room and fell together onto his bed. I heard Orson say, “I like you a lot.”
“I like you, too.”
“Yeah?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Arlene sounded as if she was about thirty, and though her voice was throaty, it retained a sliver of girlish innocence. I knew why Orson liked her. The lamp on his bedside table cut off. They kissed for a while in the darkness, and the intimate slurping reminded me of Friday nights, in high school.
“What would you think about me doing this?” he asked.
“Ooooh.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh.” The room fell silent for a moment, excepting the moist sucking murmurs.
“Can you guess what I have in my back pocket?” Orson said finally.
“Mmm. What?”
“You have to guess, silly.”
“Is it round and crinkly?”
“Actually, it’s hard.”
“Mmm.” She shuddered in a good way. I could hear the alcohol thickening up her voice.
“And very sharp.”
“Huh?”
“You told any of your friends about me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does anyone know we’ve been seeing each other?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Just tell me.” I caught a grain of anger in his voice, which I’m sure she didn’t register.
“Only the girls at work.”
Orson sighed.
“I asked you not to tell anyone. You tell them my name?”
“Why?”
“Arlene, did you tell them my name?”
“I don’t remember.” Her voice mellowed. “What do you think about this, sweetie?” A zipper started to descend.
There was sudden movement in the dark. “Don’t you touch me,” he hissed.
The bed squeaked, and I wondered if she’d sat up.
“Turn on the light,” she said. “Turn it on!” The light did not come on.
“Did you tell your girlfriends my name?”
“Why are you acting so weird?”
“Tell me, so I can show you what’s in my pocket.”
“Yes, I told them your —”
“Goddamnit.”
“What?”
“You can go now.”
“Why?”
“Leave.”
“What is wrong with you? I thought — I mean…I like you, and I thought —”
“I had something extraordinarily special planned for us tonight. And you just ruined it. I was going to open you up, Arlene.”
“To what?”
“Get out of my house.”
The bed moved again, the floor creaked, and it sounded as though clothes were being smoothed.
“I can’t believe I — you need help, David.”
“Perhaps.”
“You can go to —”
“I’d advise you to leave while you’re still able.”
She stormed from his bedroom into the hallway, screamed “Fucking freak!” and was sobbing by the time she reached the front door.
25
ORSON sat for a while in the dark after Arlene left. For some reason, I expected him to cry, to come apart in pathetic flinders when no one was around. But this didn’t happen. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I began to make out the shapes in his room — the painting on the wall, the bookshelves, his legs stretched out on the bed. I could see barbs of light through the dormer window, on the black slopes across the valley.
After thirty minutes, I thought he’d fallen asleep, and I began to psych myself up to crawl out of the closet and do what I’d come here to do. But when I started to move, he sat up abruptly. Stiffening, I watched his arms reach down under the bed and lift what appeared to be a shoe box up onto the mattress. Orson slipped out of his loafers and kicked them in opposite directions across the room. One hurtled into the closet and nearly struck me in the head.
I heard a mechanical clicking. He settled back onto the mattress and began speaking in a low, monotonous voice: “It is…seven forty-three P.M. on Friday, November eighth. Arlene came over this evening. I told you about her. That legal assistant from Bristol. It was going to happen tonight. I thought about it all day. All week. But she’d mentioned me — my name, I mean — to some of her coworkers, so that’s the end of that. It was an exercise in self-control. I’d never used a box cutter before, so I’m more than a little disappointed that tonight didn’t work out. If I go much longer without any play, I may resort to doing something careless, like that time in Burlington. But you made the rule never to do that in this town, and it’s an intelligent rule, so don’t fuck things up.” He stopped the Dictaphone, but then pushed the record button again.
“Last thing. I was on-line today, and I saw that James Keiller’s second appeal was denied. Guess that means they’ll be setting an execution date in the near term. That’s a beautiful thing, what I did there. It really is. I may have to make the trip out to Nebraska when they juice him. And I do believe they juice ’em in the Cornhusker State.”
He returned the Dictaphone to the shoe box and took out somethin
g else. Climbing out of bed, he walked toward his dresser, upon which sat a TV/VCR combo. He inserted a videotape and turned on the TV. As it started to play, he lay down on his stomach, his head at the edge of the mattress, propped up on his elbows, chin cupped in his hands.
