Ten Year Stretch

by Martin Edwards

  A gentleman for offering, a gentleman for not pushing after she refused.

  In front of the restaurant, he flagged a cab for her.

  The old Toyota pulled up. As she turned back to Tim, to thank him again, she glanced through the window of the restaurant and frowned to see that the news was back on, and the anchor was running the clip once more of the police detective talking about the Roman Numeral Killer.

  ‘Hey,’ Tim said, ‘you all right?’

  He’d been saying something once more, something she’d missed.

  ‘Yeah, sorry.’ They hugged and kissed cheeks—lingering for just a moment. A first date is generally a three-second hug, and this approached five.

  Which was fine by her.

  Joannie sat in the backseat of the cab and told the driver her address. The vehicle pulled away from the curb. She turned back to wave but Tim was already gone.

  The car clattered along the streets. Yep, a very nice night. If only it hadn’t been tainted by thoughts of the killings. It was crazy to think she had anything to worry about.

  The Paranoia Queen.

  The city was huge, the population high, and there was no reason at all to think that she’d be in danger.

  The cab was careening down a deserted street, going just a bit faster than she would have liked. She glanced toward the speedometer and noted the driver was looking at her in the rearview mirror. She met his eyes and he looked back to the road. He must’ve realized he’d been concentrating on her and not the speed, and he slowed up.

  He seemed nice enough. Nothing about his appearance was troubling. His hair was perfectly trimmed and sprayed. His face clean-shaven. Fingernails cut very short and clean. He wore a suit and tie. It was spring but there’d been a few beautiful sunny days, balmy, filled with soft breezes. She spent every minute she could spare outside; he clearly didn’t. He was quite pale. He struck her as one of those people who come to your house to spread the Gospel. A little too squeaky clean, but harmless.

  Chill, girl. All’s good.

  The drive from the restaurant to her house was about twenty minutes—all surface roads; there was no highway connecting her neighborhood to the chic little enclave of boutiques and dining spots where she and Tim had eaten. A number of routes would have taken her home, some slightly faster than others, but the driver seemed to be taking a slightly longer route.

  ‘Having a good night?’ he asked. His voice was high.

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  He gave a laugh. ‘I always seem to have good nights. It’s easy when you enjoy your line of work. Do you?’

  ‘Uhm, less.’

  A glance in the mirror showed that he was looking her way once more.

  ‘Have you been a resident of this area long?’

  Who said I lived here? Joannie thought. Maybe I’m visiting.

  Then told herself once more to relax. He was a clean-cut momma’s boy, who liked to talk.

  She said, ‘A while.’

  Another laugh. ‘I love it here. I know it pretty well. Of course, that’s a requirement for my job. I’ve lived here all my life. Are you going to the May Day parade?’

  A popular ritual in this suburb. Nothing to do with Communist workers, the fete was about flowers and gardening.

  That he’d mentioned it, though, gave the event a slightly ominous pagan tilt, a fertility rite.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll probably be working.’

  ‘I’m going. I get there early to get a good spot.’

  Now she glanced up again and found him examining her once more. Closely.

  She felt a trickle of fear and looked away.

  They were now in a very deserted area. The houses were set back from the road and there were large patches of empty fields. Joannie oriented herself. ‘Could you turn here. Left.’

  ‘On Madison?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s right.’

  ‘You sure you want to go that way?’

  Joannie didn’t want to antagonize him. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘It’s just that there’s construction. Those plates in the road. You know those steel plates? It’s not so good for my car. I wrote the commissioner about the problem, but he never wrote me back. It was rude, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘So do you mind if we go a little farther on this road? I’ll have you home in no time.’

  Her palms were sweating. Why was he looking at her so closely?

  ‘Okay,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yes, indeed, you’ll be home in no time,’ he whispered and sped up, his eyes flicking between her face and the road.

  Joannie Karsten strolled slowly up the concrete walk to her house. It was a small single-family two-story Colonial, with a detached garage.

  She was calm now, reflecting wryly on how uneasy she’d been under the gaze of the cab driver.

  Silly to think she’d been in danger. No risk, no threat. That damn paranoia.

  He’d just been a clean-cut, if odd and quirky, young man.

  Joannie unlocked her front door and stepped into the alcove, decorated with antique pictures of farmland—a hobby of hers, collecting, as she called it ‘bad but comforting art.’ A few photos of her family, too. An ornate mirror. She tossed her keys into a bowl and dropped to her knees to greet Bosco. At eight, he wasn’t as lively as he once had been, but still he bounded up and down, licking her face. She fed him in the kitchen and then she climbed the stairs to her bedroom—done up in frilly pink-and-blue floral décor. She stripped off her date clothes. Into the shower.

  It was late, close to eleven, but she wasn’t ready for bed yet. She was still exhilarated after the blind date. Dressing in jeans and a red ISU sweatshirt, stepping into slippers, she headed downstairs once more. She let Bosco into the fenced backyard and poured a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. The night was cool but clear and dry and she decided to sit on her front porch. You could hear bullfrogs and the wind singing through the trees of her front yard and the park across the street. Sometimes she spotted eager bats pirouetting through the dark sky.

