Ever So Silent

by Christopher Little

  Holding it away from her, she blinked her eyes. Sawdust crunched. She squinted until the tiny little letters came into focus. Then they crackled out of focus. Holding the phone with her left hand, she rubbed each eye in turn with her right knuckle. She blinked furiously and was finally able to read the text. If she hadn’t been so drunk, she would have been able to read it in the first place.

  Emma, your endless interference is really pissing me off. Stop looking for me. Stay out of my life.

  The text was signed by her husband, Will Foster.

  26

  Christina’s World

  Barring the mosquitoes, it’s a fine June night. The tree line lies about fifty yards from Deb’s house. It is surrounded by woods. My car is nearly half a mile away, parked on Addison Road. I have changed into an all-black outfit, well-suited for surveillance. There is a moon out casting spooky shadows, but I’m unconcerned.

  Deb must feel safe and secluded. Not a single curtain is drawn, and every light is lit. I am invisible, though. There is no way she can see me.

  She is making herself something for a late dinner. I don’t mind. Patience is my fourth P. Actually, that’s not strictly true. There are only three Ps: preparation, plotting, and pulling it off. But if you think there are four, then it must be true. Mustn’t it?

  She takes a plate into the living room and turns on the TV by remote control. I watch as she flips through the channels until she settles on something that piques her interest.

  Time to move closer.

  I creep-walk across her lawn. In spite of the night, I manage not to step on a single twig.

  The lower part of the northeast window of her living room is blocked by a hedge. I tiptoe behind it and peep over the top through the window. Deb is only nine or ten feet away. The window is open. If the privet weren’t so fragrant, I would be able to smell her.

  She is engrossed in that insipid movie, “Forrest Gump.” But I’m not going to get distracted by Deb’s “cultural” proclivities. I am waiting until she gets ready for bed. I figure I’ve got about ninety minutes left of Tom Hanks pretending to be a retard.

  I almost slap a mosquito before I stop myself. I am so close to Deb, she would definitely hear a slap. I let it bite me. Do you know how hard it is to watch a mosquito’s proboscis burrow into your skin and not react? Did you know that if a mosquito finds enough blood to suck, avoids being squished, and gets enough water, she can live as long as three weeks. Only the females bite. Big surprise.

  After nine more bites, I am finally forced to watch the interminable final scene, Forrest’s monologue when he yaps to Jenny Gump’s gravestone.

  Deb remotely clicks off the TV and leaves the room after turning off the lights. She turns the kitchen and hall lights off, too.

  I creep around the house until I find the southwest-facing window of her bedroom. She is standing next to her bed. Her hair has been done up in a messy bun. She removes some hairpins and lets it fall over her shoulders.

  Hanging on the north wall, lined up one-two-three, I notice framed images: one, a rendering of the Rainbow Coalition flag; two, a poster of an extremely unattractive black woman, who I believe is Harriet Tubman; and, three, an antique Equal Rights Amendment poster, no doubt printed before Deb was born.

  Against a backdrop of flying hearts, it reads:

  Girls just want to have Fun–

  damental Human Rights

  I grieve for her boyfriend, the one I saw at Super Stop & Shop.

  After turning down the bed and fluffing her pillows, Deb begins to undress. I’ve looked forward to this part.

  Underneath her shirt and shorts, she is wearing standard-issue, #MeToo underwear, high-waisted, white cotton panties and a white cotton bra. A complete turnoff. She unhooks her bra, and her large breasts tumble out. Like pancakes with too much batter, they flatten against her ribs. Her nipples stare at the floor. Sad!

  She bends over and removes her panties. Then she turns and faces me. I am in the shadows, the bedroom is brightly lit. I don’t think she can possibly see me, but at this point I am hardly going to stop watching. My new view of Deb is a significant improvement. She has shaved her crotch around her labia majora, but she has left a small triangle of wiry hair over her mons pubis. I stare hard. There is a Christina piercing where the labia majora meet below her pubic mound. A small diamond sparkles in the light.

  Maybe, I shouldn’t grieve for the boyfriend.