It was in color. Oh God. The shed. I resisted a surge of nausea.
“This is Cindy, and she just failed the test. Say hi, Cindy.”
The woman was tied to the pole, with that leather collar around her neck. Orson turned the camera on himself, sweaty-faced, eyes twinkling, beaming, bridelike.
“Cindy has chosen the six-inch boning knife.”
“Stop it!” she shrieked.
I plugged my ears and shut my eyes. The fear in her voice sickened me. Even with the volume muffled, I could still hear the most piercing of screams. On the bed, Orson was making noise, too. I squinted and saw that he’d turned over on his back and was watching the screen upside down, jerking off.
The footage of Orson killing her wasn’t terribly long, so he watched it over and over. If I hyperfocused on my heartbeat, I found that I could block out the television and Orson’s groans almost completely. Counting the beats, I worked my way up to 704.
When my eyes opened, the room was silent. I’d nodded off, and it horrified me to think I might’ve been snoring or lost precious hours asleep in his closet. Checking my watch, I saw that 9:30 had just passed, and I felt relief knowing that Walter and I still had the majority of the night to kill my brother.
From the bed — deep breathing. I recognized the pattern of Orson’s long exhalations. Almost certain he was asleep, I withdrew a syringe and a vial of Versed. Flicking off the plastic cap, I stuck the hollow needle through the rubber seal and pulled the plunger back until the bottle was empty. I then aspirated the contents of two more vials. With fifteen milligrams of Versed in the syringe, I secured the caps and placed the three empty vials back into my fanny pack, closing the zipper so slowly, I couldn’t even hear the minute teeth biting back together. The needle in my left hand, the Glock in my right, I poked my head through the hangers and proceeded to inch my way out.
As I came to my feet on the hardwood floor of the walk-in closet, it occurred to me that he might not be asleep. Perhaps he was merely resting, breathing patiently in a yogic trance. After three steps, I stood at the threshold of the closet, staring down at Orson on the bed.
His chest rose and fell in an unhurried rhythm indicative of sleep. I went down on my knees, held the plastic syringe with my teeth, and crawled across the dusty floor. At the edge of his bed, I stopped and spurned another wave of nausea and hyperventilation. Sweat trickled down my forehead and smarted in my eyes. Under the latex skin, my hands were wet.
Squatting down on the floor, I took the syringe from my mouth, then, holding it up before my face, squirted a brief stream through the shaft of the needle to remove air bubbles. Orson shifted on the bed. His back had been to me, but he turned over, so that we faced each other. All he has to do is open his eyes.
His left arm was beautifully exposed. Withdrawing a penlight and holding it between my teeth, I spotlighted his forearm and could see numerous periwinkle veins under the surface of his skin. With great patience and concentration, I lowered the eye of the needle until it hovered just an inch above his skin. There was a chance this would kill him. Because I was attempting to inject intravenously, the substantial dose of Versed would be tearing through his bloodstream, and when it slammed into his central nervous system, he might stop breathing. Steady hands.
As I slipped the needle into the antecubital vein opposite the elbow, his eyes opened. I injected the drug. Please have hit the vein. Orson shot up and gasped. I let go of the syringe and jumped back, the needle still dangling in his arm. He pulled it out and held it up before his face, flabbergasted.
“Andy?” he whispered, cotton-mouthed. “Andy? How did you…” He swallowed several times, as though something was blocking his windpipe. Standing, I pointed the gun at him.
“Lie back, Orson.”
“What did you give me?”
“Lie back!”
He leaned back into the pillows. “God,” he said. “That’s strong.”
He sounded medicated already, and I thought his eyes had closed. I turned on the bedside lamp so I could be sure. They were slits.
“What are you doing, Andy?” he asked. “How did you…” His words trailed off.
“You killed my mother,” I said to him.
“I don’t think you…” His eyes closed.
“Orson?” I could see the red dot on his arm where the needle had penetrated the skin. “Orson!” He still didn’t move, so I reached forward and slapped his face. He groaned, but it was an incoherent response, which only assured me that the drug had taken control of him.
Backpedaling toward the closet, I took the walkie-talkie from my fanny pack.
“Walter?” I said, breathless. “Walt…Fred?”
“Over.”
“You close?”
“A hundred yards.”
“Get up here and come inside.”
I leaned against the wall and wiped the sweat from my eyelids.
