Later in the morning, while he was busy compiling a list of reuniongoers’ favorite bands and musicians from twenty-five years ago (Duran Duran! Michael Jackson! Def Leppard!), Gina sent him an e-mail containing two photos: one of a nude middle-aged man, shown from the neck down, pointing his erect penis at the camera; the other featuring a woman wearing a party hat, her eyes and mouth opened wide in surprise. When the two photos were placed next to each other, the way Gina had arranged them, it appeared that the man was preparing to ejaculate into the woman’s mouth.
Steve deleted the e-mail.
The secretary had to die soon.
After work, he drove inland instead of heading home, stopping off at a Lowe’s in Tustin, then a Home Depot in Santa Ana, picking up thin twine, heavy rope, duct tape and, just in case, paint thinner. He divided his purchases between the two stores so that no single person could see him picking up all of the supplies, and afterward tore up the receipts, letting the pieces flutter across the respective parking lots. Driving back to Irvine on the packed Costa Mesa Freeway, Steve felt calm and in control. He now had everything he needed to take care of the Gina problem. He could go in anytime.
The only thing that worried him was her security system, her “nanny cams.” She said she had four high-def tapes of him breaking into her house and snooping through each room. He had to find those tapes and destroy them before he did anything. If the police found the tapes along with her body in the condominium, it was as good as a confession. He’d promised himself that Gina’s death was going to be perfectly planned down to the smallest detail, and though his impulse was to kill her first, then search around for her cameras and tapes, Steve knew that he had to dispose of the evidence first—then dispose of her.
He started staking out her condo again. She knew his car—or he assumed she did—so he rented one for the week, a red Honda Accord, and kept it parked on the street down the block from his apartment building. Each day, after work, he shuffled through papers or worked on the computer or made an extra phone call to ensure that Gina would leave work before he did. Then he would go home, park in his garage, walk down the block to the rental car, then head over to the secretary’s street, where he would find an inconspicuous spot from which he could keep an eye on her front door.
The first time, she tried to stay late as well, making her own after-hours phone calls and puttering around her desk before walking over to his workstation and doing elaborate and obvious stretching exercises that pushed out first her breasts, then her crotch. He smiled at her in a manner that he hoped she found encouraging, and told her in disappointed tones that he really needed to finish this project on schedule and after next week he would have a lot more free time. She took that the way he intended, and after flirtatiously bidding him good-bye, she left.
Two hours later, he was watching from across the street as she used a short hose to water the twin rose-bushes that took up almost the entirety of her postage stamp-sized yard.
She wasn’t one for going out much, he learned. Once she arrived home from work, she generally stayed there. Steve understood. He was the same way. But he wished she would go out on a date or go shopping with a friend or do something that would take her away for a significant period of time, because he wanted to have an opportunity to search for the new location in which she’d hidden her extra key. She certainly wouldn’t have left it beneath the flowerpot after learning that he knew where it was.
As luck would have it, on Thursday, the third day, she emerged shortly after he’d taken up his post and went out to her car to retrieve something she wanted to bring inside. There was a slight wind, more of a breeze, really, but it was enough to close the front door on her. Evidently, she’d left her keys in the house, so she put down her package, picked up the same flowerpot as before and used the key underneath to open the door. He couldn’t believe it, and he watched as she returned the key to exactly the same spot. She hadn’t moved it.
Maybe she wanted him to use it.
Steve smiled to himself as the secretary’s front door closed. Well, he would.
He would.
Monday was the night.
He wanted to do it as quickly as possible, but on Friday evening and over the weekend he was occupied with Sherry. Besides, there were too many people out and about in Gina’s neighborhood for him to remain unseen and unnoticed: kids playing, teenagers hanging with their friends, families going to movies. Weeknights were much more conducive to such an operation.
So he decided to do it Monday.
He thought about it a lot over Saturday and Sunday. His original plan had been to set up a fake meeting with her at a restaurant that was fifteen or twenty minutes away, wait for her to leave on the date, then ransack the condo to find the cameras and tapes. He would kill her when she returned. But it occurred to him that he might not find all of the tapes, that she might have made some copies and hidden them, so he decided to break into her house while she was there, torture her to get the information, destroy the cameras and tapes, and then take care of her.
But what if she screamed while he loosened her gag to get the information out of her, and alerted the neighbors? What if she lied and didn’t tell him where all of the tapes were? What if she’d added some type of dead bolt or chain lock, and after using the key to open the door he still couldn’t get in?
Maybe the first idea was better. Or maybe he should just kill her and then search the condo.
He went back and forth on the subject, and it wasn’t until midday Monday, when Gina stopped by his desk and told him in low tones that not all of the photos of nude men had come from AlumniMedia, some she had taken herself, that he decided the torture option was the best.
He waited until it was dark, going home after work, eating a Pasta Roni dinner, watching the news, and calling Sherry just to chat and tell her that he loved her. He would call her afterward, too, and talk about The Desk Set, a Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movie that he’d seen before and that happened to be on TCM tonight. The calls would give him something of an alibi in case he needed one—although he did not anticipate that he would.