  Deb lies down on the bed on her back, her head against the puffed pillows. Her sheets are black satin. Who knew? She adjusts a contraption which looks like a swing-arm desk lamp. Instead of a lampshade and bulb on the end, there is a clamp that holds an iPad. Ingenious. She punches some virtual keys and then settles back to watch. Another Tom Hanks movie? No! Through the open window I can hear a man and a woman saying naughty things to one another. Huh! Debbie does Dallas. Deb does porn.

  She reaches into a drawer in the bedside table and takes out a squirt-container of personal lubricant. Then her left-hand drifts to her crotch. With two moistened fingers, she rubs her clitoris using a slow, gentle circular motion. I watch, mesmerized. It’s all I can do not to touch myself.

  She stops and squirts a generous dollop of Glide onto the fingers of her other hand. She slides those two fingers into her vagina. With the other hand, she resumes massaging her clitoris, varying her pressure and timing.

  From the iPad comes the sound of some serious moaning. Deb joins the chorus. Her body spasms. She shrieks. No one can hear her but me. She has what I take to be a soul-striking orgasm.

  Peeping is definitely underrated.

  Deb goes into the bathroom and washes her hands. Seconds later, she’s back in bed with the lights out. Apparently sated, she begins to snore softly.

  I wait.

  I time myself with my expensive watch. Precisely one hour later—it’s now 10:45 p.m.—I walk around the back of the house to the kitchen door. As I expect from a free spirit like Deb, the door is unlocked. Gingerly, I open the door, prepared to stop at the slightest squeak. But it opens smoothly and quietly. I creep down the hall which I know leads to Deb’s bedroom. The door to the bedroom is open, too. I tiptoe across the room to the edge of her bed. My special shoes have rope soles. I move soundlessly.

  I indulge myself in a pleasant timeout to watch her sleep. She looks prettier asleep. I glide to the left side of her bed, lean over, and take a deep sniff of the smells emanating from her body. She wears a heavenly perfume. It smells more expensive than I expect. Delicious.

  I snap the light on.

  Deb wakes up and, with astonishing speed, sits up, fully alert.

  “Hi Deb,” I say casually.

  “Oh, God,” she shouts, “what are you doing in my bedroom?”

  27

  Nineteen Words

  A cold, wet nose woke Emma up. She pushed it away. When that didn’t work, she cracked an eye. Pepper and she were nose to nose.

  “No, Pepper, let me sleep.”

  If Pepper could speak, she would’ve said, “Wake up, it’s nearly ten o’clock.” Instead, she licked Emma’s nose. Through gritty eyes, Emma managed to focus on her bedside clock. Jesus, it was nearly ten o’clock. She sprang out of bed. When her feet hit the floor, she instantly regretted moving at all. The shock went straight to her alcohol-ravaged brain.

  An EMT had once told her that medical-grade oxygen is a miracle cure for hangovers. She had half a mind to drive over to ambulance headquarters, for which she had the key-code, and help herself to a tank.

  Still in the dress she’d worn to Ethan’s funeral, she went into the bathroom, stripped, and took a cold shower. Icy jets needled her body. Drying off, Emma realized that she couldn’t remember anything except people constantly leaving messages on her answering machine. She knew that she had suffered a complete alcoholic blackout. She also knew something bad had happened after the funeral, which had been bad enough in the first place. She just couldn’t remember what.

  She reheated some cold c
offee in the microwave and let Pepper out to pee.

  While sipping bitter coffee, she scrolled through Caller ID on her landline. Deb, Vanessa, and Caroline Stoner had all called. It was the last call that caught her attention. Stoner had never called her at home before. She couldn’t remember a thing about their conversation or the reason for the call, but she would check in with Stoner as soon as she got to the office. Vanessa and Deb, she would get to later.

  Which reminded her that she was very late.

  She dressed in a clean uniform, and she and Pepper hurried to headquarters.

  Caroline Stoner was in the lobby when they arrived. They went up the stairs together, Caroline’s ponytail bouncing flippantly behind her.

  “Big news about the cell phone,” Caroline said. “No?”