Orson lunged from the bed and drilled his head into my stomach before I could even think about my gun. As I lost my breath, he drove his knee between my legs and grabbed the back of my neck with both hands. He butted his forehead into my nose, and I felt the cartilage crunch and then the subsequent burn. Cool blood flowed over my lips.
“What are you thinking, Andy? You can just do this to me?”
I’d just managed to fill my lungs with air, when he shovel-punched me in the gut, right below my navel. As I hunched over, he kneed my face, and I dropped to the floor.
Instantly, he was on me, his fingers digging under my stomach, where my hands retained an iron grip on the Glock. A sharp, brutal pinch speared through my shirt into my back, and I moaned.
“Yeah, you like that, don’t you? I’m gonna do it again and again.” He’d stuck me with the needle. I felt it wiggling in me. “You’re gonna give it up,” he said, “and I’m gonna spend the weekend killing you. What were you thinking, Andy? What?”
I kept thinking that I should at least try to fight him, but if I moved, he might wrangle the gun from my hands.
A hard bone pummeled the back of my head, and it hurt like hell. I felt the needle pull out and enter again.
“Ah shit,” he muttered. He struck the back of my head again, but it wasn’t nearly as powerful a blow. “Ah, fuck you, Andy.” He slumped onto the floor, crouching on his hands and knees, trying to preserve his consciousness. “Stay with it,” he mumbled. “No. No.”
Yanking the needle out of my back, I stood up and moved to the open doorway of his bedroom. My face felt swollen, and I could not see as clearly through my left eye. But the adrenaline masked the pain, even the deep microscopic holes in my back. Beneath the mechanic’s suit, lines of blood streamed down my legs. Orson fell over onto his side on the floor.
“No.” He sighed sleepily, his speech beginning to slur. “Andy. Don’t do things…” He shut his eyes and was still.
There was a knock on the front door. I held the gun by the muzzle and hammered Orson across the forehead until I saw blood. Then I ran into the hallway and rushed down the staircase.
“Walter?” I yelled through the door.
“It’s me,” he said, and I let him inside. The coldness of the night radiated off his clothes. “Where’s your broth — Oh God, your face…”
“I’m fine. Come on,” I said, starting back up the steps. “Put on your latex gloves. He’s upstairs.”
26
WHILE Walter dragged Orson down the steps in his boxer shorts and rolled him up in the florid Persian rug, I again searched every crevice of my brother’s bedroom. Searching under the bed, I located the shoe box of microcassettes and two more videotapes, but this was the extent of my discovery. Another thorough inspection of the closet produced nothing out of the ordinary. In the guest room, I foun
d nothing, and by the time I’d begun a second perusal of the study, I waxed furious.
“You see this?” I said, exiting the hallway on the first floor and lifting the shoe box above my head. “It’s all he keeps in his entire house that would clue anyone in to what he is.”
In a mechanic’s suit like mine, Walter sat on top of Orson, who was now cocooned inside the rug.
“There are more pictures than this,” I said. “Pictures of me doing horrible things to people. In a self-storage unit or a safety-deposit box. You know what happens when this son of a bitch can’t pay the bill ’cause he’s dead? They clear out his space and find pictures of me digging a heart out of a woman’s chest.” Now you know.
Walter looked at me, but he didn’t ask for elaboration. Standing up, he walked across the hardwood floor into Orson’s study. He lifted the decanter of cognac and poured himself an immoderately full snifter.
“You want one?” he asked, warming the brandy with a delicate swirling motion of the glass.
“Please.” He poured me one, too, and brought it into the living room. We sat down on Orson’s futon before the hearth, swirling and sipping our brandies in silence, each waiting for that euphoric calm, though it never fully came.
“Will he tell us?” Walter asked finally.
“Tell us what?”
“About the pictures of you, and the man who wrote on Jenna’s arm.”
I turned my head and found Walter’s eyes, my cheeks candescent with the liquor.
“Absofuckinlutely.”
We carried him out the front door and down the steps. The moon shone bone white through the leafless, calligraphic trees. The alcohol numbed my face, diminishing the sting of the cold.
The rug wouldn’t fit into the trunk, so we unrolled it and let Orson slide into the dark, empty cavity. I checked his breathing, and though it was steady, they were damn shallow breaths. A light cut on in the house across the street. The figure of a man came to a bay window.