The land of dead flowers: (A serial killer thriller)

by Natasha A. Salnikova

  “Ann?”

  She startled.

  Max called her, but didn’t open his eyes.

  “Yes, Max.”

  “Are you looking at me?”

  “No.” She turned on her back and closed her eyes.

  “Not now, but before. I felt it.”

  “I was thinking how handsome you are.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you are my beauty. We are lucky to have each other.”

  Max turned to his wife, swung his arm over her chest, and buried his face in her hair. His warm breath touched her ear. Anna smiled.

  Of course, his phrase about being lucky was for a reason. He always seemed to know her emotions and fear spiked. She was a panicker.

  She turned to Max and touched his cheek with her lips. “Good night.”

  “Yep.”

  She really was lucky.

  CHAPTER 19

  Morris pushed the bucket with the rag onto the floor of the attic, and then climbed up. It wasn’t necessary to clean here, but he didn’t want to swallow dust every time he came up. He didn’t have a set of extra lungs stashed anywhere, but he would have to come here a few times. He was going to bring the green dress down now, but he would need something else later. It was always like that. First one thing then another. He didn’t know what fantasy would come to mind, but the old attic had everything to satisfy it. Almost everything.

  The light penetrating through the window was weak, so Morris washed the glass first to let in more of the afternoon rays.

  He wiped it with the wet rag then with the dry, looking outside. He cursed, noting a familiar car. It stopped, and of course, the annoying writer came out.

  Morris cursed again and spat on the floor in a fury, watching the man checking the street as if he was choosing a direction.

  “Fuck me if I’ll open the door again,” Morris hissed. “You can ring your hands off, fucking snotter.” He wasn’t worried that the man could see him from outside. Sunbeams reflected on the window and made seeing inside impossible. The writer didn’t head to his house, only looked at it. He moved straight on the road, studying the surrounding buildings.

  “What do you want, snotter? What are you sniffing for?”

  Morris pressed his nose to the wet glass to follow the man, and stood like this a few more seconds until he disappeared from his field of view.

  “What do you want? Why did you come?”

  Morris started to wash dirt from the chest in a frenzy. His mother’s clothes had been there, wrapped in plastic and interlaid with lavender. The smell of flowers burst out through the closed lid. Next, he cleaned the framed paintings covered with glass. Then Morris cleaned the floor and returned to the window. The car was still parked near his house. He decided to wait for the owner in case he broke his promise and came to visit him without a warning phone call. What was he doing here, if he wasn’t here to see him?

  A half hour later, the writer finally appeared. He glanced at Morris’s house one more time and lifted his head to the attic window before getting into his car and leaving. He didn’t ring at his door. What was he doing here? Did he find another house and maybe an idiot who believed him? Morris wouldn’t have believed him if not for the dress! Was it a lucky guess? It had to be.

  He went down, carefully carrying the bucket to keep water from spilling.

  “He lied to me,” Morris decided, splashing water into the toilet. It was black like his mood and dirty like his desires. “He knows something, this snotter. But how?”

  Morris washed his hands and went to the kitchen, where he boiled water for his tea, gazing at the shed and thinking about Goldy, about his time with her. This jerk of a writer was not going to spoil his plans. No, no way. It wasn’t going to happen. He had worked for years without a hitch, thinking the world was made for him, and now some writer was disturbing his life without so much as a bat of his eye.

  After brewing his tea, Morris walked to the bedroom and sat at the computer to the left of the window, thinking only about a way to drive the snotter away. This stupid buck that took his thoughts away from Goldy. He hadn’t even gone to New York since the day he talked to this dick. When he mentioned the dress, Morris tried to persuade himself to go, but he couldn’t relax enough to enjoy the hunt and upcoming pleasure. He had waited for so long, and now some snotter was messing with his plans.

  Morris entered the writer’s name (he remembered it from the first visit) into the Google search and waited for tons of links to the sites to come up on the screen. Tons of sites. His books, bios, interviews. They left no doubt that he was what he said he was. Too much information to support that. Unless he did something else. What did he write? Mysteries? What if he didn’t make up his stories, but used real situations? Maybe he should read something of his and see what crap he had published. He couldn’t possibly write anything good. Everyone with a computer was a writer nowadays. Damn snotters.

  What if he was a P.I.? Maybe a relative of one of the missing girls—one of the girls who spent time in his shed and now lived in his yard—came to the writer and asked him to find her. Could he have come up with something? It was impossible, just impossible. Could he have broken into his house and found out about the dress?

  “No.”

  Morris opened one site after another and stopped on a report from a party that was accompanied by photos. In three of them, the writer held a glass of red wine next to a beautiful redhead. Morris put on his glasses and moved closer to the screen, reading the small letters under the photo.

  “Writer Max Stevenson, with his wife,” he read. “With his wife. With his beautiful wife.”

  Wavy red hair, slender body under a tight, black dress, a smile showing perfect teeth. Beautiful. Stunning. Morris wouldn’t mind getting to know her better.

  “Hmm …”

  After a few more clicks, Morris found her name. Anna Stevenson.

