by Jon Osborne
Derrick finally stopped shuffling papers on his end of the connection. ‘You’ve got a book signing at Borders Tuesday, a speech to the rotary club in Roswell on Thursday and that cancer benefit thing at the children’s hospital on Friday.’
Derrick paused and cleared his throat. ‘Speaking of that,’ he said, ‘are you sure you won’t let me alert the press to the fact that you’ll be appearing at the hospital, Dinah? It would look really great to the public and up your rep with the bleeding-heart liberals. Probably score you a few more fans for your Facebook page, too.’
Dinah shook her head and pulled the BMW onto the freeway just north of Buckhead as the skies opened up and rain began to pound against her windshield. Flicking on the wipers to the most powerful setting made hardly any difference at all. ‘No, Derrick,’ Dinah said, raising her voice now to be heard above the incessant whine of the wipers. ‘I’m not trying to benefit from my charity work; you know that. This is personal to me.’
Dinah’s eyes misted up. Ever since her and Tyler’s only child had died of leukemia three years earlier, she’d worked tirelessly to help find a cure. Still, she never quite felt like she did enough. There was always more she could do. More money she could give. More charity events she could attend.
Derrick shifted back into friend-mode, putting aside his agent role for the moment. ‘We all miss, Marilyn, Dinah,’ he said softly. ‘She was an angel.’
Dinah wiped at her eyes with the back of her left hand. Between the tears in her eyes and the waterworks coming from the heavens it was almost impossible to see anything on the road in front of her.
‘Yes, she was an angel, Derrick,’ Dinah said, sighing softly. ‘She was an absolute angel sent from God. And I know she’s watching over me. As a matter of fact, she’s watching over me right now. I swear to God, sometimes I can feel her.’
Dinah paused and swallowed away the lump that had formed in her throat. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s a crazy goddamn mess out here so I need to let you go. I need to concentrate on driving.’
‘How far away from home are you?’ Derrick asked.
Dinah squinted again through the windshield. Almost as if on cue, a flash of lighting exploded overhead, allowing her to catch a quick glimpse of a green exit sign on the side of the highway. Maverick Road. ‘About five miles now,’ Dinah said. ‘Should only take me about twenty more years to get home at this rate.’
Derrick clucked his tongue. ‘That sucks, girl. Anyway, be careful out there. I’d hate for anything to happen to my favourite client.’
‘Don’t you mean your only client?
Derrick laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s what I said. Anyway, I’ll call you in the morning. I’ve got some ideas I want to run by you. Some really big stuff in the works.’
Dinah switched off with Derrick and sighed. No doubt he was cooking up even more crazy schemes designed to get her even more publicity – as if publicity was something she needed any more of. She already had more publicity now than she knew what to do with. Enough to choke a horse.
Dinah shook her head in exasperation. When she’d agreed to do the reality television show six months earlier she’d known that the media scrutiny would be intense, but she’d had no idea just how intense it would be. Last week, she’d actually caught a photographer snooping through her garbage. Lord only knew what he’d been looking for – or what he’d found.
Chasing away the unpleasant thought with another quick shake of her head, Dinah’s heart nearly stopped dead in her chest when her tires suddenly hydroplaned on the slick pavement of the highway. She sucked in a sharp breath over her teeth that sent a sharp stab of pain shooting through her lungs and slammed down her foot on the brake pedal – the exact opposite of what all the experts told you to do in situations like this.
The car fishtailed wildly out of control, then took a sharp left-hand turn and headed directly toward the concrete divider in the middle of the highway. Dinah squeezed shut her eyes and gripped the steering wheel with all her might, bracing for bone-crushing impact.
But it never came.
Opening up her eyes again when the car finally came to a gentle stop five seconds later, Dinah gasped. The concrete divider was staring her dead in the face from no more than three feet away.
Before she knew it, she was laughing and crying at the same time. Against all odds, she was still alive.
And she knew exactly who to thank for that.
Lifting her stare to the heavens, Dinah breathed out a grateful sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Marilyn,’ she said. You’ve always been mama’s little angel, haven’t you?’
CHAPTER 24
Nicholas switched off the flashing lights and wildly blaring sirens of the ambulance before swinging it around the southwest side of Dinah Leach’s guesthouse ten minutes later. Purchased at auction for fifteen thousand dollars a year earlier with proceeds from Timmy’s television work and outfitted with all the latest bells and whistles, the ambulance was a Trojan horse to ensure he crossed off the first name on his list without drawing any undue attention to himself. After all, more was more sometimes, especially for a girl like him. His mother’s idea, of course.
Nicholas switched off the engine and studied the guesthouse. The reality star’s overflow housing looked impressive in its own right. Twice the size of a normal person’s house and a hundred times nicer. Sitting about thirty yards away from the main dwelling, it provided the perfect cover he’d need to get away with what he already knew would be his exceedingly perfect crime.
