At work, though, things were going great. Both the trip and his father’s death had freed him somehow, made him stronger. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his job, or no longer tried to do the best he could. It was that he had put his work into perspective. Tracking down and interviewing alumni, putting out newsletters and yearbooks, was important but not that important. Well, it had never been that important. But he had always done his best to impress his supervisors, had placed a lot of emphasis on the opinions of those above him in the company. He’d been behaving as though he were still in school, trying to impress the teacher and get all As. He realized now, though, that he didn’t really care about gaining the approval of AlumniMedia’s supervisors, managers and department heads. He would continue to do his best, but if they didn’t like it, too bad. This position wasn’t the be-all and end-all. There were always other jobs he could take, other companies he could work for.
The realization had unchained his mind, improved his focus, and it showed in the quality and quantity of his output.
Often, when he was sitting at his desk, he thought about how it had felt to punch that smirking, bearded man at the café in Salt Lake City. Even as he relived the moment, his mind made subtle changes to the scenario. Inevitably, the other man became more evil and actively aggressive, while he himself turned out to be more heroic. Sometimes the fight lasted longer and there was a cheering crowd egging them on. In the most satisfying version of events, he ended up beating the man senseless, pummeling his face until it was a raw, bloody pulp with virtually no trace of human features left.
He liked to think about Lyman Fischer too.
He had more confidence now, and that was reflected not only in his work but in his standing at the office. He was consulted quite often by the photo editors, and even the videographer had been asking his advice lately. Unfortunately, this also meant that Gina was trying to insert herself into his life even more than she had before—walking over to his desk rather than calling him on the phone, writing notes on her personal stationery rather than the company’s memo forms, engaging him in conversation at every opportunity—and it was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid her. She seemed genuinely interested in him, though he was not sure why. She knew he was involved—Sherry’s framed photo was right there on his desk next to his computer—and her relationship with that older man on the beach certainly didn’t strike him as familial. Yet she was flirtatious and insinuating, clearly vying for his attention, and as much as he tried to evade her and put her off, he could not seem to discourage the woman. He’d taken to going out at lunch instead of eating at his desk just to avoid her.
One day after work, he was in his car in the parking lot, sorting through the stack of CDs on the seat next to him and trying to figure out what music to put on for the ride home, when he saw Gina come out of the building and walk over to a silver Saturn parked near the street. Steve watched her, curious. The two of them had never before left at the same time, or, if they had, he had never noticed. But he found himself wondering now about where she lived and whom she lived with, what her life was like away from work. Still pretending to sort through the CDs, he watched out of the corner of his eye as she removed the keys from her purse, unlocked her car and got in. She backed up, swung the Saturn around and headed for the exit.
On impulse, he started his engine and pulled out into the street, following her. She drove quickly, recklessly, like a teenager, but he maintained a steady pace, remaining one car behind at all times, and stayed with her. It seemed strange to be trailing someone like this, strange but good, and he felt happy and exhilarated as he sped down Culver Street, keeping the Saturn in his sight.
Surprisingly, she lived in a condo not too far from his own apartment. He’d assumed she lived by the beach, because that was where he’d seen her, but either she’d been visiting someone on Balboa or had just gone there for the day, as he and Sherry had, because she lived in Irvine.
Gina had her own driveway, and he parked across the street and watched as she pulled in and got out, ducking down in his seat when she happened to glance in his direction. Peeking out a moment later, he saw her step into the condo and close the door behind her. Seconds afterward, the closed blinds over the front window were opened, although the interior was too dark for him to make out anything.
It occurred to Steve that if she looked out the window and saw him out here, she might think he was a stalker. Or interested. He wasn’t sure which would be worse. He thought about driving around the block and finding a new place to park farther down the street, where he couldn’t be seen, but it didn’t feel right. Not today.
Putting the car into gear, he drove down the street and reluctantly headed toward home.
Where Sherry was waiting.
The next day, at work, Gina delivered his mail, then decided to remain by his desk, casually picking up his stapler, his Batman paperweight, anything she could get her hands on, while she tried to engage him in conversation.
I know where you live, he thought. I could show up at your doorstep and . . .
The thought allowed him to endure her mindless chatter.
After work, he left early and drove to her neighborhood, parking down the street behind a blue Prius, making sure that he had an unobstructed view of her condo. Gina arrived at five twenty-four, about the same time as yesterday, but the second she closed the door of her car, she started frantically pulling on the handle, trying desperately to open it, though the door was obviously locked. She cupped her hands together, peered into the driver’s-side window, and Steve understood that she had locked her keys in the car. He sat back, smiling. This was going to be fun.
He expected her to take out a cell phone and call AAA, but instead she looked furtively around, making sure no one was watching, then lifted a flowerpot on the porch and took something out from underneath it. A key. She unlocked the front door, replaced the key beneath the flowerpot, then went inside, returning a moment later with what was obviously an extra car key that she used to open the door of the Saturn.
