Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2)

by Danielle Girard

  The white van might have been there for any of those monstrosities. But it wasn’t. Construction crews on these new homes came in teams like police to a raid. There was never just one van. There was a truck, an SUV, a BMW or Mercedes or Tesla or—in the case of the big asshole at the end of the block—a bright-yellow Lamborghini.

  This white van with its gaudy emblem—starting to peel at the bottom-right corner, he saw—was there for their home. For their dilapidated corner of the block.

  He wanted to believe that perhaps the worker had parked it there to go get food in San Francisco’s Italian area, a few blocks away. During the week you had a better chance of getting struck by a car than finding a parking spot on the street—a much better chance. But he had that sinking feeling that this was Trent’s doing.

  Trent was in there alone. His brother knew better.

  His brother. His brother. Oh, hell. Maybe he didn’t know better. How long since Trent had stopped thinking straight? How many years ago had the pressure of their mother’s disdain and their father’s fury finally done him in?

  Anger washed over him with the answer—since they were five years old. That’s how many years it had been. And he’d been cleaning up after Trent ever since. He wrung the steering wheel in his hands as though he might relieve the pressure in his head if he squeezed tightly enough. It was not uncommon when parents lost children. How often had he heard that?

  Neither of their parents had ever recovered after their sister died. It was as though looking at the two boys made Becky’s loss worse rather than better. If there couldn’t be three children, there ought to be none.

  As a child, he had been horrified when his father had told him why his sister died—a hole in her heart. He was only five, but he had known better than to ask. That fear lived with him beyond the age of fantasies and bogeymen, until he went through his own medical training. Becky had a congenital heart defect. It was the only logical explanation for her death. After that Trent had become fragile, always imagining some malady, every ache a cancer, every virus deadly.

  From then on, nothing either boy did had ever been quite right. But it was worse for Trent. Always worse. On the rare occasions when their father had spoken to him kindly, it was often about Trent. “You’re twin A,” he used to say. “You must watch out for your younger brother. He is your responsibility.”

  Had his father recognized that the world would be too hard for Trent? That he would fall apart simply in the course of growing up?

  Did his father know that the focus of his life would be taking care of Trent? Helping him get medical care and nursing him through the recoveries? Did his father wonder how the two boys could look identical and be so totally opposite?

  As these thoughts ran through his head, he became convinced that the white van was there for Trent. Now the question was what to do about it. He could hardly sit there all day and wait, so he drove the boring gray sedan into the garage and parked in his reserved spot. From there he had a clear view of both the front door and the white van.

  He had planned on going out this evening, taking a break from his brother. God, how he needed a release.

  He smoothed the driving gloves over his knuckles, stretching his fingers and feeling the leather tighten across his knuckles. He inhaled the scent. Leather smelled like sex.

  It had been way too long.

  He focused on the gloves, on the stretch of the leather, the way the stitching felt against the smooth steering wheel. He’d chosen black with a bit of red piping this time. The third pair this month. He could afford more pairs. It was finding another store that carried the Fratelli Orsini brand. Couldn’t keep going back for replacements. Not at $400 a pop. The clerk would certainly remember him.

  Perhaps he ought to pick up a few extra pairs of less expensive ones. But they really didn’t feel the same.

  The door to his home opened, and out came a workman. He gripped the steering wheel, furious that he’d been right. The workman was heavyset, bearded. Twisting his hands back and forth, he silently urged the workman to leave. Instead the man turned back to talk to whoever was in the doorway.

  Not whoever. Trent.

  Trent stood in the doorway, open for all the world to see. It had to be Trent because Trent was the only one in the fucking house. Unless he’d screwed that up, too.

  A hand, the brush of light hair. A flash of his face. He cringed at the sight. His own face, only grotesque. The bearded worker held a large blue tackle box in one hand. The other was waving at his side as he ran at the mouth. Talk, talk, talk. What on earth were the two of them talking about? And why were they doing this out on the street?

