Table of Contents
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Intro
Chapter One
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About the Author
PRAISE FOR VINCENT ZANDRI
“Sensational . . . masterful . . . brilliant.”
—New York Post
“(A) chilling tale of obsessive love from Thriller Award–winner Zandri (Moonlight Weeps) . . . Riveting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“. . . Oh, what a story it is . . . Riveting . . . A terrific old school thriller.”
—Booklist “Starred Review”
“Zandri does a fantastic job with this story. Not only does he scare the reader, but the horror
show he presents also scares the man who is the definition of the word “tough.”
—Suspense Magazine
“I very highly recommend this book . . . It's a great crime drama that is full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists . . . Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.”
—Life in Review
“(The Innocent) is a thriller that has depth and substance, wickedness and compassion.”
—The Times-Union (Albany)
"The action never wanes."
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting."
—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Six Years
"Tough, stylish, heartbreaking."
—Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of Savages and Cartel.
“A tightly crafted, smart, disturbing, elegantly crafted complex thriller . . . I dare you to start it and not keep reading.”
—MJ Rose, New York Times bestselling author of Halo Effect and Closure
“A classic slice of raw pulp noir . . .”
—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob
“It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
Sex.
It was always on my mind back then. I was struggling hard to make it as a novelist. But all I managed to accomplish after nearly five years of constant effort, was a collection of one rejection letter after the other. Rejections from editors who seemed to take a special pride in informing me that my prose lacked emotion. That it was cold, stilted, and utterly devoid of feeling. What’s more, that it lacked experience or truth. Rather, what’s the million-dollar adjective they used for it?
Verisimilitude. It lacked verisimilitude.
After moving in with Stella, I’d gotten into the habit of taping the rejection letters to the walls of the garage just to punish myself. It also pissed me off having to look at them like that day in and day out. I transferred that energy into electricity, and that electricity fed my fingers and my brain, gave them the strength I needed to pump out new words every day no matter what. Negative capability, they call it. Writing for the sake of writing. Writing when there’s no hope that anyone will ever see it but me.
I guess you could also say the rejections made me horny.
Like there was some sort of strange connection between opening the mailbox for my daily dose of rejection and growing an erection. Fuck it. Let’s be real here: a hard-on . . . a hard-on that just would not quit.
If the mail arrived early and Stella was still home getting ready for work, I might take the occasion to slip into the shower with her. I’d create a lather with the soap, and spread it all over her shapely body, beginning with her breasts, foaming their plumpness, my slippery fingers running over her stiff nipples, then down her flat belly onto her trimmed patch of hair, and finally exploring her warm, wet sex.
I would bury my face into her long, thick, dark hair while I kissed her neck and felt my fingers surrounded by her soft flesh. That flesh would be warmer, wetter, hotter than the water spraying from the shower nozzle, and I wouldn’t stop until she came, her teeth biting into my shoulder. Then, and only then, would I slip my erection into her from behind, and when it came time for me to release, she would grab hold of my hands, pull me into her all the harder.
I lived for intense moments like those. I needed it, craved it, sometimes several times a day.
Why something as insignificant as a rejection letter or two would make me lust for Stella all the more, I had no idea. Maybe it had something to do with desiring something pleasant after the sting of refusal. Maybe it had to do with control. Rather, the lack of control I had over the New York publishers. But whenever the rejections came in, I wanted Stella more and more.
I wanted to devour her.
When we’d finished with our shower together, we’d dry one another off. We’d get dressed, sit down to coffee and eggs, sunny side up. Then Stella was off to work, and I was left alone with my typewriter and the existential agony of the blank page.
Back to those rejections.
Since I tried my best to avoid email and the internet, most of them were impersonal form letters that had been Xeroxed and stuffed into the self-addressed stamped envelope along with the rejected story itself. Maybe only the first page or first paragraph of it had actually been read. Or maybe just the title. Or maybe none of it at all.
Some of the rejections contained hand written notes encouraging me to write more. That was always a good thing to see. Others, the ones that stuck out the most, were ones that told me it was evident I had no experience in the topics I was writing about. Some editors saw right through me, I guess.
If I were writing about a fireman, for instance, they could tell I’d never had contact with a fireman. If I were writing about a cowboy, they could tell I was making everything up. If I were writing about London, well, heck, I’d never been to London and I guess it showed on the page. If I were writing about a murder . . . well, I’d have to be out of my mind to murder someone just for the sake of a good story now, wouldn’t I?
Sure, my significant other, Stella, took care of me, but at this point, she also wanted to leave me. Rather, since I lived in her house, she wanted me to be the one to pick up and leave. She was like a tale of two women. The first woman was loving and sexy. The second woman was fed up with my lack of, how shall I put this . . . fiduciary responsibility.