  Emma grinned through her headache. “Would you mind replaying that conversation for me?”

  “So, you were as drunk as you sounded.”

  “I sure was.”

  Caroline again told her that the same cell phone had been used to call Ethan Jackson and Virginia Hobson.

  Up in her office, Emma gestured for Caroline to sit. For the first time, Pepper went straight to her den in the well of the desk. Emma wondered if her period of mourning for Archie was finally tailing off. She hoped so.

  “So,” Emma continued, “if Hobson is correct—that her Sunday caller was out to do her harm—then we have a potential multiple murderer on our hands. He just was not as successful with number two, thanks to your response.”

  “Sure sounds like it.”

  Emma fiddled with a stapler. “How certain are you that Hobson was really being threatened? Or was it the excitement of an old lady reporter who had just obtained her first scoop?”

  Caroline said, “She’s only seventy-one. I asked her age. And she seems pretty sharp. My bet is that she assessed the situation pretty accurately. First off, I checked. There is no reporter at the Hartford Courant named Pat Roberts. And then there’s the part where the alleged reporter goes off on her. Hobson quoted him as saying something like, ‘I’m from the Courant, not a rinky-dink newspaper like the Hampshire Chronicle…’ ”

  “It’s not exactly an I’m-going-to-kill-you moment, but I see what you mean. I hope you told her to be careful, watch her back, etc.”

  “Yup, I did.”

  “Well, thanks for the follow-up. I’m glad we have your source at the phone company. He is a godsend. Apologies again for last night.”

  “Not a problem,” Caroline said, leaving. “I hear that Julian Jackson was pretty brutal at the funeral. Strikes me as a perfect time for a bender.”

  Emma snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you could feel the torture chamber inside my head.”

  As best she could, Emma concentrated on backed-up paperwork. After a time, she was interrupted by an incoming text. The notes of Sherwood Forest triggered some unpleasant yet irretrievable memory.

  Let’s try to reschedule lunch. I’m free tomorrow. Dick

  Yeah, like that was going to happen.

  She deleted the text, which was when she noticed that there was another text she didn’t remember reading.

  Expecting a routine message, she casually scanned the text, date-stamped yesterday, Thursday, at 11:17 p.m.

  The nineteen words buried her with the force of vertical wind shear. She sucked for air. How could it be that Will was alive and knew what was going on in Hampshire? She read the message over and over. How incredibly cruel! Why would he want to hurt her so? What had she done to deserve this? Her head pounded now with far more than just a hangover.

  She tried to focus, to concentrate. She looked at the incoming number. She had a friend who lived in Massachusetts with the same prefix. Could Will have been living just across the border this whole time, keeping track of her, and knowing about the police’s and Mark Byrne’s search?

  She reached for her desk phone to call Caroline Stoner. Stoner’s phone company friend could track this in a flash. But she stopped herself.

  A loud voice in her percussed brain told her no. This was no longer police business. This was personal.

  She didn’t want to, but she called Mark Byrne.

  “Mark, I need to see you. This is Emma Thorne. I have a problem.”

  “Why, Emma, I thought you had terminated my contract,” Mark said.

  “Come on. I don’t need cruelty from you, too.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Emma spilled her guts, reading him the text from Will.

  “Holy shit, I didn’t see that coming. Tell you what, I can be at your office at noon. How about some lunch?”

  What was it about men and fucking lunch?

  “No lunch. Just come.”

  “Okay, okay. Read me the originating phone number again.”

  At 12:45, Mark arrived, greeting Pepper first, then Emma. He took his usual chair. Without preamble, he said, “I’ve traced the cell phone. It has never been used. It’s a prepaid jobbie, a Straight Talk Huawei Sensa, purchased from a Walmart in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on April 11, a Sunday. Pittsfield is about an hour north—”

  “I know where Pittsfield is,” she said. “Oh my God, Mark, this is huge.”

  “How come?”

  Mark didn’t know about the Jackson/Hobson cell phone, also a Walmart purchase, albeit a different Walmart. What were the chances of this being a coincidence?

