Ann stared up at him as he spoke, as intrigued as she was mortified by these disturbing revelations. He paused just long enough to climb off of her and re-situate himself, kneeling on one knee as she remained lying flat on her back.
“I had it all figured out, Ann. My plan was to put you under surveillance and learn all I could about you without your ever knowing it. I started following you home from school and at night, hanging around your house and spying on you. Your house was perfect-lots of windows and neat places to hide without being seen by any of the neighbors. You lived alone with your mother and she went out a lot, too, which really helped. Anyway, I did this for practically our entire senior year, and in that time I’d discovered a lot of interesting things about you. Besides the obvious fact that you had the most luscious body I’d ever seen, that is.”
He winked and grinned impudently at her when he said this, sending a cold chill down Ann’s spine. She looked way from him and found that what he was telling her was simply too hard to believe.
“I never had much luck with girls at school, as you no doubt recall. They all thought that I was some kind of nerdy do-gooder and even I know they thought I was uglier than sin. I couldn’t change my looks any-mother wouldn’t let me-so I figured that if I could somehow attract you in a spiritual way, I might have a chance. My plan was to show you how well I knew you and that I understood what made you tick, Ann. I thought you’d be impressed and would go out with me, because you were different from the others. You had a heart. I snuck into your house once and read your diary. I discovered by reading it that you had compassion for others less fortunate than yourself. You felt sorry for your mother because your father had died when you were so young. You felt sorry for your friends for various reasons: one got knocked up by her boyfriend, another got jilted by hers, and so on and so on. But you never felt sorry for yourself. You cared for others more than you cared for yourself-you were a true “giver.” I thought that was so classy! I had myself convinced that if I played my cards right and approached you at just the right time to ask you out on a date that you’d do it. And you probably would have, if it hadn’t been for your so-called friend, Marsha Stillner.
“That bitch fucked me up at that basketball game, Ann. She and Sara Hunt were sitting together and called me over to them. I asked them what they wanted and your dear friend Marsha told me that you wanted me to ask you to the prom. I didn’t believe her at first, of course, but Marsha was such a great actress! She kept a straight face and insisted that she was telling the truth. Sara Hunt then gave an Oscar winning performance as best supporting actress. She looked at me right in the eye and said, ‘Ann knows that you have the hots for her, Stanley, and she thinks you’re really cute. She’s been waiting for months for you to ask her out, but she’s afraid you won’t have the nerve to do it.’
“I flipped out when she told me this. All of a sudden I started thinking that maybe you knew I’d been spying on you all this time and that you were letting me watch you through the window because you enjoyed entertaining me! Like, you were being coy with me. I got all excited, thinking that this was turning out even better than I’d dreamed it would and I thanked Marsha and Sara for the tip. I went down near the sideline and watched you a little longer, trying to get my nerve up. Then, just to be on the safe side, I quickly looked up at where Marsha and Sara were sitting, half expecting to see them doubled up in laughter over their little joke. But they weren’t laughing at all. In fact, they were watching the game and seemed oblivious to anything else.
“That convinced me that they were on the up-an-up. So, I mustered up all of my courage and walked over to you. Then I asked you out.
“The rest, as they say, is history.”
Stanley stood up walked over to the balcony door and examined the wound on his face in the reflection. Ann was frozen where she lay, overwhelmed by what he had just told her. She considered making a run for it but knew that it would be futile. She wanted to lash out at him, tell him that what Marsha had done over twenty years ago didn’t justify his murdering her. But she remained silent. Stanley Jenkins was clearly off his rocker, schizoid. There was no sense in trying to rationalize anything with him. He was also a cold-blooded killer, and she realized that it was just a matter of moments before he murdered her as well.
She was not in any hurry to die, though.
Stanley turned around and strode over to her, dabbing at his wound with a towel. He had tears in his eyes. He stood over her and forced a weak smile.
“You might as well have killed me that day, Ann. I was shattered by your refusal and really angry that I’d fallen for your friends’ little scheme. Now, maybe you can understand why I got great satisfaction killing them. They fucked me up royally and deserved to die.”
His tone of voice sharpened, his self-confidence returned. “I went into seclusion after that incident at the basketball game. I still wanted you in spite of what happened but I knew there was little I could do about it at the time. After graduation, my parents all but forced me to go away to college so I started taking courses that summer. In a way, I didn’t care-I just wanted to get away from Smithtown. I did drugs, a lot of drugs, and I didn’t give a flying fuck about my grades or my parents. I had hit the skids and just wanted to try to have fun for a change.
“Then I laid eyes on Cindy Fuller for the first time at a party one night. She reminded me so much of you! I started following her around and spying on her, all the time pretending that she was you. Then I made the same mistake yet again-I asked her out and she refused me. I got really angry and wanted to kill her. Sam has already told you all about the fire and all of that, so I won’t bore you with it.”
Ann flinched at the mention of Sam. If only she’d listened to him “While I was in the nut-house,” he continued, “I made a vow to myself. When I got out, I was going to change myself, make myself a better person. Not long after I finally got released, I received a rather tidy life insurance settlement, thanks to my recently departed father. I went to Vegas and studied the tables then figured out how to beat the system. I got fucking rich, all in the matter of a few months. I took all of my winnings to L.A. and began devising my master plan.”
Stanley paused a moment and stared thoughtfully at Ann. “You can get up, Ann. You’re uncomfortable. Don’t worry, I’m not going to harm you.”
Ann knew this was a lie but stood up nonetheless. He winked at her then strode over to a stool near the window and gestured toward it.
“Why don’t you sit here?” he said. It was more of a command than a suggestion.
She nodded and went over to the stool, sat down. The wood was cold and hard against her damp swimsuit as she tried futilely to quit shivering. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Stanley had a dual personality-a sort of Jeckyl and Hyde persona. And at the moment, he was assuming a sort of unsettling combination of both characters.
Jenkins sauntered over to the painting of the nude women and studied it for a moment, then turned around and faced Ann.
“I kept totally to myself while living in L.A. In fact, I was virtually incognito. I rented a beach side villa under a fictitious name and spent the next year there making dozens of overseas calls to Europe and fooling around with personal computers, which were just beginning to appear in the consumer market. I was absolutely fascinated by computers, so I started writing my own programs and finding ways of patching into, at that time, the relatively infantile internet as well as various data bases.