After an hour, she turns away from the grave. She wants to tell her dead brother about the man she works with, who in many ways reminds her of Martin. He has a pure heart and a childlike innocence that is identical to Martin’s. She wants to tell her brother about this, but leaves without saying a word.
She heads out of the graveyard thinking of Martin. Even before she reaches her car, the crucifix starts to take away her pain.
CHAPTER THREE
The newspaper no longer holds any interest for me. Why read the news, when I’m the one making it? So I fold it in half and lay it on the bed next to me. I have newspaper ink on my fingers. I wipe them on the bedspread as I study Angela. She has this look on her face as if she’s trying to digest some really bad news, like her father has just been hit by a car or she’s all out of perfume. I’m watching her towel. It’s sagging down her body. She looks pretty damn good standing there almost naked.
“Name’s Joe,” I say, reaching toward my briefcase. I select the second-to-biggest knife I have clipped in there. A blade with a fine Swiss design. I hold it up. We can both see it. It looks bigger to her, even though I’m closer. It’s a perspective thing.
“Maybe you’ve read about me. I’m front-page news.”
Angela is a tall woman with legs that go all the way up. Blond hair, obviously natural, that comes down to meet them. She has a good figure with all the right shapes and curves that have brought me here. An attractive face that could be in magazines marketing contact lenses or lipstick. Blue eyes full of life and, at the moment, full of fear. The fear in her eyes excites me. The fear in her eyes suggests that yes, she has read about me, probably even heard about me on the radio and seen the stories about me on TV.
She begins shaking her head, as if answering no to a whole lot of questions I haven’t even got to yet. Drops of water fly left and right, like it’s raining inside and horizontally. Her hair swishes behind her, the wet ends striking the walls and the doorframe. It flicks around onto the front of her face and sticks there. She’s walking backward too, like she’s got somewhere better to be.
“What, w. . what do you want?” she asks. All the confident anger from her first question of who I was left around the same time she saw the knife.
I shrug. I can think of several things I want. A nice house. A nice car. Her stereo is still playing that same song-our song now. Yeah. A nice stereo I wouldn’t say no to.
But she can’t provide me with any of that. I wish she could, but life isn’t that simple. I decide to keep this to myself for now. There will be time for conversation later.
“Please, please. Just. Leave.”
I’ve heard this so many times I almost yawn, but I don’t, because I’m a polite guy. “You’re being a poor host,” I say, politely.
“You lunatic. I’m calling the. . umm. . the police.”
Is she really this stupid? Does she think I’m going to stand here while she picks up the phone and dials for help? Maybe I’ll sit back on the bed, do the crossword in my newspaper while they arrive to arrest me. I start shaking my head, like she was before, only with dry hair. “You could go ahead and try,” I say, “if the phone was on the hook.” Which it isn’t. I took it off while I was eating my pizza. Her pizza.
She turns and makes a run for the bathroom at the same time I move toward her. She’s quick. I’m quick. I throw the knife. Blade over hilt, hilt over blade. The trick to throwing a knife is all in the balance. . if you’re a professional. If you’re not, it all comes down to luck. We’re both hoping for a bit of that at the moment. The blade brushes off the side of her arm and clatters off the wall onto the ground as she rounds the bathroom door. She slams it shut and locks it, but I don’t slow down, I just barge sideways into it. It barely rattles in its frame.
I take a few paces back. I can always go home. Pack up my gear. Close the briefcase. Take off my latex gloves. And leave. But I can’t. I have an attachment to both my knife and my anonymity. That means I have to stay. Plus I’m an optimist at heart-I’m not one to give up on myself.
She starts screaming for help. But the neighbors aren’t going to hear her. I know this because I did my homework before arriving. The house is far back on the lot and backs onto a field, we’re on the top story, and none of her nearby neighbors is home. It’s all about homework. To be successful, with anything in life, you need to do your homework. It just can’t be stressed enough.
I stroll across the bedroom and select another knife. This one is the biggest. I’m about to head back to the bathroom when a cat walks into the room. Damn thing is friendly too. I bend down and pat it. It nudges my hand and starts purring. I pick it up.
Back at the bathroom door I call out to her. “Come out or I’ll break your cat’s neck.”
“Please, please don’t hurt her.”
“The choice is yours.”
So now I’m waiting. Like all men do when women are in the bathroom. At least she’s not screaming. I scratch Fluffy beneath her floppy neck. She isn’t purring anymore.
“Please, what do you want?”
My mother, God rest her soul, always told me to be honest. Sometimes it simply isn’t the right approach. “Just to talk,” I lie.
“Are you going to kill me?”
I shake my head in disbelief. Women, huh? “No.”
The lock makes a definite twang as it disengages on the bathroom door. She’s actually going to take her chances with me rather than have her cat killed. Maybe it’s expensive.
Slowly the door begins to open. I’m motionless, too amazed at her stupidity, which is increasing by the second, to actually move. When the door opens enough, I dump Fluffy on the ground. She lands in a pile of clumped fur, her head twisted sideways and her legs sticking out in every direction, trying to point to the reason why. Angela sees the cat but doesn’t get the chance to scream. I shove my body against the door, and she isn’t strong enough to hold me out. The door goes slack as she loses balance. She falls against the shower, and her towel falls from her hands.
I step into the bathroom. The mirror is still fogged over with steam. The shower curtain has pictures of a few dozen rubber ducks all smiling at me. They point in the same direction and are uniform, as if they’re swimming off to war. Angela starts back with the screaming routine, which hasn’t done her any good so far and doesn’t do her any good this time. I drag her back into the bedroom, and I have to hit her a couple of times to get her to go along with the plan. She tries to stop me, but I have more experience at subduing women than she has at self-defense. Her eyes roll upward and she has the audacity to pass out on me.
The stereo is still going. Maybe when all this is over I’ll take it home with me. I pick her up and dump her on the bed, then roll her onto her back. I move around the bedroom, taking down the photographs of her family from the walls, and turning down the others that rest on windowsills and shelves. The last one I look at is a picture of her husband and two kids. I guess he’s about to be granted full custody.
The next step I take toward romance is placing my Glock automatic nine-millimeter pistol on the bedside table so it’s within easy reach. Nice piece. Bought it four years ago when I started work. Three thousand dollars it cost me. Black-market guns are always more expensive, but anonymous. I stole the money from my mother, who blamed neighborhood kids. She’s one of those crazy women who are afraid of using banks because she’s suspicious of bank managers. The gun is in case the husband comes home early. Or if a neighbor comes over. Maybe she’s having an affair. Maybe her lover is pulling into the street right now.
My Glock is like a magic pill-it will cure all possibilities.
I pull the phone from the wall. Tear the cord from the end of it. Use it to secure her hands. I don’t want her thrashing about too much. I tie her hands to the headboard.