When it didn’t light, he closed the cover and shook the lighter several times, then attempted to light it again. No joy. He held the misbehaving lighter in his palm and stared at it for a moment. He took in a deep breath and with a guttural cry smashed the lighter into the dash. The lighter fell to the floor near his right foot, and he began to stomp the little metal object into the floorboard. He closed his fists and pounded the steering wheel with both hands and roared, “That bitch is going to get me killed.”
A man who happened to be walking by the car tapped on the window and said, “Are you all right?”
Mort glared at the man and pushed his door open, knocking the man back a few steps. Mort stood behind the open door and said, “Walk away—walk away now!”
The man turned and quickly walked away, almost running, and never looked back.
***
Two hours later Mort drove through the streets of Michelle’s housing development, looking for just the right place to park. The neighborhood was reasonably quiet and had tall oak and maple trees lining the streets. The light from the lampposts cast spots of daylight on each street corner, and Mort was uncomfortable leaving his car where it may stand out to residents as an unfamiliar vehicle. “There it is,” he said in a low voice. On the street in front of him were nine or ten cars all parked at the curb in close proximity to one house. All the lights in the house were on, and from the sounds emanating from the home, a party was in progress. Mort parked at the curb just past the row of cars and out of reach of the light cast by the nearest lamppost, his car now becoming that of just another partygoer.
Mort checked his wristwatch; it was 9:00 p.m. The jogger in the hooded Eagles sweatshirt that Sylvia had warned him about should be back at home by now, hopefully in for the rest of the night. Mort reached under his seat and pulled out a plastic bag. He unfolded a new Eagles hooded sweatshirt and slipped it over his head. He put several items from his black burglary bag into his pockets and waistband, checked to see that no one was on the street, and began to jog the five blocks to Michelle’s house.
Mort kept his head down and his hood up as he traveled along the quiet street, the vapor from his breath visible in puffs that dissolved in the night air as he jogged. He would raise his hand to wave at passersby, and more often than not, they would wave back. He smiled at his own cleverness. What rubes these people are, he thought.
When he reached her house, he ducked into the shadow of a tall bush and worked his way into the backyard. There were lights on in the house, but the yard leading to the back door was dark, giving him plenty of cover. Peeking out from behind a tall evergreen tree next to the porch, he studied the lock on the back door. Even from this distance of fifteen feet, he could see that this would be an easy entry. He took the blank plastic credit card from his pocket and crept to the door.
The door opened into a small kitchen. It was dark except for the light from the digital clock on the range, and the room had a slight smell of disinfectant. All the counters were empty. There were no dishes in the sink or pots on the stove. He wiped his feet before entering, more to preserve the kitchen’s neat, clean appearance than to eliminate any evidence of his presence. He moved silently through the kitchen toward the light from the open archway to the living room.
On the floor just a few feet from the opening to the living room were three tan suitcases. Two stood closed and one was open, partially filled with clothes. He bent down to feel the soft silk of a pink nightgown between his rough fingers. He lifted the nightgown to his face to drink in the scent of the woman he had come to see, but it smelled only of laundry detergent. Disappointed, Mort dropped the nightgown and listened for the homeowner. He assumed she had gone back to the bedroom for more items to pack.
He started up the stairs and froze as a step creaked under his foot. He heard no sound and saw no movement from above. As he approached the bedroom door, he still could not see his target, but a shadow dancing across the bed told him that she was in the room. He pulled his stocking mask down over his face and quickly stepped into the bedroom. He stood up tall, trying to look as big and as menacing as he could. To his surprise, the room was empty.
He looked around, trying to determine where she had gone. On the left side of the room, he saw an open door. At first he thought it must lead to a bathroom or a walk-in closet, but as he looked more carefully, a chill ran down his spine. Through the open door he could see what appeared to be a hallway, a hallway with the same rug and wallpaper as the hall he’d just left. He tensed and prepared to turn and move back to the door, but it was too late. Before he could complete his turn, the wind was knocked from his lungs by a blow to his side. He dropped to his knees. Next a sharp pain exploded in the left side of his head. Then everything was black.
