The Feminine Touch

by V. J. Chambers

  The podcast? He’d cobble together what he could from what he knew, and it would have to be enough.

  But instead, he said, “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “I’ll see you around nine o’clock, then?”

  “See you then.”

  “Mmmm, good.” Her voice was a sigh. “I’m looking forward to that. I’m going to lie back down now, and think about tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “What will you think about?”

  He made a noise in the back of his throat.

  “It’s okay to think about me, Nash,” she said. “I don’t mind.” She hung up.

  He flung the phone on the bed. What the hell had he just gotten himself into?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When she arrived in his room, Nash met her at the door. “Let’s not talk here,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else. If you’re worried about being seen in public, maybe we could find some nature trail in the woods or—”

  “I’d rather talk here.” She pushed past him into the room.

  Nash hesitated in the doorway, and then he closed the door. “Okay, let’s clear the air.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “I’m not—” He broke off. “We’re not—” He gestured back and forth between the two of them. “It would be unethical for me to become involved with someone that I was profiling—”

  She put her finger against his lips, silencing his voice. “I agree.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  She removed her finger. “It’s just flirting, Nash.” She smiled. “Nothing more. It’s innocent.”

  His lips parted. He stared at her with something that was mostly disbelief but partly a raging ball of frustration.

  She laughed a little. “It’s okay if you want to back out.”

  “Back out?”

  “Yeah, I know you might have just blurted out the offer to help me with Eddie in the heat of the moment. Maybe you didn’t really mean it.”

  He backed up so that the closed door was at his back. It made him feel like the universe was stable. “Is it a deal? If I help you kill him, you let me interview you?”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Sure, why not? A deal.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Then I don’t want to back out.”

  “Really?” She raised her eyebrows. “I have to admit, I’m a little surprised.”

  “He hurts children,” said Nash. “He’s a monster.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “Like I said, he makes my skin crawl.” But she didn’t look particularly disturbed. She was a little flushed, color in her cheeks. Her chest heaved a little.

  He noticed that, and then his gaze went to her breasts.

  She laughed again.

  He snapped his gaze up to her eyes.

  “This is fun,” she said. “I don’t know why I never thought of doing this before. Probably because it wouldn’t work with just anyone. But with you, Nash, well, this is very, very fun.”

  He tried to be disgusted by that, but his body was shot full of too many conflicting sensations. He shut his eyes. “How is this supposed to work, anyway? Killing him, I mean.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll do most of it. I can let you help, but I can’t let you do the actual act. That’s for me to do.”

  He opened his eyes. “Are you going to drown him?”

  “Ah, that is a particular favorite of mine. Water is a great equalizer in terms of strength. Puts me on equal footing with any man. Besides, I like the closeness of it, dragging down the body in the water, feeling the struggling grow less and less and less…”

  He looked at the floor.

  “Want to back out now?”

  He shook his head. “So, where are you going to drown him?”

  “I’m not going to,” she said. “I told you, he makes my skin crawl. I don’t want to be close to him.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Poison,” she said. “I don’t use it often. It’s dangerous, because there are always traces if you know how to look. But in this case, I think it will be worth it. And it should look like a heart attack. Luckily, he’s had some trouble with his heart before. No one will be suspicious.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I can dose his food.”

  “What do you need me for?” he said. “Dosing his food is a one-person job.”

  “I need to find the right place to do it,” she said. “I haven’t done it yet, because I haven’t been able to convince him to marry me. But I’m going to set it up that we eloped, and then he tragically died on our honeymoon.” She sighed with mock-sadness. “I’ve got all the paperwork drawn up.”

  “Why do you need to marry the men you kill anyway?”

  “It’s part of it,” she said. “Besides, I like having access to their money, so I can make whatever restitutions I can.”

  “Part of it?”

  “There’s a ritual to it,” she said. “It’s sort of… sacred.”

  He eyed her. “You’re insane.” He felt it in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know what was worse—that she truly was crazy or that he was still attracted to her despite it all.

  “I manage it the best I can,” she said. “Anyway, I’ll find things for you to do to help, don’t worry. First of all, we’ve got to find the location for a perfect little poisoning.”

  * * *

  They toured an old farmhouse, very isolated and off the beaten path. It sat at the end of a long, twisting gravel road. There were no other houses nearby, not for miles.

  Siobhan immediately told Katie Cox, who owned the property, that it was perfect and that they wanted to rent it right away.

  “You agree with her?” Katie asked Nash.

  “Oh, definitely,” said Nash. “This is great.”

  The farmhouse was two stories high, with a barn, and it was decorated like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. It wasn’t to Nash’s taste, but then he didn’t have Siobhan’s vision. Honestly, he was antsy about all of this. He didn’t see why killing Carston had to be such a big production.

