“‘Experiment’ makes it seem so sterile. This is about life and death, Vera, and those things are always messy.”
Vera stared at her for a while, then she stared at the ground and shook her head. “You’re really going to let me go after all this?”
“You’ll be able to leave if you wish, but once you see our mutual need…”
Stacy did not complete the sentence, and Vera nodded. Her mind felt overwrought—on the verge of collapse. She looked over at Stacy again, still struggling to digest the few facts that would keep her in contact with reality.
“You said you killed your boyfriend tonight?”
“Yeah—about forty-five minutes ago.”
“What?”
Stacy laughed. “You think I’m lying to you, don’t you? Admit it: part of you thinks this is some kind of attention-getting stunt?” she said, smiling with an odd expression in her eyes.
The expression made Vera turn away; she felt queasy again. Yet, maybe it was to try to fool Stacy into believing she was not afraid that Vera said, “You don’t seem like a murderer.”
Stacy laughed heartily, so that the sound echoed down the long, empty, warehouse-lined blocks. “What’s a murderer supposed to look like?” she said between laughs. “…You’d be surprised by what a murderer looks like, Vera. You’d be surprised to know how easy it is to kill someone.”
By now, Vera could practically taste the vomit in her mouth; she had the urge to spit and lie down, but she forced herself to speak—to try to forge some kind of connection with her abductor. “Did you shoot him with that gun?” she said, gesturing to the thing in Stacy’s free hand.
“No, I stabbed him with an ice pick.” And then, with her usual frankness: “When you stab someone with an ice pick—right in the heart—there isn’t that much blood. There’s less mess.”
“Oh,” Vera said when she could think of nothing else to say.
“What are you thinking now?” Stacy said with a laugh.
“I don’t know…You kidnap me and tell me that you’ve killed your boyfriend, and then you talk as though nothing’s wrong—as though killing your boyfriend is no big deal.”
“It’s not—I’ve done it three times so far.”
“What?” Vera said with an uneasy laugh, hoping beyond hope that this was all part of the sick joke.
“You still don’t think I look like the type?” Stacy said, smiling morbidly.
The expression on Stacy’s face made Vera shudder. She took a deep breath to calm herself. And then, in a low, non-threatening voice: “I told you before that it doesn’t matter what I think. The only thing that matters—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Stacy said in annoyance, “—the only thing that matters is what I believe.”
They walked along in a brooding silence for a moment. The silence ate away at Vera more savagely than the horrible things Stacy had said. Vera felt somehow that she had to make peace:
“Maybe if you told me your motive in killing your boyfriend I’d be able to understand.”
Stacy sighed. “Terms like ‘motive’ are irrelevant, Vera. I didn’t kill my boyfriend for any of the usual reasons. He wasn’t abusive; it wasn’t a crime of passion or something like that. I didn’t do it because I was bored and thought I could get away with it. I don’t hear homicidal voices in my head. In fact, I didn’t take any steps to get away with it: if my ‘experiment,’ as you called it, fails, my case will be the easiest murder trial in history—and you’ll have something to talk about on your show on Monday. It will be like the Forget-Me-Not incident all over again. It will revive your career. So, you see, you win no matter what, Vera.”
Vera was looking at her with a frown on her face, as if trying to tackle an equation that refused to add up. Stacy laughed at her expression. “Don’t overanalyze, Vera. For once, just sit back and observe. You don’t have to come to any conclusions right now; you don’t have to treat me—I’m not one of your patients. And of course, there is no point in thinking you can escape me,” she said, displaying the gun once again. “This is a great moment in your life,” she went on joyously, “—remember I said that afterwards. I’m going to show you something beyond anything you ever thought was possible. Nothing I can say to you can express what I will show you in a few minutes. And, speaking of which, here we are,” she said, gesturing to the utility van parked on the curb.