But that didn’t matter to me. What mattered was getting those words on the page.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Stella was an all-around great dame. Tall, built like a brick shit-house with long dark hair and deep brown eyes, a heart-shaped ass and a half, and a set of perky tits that made me cry every time she slipped her bra off in front of me.
She wasn’t about to see thirty again, but she still had one of the tightest pussies I’d ever been in. It also tasted even better when, out of the blue, she’d set herself on the corner of the couch, pull up her black skirt, and spread her legs for me. She sometimes wore black stockings and garters with no panties. “I’ve been wet all day thinking about you going down on me,” she’d say, her eyes closed, her hips gyrating, her manicured fingers pinching her long erect nipples. “But that still doesn’t mean I don’t hate you.”
Stella was an expert at those dagger-like passive aggressive double negatives. But she could also be a real peach of a girl. Problem was, I wasn’t bringing home any dough, and I knew that sooner or later she was going to kick my sad ass to the curb. We weren’t bound legally, after all. When that happened, the most I could hope for was to hock my typewriter and maybe buy myself a week’s rent in some downtown rat trap.
Welcome to my world.
Wait, where the hell are my ma
nners?
My name is Victor. Vic, for short. Just like that guy in the old movie pictures my folks used to watch incessantly when they weren’t battling one another, that is. What’s his name? Victor Mature. Only, I’m not sure how mature I am, and I don’t stand as tall as his six feet, nor is my waist as thin as his was.
But I’ve gotten into the habit of lifting barbells at the local boxing gym or down in my basement, and I’ve had my nose broken a few times in the ring so that it’s not exactly planted straight on my face. I have the same brown eyes, though. Now, when it comes to the hair, it used to be a hell of a lot thicker and blacker. The grays that have been showing up more and more are a stark reminder that my tenure as a full-time author . . . a mostly unpublished author . . . could be quickly coming to an end, and along with it, my love affair with Stella.
So, what’s a man to do?
Okay, before you say it, I’ll say it for you. Get a job, for Christ sakes. I’m college educated, so there’s no excuse. Except, I’m not one of those write-on-the-side sort of fellas. I need to be all in, or I’m not in at all. Something I’ve tried to explain to Stella on a daily basis, not that she ever understood. I’m assuming you probably don’t understand it either. But I’d be happy to explain it better for you, that is, you pony up for a beer and hamburger.
But I’m also not a complete moron, meaning, I’m not the sort to give up an opportunity to make a quick buck. Which leads me to this morning. Stella hadn’t been gone more than a half hour for her morning gym workout followed by her job at the State Motor Vehicle Department when someone knocked on my door. I was seated at the dining room table, banging out a new short story I was hoping to sell to a mystery magazine down in New York City. The knock took me by surprise because nobody, not even bill collectors, bothered to make house calls at seven in the morning.
At first, I considered letting it go. Figured whoever was knocking would just go away. But when her voice accompanied the knocking, I knew I couldn’t just let it go.
“Mr. Casey?” she barked. “Mr. Casey, you in there? Please, can you come to the door?”
I recognized the voice, more or less, but found it impossible to attach it to a face. As I slid out of my chair, got up, and headed across the living room to the door, I thought it might be Stella’s mother who lived across town in the higher society section. But then, since when did she refer to me as mister? Usually, she referred to me as “the unkempt man” while handing me the want-ads section of the Sunday Times.
Making my way to the front door, I glanced through the little square section of inlaid glass. My pulse picked up. It was Tara from next door. The young wife of a lawyer who I saw almost daily, but whom I’d never actually struck up a conversation with. Usually, our interaction consisted of a casual wave from my driveway to hers.
I opened the door.
“I’m so, so sorry to disturb your work, Mr. Casey. But I have a bit of an emergency next door.”
I tried to plant a smile on my face. It wasn’t that she was disturbing me. My work was going nowhere that morning anyway. It was that I was dressed only in an old wife beater T-shirt and a pair of torn jeans. I was also barefoot. I hadn’t shaved in days either, and since the writing wasn’t coming very well as of late, I’d taken to adding a little Crown Royal to my morning coffee just to dull the edge. But I wasn’t about to run to the bathroom to brush my teeth just because Tara showed up unannounced.
“Come on in, Tara,” I said. “You look a little distressed. Is there something I can help you with?”
Sure, she looked distressed. But, she also looked hot as hell. She obviously ran out of the house without thinking about her wardrobe. She was dressed in a T-shirt that doubled as a nightgown. While I had no idea about panties, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and the way her young breasts pressed against the thin cotton shirt nearly robbed me of my breath. The hardness of her nipples was matched only by the hardness growing between my legs.