Steve waited until she went back inside, then drove away, smiling.
He knew where she kept her spare house key.
He wasn’t going to use that knowledge, Steve told himself. He wasn’t going to do anything about it.
But he knew that wasn’t true.
It was not until the next week that Gina left her condo unattended. It was possible that she’d gone somewhere over the weekend, but he was with Sherry from Friday night until late in the day Sunday and hadn’t been able to drive by and check. On Tuesday, however, she told everyone at work who would listen that she had a big date that night, and she told it to Steve several times in an annoying, flirtatious way that made him think she was trying to make him jealous.
So what if she was going to be gone for several hours, and he knew where the key to her front door was hidden? That didn’t mean anything. He didn’t have to do anything with that information. There was no reason for him to break into her place. He didn’t like her; he didn’t care about her; he had no interest in her or her life. What could he possibly gain by spying on her home? Besides that, it was illegal. Breaking and entering. He could go to jail.
He was going to go straight home to his own apartment after work. He was going to call Sherry and ask her to come over, and the two of them would have a nice dinner, watch a movie or something and spend the night together.
He called Sherry.
And told her that he would be working late and would call her tomorrow.
At exactly seven fifteen, Gina turned on the porch light of her condo, stepped outside, locked the door, got into her car and left. Steve knew this because he was watching her from within his own car, parked across the street and two houses away. He had assumed that someone would come by to pick her up—possibly the guy from Balboa Island—and he was surprised to see her leave on her own. It made him wary, as well, and he waited five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen, before he finally got out and walked casu
ally down the sidewalk to her microscopic yard. Pausing for a moment, pretending to check whether his shoelace was untied, he looked up and down the street, seeing no one on the sidewalks, no one watching him from any windows. Two quick steps and he was on her porch, lifting the flowerpot, taking the key.
He opened the door and waited for a moment, bracing himself, ready to run, but she didn’t appear to have an alarm, and he slipped the key back under the flowerpot, hurried inside and closed the front door. He found the light switch and flipped it on.
This was where Gina lived.
It was sparsely furnished. There was a single couch against one wall, a coffee table in front of it, a flat-screen TV hanging on the opposite wall. A dying ficus tree stood next to the couch in a white pot.
Against the far wall, between two doors, was a bookcase. Although, he saw as he drew closer, it was not filled with books. Not real books, at least. For the volumes that packed the top four shelves were the yearbooks put out by AlumniMedia. The bottom shelf contained a series of white binders, and he pulled one out, opening it up. Inside, arranged sequentially, were copies of the newsletters they published.
This wasn’t work related. The company had a massive archive of all of its publications stored in a fireproof, climate-controlled vault.
These were here for her personal use.
Exploring the condo more carefully, he left the living room and walked into the bedroom. Only it wasn’t a bedroom. Instead, there was a draftsman’s table and chair in the center of the otherwise cleared space, and on top of the table were a pile of photographs next to a pair of scissors and an X-Acto knife. He glanced around. The walls were hung with collages of faces, bodies, arms and legs that had been cut up seemingly at random and joined together in any way that the shapes fit, like some lunatic jigsaw puzzle.
Steve moved closer to the wall, staring at the intricately cut photos. There were literally hundreds of them, all men. The effort that had gone into these collages was impressive, but the fact that all of it added up to nothing was absolutely stupefying. He could discern no themes or motifs in the chopped-up photos, no attempt at an overarching composition in their arrangement. Maybe she considered herself an artist, he thought. Maybe this was her work. He didn’t get that impression, though. This seemed more like the misplaced fantasies of an obsessed schoolgirl.
He walked slowly around the room, examining everything, marveling at the number of hours Gina had put into this . . . hobby. Counting, he found that there were thirty-three collages on the walls.
He wondered where she slept. As far as he could tell, this was a small condo: living room, single bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. Did the couch pull out? Did she sleep on the floor? No matter what the answer, the fact that she’d given up her bedroom for this madness sent up red flags. If before he had felt uncomfortable with the secretary’s occasional flirty attention, he now recoiled at the thought of having even a casual conversation with her.
Steve decided to check out the bathroom. He went over to the open doorway, flipped on the light.
And stood frozen in his tracks.
The entire ceiling was covered by a massive collage. Corner to corner, from above the doorway to above the shower, the ceiling was hidden by a multitude of multicolored pictures clipped from various sources.
And this collage had a theme.
Every picture pasted onto the collage was the face of a clown.
Steve’s blood ran cold. No matter what she did in here, whether Gina was bathing, showering, brushing her teeth or going to the bathroom, she would be spied upon and stared at by scores upon scores of unmoving clown eyes. Just the thought of it gave him the heebie-jeebies.