  The beard stopped talking. For a moment, it seemed the beard was leaving. But then he remained in the doorway, not leaving. Now he was listening. Listening and nodding. Trent was running at the mouth.

  Dear God, had Trent not learned one damn thing from the last time?

  The beard set down his tackle box, talking again. They were standing in the doorway, shooting the shit.

  Rage pulsed through him, along with adrenaline. Heat flushed his face as moisture collected under his arms and at his brow. Something would have to be done.

  He scanned the other buildings, searching for a face in a window. Someone would see Trent. How many people would need to be silenced? But he saw no faces in the windows. Most were shaded by dull, accordion-style blinds. There was no subtle shifting of curtains like in the old days, back when Mrs. Brighton lived across the street. He could always tell when Mrs. Brighton was watching by the sway of her dingy lace drapes. Dead three years, thank God.

  The beard remained in the doorway.

  Anger rose in his throat like bile.

  He could kill Trent. How many times had he thought about it? How easy it would be. Trent was so unsuspecting, so naive.

  He clenched and unclenched his fists inside the new gloves. The smell of leather, some mixture of oak and pine and sex to his senses—filled the car. Before his mother had died, he’d owned a car that smelled like leather. Not the manufactured pleather that infused cars these days—the genuine scent of Italian leather. Along with the alloy wheels, the smooth, polished wood of the dash, the car had handled like a race car. He would know. He’d driven race cars.

  When his life had been his own.

  Before his mother had died and left him to manage Trent.

  The beard lifted the tackle box off the porch. Finally. The anger simmered into an internal steam. He would need to control himself, to prepare.

  The beard turned from the door and started down the steps. A sliver of Trent’s face was visible as he waved. This was his brother’s fault. If he would just obey directions. If he would just stay undercover for a while. But no. It was like he wanted to fuck things up for them.

  There was no one to clean up Trent’s mess except him.

  He popped open the glove box and found the silver spray canister and the silk handkerchief. Put one in each pocket. Added a bottle of artificial tears and a small foil package with a wet wipe into the pocket with the handkerchief.

  He locked the car and zipped his keys into the inside pocket of his windbreaker. He pulled up the hood and jogged across the street as the serviceman loaded up the back of his van.

  This was not the ideal location.

  He kept his face down and to the left. The yuppie neighbors might have video surveillance. Not that anyone would come checking. Not if he did it right.

  He approached the van from the front. Checking that the man was still loading up the back, he took a moment to stare into the driver-side window. Cigarettes, a cell phone. Paperwork. A parking ticket.

  His pulse quickened. He had an idea. He slid the gloves off his hands, tucked them into his pockets, and rounded the passenger side of the van. “Hey.”

  The man gave him a smile and then eyed his clothes. His expression turned into a funny double take. The name tag on his dingy uniform read “Ben.”

  “Ben, sorry to bother you.” He pointed
to the house. “It’s me. I’m wondering if you could drop me off. I looked at getting an Uber, but the wait is like fifteen minutes.”

  Ben was staring at the closed house door. “You—”

  “I know. Quick change, right?”

  Ben frowned. “Actually, I’ve got another job I need to get to.”

  “It’s only about six blocks from here,” he went on, ignoring Ben’s no. “I left my car in the parking lot across from the Exploratorium, and, of course, the damn meter is going to expire. Those tickets are outrageous.”

  “They are,” Ben agreed. He could see the dumb lug’s brain moving. “I got one this morning. A hundred bucks.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure mine will be at least that. And it’s not my first this month.” He pretended to think—good to act as slow as they were, he thought—and pulled his wallet from his back pocket, nodding and smiling. Like the idiots did. He slid a fifty from his wallet. “How about you give me a ride to my car, and I’ll split the ticket with you?”

  Ben eyed the bill. “Seriously?”

  “That way we both win,” he said with another smile. He touched his wrist even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “But only if we can go soon because if the meter runs out . . .” He reached out, the fifty-dollar bill almost touching Ben’s hand.