  “You said it’s never been used?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Suddenly, the whole weight of Mark’s bombshell crashed down upon her.

  Oh, Jesus, Will! she thought. Could it be? Could it possibly be? Her husband Will could be the one she was looking for … times two.

  Emma averted Mark’s eyes and openly wept.

  She could feel him staring at her. He tried gently, “Emma? Tell me what’s going on.”

  When she didn’t answer, he added, “What did I say? Why are you crying? Are you thinking what I think you are? Please tell me how I can help you.”

  “You can’t,” Emma said with finality. She wished he could.

  Mark came around the desk. He embraced her shoulders with his arm and hugged her.

  Emma flinched. “Please, just leave!” She hated herself for her words.

  “I can’t leave you like this,” he said.

  Shrugging off Mark’s well-meant attempt to comfort her, Emma rose from her chair and pushed him away.

  She said, “I need you to leave me alone. I have to figure this out on my own.” Even she was aware of the paradox. She’d called him, after all.

  Pepper accompanied Mark to the door, not as a guard dog, but as a friend saying goodbye to a friend.

  At least one of us has manners.

  28

  A Pleasant Tone of Voice

  I take my time staring at Deb against the backdrop of her sexy black satin sheets. I watch her shake. Her terror is evident, but, for the moment, she doesn’t say anything more. My eyes reluctantly leave her crotch and wander up to her face. Her eyes are darting every which way. I understand that she is seeking an escape route. She looks around her bedroom, presumably for a weapon. I follow her gaze. The most threatening object I see is a comb on her bureau. Whatever. I’m not terribly worried. Deb is well-toned, muscular even, but I’ve worked out more than she has.

  I adopt a reasonable, pleasant tone of voice. “First an apology, Deb. I have nothing against you personally, but I have come here to kill you.”

  Deb says, “You’re insane. Get out, or I’ll call Emma.”

  Then she starts to scream and thrash and plead. “Please, please don’t hurt me. I beg you. I’ll do anything, anything.”

  I remove my scuba diving knife from where I like to keep it, snuggled against the small of my back.

  Deb howls and struggles to free herself from the sheets. With my left hand, I grab her wrist and twist it violently behind her back. Turns out, I am far stronger than she is. She calls out in pain, “Stop it! Please don’t hurt me! I’ve done not
hing to you!”

  I grab a clump of Deb’s hair. “Deb, my pet, we’re going for a little walk.”

  She kicks out at me with surprising force. Her adrenal glands sure are secreting. Her heel catches my left kidney causing unexpected pain. I throw her back on the bed.

  “Okey-dokey, bitch, let’s try it another way.”

  I gash her wrist with my scuba knife. I don’t know which artery I’ve severed—her radial or ulnar (maybe both)—but blood spurts all over her bottom sheet.

  Deb screams even louder.

  I grab her hair again and force her out of the house. I frog march her around to the back as she continues to plead with me. She’s getting irritating, and I tell her to shut up. She doesn’t.

  When we reach the back driveway, I instruct her to kneel down. She refuses, so I kick her legs out from under her. With a shriek she lands heavily on the road.

  Seizing her hair once again, I rock her head back until her neck yawns invitingly. Placing the blade against her left carotid artery, I cut through her neck, finishing the slice at the opposing artery. I jump away, trying to keep the geyser of blood from spraying my clothes.

  “Number two, Emma dear,” I say aloud. But nobody can hear me.

  I return to the house and take the top sheet, which is now on the floor. Outside, I cover Deb’s naked butt with the black satin sheet. I want to protect her privacy from a bunch of horny cops.

  Finally, with a brand-new Sharpie, I inscribe my special calling card on her back. This time, though, it’s a brand-new letter. Emma can figure out whether it’s an M or a W.

  So fun.

  29

  Another Sharpie

  It was a fine evening when Emma drove home, but she didn’t take much notice. She had a plate piled high with worries.

  It wasn’t until she’d poured herself a class of Sauvignon Blanc—no scotch tonight—that she thought to call Vanessa and Deb. She tried Deb. There was no answer. She got Vanessa on the second ring.