The supplies he needed were already in a plastic grocery sack in the backseat of the Accord, ready to go, and he shoved a pair of latex gloves in his pocket before walking casually down the block to the rental car. He drove for a mile or so in the opposite direction of Gina’s condo, then swung around and took a circuitous route to his destination.
The street was devoid of pedestrians, as it usually was on weeknights, and he parked close this time, right in front of her condo, so he would not have to walk down the sidewalk and risk extra exposure. This way, his presence would not be so conspicuous, and he picked up his grocery sack, put on his latex gloves, locked the car door, and walked briskly but not too briskly up the short walk to the front porch. Every instinct he had was telling him to stop and look around the neighborhood to make sure he wasn’t being watched, but that would be the action of a guilty man and would serve to draw attention if anyone was watching, so he forced himself to remain facing forward, take the key from beneath the flowerpot and open the door.
He had no idea where she was. The porch light was on, the car was here, and he assumed she was home, but she could have been in the kitchen cooking dinner, could be sitting right next to the door watching television, could be in that weird workroom, cutting and pasting photographs. He needed to get in quickly, subdue her, silence her, then get her to tell him where the tapes and cameras were.
He opened the door, closed it, and—
She was not there.
The television was on, as were seemingly all of the condo’s lights, but at first glance he saw no sign of Gina. Then he heard a noise from the open doorway to the right of the bookcase, a click or a tap, and froze for a moment. No one came out, although he saw the trace of a shadow, and Steve locked the front door behind him and moved swiftly and silently through the living room.
The secretary was in the bathroom, naked, getting ready
for a shower, and though she cried out when she saw him, startled, fear turned almost instantly to anticipation when she recognized who it was, and she smiled, moving toward him with an obviously practiced walk that made her hips sway and her breasts bounce. “I knew you’d come . . .” she began, but then she noticed the sack in his hand, saw the gloves.
He was on her before she could react, punching her in the stomach and grabbing the roll of duct tape from the plastic bag as he let it fall to the floor. She was gasping for air as he taped her mouth shut, and an expression of panic crossed her features, her eyes widening, her arms flailing as she desperately tried to breathe through her nose. He kicked her legs out from under her, and as she fell to the ground, her shoulder glancing off the side of the toilet, he stepped on her back, reaching down to grab the ball of twine that had spilled out of his sack. She might have been able to fight him at this point, but her first priority was to breathe, to recapture the wind that had been knocked out of her, and it was all she could do to suck enough air through her nose to remain conscious. She was thrashing around beneath his foot, her body heaving, making strange noises from deep within her chest, and he pulled out a length of twine with his right hand, grabbed one of her wildly flapping arms with his left, and started wrapping her wrist. He reached down for her other arm and bound the two together. He used a knife to cut the twine and did the same thing to her ankles before hauling her up and sitting her atop the toilet.
Her eyes were wild, her face bright red, and the noise made by the too-deep inhalation and exhalation of air through her nostrils did not sound human. There seemed a distinct possibility that she might pass out, so he partially pulled the tape from the right side of her mouth and allowed her to breathe for a moment. She couldn’t scream at first, and he waited a few moments, until she was breathing more normally and he was sure that she wouldn’t, before taking his fingers off the end of the duct tape and stepping back.
They stared at each other for a moment. Gina seemed confused. “Is this what you thought I liked?”
“Where are those tapes?” he demanded. “The ones with me on them?”
Understanding dawned in her eyes. “Oh.”
“I want them.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” she whined. “I would have told you.”
“Where are they? And where are your cameras?”
“The tapes are in my desk drawer. They’re labeled. The cameras are in the Buddhas.”
He wasn’t sure what type of reaction he had expected, but it had not been this. Screaming, maybe. Fighting. Defiance. But not this docile compliance.
There was indeed a Buddha in the bathroom, sitting atop the counter next to an array of lotions and a porcelain jar in the shape of a woman’s head that held combs, brushes and other hair items. Picking up the small statue, he saw on its back a black switch. He threw the statue to the ground as hard as he could, smashing it, and amidst the shards of plaster saw wires and minuscule mechanisms along with a tiny cassette.
“We’re even,” Gina told him. “Now we’re even.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “We’re even.” He pulled the tape back over her mouth, picked up the cassette, then went through the other rooms of the condo, finding the other Buddhas and breaking them open, taking the tapes inside. In a drawer of her drafting table desk, he did find a neatly arranged collection of tapes, all of them carefully labeled with the names of people and, presumably, the dates on which those people had been filmed. The four tapes at the front of the final row contained his name, but unless he watched them, there was no way to know for certain whether they were the ones actually showing him going through the rooms, so he decided to take all of the tapes and dispose of them later.
He returned to the bathroom. Gina had not moved, had made no effort to untie herself or escape. He supposed that was because she wanted to show him that she was cooperating or not afraid or something.
She should have been afraid.
He said nothing as he took the length of rope from his sack and started to make a noose. She was talking behind the gag, not begging for her life but trying to say something, only he could not hear what it was and did not care. He continued with his efforts, tying off the end of the noose and pulling out the loop, which he shoved down over her head.