  There was no hesitation. “No problem,” Ben said, pocketing the cash and moving to finish loading his gear. His shirt hiked up on one side as he lifted the tackle box into the back of the van. He closed the doors and yanked the shirt down over his doughy midsection.

  Face shadowed by the windbreaker, he kept his eye on Ben as he slipped on a glove, opened the passenger-side door, and got in. With the same hand, he gathered the clipboard and paperwork, shuffling it into his lap. The speeding ticket lay on top. The fine at the bottom was sixty-five dollars. Not one hundred, but sixty-five.

  So Ben was a liar, too.

  He slid the pile to the middle console and slipped the glove off his hand as Ben climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Ben started up the engine and took the paperwork, setting it down at his feet. The idiot’s gaze paused on the parking ticket, but he didn’t look over.

  Peering out the window, he slid on his sunglasses while Ben pulled away from the curb. Probably curious about why the hood of his windbreaker was up. He made a little internal bet. Ben wouldn’t ask about the hood. He wasn’t the confrontational type. The moron glanced in his direction and sped up a little. Passive-aggressive. He never did understand passive-aggressive personalities. He’d grown up with only aggressive ones.

  As the van bounced over a pothole, Ben signaled to turn left.

  “Green Street doesn’t go all the way through,” he said. “You’ll have to go down to Broadway and cut across Sansome. Get to Green that way.”

  Ben glanced at his phone. Like this was taking too much time.

  Sorry, Ben. You took the fifty bucks. Too late now.

  “It’s just a couple more blocks, Ben. I really appreciate it.”

  The smile was tight on his face. A dimwit like Ben who probably barely finished high school should feel damn lucky to make fifty bucks for ten minutes of work. When would he ever make that much money again? Never.

  A nervous laugh caught in his throat. Ben gave him a strange look.

  “Sorry. Just thought of something funny.” Only the idiot wouldn’t think it was funny.

  He studied Ben out of the corner of his sunglasses, wondering why he was pretending to be in a hurry. Hell, from the look of it, he would have stood on the porch with Trent for another half hour.

  He knew why, of course. People were drawn to Trent. It had always been like that. Women especially. As identical twins, their appearance could fool people, but give a woman five minutes with both of them, and she invariably went for Trent.

  He had pretended to be Trent on more than one occasion. Slept with two of Trent’s girlfriends in high school, posing as his brother. Jill might have figured it out. She was different afterward. Looked at him with those beady eyes narrowed. Creepy, really.

  He remembered the smooth curve of her butt, the flawless, taut teenage ass. She was a sophomore when they were seniors. But experienced. The first girl he’d been with who knew what she was doing—how to move her hips, the noises to make, the muscles she tightened inside.

  He shifted on the seat, adjusting the crotch of his slacks to give himself more space. He was going out tonight. Ginger or Stacy, maybe. One of them would be up for some fun. Of course, Ginger wanted more, some sort of commitment. Didn’t they all?

  Ben stopped at a light. The street was quiet. He would have liked to finish their business right there at the light, but a car came up behind them. A stoplight was not a smart choice.

  Ben swung a left on Broadway.

  “Turn on Sansome. It’s a little faster.”

  Ben shot him a frown, looking more frazzled.

  “We’re going to make it. You saved me a hundred bucks,” he said, slapping Ben’s shoulder. “Well, fifty bucks, right?”

  Ben stiffened.

  Maybe it was too much, the slap. As if they were buddies. How had Trent acted inside? Did Ben realize they were two different people? Or did he think they were the same person with two personalities?

  Trent probably hadn’t mentioned him. Didn’t think of himself as a twin, didn’t think of his brother much at all. Trent thought of himself with a unique focus.

  “Take a right on Green and the lot is just up ahead,” he said. He was pleased at his choice to come down Green. The street was quieter. Fewer stoplights, so fewer cameras. He was breathing more easily now.