Vera looked at the vehicle warily. A van seemed to hold more unwholesome possibilities than a car—especially where an abductor was involved. It was a rental van—the rental company’s logo was emblazoned in huge purple and orange letters on the side. It fit in with the other commercial vehicles parked on the block, but it seemed dark and ominous: there were no side or rear windows on the vehicle, so that no one would be able to see what was going on inside. While Vera was thinking these thoughts, Stacy let go of her arm and went to the side sliding door. In a deft motion, she pulled it open (it was unlocked); as soon as the door was open, the nude torso of a body flopped out. It was Stacy’s boyfriend. There was a street-lamp nearby, and Vera saw the horrified expression that was frozen on his face. His eyes were staring into space; his mouth was gaping; and as the body was totally naked, Vera could see the handle of the ice pick sticking out of his chest—
“Oops,” Stacy said, pushing the corpse back into the van, “I guess the body shifted while I was driving around.”
Vera’s handbag slipped from her shoulder; she took a step back and went to scream, but nothing came out—
“Don’t scream,” Stacy warned her, “—we don’t want to attract any attention to ourselves.”
Vera took some more shambling steps back; the scream that would not come was still reflected on her face—
“It’s too late to walk away now, Vera,” Stacy chastised her, as if disappointed. And then, as Vera continued to retreat, “Get back over here!” she said in an angry whisper. In three steps, she had Vera by the arm again.
“Leave me alone,” Vera pleaded, “—I don’t want any part of this!”
Stacy pulled her back over to the vehicle. “You don’t know what you want, Vera…but everything will be clear in eight minutes. For now, let’s wait inside—”
“You can’t be serious!” Vera said when she realized that Stacy meant for her to go in the back with the body. Vera tried to make a break for it, but Stacy grabbed her and shoved her into the dark, gaping entrance of the van. Stacy was strong and vicious for a beautiful, waif-looking girl. Vera banged her knee as she was sent flying. She landed on top of the body; she felt the hard handle of the ice pick against the warm, clammy elasticity of the body. She squealed and scurried into a dark empty corner, in the rear. At last, Stacy threw the huge handbag into the van, before getting into the vehicle and pulling the door shut. For a few seconds, they were in total darkness, but then Stacy turned on the ceiling light. Vera was sobbing by now, partly from the pain of her banged knee and partly from the terror that came with the reality she was trapped in the back of a van with a corpse and a gun-wielding murderer.
Stacy tried talking to her in a soothing voice: “There’s no need to cry. I told you that you’re in no danger.” Nevertheless, Vera continued to sob. She sat with her knees touching her bowed forehead—like a child trying to hide in the back of a closet. With the outside heat, it was like an oven in the back of the van. Sweat was already streaming down Vera’s face; and with the heat, the sickly sweet odor of blood seemed more sickening somehow.
“Come over here,” Stacy said. She was still crouched by the body. Vera ignored her, or did not hear her. “Come here!” Stacy commanded, so that Vera jumped and looked up. Vera’s face was lined with tears; her eyes were red. “Come here,” Stacy said in a more neutral voice. She gestured with her hand for Vera to come—the way a mother gestured for a baby to take its first steps—but Vera saw that the gun was still in her hand.
“Please come,” Stacy said at last, and Vera wiped away as many tears as she could, got on her hands and knees, and crawled over
to Stacy and the body. As she crawled, she stared at Stacy’s beautiful, encouraging face. She found that if she stared at the face, she could block out everything else: all the immediate realities and horrors. When she was close to Stacy, the young woman smiled, as if proud of her.
“Okay,” Stacy said in a new voice, as if all that had passed before were forgiven and forgotten, “—I need you to do one last thing.”
Vera tried to open her mouth to ask what Stacy wanted, but her jaw was tight and unresponsive. Stacy went on:
“I need you to check his vital signs, so you know that he’s really dead.”
