Later, as soon as Cheryl shut off her light and tucked herself in to the sofa, Bill would masturbate. She was certain he wanted her to hear it, but if she surprised him by creeping into his room during his self-abuse, he would roll over and make a snoring sound. Sometimes she waited until she heard him come, and then she’d go to his door and smell it in the air. That got her excited. Then she’d return to her sofa and diddle herself.
More games.
Cheryl longed for a normal sex life with this man, but she was intrigued by what they had. Older men definitely had more complex sexuality than the teenagers she knew—all her peers wanted to do was fuck.
“I better get home,” Cheryl said to Judy.
“lf he calls I’ll tell him you left a while ago but you were gonna stop for gas.”
“No, he checks the gas gauge.”
“Really?”
“G’night.”
Cheryl headed out.
It was odd—some nights Bill insisted on dropping Cheryl off at work and picking her up after, and sometimes he’d call at the last minute and ask if Cheryl could hitch a ride with Judy—but he never seemed to have any real rhyme or reason for it either way. He was always possessed by some premonition of an earthquake or robbery or some disaster that would befall Cheryl without his protection, and he liked to terrify her and make her take his advice by warning her of his worry, but it really seemed like even he knew he was making it all up just to divert everyone’s attention from some secret agenda he had going.
Tonight Cheryl hadn’t heard from Bill at all, and that was definitely odd. If she didn’t know better, Cheryl would have believed that Bill was cheating on her.
In fact, at that very moment, high in the not-so-high Ortega Mountains behind Lake Elsinore, in a kind of canyon within a canyon, hidden from sight above and below, at a place that would always be for him “Tranquility Garden”, Bill Suff was alone with Carol Lynn Miller and Cheryl was most definitely not on his mind.
Earlier in the evening, Carol had missed her drug connection. Actually, she’d been at the rendezvous point on time and ready to score, but her dealer hadn’t shown, no doubt wisely aware that Carol wouldn’t have the cash to consummate the transaction.
Carol was angry at first, angry at the no-show, but then she decided it was some sort of a sign, that all the forces of nature and even the drug dealers of the world were unifying to tell her she couldn’t afford her addiction anymore. She was financially and emotionally bankrupt, bereft. She needed to get whole, she needed to get clean.
In response, she decided she’d go cold turkey—after all, she was already more than a few hours into it, and it wasn’t really so bad.
Unfortunately, per usual, resolve turned to challenge.
Who was that motherfucking dealer to decide for her when she would kick or not?
She’d show him, she’d show them all. Carol would take her life back her way, in her own damn time. If she wanted to hook and she wanted to fix, that was her business, her life.
She headed down to the local “business district” where she and her kind earned their keep. No welfare for Carol Miller—she was no charity case—she had something to sell, and there were plenty willing to pay.
Tonight, Bill Suff picked her up.
To Carol, Bill seemed just the kind of guy you could weasel more and more loot out of as the evening progressed. He was embarrassed but he was excited. She could tell that this was a fantasy for him, and you just can’t put a price on fantasy—once committed, price would be no object. Carol would quote Bill twenty for a straight lay, then tease him with a little head and tell him that’d cost him a little extra or else she’d stop. Maybe then a prostate massage or a few different lovin’ positions— Carol was plenty flexible and plenty strong, her body was soft and curvy all over, and she’d charge for each angle of attack. She’d let him have
any part of her he wanted, even parts he would never have asked for on his own. She could make enough off this guy, she could call it a night.
So she gladly climbed into Bill’s rig and agreed it was a terrific idea he had about heading up into the hills where they could be alone. “I’m kind of choosy,” Carol told Bill, “and when I meet a man I like, I like to give him my undivided attention. Turn up that music, okay?”
She reached over to unzip Bill’s fly, and he reached to turn up the volume on the radio. It was an easy listenin station—not rock, barely pop. “Careful how you drive now, sugar—keep your concentration on the road,” she said, and then put her head in his lap. After a lick or two, she looked up at him for a moment: “Tonight’s your lucky night, big guy. Big guy, big tipper, right?”
He looked down at her as she went back at him with relish.
And then he smiled.
“Wrong,” he said.
And so now Bill and Carol were in Tranquility Garden and the only reason it was tranquil was because she was tied up with sisal rope, her black cotton undershirt stuffed in her mouth.
Carol was naked, lying on her back on a plastic tarpaulin, and she didn’t notice the cold. All around her, Bill had his toolboxes, his paint, his killing kit. Light came from one of those blue-glowing liquid light tubes, the kind you bend and crack so the chemicals mix and light up for a while—eerie but gentle.
Bill had really really really wanted to cut up and paint up Carol, but he just knew it would come back to haunt him, forensically speaking, so now he thought he’d etch and paint an image of her lying there like that—he had a leather belt he meant to use as a canvas—but, once again, he was finding that the artistic and the practical didn’t go together: it was gonna take way too long and he was gonna feel way too pressured to etch and paint while tucked into that dark hillside on this cold desert night. You just shouldn’t force art, that’s the whole point.
So, while Carol lay there, Bill closed up his toolboxes, put away his paints, stowed it all back in his rig. He didn’t let himself rush, instead he savored each moment. Behind the driver’s seat he saw his tape recorder still taping—now he shut it off. This wouldn’t be a tape much worth listening to. This woman had been different from all the rest: she hadn’t screamed, hadn’t fought, hadn’t tried to talk her way out. As soon as he’d had her by the throat, she’d gone limp on him, gone unconscious. He knew he’d been getting better at just blacking someone out with his first assault rather than squeezing all the life out of her, but this one—it was like his touch hypnotized her or something.
Even now, now that Carol’d come to, with her eyes wide open and her breathing raspy loud, she just lay there impassively. The other girls, they’d resist to a point and then resign themselves to their fates, but it was active resignation—he could see their lips move as they prayed, tears on their cheeks, and he hated them for that, hated them for praying to a false God who would grant them no salvation. Bill was their God and they should have recognized it—he alone could and would deliver them from evil. Through death, he would save them from himself. That’s what aroused him. He was God and man to them. He would kill them and then he would fuck them.