The maddog smiled and started writing the brief. This would never go to triaclass="underline" Gant had not completed the basic elements of the crime under Minnesota law. So he had been caught hiding in a private garage just before midnight? So what? Nobody told him to go away . . . .
The maddog left the brief on his secretary’s desk before he left the office Sunday afternoon. On Monday morning he happened to get on an elevator with the chief trial attorney and his assistant. They nodded to the maddog and turned their backs on him, watching the numbers change.
Halfway up the assistant cleared his throat. “Got something for you on that Gant case,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Olson was a sharp dresser. Gray suits, paisley ties, big white teeth in an easy grin. “I thought I already put a stamp on that turkey and mailed him back to Stillwater.”
“Not quite, O wise one,” the assistant said. “I got to thinking about the state trespass law and came in over the weekend to look it up. Sure enough. There’s a provision in there . . .”
The assistant then related, paragraph by paragraph, the maddog’s research. Olson was laughing by the time they got to the skyway level and he slapped the assistant on the back and crowed, “God damn, Billy, I knew there was a reason I hired you.”
The maddog stood thunderstruck at the back of the car. Neither of the others noticed. In a half-hour, he was in a rage. He couldn’t go to Olson and claim the work as his own. That would seem petty. The assistant would claim he simply had similar ideas.
It had always been like this. He had always been ignored. The rage fed the need for the girl. It built like a thunderhead, and he went home, the need crawling in his blood.
Heather Brown was back on the block. She wore a short leather skirt and a turquoise blouse open to her belt. Glass beads dangled over her thin freckled chest; a headband pinned back her hair.
The maddog walked down the sidewalk toward her, his eyes running over her body. He was most carefully dressed; more carefully dressed than for any of the other killings, because this pickup would be in public and might well be witnessed.
The maddog wore jeans and boots, a red nylon athletic jacket, and a billed John Deere hat. He was slightly out of place on Hennepin. Not enough to be outrageous, but enough that his clothes might stick in somebody’s mind. He was a farmer, clear and simple. In a crowd of farmers, he would fit without the slightest wrinkle, he thought, as long as he kept his mouth shut.
He had cut a hole through the back seam of the jacket pocket and a long wicked blade from Chicago Cutlery nestled in the lining.
“Heather,” he said as he approached. He glanced around. The nearest person was a black man sitting on a bus bench across the street. He turned away from the man. Heather had been looking past him and her eyes snapped back.
“How are you, honey?”
“I talked to you the other night . . .”
“I don’t remember you.”
“I offered fifty for a half-’n’-half . . .”
“Oh, yeah.” She tipped her head in bemusement. “You look a lot different.”
The maddog looked down at himself, nodded, and changed the subject. “You said you might come up with something more exciting, if I could get the money.”
“You get the money?”
“I got a hundred.”
“So what you got in mind, cowboy?”
The motel was pleasingly decrepit. Heather went into the office, got a key, and returned a minute later. Inside, the maddog looked around the room, sniffed. Disinfectant. They must spray the place, he decided. The bathroom was tiny, the floor was missing tiles, the bedspread was thin and badly worn.
“Why don’t we get the money out of the way first?” Heather Brown asked.
“Oh, yes. A hundred?” The maddog took the bills out of his pants pockets and tossed them on the dresser. Five twenties. “And if we can really do . . . you know . . . I’ve got another fifty.”
“Hey, I like you, guy,” she said with a bright smile. “Why don’t we just go in here and discuss it while we take a little shower.”
“Start it, I’ll be right there,” he said. He started taking off his jacket, and when she stepped into the bathroom, took the knife out of his pocket and slipped it under the bed.
The shower was agonizing. She carefully washed his penis, and when nothing happened, said, “Have a little trouble there?” She frowned, a wrinkle between her eyes. The impotent ones weren’t the worst of the trade, but certainly slowed down the turnover.
“No, no, no, not if we can . . .”
She had silk scarves in her handbag, four of them, one for each wrist and ankle.
“Don’t tie them too tight,” she said. “Just looping them is enough.”
“I can do this,” he said through his teeth. He tied her feet first, one out to each corner at the foot of the bed, then her hands, out to the sides, tied to the sideboards.
“How we doing, honey?”
“Fine,” he said, turning toward her. He had a half-erection now, his penis standing away from his body.
“If you want to bring it up here for a minute, I can help you out,” she offered.
“No, no, I’m fine; but I want to use a rubber . . . I’m sorry . . .”
“No, that’s good,” she said encouragingly. He turned and picked his jacket up off the floor, found a rubber, ripped it out of the package, and unrolled it on himself. Then he took the Kotex from the same pocket and lay down beside her.
“Open wide,” he said.
Sensing that something was wrong, she tried to sit up, opened her mouth, perhaps to scream, and the maddog grabbed her by the sides of the throat and squeezed and pushed her down on the bed. She flopped, twisting her shoulders, struggling against the binding scarves. As he squeezed and squeezed, her mouth opened wider, and she managed to force out a moan, not loud enough to attract attention in a motel like this, and then he forced the Kotex into her mouth, stuffing it in.
When it was in, he covered her mouth with one hand and fished in the pocket of the jacket with the other, found his gloves and slipped them on, one at a time. The girl watched him, still bucking against the scarves, her eyes wide and terrified now. When the gloves were on, he took his tape from the other pocket and wrapped it twice around her head and across the gag. Next he checked the bonds again; they were holding nicely.
“Look at it now,” he said to the girl, kneeling over her. “That’s the real thing. And they tried to say I was impotent.”
She had stopped struggling and shrank back on the bed, watching him.
“So now we’ll have a little fun,” he said. He found the knife under the bed, took it out, and showed it to her, the steel blade shimmering in the lamplight. “It won’t hurt too much; I’m very good at this,” he said. “Try to keep your eyes open when it goes in; I like to watch the eyes,” he said.
She looked away, and there was suddenly a smell in the room and he looked down at her pelvis and realized that she had wet herself.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. But he was delighted. She’d wet herself in fear. She knew the power.
But he wouldn’t rape her now. The thought of lying in cold urine was distasteful. And rape wasn’t necessary, anyway. The maddog stretched out beside her, reached over and kissed her gently on the cheek as she strained away from him. “It’ll just take a second,” he said. She began frantically jerking her arms against the bonds. He laid the point of the knife just below her breastbone and felt the orgasm rising up within him as he pressed the knife up and in. The girl’s eyes opened, straining, straining, and then the light went out and it all stopped for her. The maddog peered into her eyes as the light faded, felt the waves of the orgasm receding and the pressure lifting off his mind.
It had gone very well, he thought. Very well.
He stepped back from the bed and looked at her. Not pretty, he thought, but there was something beautiful in her attitude. He stripped off the rubber and tossed it in the toilet and flushed and began to get dressed, stopping frequently to look at his work. Inside, he rejoiced.