  Katie chuckled. She was probably in her early fifties and she had a throaty voice. “You’ve learned that it’s better just to agree with the wife, I see.”

  Nash put his hands in his pockets. He and Siobhan were posing as a married couple. “Well, you know what they say. Happy wife, happy life.”

  Katie cocked her head to one side, smiling. “Ah, you two are so in love.” She snorted. “Enjoy that while it lasts. Trust me, it never does.”

  Nash felt a cold chill. He squared his shoulders. This place was old. Probably drafty.

  And then Katie turned and started to move through the house, waving at them to follow her.

  They went through the living room and the kitchen and emerged into the foyer. There was a room off the foyer that had been marked Private. Katie fished a key out of her pocket and let them in. Inside was an office with a desk. There were two chairs sitting in front of it. Katie motioned for them to sit down, and she sat down behind the desk. She booted up her computer.

  “I shouldn’t say things like that, I know,” said Katie. “I hear that all the time. People say that if I’m renting out a getaway house for sweethearts, that I should pretend to be enamored with love. But when you’re my age, and you’ve had three failed marriages, you find it hard to pretend.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Siobhan, reaching across the desk to pat Katie’s hand. “Maybe you just haven’t found the right man yet.”

  Katie chuckled again, deep in her throat. “Maybe not, sweetie. But at this point, I’d much rather keep to myself and cuddle a cat at night, I have to admit. But more power to the both of you. I hope you’re very happy together. So, it’ll just be the two of you here?”

  “That’s right,” said Siobhan, “just the two of us.” She put her hand on his leg, squeezing his knee.

  Nash jerked at the contact. Something about the pressure of her hand there… He wanted t
o reach down and remove her hand from his leg. But he couldn’t. He thought Katie might find that suspicious.

  “I hope you have a simply lovely time,” said Katie. “Romance will be in the air, I assure you.” But her voice sounded a little bit deadpan.

  Nash shifted his leg slightly.

  Siobhan’s hand fell off. She gave him an odd, wounded look.

  He swallowed. He wanted all this over with. Now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “I think it’s all going to work out well,” said Siobhan. “I really enjoyed having you along for the trip, too. I’m liking the way this goes, us working together. Aren’t you liking it?” She was driving back from the farmhouse.

  Nash was in the passenger’s seat of the car. “What about the interview? I’d like to talk about that.”

  “I’m not backing out of it,” she said.

  “Well, then, how about now?” he said. “We’re stuck in this car for another forty minutes. You can talk while you’re driving, and I can easily record you.”

  She bit down on her lip. “All right. But nothing about high school, Nash. If you say anything about high school, then people are going to be able to find me. They’ll look you up, they’ll look up your high school—”

  “Nothing about us being in high school together, then,” he said. “But we have to talk about high school. That’s when it all started for you. Right?” He slipped out his field recorder, which he had in his pocket. He turned it on. Maybe he was being sneaky, recording her without telling her he’d started. But he’d gotten her permission. And if she said anything she wanted held back, he could edit it out.

  “By ‘it,’ you mean killing men?”

  “I do,” he said. “You don’t seem to have a problem saying that straight out. You don’t use any euphemisms.”

  “What kind of euphemism could I use?”

  “I don’t know.” He mused. “Putting monsters out of their misery. Taking out the trash. Something like that.”

  “No, I don’t see it that way,” she said. “I see it as what it is. I could call it something else and make it seem noble, but in the end, it’s not.”

  “There’s something a little bit noble about it, though,” he said. “I mean, these men are hurting people. You save their potential victims from harm.”

  “I suppose,” she said. “But it still isn’t noble. You’ll see. When we kill Eddie, you’ll see.”

  That was something he’d probably have to edit out. It was one thing to agree to help kill a pedophile and child rapist, it was another thing to broadcast that fact on a podcast. “So, how old were you the first time?”

  “That I killed a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was sixteen,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Wasn’t it self-defense? Wasn’t he trying to hurt you?”

  “Not at the moment I killed him, no.”

  “But he had tried to hurt you before.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And he hurt all the other girls. Lots of them. Over years and years. He wasn’t about to stop either.”

  “So, why did you kill him? If it wasn’t self-defense. Was it in defense of those other girls?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Although I hated him for having done it. I told you I don’t want to talk about this.” She turned to him. “Are you recording me already?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She pressed her lips together, annoyed.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll let you listen to it before it airs. I’ll cut out anything you don’t want broadcast.”

  She laughed. “Sure, you will.”

  “I will. Trust me.”

  She sighed.

  “So, how long after the first time did you wait before you did it again?”

  She furrowed her brow, staring out at the road as she drove. “A few years. I was twenty the next time. But then, you already know this. You have all my invitations. You know my victims.”

  “Why did you do it the second time?”

  “I wanted to,” she said. “I kept thinking about doing it. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. Eventually, I thought I was going to go insane because of how much I was thinking about it. So, it became a matter of finding the right person, and once I did, I got close to him first.”

