He pulled the bound and gagged man out through the back door and dropped him next to the cooler. Then he returned to the van and brought back a large hook on a chain. He stood on the cooler and secured the hook to a stout limb. He pulled on it with all his weight, and it creaked but held.
The man was trying to scream, but with his mouth sealed by duct tape, he could only make a nasal whine. Hunter made sure the duct tape around his ankles was secure, and then easily lifted him up by his feet and hung him upside-down from the branch, the hook going between his ankles, holding him up by the tape.
He took the razor-sharp clasp knife from his pocket and sliced off the man’s T-shirt and then his running shorts. He was wearing a jockstrap. He snapped it playfully and cut through the waistband and both leg straps, and tossed it away. The man had soiled himself, which was understandable and not unusual.
He put the knife away and delicately lifted the man’s scrotum and testicles and looked underneath. The penis had retracted so far it was almost invisible in the nest of pubic hair. That was not unusual, either.
He walked back to the van and returned with a 12-gauge pump shotgun. He spoke for the first time, his voice curiously high-pitched and musicaclass="underline" “Don’t be afraid. This is not for you.” It was in case of interruption. He’d never had to use it.
He got a quart of beer from the cooler and twisted it open, and sat on the cooler with the shotgun in his lap. He sipped the beer slowly, studying the man.
When he’d finished the beer, he spoke again. “There’s not a living soul within miles. If you scream, you will only annoy me.” He reached down and carefully pulled an inch of tape away from his mouth. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a minister. But my father’s a millionaire! He could—” Hunter pressed the tape back into place.
“A man of God. I respect that. I will be gentle.” He opened the knife and with one sweep deeply cut the minister’s throat, severing both carotid arteries. The man was probably dead before the gush of blood could blind him.
He didn’t always do that. It wasn’t necessary to bleed the corpse; the meat was going straight into the cooler. It was probably kinder to kill them quickly, but that wasn’t much of an issue. Sometimes he played with them to see how they would react to his ministrations. Sometimes he even told them his life story, since they would never be able to pass it on, and their reaction to that was interesting, too.
A joke he played on the police was to dress out their bodies exactly as one does a deer, hence the name Hunter. But he had never killed a deer; he’d copied the instructions out of a library book, not wanting to leave a web trail, and practiced on roadkill until he was fairly expert, burying the remains to avoid suspicion.
He brought out his box of tools and supplies. He felt for the pubic bone and did a long ventral incision from there downward, using a sturdy plain hunting knife from Sears. He guided it with his fingers, careful not to nick the stomach or intestines. He cut through the pelvic bone with a Craftsman hacksaw, and cut away the diaphragm so he could remove the liver and heart, which he put in separate Ziploc bags and set in the cooler. Then he remembered the thymus gland and put it in a small bag to take home and add to the eleven he had in the freezer. Almost enough for a nice appetizer of sweetbreads.
He cut around the anus and severed the windpipe, and the offal slid out in a steaming pile at the base of the tree. He carefully stepped around it while he finished the job, skinning the man from ankles to chin. He left the head untouched, for his collection. He draped the skin artistically around the tree branches, tying it in places so an animal couldn’t easily drag it away, then slipped a large yard bag over the blood-slick body and cut it down. Best to finish the job at home, where he had proper tools and plenty of time. He lay the body on the ice and dragged the cooler back to the van. Retrieved the hook and chain.
Tired. Lean people are harder to skin. He took a beer out of the cooler but put it back. Best to make a few miles first. There were already two turkey buzzards circling, and more would come. He stripped off the gloves and bloody clothes into a laundry bag and washed up, using the van’s side mirror and a hand mirror to make sure there were no telltale speckles. He got a small erection but ignored it, then dressed in old clothes and quietly drove away.
3.
I woke up out of a terrible nightmare, reaching for Kit, who wasn’t there; she left early to go to Chicago on family business. The nightmare wasn’t about the cartoon monster in the script, but a related horror I saw in the war.
Artillery support had gotten the new “shock” rounds for the 175s, and the first one they fired fell way short, and it went off above a thing like a Muslim day care center or orphanage. Our camp was right on the edge of town, a place we called Honeypot, so they ordered most of us to run over and render aid.
It was all children except for four women, and all but one were dead or barely twitching. The shock round had blown off all their clothing and most of their skin. Most of them must have died instantly of cardiac arrest, but one was walking, a girl of ten or twelve who looked like a medical-school diagram, flayed from the waist up, just bloody muscles, and from the top of her butt trailed a bright flag of bloody skin like a gory wedding train. She fell over and died before the medics could do anything, but what would they have been able to do? Whole body skin graft; just grit your teeth, sweetheart.
It was two in the morning. I got up without dressing and turned on all the lights in the kitchen and sat drinking a beer very fast. Then I put some ice cubes in a glass and poured in a few inches of Kit’s vodka. That got me tranquilized enough to go back to sleep and not dream, or at least not remember the dreams.
Woke up groggy and went for a walk. I took the next section of the script and a notebook, so I could at least pretend to be working. Went by a bike shop, but it wasn’t open till ten, so dropped in the twenty-four-hour pool hall and had a healthy breakfast of Slim Jims and beer. I read the paper for a while and then went back to the bike shop.
The Steve in the story gets a really nice touring bike, but I didn’t need anything that fancy or expensive. Just something to replace the old clunker I’d bought from a roommate in college.
The shop’s pretty upscale, and most of the bikes are almost weightless and cost as much as a used car. But they did have a section with cheap kids’ so-called mountain bikes—like there were mountains in Iowa—and adult “commuter” bikes. I can commute to work in ten seconds, barefoot, but I got one of those, a bright blue Cambridge. With an accessory package of lights and lock and saddle bags, it was just under $500. One percent of my eventual Monster money.
It was gloriously easy to ride, compared to my rust bucket. It had automatic shift and springs and nice wide handlebars, so you could sit upright and see the world go by. The old one had dropped handlebars, so you rode hunched over, and was so rigid your ass felt every pebble in the road.
Perfect weather for bicycling, sunny and slightly cool, so I pedaled around for an hour and a half, and wound up on the other side of town. There was a new Italian restaurant with outside tables, so I sat down there and took out the script and notebook. I got a half carafe of white wine and started to work.
CHAPTER THREE
Stephen Spenser thought he had the world by the tail when he left his father’s New York law firm and joined a small one in Florida as junior partner. He liked the little town of Flagler Beach, and was usually inside only half the day, helping to prepare briefs and going over old files with the firm’s gorgeous administrative assistant, Arlene. The rest of the time he was outside in the usually beautiful seaside weather, interviewing clients and respondents—and occasionally doing repossessions, a profitable sideline for the firm.