  As she dropped into the swing, chained to the porch ceiling, she noted something odd. There was a dark car parked in front of the house next door. It hadn’t been there when she’d arrived. She rose and stepped to the edge of the porch to get a better look. No, it wasn’t the neighbors’ Nissan. And it was strange there’d be a car parked in that spot anyway, since the family was away. She wondered—

  A creak behind her.

  She gasped, turning.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ the man’s voice said.

  ‘I—’

  It was Tim.

  ‘You…you scared me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  It would be his car.

  He was looking around her yard and at the front door of her house.

  ‘How did you…?’ She was going to ask how he knew where she lived, but then remembered he’d gotten that information at dinner—referring to the pictures she’d posted on Facebook. She’d mentioned she was right across from one of the entrances to Cooper Gardens. Later, she’d mentioned that she lived in a two-story Colonial that was green, but that she was thinking of painting it white. On a blind date, she wouldn’t normally give away that kind of personal information but she’d been distracted, gazing at the TV.

  Police are continuing to investigate the case of the Roman Numeral Killer…

  ‘I tracked you down.’

  Silence for a moment. She glanced past him briefly. He was standing between her and the door.

  ‘I was worried,’ he said.

  In the distance a dog barked, nearby the bullfrogs croaked. But otherwise it was quiet. Nobody on the sidewalks. And all the lights on the neighboring houses were out.

  Not a soul around.

  ‘Worried?’ she asked.

&n
bsp; ‘Your face. Just before you got into the cab, you were looking back in the restaurant. It was like you’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘Oh, well. It was nothing. Just that story about the killer.’

  ‘The Roman Numeral Killer?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is that what it was?’ he asked in a soft voice.

  Here, on the walk, with only a dim front-porch light—behind him, turning him into a silhouette—he seemed so much bigger than at the restaurant.

  She said, her voice trembling ‘Sorry you came all this way.’

  ‘I tried to call. But your phone was off.’

  Had he really tried? She wasn’t so sure.

  Neither moved for a long moment. The faraway dog barked once more. Another bullfrog joined the chorus. And Joannie Karsten believed she could hear, as well as feel, her heart pounding faster and faster.

  The Monroe, Indiana, Police Department didn’t generally see a lot of high-profile crime.

  It was mostly DUIs and domestics, carjackings, and the occasional armed robbery. Oh, and the always-popular weed, meth, crack, blow, horse…

  ‘Drugs don’t pay attention to ZIP Codes,’ read the MPD poster, the brainchild of some public affairs wonk in the police department. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so goddamn true.

  But lately the Detective Division had had to expand—unwillingly and largely unprepared—into the serial killer investigation department.

  Thanks to the guy slicing throats with a razor and carving Roman numerals into the corpses’ foreheads.

  The lead investigator was a stocky, thirty-eight-year-old detective named Judd Bell, from whose name you might suspect roots in Georgia or Alabama, but in fact was a taciturn Maine native, and Indiana was about as far south as he’d ever been, when you excluded the Disney outing with the family.

  Bell was contentedly asleep in a comfy Sleep Number bed (he 58, the wife 89) when he was awakened by the blare of his work mobile.

  Fumbling for it, he picked the unit up and, to avoid waking Betsy, headed into the hallway. He stepped carefully over the minefield of two black labs, whose sprawled posture in sleep and coloring made them a dangerous booby trap.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ebbet. Didn’t I come up?’

  ‘Don’t have my glasses. Middle of the night. What?’

  ‘It’s four a.m.’

  ‘Fine.What?’

  ‘Got another one, Detective.’

  ‘Roman numeral?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Near Cooper Gardens.’

  There hadn’t been any killings in that part of town. Bell had the not-so-funny thought: Well, our boy’s expanding his market.

  ‘Throat cut again?’

  ‘Yep. Ear to ear.’

  He sighed. ‘All right. I’ll meet you at the station. Crime scene and coroner?’

  ‘On the way.’

  Bell disconnected and returned to the bedroom, threading his way over the canine obstacle course, to kiss his wife and tell her he’d be heading to work early and wouldn’t be back till late.

  The bedroom windows faced east.

  The pink curtains were spread wide and the dawn sun poured into the spacious, airy room and fell upon skin like a warm caress.

  Joannie Karsten opened her eyes and looked at the face close to hers.

  Tim Evans was awake, too. Had been for a few minutes, it seemed. He smiled. She did as well.

  Good. It had been good. She recalled being on the porch last night, her heart pounding in anticipation of what was coming next...a culmination of the attraction—the undeniable heat—that had arisen at the restaurant.

  No, Tim hadn’t come to see if she was upset, worried outside the restaurant.

  That was crazy. Nope, he was here because he wanted her.

  Well, guess what? She wanted him, too.

  They’d kissed hard, embracing, to the soundtrack of the bullfrogs and the wind easing through the spring leaves. Then they’d made their way upstairs.