She was wiggling now, and the voice behind the duct tape sounded louder, more frantic, as though the seriousness of her situation had finally sunk in.
Good, Steve thought. He recalled how she had tortured him at work with her intrusiveness, her flirting and, most recently, her slutty blackmail attempts. He pulled the noose tighter, walking slowly around the other side of the toilet, looking closely at her neck. The coarse rope appeared especially rough against the smoothness of her throat, its stray bristles pressing like needles into the softness of her skin in a way that he could tell was painful.
He tugged on the noose, and she was pulled forward, falling off the toilet and hitting her head on the ground.
Now she was screaming behind the duct tape, and Steve jerked on the rope until those screams were cut off. The secretary thrashed around like a beached grun ion, and he let out more rope as he stepped back, away from her, tightening the noose the entire time. Her head was bleeding where it had hit the floor, as was her neck where the rope was digging into flesh. Thin cuts bisected her breasts where the twine binding her arms had rubbed the skin raw.
He could see himself in the bathroom mirror, and his face was strangely placid. There was physical effort involved in pulling the noose so tight, and that was reflected in the set of his mouth, but he might as well have been picking up a heavy box or moving a piece of furniture. There was no indication on his features that he was killing a woman.
Her face was now purple, her eyes bulging gro tesquely in their sockets, her twisted, tortured mouth wriggling under the tape. Blood was flowing in rivulets from where the rope was now embedded in her neck, and the surrounding skin was a deep red, on its way to turning the same shade of purple as her face.
And then she died.
It happened all at once, a sudden cessation of the force pulling against him as the secretary’s body went limp. She rolled sideways, her head flopping onto the floor with an audible crack. Her bladder let go, and Steve dropped his end of the rope, backing away. He picked up the plastic sack containing the nanny-cam tapes and retreated to the living room. What would this look like when the police discovered it? Some sort of sex thing? A home invasion? Nothing had been stolen aside from the tapes, so it would be obvious that it wasn’t merely a burglary. What would they make of Gina’s collages and diorama?
Whatever motive and scenario they decided upon, it couldn’t possibly involve him.
Steve glanced at his watch. The entire thing had taken less than twenty minutes. Peeking out from between the front shades, not opening the slats but placing his eye against one of the small holes through which the drawstring was threaded, he saw that the street appeared to be empty. He quickly opened the front door, closed it, then walked directly to his car, looking neither this way nor that. He got into the car, started the engine, and drove sedately down the street so as not to draw attention to himself.
As soon as he got home, he destroyed the videos, smashing the plastic cartridges and painstakingly cutting up the narrow lengths of tape, dumping the cut-up tape into the toilet and flushing it all away. He lost count at twenty-two flushes, but he continued the process for nearly an hour. The broken pieces of plastic from the cartridges he placed back in the plastic sack along with the leftover twine and duct tape. Heading out to the rear of the apartment complex, he tossed the entire thing in the Dumpster for the next building over. Returning to his apartment, he cut up the latex gloves he’d been wearing and flushed those pieces down the toilet as well.
And then he was done.
It was over.
The Desk Set was still on TCM, and he watched it for a few moments to get his bearings, trying to remember the story, then gave Sherry a call. Casually, h
e asked her if she’d ever seen the movie. She hadn’t, and he told her that she’d like it; he’d been watching it for the past hour or so and thought it was really good. They talked for a while longer; then Sherry said it was getting late, and she needed to finish reading a book for a library discussion group she was leading, before taking a shower and going to bed.
“Wish I was there,” he told her. “At least for the shower part.”
“Do you want to come over tomorrow?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, and he did.
“I’ll be taking a shower then too.”
“I’ll be there.”
They said their good-byes, hung up, and Steve decided to take his own shower. First, though, he took off his clothes and threw them into the small washing machine in the alcove off his kitchen. He dumped in a bunch of laundry detergent and set it for full cycle. There was no blood on his clothes and no one would even be looking for blood, but a person could never be too careful. After the shower, he would toss the clothes in the dryer stacked above the washing machine and leave it on while he went to bed.
But he was too keyed up to go to bed, and he ended up writing a little, reading a little, then watching the last half of another Tracy-Hepburn movie before finally going to sleep.
He awoke after midnight.
And there was his father.
As before, the figure of the old man was silent and unmoving, sitting on the chair by the curtains, unblinking black eyes staring into nothingness. His white shirt was still bloodstained, but the splotches looked bigger, more saturated, and it was impossible to tell whether the blood was his own or someone else’s.
Steve was alone in the bed this time—Sherry was not with him—and while he wasn’t afraid exactly, he didn’t feel the same peace and calmness he had before. This go-round, the sight of his father seemed creepy and disturbing.
What did it mean?
He was also not quite as convinced that it was a figment of his imagination. There seemed an objective reality to the figure, and from the corner of his eye he could see a reflection of his father in the mirror. Was this a ghost? It seemed so, but even if that were the case, it did not necessarily follow that the ghost had shown up for some specific purpose. It could simply be a natural phenomenon, like lightning striking randomly for no particular reason.
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