  “Anna. What a beautiful name. Very beautiful name. And such a beautiful woman.”

  Ideas and thoughts whirled in his head. Morris leaned back in the chair, studying the photo of the writer and his wife. Studying the wife. The idea was insane and risky, arousing his imagination. Without certain and subtle risk, everything became bland and ordinary. It was easier to go to some park and grab some passerby, but a good part of the allure would be lost. Here was another bonus—punishing the snotter who was interfering in his life. Of course, they would search for the wife with special assiduity—he wasn’t born yesterday—but he could organize everything so no one would ever guess.

  Morris threw his hands behind his head and smiled. He liked Goldy and he had prepared everything for her visit. He had even created a plan for capturing her, but now he had to start over. How would he find their address? Internet? Possibly. It would be easier to find his wife’s address if he watched their house. Which could be risky.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Morris found the writer’s business card on the table. He said that his wife made them and she could make some for Morris. He could call the writer and ask that company’s name, but then he would have to talk to him and that was not something he wanted. There were probably millions of companies specializing in card design and print. What if …?

  Morris returned to the bedroom and entered the wife’s name in the search bar. He saw links to see Anna Stevenson on Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube. He opened one link after another to see different faces, smiles, eyes, but his heart started to beat faster on the second page. Bingo.

  Anna Stevenson. Website design, business cards, invitations, advertisement banners, and more. No idea is impossible.

  Morris rubbed his hands together, walked to the living room to get the phone, and returned to the computer.

  “Design Unlimited, good afternoon. How can I help you?”

  “Ah, hi,” Morris said, lowering his voice as he always did. “I found your phone number on the Internet.”

  “Yes.”

  “It said Anna
Stevenson. Is that you?”

  “I’m just answering phones. Anna is one of our artists, but she takes orders over the Internet.”

  “It doesn’t really matter to me if she or someone else does the job. Can I make an appointment to meet with someone?”

  “Sure. We work from nine to five Monday through Thursday. Do you know how to find us?

  “Actually, can you give me your address?”

  Morris wrote down not only the address, but also directions, and turned off the phone.

  “Now, I just have to find where you live, my dear Anna.”

  For the first time since that damn snotter visited him, Morris felt good. He decided to finish the project for that fat Ferrari owner tonight. There wasn’t much left, but he couldn’t concentrate. He needed to finish it, get the rest of the money, and take a break. He wanted to dedicate his time to the hunt. He had wonderful prey.

  Morris smiled and turned to his drawings, but then went to make a cup of tea before starting the work.

  CHAPTER 20

  Max couldn’t get rid of the guilty feeling lingering inside him after last night. He didn’t just lie to his wife, reacting negatively to her offer without explaining the reason, but his answer was also rude. She didn’t deserve it, and he couldn’t understand why he had acted that way. He was like a predator, protecting his territory.

  What territory was that? Why couldn’t he take Anna and show her the house? There was no mystery. He didn’t have any secrets from his wife. He never had. Why now? Yesterday, some protective mechanism snapped into action, but why? Why now?

  The next morning, Anna had acted as if nothing had happened while Max reacted like a small, capricious child. They had breakfast together. Anna burnt the toast and they ended up with muesli on their plates. It was disgusting, in his opinion, but Anna thought it was healthy and delicious. Then she went to work and he drove to Watervliet again. Alone.

  Max hadn’t called to arrange a visit or planned to talk with the man again. He decided to walk around the area, along the street where the house stood, observe the atmosphere, and collect material for descriptions. He parked across the road from the house from his dreams. The house stood quiet and proud, as if it kept secrets inaccessible to mortals. The street was empty. There were no people or cars like before.

  The cold had hit full force. Max froze the minute he got out of the car. He pulled his head into his shoulders, drew his hands into the pockets of his coat, and went straight along the street. He looked at the houses, yards, fences, windows, and driveways. There was a brick house ahead, and before Max reached it, he stopped dead, not believing his eyes. Fear, which smashed him like a hot blow, suppressed the cold.

  “Seriously, this is not funny,” he mumbled, approaching the house as if it were a sleeping animal that could jump at him.

  It really wasn’t funny. The red brick house looked exactly like the one he had imagined the day before. The house where a six-year-old girl lived. He had imagined it, yes. At the time, it felt like a work of his mind. This red brick house and red roof. This house, this evergreen tree by the wooden porch, this cracked driveway. All of this appeared on the page as an example of his talent to create visual images. That was what he thought. What had really happened?

  The surroundings must have deposited into his subconscious during his previous visit here, and then spun up to the surface in the form of memories. Because these memories weren’t conscious, he logically attributed them to his imagination. It had happened before.

  Max went closer to the house and studied the reddish brown walls, windows covered with light curtains, flowers on each windowsill. They didn’t have any flowers in his house. Anna told him she would kill anything alive because nothing could survive without food and water, and she was not a good caregiver. She was, but he couldn’t convince her. He would love to have flowers in the house. His mother hadn’t had much love for plants, or animals, or to anything in her house. Including her son.