He flipped off the light, moving away, going back into the living room and then to the kitchen. His hand was shaking as he turned on the kitchen light, and he wanted nothing more than to get out of here and go home. But he had to finish this, had to see it through. He glanced quickly around the room, taking it all in: refrigerator, stove, sink, counter, microwave, breakfast table. Those were the normal elements, the ones Gina’s kitchen had in common with an ordinary kitchen.
The abnormal elements . . .
On the counter next to the microwave oven, in a diorama constructed in a converted shoe box, was a scene of a man sitting in front of a campfire in a forest. Steve recognized the man as the paunchy older guy from the beach, and wondered whether Gina had sought him out, stalked him. He couldn’t recall AlumniMedia putting together anything for a Newport Beach or Balboa reunion, but it was conceivable that he had graduated from somewhere else, and Gina had come across his name, photo and current address and had made an effort to meet him. Such an approach was slightly unethical, but it wasn’t out of the realm of normalcy. A lot of people met online these days or through dating services, and this wasn’t a whole lot different from that.
But the diorama, the collages . . .
His gaze alighted on a framed collage above the stove. In it were men, nearly all of them shirtless, many of them with their genitals accidentally or intentionally exposed, some with no pants on at all. Steve came across this type of thing at work periodically—people sending inappropriate pictures for their reunion photos. He usually deleted them if they’d been e-mailed or threw them away if they’d been sent in, but Gina had obviously been collecting them over a period of many years, and she’d made a special effort to piece them together in a sexualized way that made her intentions very clear. It was sick and disturbing, made more so by the fact that it was not near her bed or bathtub or someplace intimate but above her stove, where she cooked food.
She was the type of woman, Steve realized, whom his father would probably consider a slut.
His father had had no use for such people, and neither did he, and he found himself thinking that if something happened to her, she would not really be missed. At AlumniMedia, she was only a secretary, an annoying one at that, and could easily be replaced. She obviously had no real significant other, and judging from the state of her condo and the lack of personal pictures, she had no close family, at least not here in Southern California.
That was the moment he knew he was going to kill her.
No. That wasn’t really true. He’d known earlier than that. He’d known it when he first found the drafting table and the photos.
When he first walked through her door.
When he first decided to break into her place.
When he first followed her home.
Yes. He’d known it all along, and it felt good to admit that now.
Steve glanced at his watch. It felt like only a few minutes had passed, but he’d been here for over half an hour already. Gina could come back anytime—the date could have gone bad, the guy could have stood her up, there could have been no date at all—and he did not want to be caught unawares, did not want to be forced into doing something hasty and rash. This time, he wanted to be able to plan it out, to take his time and arrange the best kill he could.
Something his father would be proud of.
He made sure everything was as he had found it, turned off all the lights, locked the front door, then hurried down the street to where he’d parked his car. He waited a moment after he got in, watching the houses and sidewalk through his windshield and rearview mirror to make sure he had not been spotted. When he was sure everything was clear, he started the car and pulled carefully out into the street.
He passed by a hitchhiker on his way out of her neighborhood. He would have thought nothing of it, would probably not have even noticed the man except for the fact that he was dressed like a hillbilly and dancing, doing a strange little in-place jog on the street corner where he stood, his arm windmilling up at irregular intervals to expose his outstretched thumb. The man stared at him as he passed by, paying entirely too much attention to Steve for his comfort. Dressed in bib overalls and a straw hat, he looked like someone going to a costume party, but it was a weeknight, as well as being an odd time of year for such festivities, and Steve had the d
istinct impression that this was not a costume but the hitchhiker’s daily attire.
Keeping his eyes on the road, ignoring the man, his hands remaining at ten and two on the wheel, Steve drove by, heart pounding, thinking that maybe he should take this as an omen and call everything off, not go through with it.
But he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
On the way home, he got dinner from the drive-through of a Jack in the Box and ate it in front of the TV while he watched a CNN broadcaster bash Mexican immigrants. He wanted more than anything to plan Gina’s death, to decide how he was going to do away with her, but he enjoyed the anticipation so much that he decided to wait on that, to prolong the gratification and think about it tomorrow.
So he opened his mail, worked on a new short story until he was so tired that his eyes hurt, and finally went to bed.
He dreamed this time about a hillbilly clown, an overalls-clad yokel with a big red nose and bright green hair, who was hitchhiking by the side of the road, dancing with his thumb out. Steve himself was driving a clown car, a little miniature Volkswagen, and he pulled over to give the hitchhiker a lift. “Where are you going?” he asked.
The clown poked his big face into the tiny window and grinned evilly.
“You know,” he said.
And Steve did.
Seventeen
The Promise
They stopped at a McDonald’s in Blythe, pulling off the highway onto a cross street where the familiar red and yellow sign sat like a beacon amidst the darker billboards and buildings of the still-sleeping town. The McDonald’s had just opened for the day, and only the vehicles of employees were parked in the lot. Dave pulled into a marked space near the entrance and, without even glancing at his sister, got out of the car, stretching loudly.
His Father's Son Page 18