Stretching his neck six inches to the right, Nicholas lifted his left wrist to check his Mickey Mouse watch. With any luck at all, the two ladies he was waiting for would arrive at just about the same time. The sky had reached its darkest point of the night now and the howling wind seemed more insistent, more intense, transforming the spitting rain from earlier into a thunderous downpour that danced a gleeful jig on the ambulance’s metal roof. From the look of things, hurricane Allison would be here at any minute now. Good. But where in the hell was Dinah Leach? Impending hurricane or not, the nightclub was just seven short miles away.
As if on cue, that’s when Dinah Leach finally wheeled her silver BMW up the long, winding driveway of her palatial pad, the vehicle’s headlights bouncing up and down in perfect time with the shocks and piercing the foreboding night like sharp silver knives stabbing hard through a huge black sheet.
Nicholas breathed out a deep sigh of relief as his eyes drank in the delicious sight of his target once more. All systems go.
From the driver’s side of the ambulance he watched Dinah Leach exit her car and fumble with her key to the front door. His heartbeat ramped up another fifty levels in his chest. Obviously, she was in a great big hurry to get out of the rain, but as Nicholas had noted earlier, you could never really beat the storm. Not in any meaningful sense, at least. It was just too powerful. Too relentless. Too goddamn heartless. Throwing open the ambulance door, the howling wind immediately slammed him in the face as he covered the thirty yards between them in a flash.
Torrential rain soaked into his clothing and the booming thunder masked the sound of his pounding footfalls as he went. All five of his senses tingled violently, as though he’d stuck his finger directly into a live electrical socket featuring an exposed-wiring problem. Slipping up behind the woman twenty seconds later, Nicholas stabbed the sleep drug deep into her neck, rendering her completely unconscious almost at once. Much as had been the case with Claire Bishop in the butcher’s shop back in Chicago all those years ago, Dinah Leach’s body went as limp as a rag doll in his arms as the drug took effect.
Removing the house keys from the slut’s left hand, Nicholas slid the correct one into the lock, at the same time balancing the woman’s body in one arm before stepping inside the house and taking a look around.
Nice joint.
Fifteen thousand square feet at a bare minimum, the faux Tudor mansion featured thirty-foot-high arched ceilings and expensive Italian marble tile on the floors. A
frican art and sculptures were scattered throughout. Nicholas breathed in deeply, enjoying the scent. The entire place smelled of money.
Pretty soon, though, it would smell of something entirely different. Something coppery.
Gathering Dinah Leach into both of his arms now, Nicholas ascended the spiral staircase edged with a gold-leaf design that sat just off the elaborate foyer. In the master bedroom upstairs, he laid the TV star’s unconscious body across the massive king-sized bed and leaned over, putting his ear to her mouth and listening for the sounds of breathing. Faint, but still there, tickling the tiny hairs of his left cheek.
Just then, a brilliant flash of lightning suddenly flared up outside the second-floor bedroom windows of the woman’s eight-million-dollar dwelling, followed immediately by another crash of thunder, giving Nicholas’s heart a terrible start, and then bringing a delighted smile to his lips. Blissfully, Hurricane Allison had arrived just in time for the festivities to begin.
Humming softly to himself beneath his breath, Nicholas removed Dinah Leach’s Jimmy Choo shoes and unbuttoned her tailoured DKNY jeans before sliding the fancy denim down her ankles. Another powerful wave of anticipation flooded through his chest at the sight of the bright-pink Victoria’s Secret thong stared back at him. Only the finest in lingerie for Atlanta’s queen of the boob tube, right?
Climbing up onto the bed with her, Nicholas straddled Dinah Leach’s body and positioned his palms just beneath her belly button. Then he began to push gently. Urine leaked out of her bladder and spread across the crotch of her expensive pink panties.
Feeling dizzy, he pulled off the soiled undergarments and slid 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 he’d been forced to do all those years ago.
Swinging his feet back down onto the floor, Nicholas then grabbed Dinah Leach roughly by her ankles and pulled 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, he then removed an eight-inch-long butcher’s knife from his waistband.
Biting down softly into his lower lip, he was the picture of concentration as he dug the sharp steel into the new-money socialite’s firm left breast.
Dinah Leach’s bright green eyes flew open at once in shock and terror, the knife overriding the sleep-drug’s effects. A bloodcurdling scream exploded from her mouth.
A well-placed punch to her face shut her up again.
‘Just go to sleep, princess,’ Nicholas whispered, 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, Nicholas winced at the slight popping noise it made as it separated completely from her torso. He balanced the gelatinous blob in his right hand, savouring its surprising weight in his palm, enjoying its heft. Five minutes later, the woman’s right breast and labia came off in similar fashion.
Finally finished the with the grisly deed of de-sexing the woman, Nicholas tossed Dinah Leach’s sexual organs to the floor in a bloody pile as yet another deafening explosion of thunder rocked the mansion to its foundation. He wiped a thin line of perspiration from his forehead and glanced down at his watch. Time for him to get the fuck out of here. Tyler Leach would be home any minute now following his basketball squad’s 110-99 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 who sported an afro roughly the size of a mushroom cloud was never a good idea.
