When he’d spent as much time there as he wanted he abandoned his cart in the dairy section, picked up a couple of items he needed — a tube of toothpaste, a pack of six disposable razors, a box of Nutter Butter cookies — and hand-carried them to the checkout counter. The girl on the register (Sandy, according to her name tag) had a sunny smile and a pretty face. Her fingertips grazed his palm when she gave him his change.
“Have a nice day,” she said.
He had dinner at a Pizza Hut not far from his motel. His waitress was darling, and so were two or three of the other waitresses, and several of the customers. Afterward he sat in his car for half an hour with the motor off and the lights out, waiting to see if anyone interesting came out alone, but no one did and he tired of the game. He went back to the motel and called Marilee. Both kids were home, and he talked to them, talked some more to Marilee, had another shower and went to sleep.
The following morning he saw another of the realtors he’d spoken to the first day. He wound up going around with her to look at a couple of properties. Her name was Janet, and he had always found her quite attractive, but he knew her professionally and had never allowed himself to entertain fantasies about her. By now he knew her too well; even if there were no risk, he wouldn’t have been interested.
Nor was he much interested in either of the properties she took him to inspect. That was all right, he liked to look at property, you always learned something that way. She drove him back to her office and he picked up the Lincoln.
He drove around. The streets were full of women; the city was full of women. At a stop light, the car next to his was a Dodge convertible with the top down; the driver had a tight sweater and a pouty, sullen mouth. Country music blared on her radio. He let her pull ahead when the light turned and followed her for a dozen blocks until she sailed through an amber light that was red when he reached it. He didn’t want to run the light, and by the time it changed she was gone.
He headed back toward the motel, but stayed on Lindbergh Boulevard past Florissant and parked at the Jamestown Mall. All of the stores were full of women and a remarkable proportion of them looked good to him. It was crowded everywhere, you couldn’t even think about doing anything.
A salesgirl in a gift shop asked if she could help him. “Just looking,” he said.
In the Waldenbooks store, he browsed the shelves and studied the other customers. One book caught his eye, a paperback, and he carried it up front to the register.
The cashier was a woman about his age with a receding chin and a barbed Ozarks twang. She rang the sale and said, “Men Who Hate Women. Well, I met a few of those and I sure hope you’re not one of them.”
“Not me,” he said. “I love women.”
He left the mall and drove into Florissant, cruising up one suburban street and down the next. He stopped on a block of brick-fronted ranch houses set on quarter-acre plots. Each house had a young tree planted on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and most of the trees still had their trunks wrapped with tape. A large proportion of the cars parked in the driveways were either station wagons or hatchbacks.
He parked his car at the curb, got a clipboard from the trunk, and put a couple of pens into his shirt pocket. He crossed the street and walked up to the door of the first house he came to. He rang the bell.
The woman who answered it was middle-aged. She wore a patterned housedress and was smoking a cigarette.
He said, “Water company. Did you report a drop in pressure?” She said she hadn’t. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, and turned away from her.
There was no one home at the house next door. The woman at the third house was pregnant, and carrying a whining infant. He asked her the same question, and she too denied having reported problems with the water pressure, and he thanked her and left. The woman in the fourth house was pretty — light brown hair, dark brown eyes. He said, “Water company. We’ve been having problems with the water pressure in your area. Have you had any difficulty?”
“No,” she said. “It seems okay.” She turned from him, called back into the house. “Adam, you stop your fussing. I’ll just be a minute.”
He thanked her and left. At the house after hers, he waited a long time before the door was answered. The woman was in her late twenties, and the minute Mark saw her he was glad her neighbor had had a child in the other room. Otherwise he’d have missed out on this one, and she was much too good to miss. She was just a little thing, barely over five feet tall, with a lovely figure and deep dark blue eyes. Oh, wonderful, just wonderful.
“Water company,” he said. “We’ve been having some problems in your area. Have you had any difficulties with the pressure?”
She thought about it. “Uh, no,” she said. “Not really.”
“How about the appearance and flavor of the water?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The coffee was all right this morning. I don’t know as I drank any water, not just plain by itself.”
“I see,” he said. “Is it all right if I come in? I’m not interrupting anything?”
She shook her head. “I was just watching TV is all.”
“You’re not busy with the kids then?”
She shook her head. “Still in school.”
Wonderful. He drew the door shut after him. “Now if I could just check the water in the kitchen taps first,” he said. “Which way’s the kitchen, if you don’t mind?”
She led the way. She was wearing khaki slacks and he watched her rear as she walked. He caught up with her at the threshold to the kitchen, clapped a hand over her mouth and wrapped her in a choke hold, her throat caught in the crook of his arm. She struggled, but she was just a little thing and he was much too strong for her. Her struggles ceased and she slumped unconscious, limp in his grasp.
He undressed her there in the kitchen. He used a paper towel to protect his hand and went through drawers until one yielded an electrical extension cord. He cut it in half and used one piece to tie her ankles together and the other to bind her wrists behind her back. He stripped to the waist and picked her up in his arms and carried her through the house until he found the bathroom.
He set her down on the tile floor, stopped the bathtub drain and ran a lukewarm tub of water. The tub was still running when she groaned and opened her eyes.
She looked at him. Her mouth opened but she didn’t make a sound. It didn’t too much matter if she did; the window was closed, and he had drawn the bathroom door shut. No one could hear any sound she could make.
When the tub was as deep as he wanted it he shut off the water and turned to her. “Now I’m just going to give you a nice bath,” he said. “That’s all.” And he picked her up in his arms — she had luxuriously soft skin, she was wonderful to touch — and placed her on her back in the tub.
He used his hands and ran the soap over her teacup breasts, down over her belly, lathered her pubic hair. He put the soap back in the dish and sluiced water over her to rinse her. Her eyes were wide, rolling in terror, but she still hadn’t uttered a sound since regaining consciousness.
“You’re so sweet,” he said, bending to kiss her on the lips. He took hold of the hair at the back of her neck and drew her head down under the water, pinning her down with his other hand on her breast. She tried to struggle, and he could feel her heart hammering. He looked down at her face, just an inch or so below the water surface. Her huge eyes stared at him. She held her breath until she couldn’t hold it anymore, and bubbles issued from her nose and mouth. He pressed down on her chest and her lungs emptied, spewing forth more bubbles. He took his hand away and her lungs filled with water. Her eyes still stared up at him from under the water, but the life was gone from them now.