She was maybe ten years younger than me. She had a nice house, a nice husband, nice little kids who lined up shoulder to shoulder every morning to catch the school bus. I’d always thought of them as the perfect American family. I kept my distance for fear of rubbing off on them. They were nice, if not perfect, and I was a total wreck. If I made an effort to offer so much as a casual hi there to the kids, offered them some candy, they’d only think of me as that weird man who lives next door and stays home all day. The guy who’s always swearing at the mailbox. The guy who doesn’t have a job.
She brushed back her thick, shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair, and crossed her arms over her chest. She seemed suddenly self-conscious. Like she knew full well my eyes were locked on her breasts.
“There’s a spider,” she said.
I felt myself shaking my head, more to snap me out of my trance than anything else.
“I’m not following, Tara.”
“In the basement. Over the washing machine. There’s a web and spider living on it.” Her blue eyes were dilated with fear. “If only . . . If only you knew how I felt about . . . spiders.”
“You’re positively catatonic,” I said, knowing precisely where this was going, knowing the bravery that was going to be expected of me.
“I can’t bear spiders of any kind, Mr. Casey.”
Truth was, I couldn’t either. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. Let her in on the fact that most nights I dreamt about a big orange-bellied spider slowly descending from a web constructed on a dark ceiling. I’m on my back, mouth open. I’m paralyzed. I can’t shout out or move a muscle. There’s only the big black spider with the orange belly about to enter my mouth, into my body . . .
It was the nightmare from hell.
“I know what you mean,” I said.
“Can you help me? It’s holding my family’s dirty laundry hostage.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe I’d use that line for a short story.
“Let me grab my shoes,” I said, my pulse picking up, heart pumping in my chest. “You sure you wouldn’t like to come in?”
“I’ll wait here,” she said, crossing her arms once more over her chest self-consciously.
She was a timid one, this lonely housewife.
I was anything but.
I followed her across the length of both our lawns until we came to her front door. The big wood door was already opened, so we entered her vestibule through the screen door. I was immediately struck by the odor. It smelled, how do I put this . . . clean. Like too clean. Like not lived in enough. I’d half expected the place to smell like bacon and eggs, and coffee, and other aromas that usually goes with the average modern nuclear family gearing up for an average day.
Mounted on one wall were framed pictures of the kids. Good looking kids. Sweet kids dressed in their school uniforms, or sporting outfits. One picture showed the boy dressed like Batman on Halloween, and another showed the little girl dressed like a ballerina. One large photo showed the husband—Stan, I believe his name was—standing at a podium where he was giving a speech. The projection behind him read New York State Society of Lawyers. He was tall and blond, clean shaven, and very serious about his work. She caught me staring at him, and whispered, “That’s Stan. He’s a bit of a nerd.”
“Nerd is good,” I said. “Nerd brings home the bacon.”
I focused on her heart-shaped ass as she made her way into the kitchen and to the door that I assumed led down into the basement. She opened the door, flicked on the light.
“Follow me, Mr. Casey.”
“Call me, Vic,” I offered.
I followed her down the wood steps, the cool basement air washed over me. The stairs hadn’t been carpeted, and the basement wasn’t much more than a concrete hole in the ground that doubled as a sort of man cave. Correction, the opposite end of the basement had been sheet-rocked, the interior walls painted hunter green, while the concrete floors had been partially covered with a patchwork of throw rugs. A wide screen, high-def television was mounted to the far wall. A v
ideo game console was hooked up to it, and a sectional couch that was nicer than anything Stella and I had in our living room was positioned before it. A couple of stand-up lamps were set on either side of the couch. A big sign that spelled out Budweiser in red neon tube lighting was attached to the wall over a small, but fully stocked, black plastic mini bar. There was also a stair-climber stored in the far corner that also faced the television.
“That stair climber how you stay in such great shape?” I asked.
She stopped, gazed at the machine, then peeked at me over her shoulder.
“Thanks for noticing, Vic,” she said smiling. “But this space is strictly off limits for me or the kids. It’s Stan’s refuge. He lives down here when he’s home. Most of the time he sleeps on that couch.”
“I can’t imagine a man not wanting to share a bed with you,” I said. I’m not sure why I said out loud the first thought that entered my head, but it just happened like that.
She turned to me, set her fingers gently onto my face.
“You’re very sweet for saying so,” she cooed.
Her gentle touch and kind words sent a shock through my system. They also made me somewhat hard. But all that changed as soon as I entered the partitioned laundry room. Inside the brightly lit room, I faced my nightmare.
The black spider with the orange belly.
Any semblance of my hard-on quickly vanished. In fact, my manhood retreated up inside me. It was one of the biggest spiders I’d ever seen in my life. Even from all the way across the room I could see that the legs were long and black, the body black and hairy, the belly bright orange. It must have known we were in there because it traipsed up the web a couple of inches then stopped, rubbing the ends of its two front legs together.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, my mouth turning desert sand dry.
Lust and Letters: The Handyman, Episode I Page 1