Mort opened his eyes and tried to remember where he was. He was lying facedown on the bedroom carpet, his head pounding. He reached up and felt a lump the size of a baseball. When the spinning room slowed and his vision cleared, he saw a pair of eyes staring back at him from the floor, only inches from his face. They were wide-open eyes, but lifeless eyes. She must be the woman I came to frighten into leaving. The woman Sylvia was afraid would cause trouble. She would cause a different kind of trouble now. In her right hand was a baseball bat. The one Mort assumed hit him. His attention was now drawn to her neck. It was purple, and her head was resting at a grotesque angle to her body. He sat on the floor staring at his hands, trying to understand how he could have done this. He looked at his watch; it was eleven thirty. He must have been out for almost two hours. The more he looked at the body, the angrier he became.
Sylvia should never have sent him here. There was nothing to steal, nothing to gain. He shouldn’t have listened to her. He needed to figure out what to do. This killing was Sylvia’s fault. She was responsible.
***
Mort sat on the floor of Michelle’s bedroom and cursed Sylvia for putting him in this situation. Michelle was dead. There was nothing he could do about that now. He rubbed the sore spot on his head and looked at his fingers for traces of blood. There was barely a drop, and none on the carpet. That was a good start. His head was still spinning, and he couldn’t remember anything between being hit from behind and waking to find Michelle dead on the floor in front of him.
Mort’s first impulse was to call Sylvia, but that might not be the smart play. If she were here, he would wring her neck, but calling and threatening her on the telephone would just give her a motive and the opportunity to turn him in to the police just to save her own skin. He was a wanted man in New York, and he was sure that Sylvia could arrange to have him arrested for parole violation, if not for this murder, without implicating herself. She’s a crafty bitch, he thought.
Sylvia was his partner in the burglaries and he was sure that she wouldn’t want to lose him as a source of income, but murder was a whole different story. Sylvia would avoid involvement in this business at all cost. He would be on his own if he got caught, and with his criminal record, he’d be lucky if they didn’t give him life without parole. No, calling Sylvia would not be the smart play.
Instead, Mort decided to cover any traces of having been in the house and get far away as quickly as he could. He had to get rid of the body, of course, and remove any signs of a struggle. The woman was taking a trip, so she probably wouldn’t be missed until he was well out of town.
He could tell Sylvia that he made Michelle believe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time as her house was being burglarized. He could tell her that Michelle was so frightened by him that she promised to leave the state and never come back. He could say how he threatened her, and how she pleaded for her life and swore she wouldn’t call the police or tell anyone. He could even say she offered him her jewelry and cash if he would just let her leave unharmed. That sounded good to him.
Now that he had a plan, he began to inspect the bedroom for any evidence that might incriminate him. He moved her body into the hall and searched her closet and dresser for person
al items. He found a cardboard box in the hall closet and filled it with all her possessions that had not already been packed in the suitcases on the living room floor.
As Mort walked down the stairs from Michelle’s bedroom, a small panel in the ceiling of her closet silently began to rise, revealing an access passage through the closet ceiling to the attic. Next, two feet and then a pair of legs introduced a figure in dark clothing lowering carefully to arm’s length and then dropping with catlike grace to the closet floor. Two eyes peering through holes in a black ski mask peeked through the louvered doors, found the way clear, and entered the room.
Mort was oblivious to the clunk, clunk, clunk sound made by Michelle’s head hitting each step as he dragged the body feetfirst down the uncarpeted flight of stairs. He held both of her feet locked tightly under one of his arms and carried the cardboard box filled with her belongings on his opposite shoulder. Clack, clack, clack went the sound of her ring as her trailing hand struck each baluster on the way down to the living room.
