She had used her weight to break through his bone. She knew stabbings—murders—weren’t as easy as the movies made them look. She had calculated every detail, studied the human body, and accepted her own strengths and weaknesses. She accepted the fact that she wasn’t as strong as most men or even most teenage boys. She had planned on only targeting young girls, but she took what she could get. Patterns led to capture anyway.
Killers were often caught because of their modus operandi.
Miki exhaled loudly as she pulled the shears out of the boy’s motionless chest. She sat beside him and cleaned the blades with a handkerchief. She scanned the woods for any wandering hikers or rangers. There was no one in sight.
She glanced at Brian and said, “That could have gone a lot smoother. Why were you scared of me before I even showed you my face? Was it the mask?” A squirt of blood shot out of the kid’s stabbed chest. His white shirt turned red and his blue windbreaker looked black from all of the blood. Miki sighed, as if she were disappointed by Brian’s silence, then she said, “This isn’t working the way I was hoping it would. Maybe I should give up.”
She thought about her approach. Kids in Japan were afraid of her scars, but they weren’t suspicious of her mask. It seemed like it was the opposite in America—kids didn’t care about her scars but they didn’t trust her mask. She believed she couldn’t continue her murder spree without the mask, though. It gave her an element of surprise while helping her hide her identity. She sat beside the dead boy for five minutes, listening to nature while waiting for a ranger to arrest her or for a hiker to restrain her. She was ready to accept defeat.
But no one showed up.
She saw it as a sign to continue moving forward with her plot. Try again, she told herself. She walked away from the body and disappeared in the woods.
11
AN INTERNATIONAL CRISIS
“I’ve gotta go in a minute,” Adam said, balancing a cell phone between his shoulder and ear. “Just leave a message with Karla or put the paperwork on my desk. I’ll get to it tomorrow. Come on, Dallas, you know I’m off today.”
He stood in the living room, trying to fit a sippy cup and a pouch of applesauce into a full diaper bag. He pulled a pink onesie out and stared at it with a confused look that said: ‘Why does she need this today?’ Dallas said something to him over the phone, but Adam didn’t hear him.
He looked over at the kitchen, held up the onesie, and asked, “You’re taking this?”
Washing Riley’s hands at the kitchen sink, Amber said, “It’s just some extra clothes in case she gets dirty or she wants to sleep.”
“You already have an extra set of clothes in here.”
“Well, it’s an extra set of clothes in case she doesn’t like that extra set.”
“O–kay.”
Over the phone, Dallas said, “Adam, you’re not listening. Hey, Adam, this is urgent. You have to listen to me, man.”
“I am listening.”
“No, you’re not. You’re standing there with a diaper or a sippy cup in your hand and you’re talking to Amber or you’re watching TV.”
Adam looked at the sippy cup in his hand, smiled, and asked, “When did you become a psychic?”
“I’m serious here. Put it down—put everything down—and listen to me.”
Adam felt the gravity in Dallas’ voice. He put the cup on the coffee table and sat on the sofa. He could still hear Amber talking to Riley, but he focused on the call.
He asked, “What happened?”
“It’s getting serious,” Dallas answered. “This pandemic, man… The travel advisories are changing all around the world. Level 3, Level 4… We’re seeing requests for cancellations—refunds—at a record pace. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Ah, come on, don’t be so dramatic. We’re going to bounce back from this. It’s just, like, uh… the swine flu, you know? It’s not like it’s the bubonic plague.”
“It doesn’t matter what it is, Adam. The only thing that matters is what people think it is. People are getting scared. There are rumblings of a nationwide lockdown right here. It’s not under control and this is not going to be just a ‘China problem.’ Hell, we’re already getting reports of cancellations from all of our partners in Asia. All of them.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Adam said, struggling to keep the smile on his face. “I doubt we’re going to see border closures. Maybe in some countries like North Korea or Thailand, but… Japan? The Olympics are this year. They’re not just going to cancel after years of planning because of a couple of cases of who knows what. We just need to… We need to adapt, right?”
“Adam,” Dallas said with a hint of disappointment in his voice.
The answer was obvious. Their business was healthy, but they weren’t ready for an international pandemic—nobody was.
“Say I’m right,” Adam demanded.
“Adam, we can’t adapt to something that is going to wipe out our industry. We’re all about travel. If people can’t travel, we have nothing to sell. I’m hearing from analysts that travel agents, tour operators, hoteliers, airlines and airports are all bracing for impact. They’re saying the tourism industry is going to be disrupted until 2021. And that’s the earliest estimate for any sort of recovery.”
“From who?! Which analysts?!”
From the kitchen counter, Amber said, “Adam, please keep your voice down.”
At the same time, Dallas was saying, “Ours and theirs, Adam. Come on. Just ‘cause you’re not listening doesn’t mean no one’s saying it.”
Adam turned on the television and flipped through the news channels. Every program discussed the developing pandemic. One headline read: The quiet, deadly epidemic? Another headline read: California case makes containment urgent. The most frightening headline read: CDC warns of deadly virus’ rapid spread in US.
“Look at these damn headlines,” Adam said as he pointed the remote at the television. “No wonder everyone’s scared.”
Dallas said, “Headlines create panic, but they don’t create pandemics. This damn virus was going to be here, one way or another. So, it doesn’t matter if people cancel their trips calmly or frantically. This is where we’re at and we need a plan.”
“What kind of plan, Dallas? You just said we can’t fucking adapt!”
Riley started crying in the kitchen.
“Adam,” Amber hissed.
Face scrunched up, Adam turned to face her, raised his hand up, and mouthed: ‘Sorry.’ Amber shook her head and returned to Riley, who was already seated in her highchair.
Lowering his voice, Adam asked, “What do we do?”
Dallas said, “We need to meet and talk about this. Not just us, but the top brass. We have a lot of important decisions to make. If this is a global pandemic, if there is no cure or vaccine, we have to get ready to survive for the foreseeable future without any international business. Hell, we might even have to find a way to survive without any domestic business.”