  “You married him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that your plan from the beginning or did you improvise? How did that become part of the pattern? You weren’t married to the first man.” He paused. “Were you?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t married to him.”

  “So, then, why the second time?”

  “It made certain things easier,” she said. “And I like weddings. Doesn’t every little girl dream of being a bride? My only regret has been not being able to keep all the dresses. But they’re bulky, hard to store.”

  “The dresses? Seriously?”

  She laughed a little. “Most women aren’t able to get married as many times as I have. It’s great fun.”

  He shook his head. “That’s….”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I can’t very well approve of murder, can I?”

  She sniffed. “I thought you said it was noble.”

  “Well, there are aspects of it that are…” He made a face. “Okay, you’re right. It’s not noble. Not exactly. This second man that you killed, he was a murderer as well?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was still trying to figure it all out back then, and I hadn’t perfected my technique. Now, I typically like to kill victims in ways that are undetectable. Making it look like an accident or a suicide is generally the easiest way to make it all nice and tidy. But I’ve never wanted to kill in some pedestrian way, like with a gun. Too hands off. I want my killing to be… intimate. Close up. Skin on skin.” Her voice had gone breathy.

  To his disgust, Nash got goosebumps. He shifted in his seat.

  “So, I tried to beat him over the head with a brick,” she said. “I snuck up behind him and brought it down on his skull. I hurt him. He was bleeding all over the place, but he wasn’t even unconscious, let alone dead. We ended up struggling over the brick, fighting while he bled all over everything. It was horrible. Very messy. Very stressful. I eventually did get the brick and then I hit him and hit him and hit him until his skull caved in. But I knew I needed to find a better way.”

  Nash felt queasy. That was disgusting, thinking of the blood, the shattered bone, the misshapen head. Ugh.

  She reached across the car for him, squeezing his thigh again.

  He pushed her off, not wanting that sensation to hit in the middle of the grotesque imagery. It was more than he could take.

  She laughed.

  “Don’t,” he muttered.

  “You’re the one who wanted this interview,” she said softly. “Don’t you want to know these things, Nash?”

  “What I want to do is understand,” he said. “What makes you do this? Why do you kill?”

  “Because,” she said, shrugging.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Maybe I don’t know either.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “It’s a big deal. You’re telling me that you’d do something that required that much commitment and that much risk and never try to figure out why you do it?”

  “I just do it,” she said. “And that’s all I can tell you.”

  * * *

  That night, Nash couldn’t stop thinking about the story about the man with the brick and the caved-in skull.

  He knew who it was she was talking about, too. It was David Murphy, who’d left a trail of victims before Siobhan had put a stop to that. He hung girls spread eagle in barns and pavilions. He disemboweled them, and left them on display to be found. David Murphy was no loss to the world. He wasn’t a nice guy.

  Nash couldn’t share that information on the podcast, because it would help to identify Siobhan and to associate her with
a real person, real crimes. Officially, no one knew it was Murphy who’d committed the crimes. He was simply called The Night Slasher.

  At any rate, Nash found that knowing that the killer deserved what happened to him didn’t make it any easier to take.

  Nash was disgusted by the story, because…

  Damn Zoe.

  Because it robbed the victim of his humanity.

  It was one thing to think of bashing a person over the skull and attempting to kill them. It was another thing entirely to fail at doing it and then have to concentrate on getting a person to die.

  It was hard to explain why, but it suddenly equated taking a person’s life with getting a tight lid off a jar. It was a frustrating chore to be completed, not a murder. It took away the meaning of the act, made it mundane and sordid.

  Nash hadn’t thought murder through in that way before. It had always been hypothetical to him, and now the thought of the sweat and blood and physical reality of it…

  He suddenly realized that he had promised to help Siobhan kill a man.

  You’re not the man I thought you were, said Zoe’s voice.

  “Shut up,” he muttered aloud. He was in his hotel room, lying in his bed. It was dark. Maybe it was the darkness and the solitude that was doing this to him. He didn’t move, though. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

  He could still get out of this.

  It would mean sacrificing the podcast, but maybe he had to do that, anyway. It was ludicrous to try to weigh the podcast against a man’s life. His life.

  “A bad man, though,” he whispered. “No. An evil man.” It was true. He saw no redeeming qualities in Edward Carston. The monster was doing nothing good for the world. He was better off dead.

  Maybe that was true. Maybe as an intellectual exercise, that was logical. But the idea that he would physically take Carston’s life—

  “No,” he said. “Siobhan wants to do it herself. And besides, she’s going to use poison.”

  He couldn’t do this, though. If he did this, if he descended down this path, he would be risking something—something untouchable, but important.

  He thought of a verse he’d heard when he was a little boy in Sunday school. “What should it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”