Mort was now mumbling and making unintelligible sounds interspersed with fits of profanity and the occasional stomping of his feet. He dropped the cardboard box to the floor with a crash, sending hair brushes and jars of face cream bouncing and rolling across the living room and disappearing under the furniture. He groaned as he lifted the body and dumped her, facedown, on the sofa, leaving one shoeless foot hooked on the sofa back and one arm dangling down toward the carpet.
Mort lay on his back on the floor, stretching his arm under the sofa to retrieve the runaway beauty products. He then executed a verbal tirade, accusing them of intentionally trying to evade him, and threatened them with their eminent destruction if they didn’t immediately submit to his attempts at their recapture. As he jostled the couch, stretching the full length of his arm, Michelle’s hand fell that extra inch, causing it to brush across his cheek. Startled by the now cold touch, Mort jumped to his feet, almost tipping the sofa on its back. He caught it just in time and settled it back to the floor. He stood looking at the facedown body, not quite knowing what to do. First he took the dangling left hand and tucked it under her hip to keep it secure. After a moment’s reflection, he felt guilt for placing her in what appeared to him to be a suggestive pose. He pulled out the hand and placed it under her chest, but felt no better about the mental image that conjured up either. Finally he bent the elbow and placed the hand under her cheek as if she were resting. This seemed acceptable, and he went on with his scavenger hunt.
The figure from the closet listened to Mort’s antics and stifled a laugh. Then the intruder moved to the bed at the far end of the room without making a sound and carefully pulled down the covers. Next, the sheets and blankets were rumpled and twisted to look as though the bed had been recently used. With care, the intruder lay down to make a depression in the bedclothes. A slight squeak from a bedspring made the intruder freeze in place in the center of the bed. Without even risking a breath, the intruder listened for any activity from Mort on the first floor. Mort’s footsteps moved closer to the stairs. The prowler sat up, ready to bolt back to the closet, but then Mort’s footsteps receded back into the kitchen.
The masked intruder stood and admired the state of disarray of the bed. It looked as though someone may have struggled to fend off an attacker. All it needed now was the finishing touches. The agile prowler removed a folded piece of paper from a hip pocket and carefully opened it. It contained three black hairs that had been plucked from Mortimer Banks’s head while he was unconscious. The stealthy interloper took a hair between two fingers and held it up to the light, smiling and nodding at the tiny root, still intact, on the end of the hair. The three hairs were then placed near the pillow where they might have fallen if they were pulled from an assailant’s head during a struggle. The picture was almost complete.
Next, that same hip pocket produced a plastic bag containing the blank credit card that Mort used to slide between the lock and the frame of the kitchen door to gain entry. The intruder removed the card from the bag, holding it by its edges. Two full fingerprints and a partial print were clearly visible on the smooth face of the card. The rectangular piece of plastic was then placed on the floor just under the bed where it might have fallen without notice during a struggle.
Mort was still cursing and mumbling in the living room as he retraced his steps on the first floor to ensure that he’d left no sign of his presence. He finished Michelle’s packing and closed the suitcases. He wiped down everything he remembered touching using a kitchen dish towel, which he then stuffed into his sweatshirt pocket.
The intruder stood in the bedroom peeking out of the doorway to watch Mort’s progress with the cleanup. Mort was now rummaging through the kitchen counter drawers, looking for something. Suddenly he turned and started walking toward the stairs. The intruder quickly ducked back into the bedroom and looked at the closet with its access to the attic. There wouldn’t be enough time to get through the door, open the ceiling hatch, and climb to safety.
Near panic, the intruder dashed to the bed and was about to roll under, but stopped. The room no longer looked as it did when Mort left it. Mort would know someone had been here, and under the bed would be the first place he’d look. Mort had been bested the first time by getting hit from behind, but this time the element of surprise would be forfeited the second Mort reached the doorway and saw the unmade bed. In a fair fight, Mort would be a formidable adversary—particularly for the slender prowler.
Just as Mort reached the center of the stairs, the intruder spied the baseball bat leaning against the wall where Mort had placed it when he moved the body. The intruder stood behind the door and held the bat ready to strike Mort a second time when he entered the bedroom. The plan was to hit him hard and run from the house before he came to his senses.