Gathering Dinah Leach’s unconscious body into his arms again, he cradled her as gently as a newborn baby as he left the bedroom and descended the staircase before exiting the house. Out in the heart of the storm, the howling wind and torrential rain immediately buffeted his body from all directions, slamming him squarely in the chest and threatening to push him off balance as he struggled down the long driveway. Luckily, the added weight in his arms steadied him somewhat against the gale-force gusts. Thank God for small favours. Or thank Hurricane Allison. Either one would do at this point, really.
Fifty feet away from the ambulance, the sharp edge of an airborne street sign whistled through the air and caught Nicholas just above his left eyebrow, opening up a wicked red gash that instantly started gushing bright red blood. Stumbling forward, he nearly dropped Dinah Leach’s body to the ground. Still, Nicholas wasn’t in the least bit concerned about the possibility of leaving any of his DNA behind. No worries here. The rain was his friend. Hell, all of nature was his friend tonight. The rain would wash away his blood.
But never – not in a million fucking years – would it ever wash Dinah Leach’s blood away.
Finally reaching the ambulance forty-five seconds later, Nicholas dumped Dinah Leach’s unconscious body onto the ground like a sack of drenched potatoes and fought with the powerful wind to open up the back doors to the ambulance. Ten seconds after that, in she went.
Nicholas stepped into the back of the vehicle after her before placing her inside an unzipped body bag he’d positioned on a waiting stretcher. He paused for a moment and took a look around. Nowhere near as comfortable as the fancy limousines she was used to riding in, of course, but almost dead people couldn’t be choosers, now could they?
Of course they couldn’t.
Especially not on a night like this.
CHAPTER 25
Nicholas hit the flashers and sirens again and backed the ambulance carefully down Dinah Leach’s driveway, turning on the windshield wipers full-blast to whisk away the torrential rain. God, it was a mess out here.
And he fucking loved it.
Nicholas pursed his lips and concentrated on navigating the road in front of him while the frenetic sound of the wipers filled his brain like a million swarming mosquitoes. The only other vehicles on the streets right now belonged to emergency responders on their way to various points of trouble all around the besieged city, exactly the reason that he and his mother had chosen to put their beautiful 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 the fallout from Hurricane Allison, Nicholas could really take his time here and get everything exactly right. Not only was he a kid in a candy store right now, he was a kid in a candy store with what amounted to an unlimited budget.
He could take whatever he wanted.
An Atlanta PD patrol car whizzed by in the opposite direction at seventy miles an hour, its blue-and-red lights flashing and its powerful sirens screaming, letting everyone in the vicinity know that the men inside the vehicle were in a goddamn hurry here.
Nicholas smiled until his jaw began to 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 goddamn busy right now? What about a murder? Would something like that pique your interest at all? How about if the victim is famous? Still no? I see. Well, I understand. Have a nice day, officers. Thank you so much for your service to our community.
Nicholas shook his head and adjusted the police scanner to the correct frequency, listening in joyfully as the reports crackled in over the electrified airwaves.
‘Flooding at 187 Mockingbird Lane. Infant trapped in an upstairs bedroom. Mother’s frantic, crying 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.’
Nicholas winced at the 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. Better hurry.’
Twenty minutes later, Nicholas pulled the ambulance over to the side of the road about half a mile away from the hospital. Stooped over in a half-crouch, he made his into the b
ack of the vehicle and unzipped the body bag. A hot rush of adrenalin bolted through his veins at the sight of her face.
There she was, just waiting for him.
The woman was conscious now, but just barely. The reality-television star gasped for air through the soiled panties covering her face, but was too woozy to do much of anything else.
Nicholas slid up the panties onto Dinah Leach’s forehead. She widened her bright green eyes in confusion. ‘What’s happening?’ she breathed. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
Nicholas smiled down at her. She looked so goddamn beautiful in this state that he couldn’t resist the urge to lean in for a quick kiss, tasting her expensive lipstick on his tongue. Once again, much like the woman’s jeans and perfume, she’d obviously bought the good stuff. Estee Lauder, judging by the flavour of it.
Nicholas broke the kiss and slid the panties back over her face, zipping shut the blue body bag constructed of industrial-strength rubber once more. No need to make a big show over their good-byes, right? Didn’t want anyone to feel embarrassed here.
Making his way back into the driver’s seat up front, Nicholas traded in his bloody clothes for a pair of brand-new scrubs. He needed to the look the part here, after all. Hell, that was half the battle.
Ten minutes later – having given Dinah Leach sufficient time to suffocate inside the body bag – Nicholas wheeled the vehicle up to the emergency-room entrance of the hospital and took his place waiting in line.
The scene around the hospital was an absolute madhouse, but it wasn’t very long before three EMTs hustled up to meet him.
‘What do we have here?’ one of the EMTs asked, shielding his eyes from the pounding rain that was pouring down from the heavens.
Nicholas shook his head sadly and told the man the bad news. ‘I’m afraid this one is just a drop-off for some post-mortem work. Forty-two-year-old female. It’s that Dinah Leach chick from the Real Housewives show.’