I can also see the thoughts going through Melissa’s mind. She likes collecting police things, and she’s wondering if she can collect this guy. She’s measuring him up to see if she has room for him in her house. Perhaps the corner of the living room, or next to the fridge.
“I don’t understand what you’re playing at, Joe,” she says.
“He’s my witness to what you really are.”
“Oh? And what do you have on him?”
“Enough.”
She looks around the room. It’s obvious that she hates losing. Slowly she begins shaking her head. I can hear her teeth grinding. She looks angry. “You’re forgetting one thing, Joe.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t need him.”
Before I can react, she grabs a knife from my briefcase and runs into the bathroom. She stands behind Calhoun and his eyes widen in fear because he knows as well as I do what’s about to happen. The chair jerks beneath him as he tries to pull away, but it’s no good. She holds the knife to his throat and watches my eyes. I look from the eyes of the detective, who has just become as still as stone, to the eyes of the woman behind him. Hers reflect amusement, a sense of enjoyment. Not for what she’s about to do to the cop, but what she’s about to do to my witness. I’ve hardly taken a step, but now I don’t dare move any closer.
“Think about this, Melissa,” I say, my words almost flustered. I put my hands ahead of me, palms outward. “Think about what you’re doing.”
Calhoun is pleading with his eyes, and as Melissa takes the knife away from his throat, his pleading moves to relief-then to horror as he sees the knife plunge back into sight on the way toward his chest. His eyes sparkle with fear, then all the sparkle evaporates in an instant as the knife punches into his body.
A sound, which is both gurgle and grunt, comes from him at the same time, and he struggles harder against the rope, as if the metal blade that has punctured his chest isn’t a knife, but a high-voltage battery from which he’s drawing power. Even so, it’s not enough to give him the strength to break the rope and tape that bind him. The chair dances back and forth as his body weight waltzes it across the floor. Blood squirts up from his chest. It pools around the blade of the knife and quickly blossoms over his shirt. Melissa leaves the knife in him, then steps away to watch. Blood has splashed onto the mirror, and even the ceiling. He begins trying to cough more of it up, but because of the tape across his mouth it becomes impossible. He begins choking, his face turns red, and I’m not sure if he’s choking or bleeding to death. The front of the duct-tape gag turns red. His face turns from red to purple, the same purple the sky was when I viewed it from the park with my testicle turned to pulp. The chair waltzes faster over the linoleum floor, the legs tap-dancing to some dying rhythm. His eyes are as wide as they can be, and in them I can see all sorts of fear and knowledge. Fear of dying. Knowledge that his last few seconds in this world are happening right now.
He looks at me and I think he wants me to help, but I can’t be sure. I stand motionless, unable to do a thing to save him. His throat begins to swell and his mouth is full of blood. It’s a race to see which will kill him-the stab wound or the choking-and when he stops moving, his head slumped forward and his ragged breathing eerily silent, I can only guess.
I stand with my mouth open and my tongue nearly hanging out, sweat dripping down my forehead. “You stupid bitch,” I manage to whisper. “How could you do such a thing?”
She reaches over to him and pulls away the duct tape. Blood gushes from between Calhoun’s lips and spills over his shirt. “I’m surprised that you thought I wouldn’t. I told you no tricks, Joe.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, you should have assumed it. I still want my money.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Get it.”
I look back at the body. “Maybe he’s still alive,” I whisper. I’m about to move forward to check when she interrupts me.
“Maybe,” she agrees, and she grabs hold of the knife and pulls it away.
“Don’t. .” I say, letting my voice trail off.
She leans in close and listens for a pulse. Whether she hears one or not, I can’t know. What she does do is drag the knife across his throat. Then she steps back. Dips a finger into the wound and puts that same finger into her mouth. She sucks on the blood.
“If he wasn’t dead, he sure as hell is now. And unless you want the police busting your ass on Monday, I suggest you give me my money.”
“Give me four hours.”
Melissa looks down at her jacket and sees a few splotches of blood. She takes it off. Her nipples are standing out as if she’s got small coins tucked in the front of her bra. She drags the knife over the dead man’s throat once more, making a squelching sound that reminds me of walking in wet shoes. Then she steps around behind him to cut the ropes and tape. After she drops the knife to the floor, she raises one of Calhoun’s arms and places his hand on her right breast. Softly she moans.
When she looks over at me, she is smiling. “You want to try it?”
“You promise not to slap me?”
“No, you idiot. Do you want to see how he feels?”
“He feels dead.”
“If you can get the money that quickly, Joe, we’ve still got a deal.”
“Where and when?”
She drops the arm and takes a look at her watch, mentally studying her schedule. “Ten o’clock. Our park. Don’t be late.”
Our park. Sure, I won’t be late. “I’ll be there.”
“No tricks, Joe.”
“No tricks.”
With that, she turns to leave and I’m left alone with a useless corpse.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Be prepared. That’s the Boy Scout motto. It applies to anything in life. It’s like doing your homework. I simply can’t stress enough how important that is.
I stand at the window for a few more minutes watching in case Melissa comes back. It’s a clear evening, a few stars are out already, a faded moon growing in strength. Melissa disappears between streetlights and reappears at the following one until she reappears no more. When I’m satisfied she’s gone, I point the remote control at the wardrobe. With the push of one button I turn off the video camera that’s running in there. The crippled chick’s video camera.
I rewind the tape, then sit on the edge of the bed to watch tonight’s footage through the small viewfinder. I hadn’t started the unit recording until I moved over into the corner of the bedroom. The lens was zoomed out to capture most of the room, which included the bed. I continue watching the tape. I can see Melissa stroking the covers, then, soon after, opening the bathroom door and murdering the policeman. Because of the angle of the lens I’ve managed to stay out of the footage. If I was in it, I would have edited it out. Seems I don’t need to.
I take the dead detective’s gun out of the waistband of my pants and set it on the bed for easy access. The gun’s ready to fire, has been the entire night. It was my protection against Melissa in case anything went wrong.
As it turned out, everything went perfectly.
Melissa didn’t cut all the bindings away from the policeman, so I grab a knife and finish the job. He smells of piss and death as I drag his heavy corpse into the bedroom, careful not to get any blood on me. When I dump him on the bed, he bounces once before becoming still.
I look around the room for something I can use to wrap the body. The blood will just soak through the sheets, so I go back into the bathroom and rip down the shower curtain, scattering the plastic rings to all four corners. I roll it around him. The end result is an odd-looking cocoon, which looks ready to hatch a being from some 1950s B-grade sci-fi movie. His blood smears across the inside of it, painted on the curtain of this womb. I use duct tape and his shoelaces to secure the curtain. Back in the bathroom I wash down the knife Melissa used to kill him, dry it, and put it back into my briefcase.