With a pounding heart, a heaving chest, and every muscle tensed, the prowler waited for Mort to enter the room. Several seconds passed, but Mort didn’t appear.
The waiting was agonizing. The prowler raised the bat and stopped breathing, listening for the footsteps that would start the war. The bat was beginning to shake, and the intruder worried that it might knock against the wall and alert Mort.
Then the intruder exhaled and lowered the bat as Mort’s footsteps were heard descending the stairs back down to the living room. The prowler lay on the floor and looked through the balusters of the railing just in time to see Mort take Michelle’s car keys from an ashtray on the coffee table.
Mort entered the garage through the door in the hall and loaded the body, suitcases, and the refilled cardboard box into the trunk of Michelle’s car. He had to slam the trunk several times, cursing and kicking it, to smash down its contents enough to make it latch. When he regained his composure, he took a last look at the kitchen and the living room and opened the garage door.
Mort drove the car out of the garage and used the remote control clipped to the visor to close the door behind him. At the sound of the door closing, the intruder ran gracefully down the stairs, stepped up to the living room window, and removed the black ski mask. With a shake of her head, long black hair cascaded to her shoulders.
“Perfect,” said Sylvia.
***
Mort turned onto the two-lane road that led out of the development and toward the interstate. The streetlights along the road were far apart, which gave him the cover of darkness for most of the ride through the suburban streets. He was so angry that he feared losing control and flooring the gas pedal to speed away. To help suppress his rage, he punched the ceiling of the car as hard as he could. The pain helped him focus on his tasks—dispose of the body and then hide the car. He drove slowly and remained alert for police.
The kitchen door to Michelle’s house slowly opened. Sylvia looked left, then right, and slipped into the backyard. She ran a few steps and vaulted over the short fence to the adjoining property and dashed to the gate at the far side of the house. Just outside the gate, sitting at the curb, was the Suzuki Hayabusa m
otorcycle she had parked there just three hours before. She unlocked the cable holding her helmet, strapped it in place, and mounted the bike. The engine sprang to life with a high-pitched whine, and within seconds she was slowly cruising two blocks behind Mort as he drove Michelle’s little red car. She kept her distance and followed until he came to a stop near an abandoned strip-mine pit. Sylvia continued past the parked car for about a quarter of a mile and stopped behind a dune of coal. She then ran back to the pit, keeping out of sight among the small trees and bushes that lined the road.
Sylvia squatted behind a bush and watched Mort place Michelle’s body at the foot of a pile of loose stones and then climb the pile and kick stones down until he started a mini avalanche that completely covered the body. Satisfied that his work was done, he returned to the car and drove off. Sylvia raced to her motorcycle and resumed her clandestine chase. Shortly after, Mort pulled into the local municipal airport parking lot, wiped down the car to remove any fingerprints, and walked to the terminal taxi stand. He took no notice of the black-clothed figure bending low to the motorcycle’s handlebars and speeding past on her way back to the highway.
***
Sylvia rode back to the city, to the apartment she kept under her birth record name of Laura Carpenter. She parked her Suzuki in her garage and drove her car back to her house in Silicon Springs.
So far the plan was going well. She was still upset about the outcome for Michelle; she didn’t deserve to die, or for her body to be so disrespected. To be dumped in a strip mine with no proper burial and no loved ones to grieve for her was despicable. That could all change by tomorrow. A phone call from Sylvia to the police would solve most of her remaining problems. Sylvia thought hard about exactly what she would say to the police. She could give them the location of the body, and that would start the ball rolling. Once they identified Michelle’s body and investigated at her house, the evidence Sylvia had planted would make Mort the prime suspect. Mort was smart enough to know that no matter how careful he was, there was always some piece of evidence that could trip him up. Of course he didn’t know that she had planted enough evidence to put him on death row. He was probably two states away by now, she thought, and would never be seen again.
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