  Strewing clothes on the floor, they’d fallen into bed.

  Sometimes, rarely, it all comes together, and two people fall so easily into patterns of touching, tasting, smelling, as if each was composed of incomplete genes and only by joining could their hearts become whole.

  Now, Tim asked, ‘Are you…?’ As men will do at times like this.

  She leaned up and kissed his cheek. And touched a finger to his lips.

  ‘Brunch?’ He fluffed pillows and eased into a sitting position, pulling the comforter up to his chest.

  ‘Perfect.’

  He picked up his iPhone. ‘I’ll check OpenTable.’ He logged on and frowned.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Joannie asked. She reached to the floor and pulled on her t-shirt. Enjoyed it when he snuck a peak.

  ‘My home page is local news. There was another murder last night.’

  ‘What?’ she gasped. ‘The Roman Numeral Killer?’

  He nodded. ‘It was near here. Just the other side of the park.’

  ‘No! Who was it?’ she asked this with breathless urgency.

  ‘A cab driver. The police think maybe it was a fare.’

  ‘Do they?’

  And Joannie Karsten reminded herself: Careful. Act interested but not too interested.

  Thinking: Of course it was a fare.

  A fare who’d grown ever more concerned that the Book of Mormon driver kept looking her way in the rearview mirror. Leading Joannie to believe that, despite the unlikelihood, maybe he was one of the witnesses to the earlier killings that the police had been talking about.

  Witnesses…That was why she’d been so worried at dinner—not that she’d be the victim, but that the police were apparently making some strides in finding out that she was the Roman Numeral Killer.

  Who’s at risk?

  Me?

  She eased a bit closer to Tim, enjoying the comfort of the sunlight, the comfort of his flesh against her. She asked if the police had any leads.

  ‘Nothing so far.’

  She’d been careful. She thought again about last evening. Replaying the last minutes of the driver’s life. Having him take her to the other side of the park, a mile from her house, nowhere near witnesses.

  ‘Stop here, please.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Please.’

  The driver had turned his scrubbed face toward her in the mirror. ‘The park? You want to walk through the park after dark?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  He had done so and on the pretense of handing him the money, she’d slipped the razor against his throat and screamed, ‘Do you know me? Have you ever seen me?’

  ‘What, what? Lady! Please. No. I was just making talk. I was…I didn’t mean nothing.’

  ‘Answer my question. Have you ever seen me before?’

  ‘No, I don’t who you are. My God!’

  She’d believed him.

  But she’d already made up her mind.

  Swish…And then leapt back, away from the enthusiastic spray.

  His screams became choking, the choking silence.

  She’d already shut her phone off, to avoid GPS tracking, thinking that things might develop this way. Then she’d taken the Sani-Wipes from her purse and wiped everything she’d touched. Which was very little; she was always cautious that way. Then she’d replaced her shoes with the men’s boots she carried in her bag, and climbed out of the cab with a tissue. She’d pulled open the driver’s door—just to confuse the police a bit more—and walked in a circle around the car, leaving plenty of bootprints. Then she disappeared into the park, walking on the grass. She changed her shoes halfway through.

  So, the driver hadn’t been a threat, hadn’t been a witness to one of the ea
rlier killings.

  Just a clean-cut, if odd and quirky, young man.

  Though one who had committed an unpardonable offense. He’d made her uneasy. Made her feel bad. Made her worry.

  And those offenses, for Joannie Karsten, were punishable by death.

  It had taken her years to have the confidence to accept this urge, which had dogged her all her life. Years ago, teenage Joannie had been alone with her father—a serial philanderer and drunk—when he’d dropped to the living room floor with a ferocious heart attack. As he’d crawled toward the phone, screaming for her to help him, Joannie had risen from the lounger where she was watching The Brady Bunch. She lifted the cordless handset away and sat down once more, sipping her cherry Slurpee and watching him with detached interest until he died.

  She wondered how it would feel.

  Wonderful. It felt wonderful.

  But she’d kept a lid on her passion to repeat the sensation…until about a year ago and she knew she had to give in.

  First, the sadistic nurse at her mother’s rehab center—a woman who was continually rude to Mom and who left her waiting in a freezing hallway on more than one occasion. Then the grad student making money as a dog-walker. He’d kicked Bosco when the dog was pulling on the lead, thinking Joannie hadn’t seen. And two days ago: ‘Hi I’m Your Helpful Server, Lois,’ at Callaghan’s Road House, who hadn’t given Joannie any service at all, and then shouted at her for not leaving a tip.

  Swish, swish, swish…The sound was largely imaginary—a razor through the veins and cartilage of the throat is almost silent—certainly compared with the screams of the victim, and the ensuing gurgling. Which was, to her ears, delightful, if loud and messy.

  Tim rose from the bed and found his shorts. Pulled them on. ‘What’s Roman numeral four?’

  He didn’t know?

  ‘Hmm,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure. IV, I think.’

  ‘Wonder why the killer leaves those?’

  ‘Something in his sick mind. In his past probably. That’s what they always say on TV. Those true crime shows.’