  Max sighed. As always, the memories of his childhood and his parents put him in a dark place. They lost their gloominess over the years, but he couldn’t call them light or pleasant. The dreams of his father stopped after he married Anna. Only then, it seemed, had he stopped the worry, blame, hate. Conciliation came to his life. It stayed that way until the new dreams came. The house from Watervliet.

  Max stared at the brick house as if expecting a magical creature to come out, like an elf or a fairy, and explain to him what was going on.

  If something was going on. If this wasn’t some hocus pocus of his mind. That had to be it. It had to be.

  “Are you looking for somebody?”

  Max flinched and turned to the voice. A little elderly woman stood behind him. A kind face, a blue beret slightly to one side, a shopping bag in her hand and a pocketbook on her shoulder.

  “Ah … Do you live in this house?” Max asked, as he tried to remember where he had seen this woman. He had seen her; that was for sure. Probably during one of his previous visits and his memory was better than he thought. He had gotten used to observing, catching details, so he could use it later in his books. He noticed more than other people who didn’t have anything to do with his profession. He noticed, remembered, and wrote it down. Now it happened subconsciously, and he didn’t have to strain his memory to dig up a needed picture.

  “Yes.” The woman studied him.

  “My name’s Max Stevenson. I write books and …”

  “Of course!” The woman clapped her hands in blue gloves and dropped her bag. Max rushed to pick it up and gave it to her. “Thank you. I thought your face looked familiar. I watched you just this morning on TV.”

  “Really?”

  “On the morning show. They talked about books and mentioned Connelly, Child, and you. They did. They talked about electronic sales or something. Oh, my goodness! I went to New York to meet you. You signed a book for me. Flowers for Dolly.

  Flowers For Dolly, a year and a half ago. A girl disappeared and was found in the glades where she played. Her father killed her. Could he remember this woman from a book signing a year and a half ago?

  “You don’t remember me? Sorry, what am I talking about? I’m old and it was a long way to drive, but I still did it because I loved that book. The mother in that book, Nina, is such a good woman. She is. You wrote her emotions as if she was real. Like you went through it.”

  He hadn’t, and he had never talked with his fans in the middle of a strange street before.

  “I felt what she felt. What are you doing here? Near my house! I’m sorry for asking.”

  “I set up the plot for my new book here, in this town. On this street,” Max answered, keeping the information about the houses. Not with evil intent. He liked this woman and he didn’t want to make her nervous.

  “Oh, my goodness! Really?” The woman put her hand on her chest, in the area of her heart.

  “Yes. I am looking around for interesting details.”

  “Is that right? It’s so interesting. I’ll tell my friend! She won’t believe me. She doesn’t know you well though; she likes another writer. A woman. She likes romance. My friend does. Maybe I can help you with something?”

  Max thought the offer over.

  “Yes,” he said. I have a few questions. About that house, for one. Number five.”

  “Oh.” The woman glanced behind Max’s back. “It’s Morris Bishop’s house. He’s an architect, a good man.”

  The woman called her neighbor a good man, but the tone of her voice didn’t sound convincing. Her voice was warm, and icy notes slipped into the sentence. Something that Max felt.

  “Do you want to go inside? It’s so cold here. I’ll make you coffee or tea. Maybe you’re hungry. I can cook something hot.”

  “Oh, thank you, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

  “Don’t say that! I haven’t had guests for a long time and I’m always happy to have someone. Especially someone like you.”

  Max wanted to use the invitation
, sit at the round table in the kitchen, and smell the flowers while …”

  A sudden thought knocked him out of the calm mood.

  “You know what? I have to go now. Maybe some other time?”

  “Yes, of course. You are a writer and I … You see …”

  “No, no, no!” Max reached for the woman and took her hand that was snug in a soft glove. “It’s not that. I really have to go, but I also need to find out a few things. I have tons of questions. Can I visit you? Another time?”

  “Of course! You just give me a call, so I know. I’ll bake a casserole and cookies. Do you like chocolate chips?”

  “Yes.” Max swallowed the lump in his throat. “I do like them a lot.”

  “I’ll even … Should I write my phone number for you? No one would believe me. I met Stevenson and invited him in!”

  “Stevenson is just a man, nothing special.” Max smiled as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. The smile came with difficulty. “What’s your number?”

  The woman told him and Max entered it into his address book.

  “I’m Wilma. Or Ms. Porter if that sounds better to you.”

  I know Max wanted to say, but thought better of it. This knowledge scared the crap out of him and could scare her too.

  They said goodbye to each other, but when Max jumped into his car, he saw Wilma still standing outside and looking at him. He waved to her and drove away without turning back. He turned on the radio, but couldn’t concentrate on the music.

  “Wilma Porter.”

  Okay, he could assume that he remembered her from his book signing or saw her on the street in Watervliet, but her name? Could he be wrong and think he knew things even though he didn’t? A lot of strange things had happened lately.

  The house from his dream and another house, which he hadn’t dreamed about. An architect from the picture who woke up strange emotions, who happened to be the owner of the house. And this woman …

  Max heard a car horn and only then noticed that he was driving in the opposite lane. Thank God the road wasn’t busy at this time of day in this town. He would be dead already in Manhattan.