  Ben drove the van into the lot, taking the curb so that he bounced off his seat. He put his hands in his pockets to pull the gloves into his lap. Nodding his chin toward the end of a row, he slipped his hands into the gloves. “That’s me there on the end.”

  “Can you get out here?”

  “It’ll be easier to turn around down there,” he said.

  Ben sighed.

  “I sure appreciate it.”

  Ben drove to the end of the row and scanned the cars. “Which one’s you?”

  “That one there,” he said, nodding to an older-model car on their left as he dug into his pockets. “The black one, second from the end.” His right fingers found the canister. His left bunched the silk handkerchief. “You see any ticket?”

  Ben shifted in his seat to look at the car. “Can’t see one.”

  “You sure?” He released his seat belt and let it slide off his shoulder. Hands out of his pockets.

  Ben leaned forward for a better view. “You’ve got Colorado plates?”

  He grabbed hold of the gearshift beside the wheel and jerked the car into park.

  “How come—” Ben turned toward him, his lips folded in anger. “What the hell?”

  “Didn’t want you to roll forward.”

  Ben’s gaze tracked to his hands, to the gloves. His eyes widened. He reached for the gearshift. As though the idiot could escape.

  He sucked in a breath, covered his mouth with the handkerchief, and swung the canister into Ben’s face.

  Ben gasped at the spray. Like a baby does when you blow in its face. The instinctive reaction to surprise was to inhale. Perfect.

  He held the nozzle down for a slow count of two and then cracked his door to slide from the van. Exhaled and breathed his lungs full of clean outside air. Reaching back into the van, he turned the air on high, closed the door, and watched through the window.

  His belt still strapped across him, Ben writhed in his seat. His hands were pressed to his face. He touched his nose as though surprised to find it there. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

  Ben’s eyes looked wild as they scanned his surroundings. He clutched his neck, the steering wheel, and then his neck again.

  It was arousing, watching Ben struggle to breathe. Ginger had tried to convince him to try that once. Breath play, she’d called it.

  Ben stared
in his direction, but the spray would have gotten in his eyes. He probably couldn’t see anything.

  He stood outside the car and watched Ben’s last breaths. The cyanide wouldn’t reach him outside, but to be safe, he kept the handkerchief to his face.

  Ben lurched upright, the motion like a terrifying climax. Then, with a terrific thump, he slumped sideways against the door. Dead. His last orgasm.

  Sorry, Ben.

  He waited another minute before climbing back into the van to turn the air down and shut off the engine. When he pressed his gloved hand to Ben’s jugular, he felt only the beating of his own heart in his fingertips.

  Adrenaline galloped through his racing heart, and the erection was tight in his pants. He was slightly ashamed of his body’s reaction to the murder. It had done it last time, too. Why was that? Perhaps he and Trent were more alike than he wanted to admit.

  No. They were nothing alike.

  He focused on Ben again. There was no detectible pulse. With Ben’s head pressed backward, he squeezed drops into Ben’s eyes to wash away any trace of the cyanide and used the wet wipe on Ben’s face, focusing on the area around his mouth and nose where the chemical would have left a slight sheen. The bright sunlight made it difficult to see, so he wiped broadly to be safe.

  Content that Ben looked as normal as a dead man could, he returned the paperwork to the passenger seat, leaving the parking ticket on top. He removed the driving gloves and put them in his pocket with the spray canister. He was ready to leave when he remembered the fifty Ben had so greedily shoved into his pants pocket.

  Using the handkerchief to push open the khaki trouser pocket, he felt for the money. Through the thin layer of the pocket’s lining, Ben’s thigh was warm against his hand. He imagined Ginger’s thighs around his waist.

  His fingers found the bill, and he wrapped it in the handkerchief and shoved it in his own pocket.

  He retrieved the bottle of eye drops and the used wet wipe, then looked around for the foil packaging. It wasn’t under the seat or on the ground outside the van. Where had it gone? The silver caught his eye from where it had fallen between the middle console and Ben’s seat. Damn.