Vera glanced at the naked body, then back at Stacy’s beautiful face. She shook her head, pleading…
“Check his vitals,” Stacy said, calmly but firmly, so that Vera began to sob once more. Vera looked down at the body and again noticed that it was nude. She looked away. “Go on,” Stacy coaxed her again. At last, like a child ordered to do something onerous, Vera stifled a sob, reached her hand down and felt the boyfriend’s neck. She did so without looking directly at the nude body. The skin was still warm and clammy, but there was no pulse.
Stacy laughed at her. “I didn’t know you’d be such a prude, Vera. You have a problem looking at a naked man? Aren’t you supposed to be a sex and relationship therapist?”
“I like my naked men breathing,” Vera mumbled sarcastically.
Stacy laughed louder. “That’s a good one!” She seemed pleased with the way everything had turned out. While she continued to laugh, Vera glanced down at the body again:
“Why is he naked?”
“I told you I planned everything, didn’t I?” Vera nodded her head tentatively; Stacy went on—“…I didn’t want to get any blood on his clothes. I hate making a mess.”
Vera frowned in bewilderment. “You can kill someone, but you don’t want to make a mess?”
“You have no idea what a headache it is to clean up blood. When you cut a major artery, the blood gushes all over the walls…clothes…everything? You can spend hours cleaning up afterwards—and I don’t have time for that.”
“That’s understandable,” Vera said when she could think of nothing else to say.
“Anyway,” Stacy went on matter-of-factly, “since I’ve started using an ice pick, I don’t have to worry about that too much anymore, but I still hate getting holes in shirts. I hate ruining perfectly good shirts. That’s why I made him take all his clothes off.”
That, too, seemed reasonable; and despite everything, Vera found herself nodding.
Stacy was still pleased with everything, and she smiled grandly all of a sudden. “Let me tell you how I killed him!” she started, seeming proud. “I told him that I had this fantasy to have wild sex in the back of a rental van!” She started laughing to herself as she remembered it all. “He’s such a moron: You can get him to do anything once you tell him there’s sex involved. You could get him to jump off a bridge if you told him there was an orgy going on at the bottom of it.” At this, she threw her head back and laughed heartily. Vera could only stare. It left her stomach feeling unsettled, so she looked away. However, all there was to see was the nude corpse. She noticed, for the first time, that the boyfriend’s clothes were heaped to the side, along with his shoes. Her eyes went to the flaccid penis, then glanced away—
“You can look at his cock if you want,” Stacy said with a laugh, “—even though it’s not that much to look at.” Here, she pursed her lips and sat assessing his penis the way an art dealer assessed a painting. “But let me assure you,” she went on thoughtfully, “that what he lacks in size, he more than makes up for in originality and imagination—”
All at once, Vera had to put her hand over her mouth to hold back the surge of vomit. She felt it in her throat, but mercifully, it went back down. She groaned and swayed—
“Don’t you dare throw up in here!” Stacy warned her. “It’s bad enough cleaning up blood. Just suck it up for six more minutes.”
Vera felt dizzy. She glanced at the body again, before once more looking away uneasily.
“Don’t be such a prude, Vera.” Stacy laughed again. “Hey, you ever do it in public? My boyfriend liked to do it in public all the time—that’s why it was so easy to get him into the van. …This one time, we got caught by these two old ladies—”
“Would you please shut up!” Vera screamed, unable to stand anymore of Stacy’s ghoulish bragging.
“That was uncalled for,” Stacy said as if stung. “Besides, I’m talking like you asked me to. You have to keep the lunatic talking, remember,” she teased her.
“You don’t need to talk anymore,” Vera whispered, fighting her dizziness. She glanced at the body again:”—Oh God!” she broke down, as if only just now grasping the situation. “He’s dead—he’s really dead! …And you killed him.”
“Yeah, he’s dead all right,” Stacy said with a shrug and a mischievous wink.
Vera tried to reason with her again: “What good is keeping me here going to do? Why don’t you let me leave now?”
“After all the trouble I went through: renting the van, killing my boyfriend…? You’re the key to everything, Vera—you can’t leave yet. You’re the one who will make all this real.”
Vera began to sob again—she could not help herself.
“Don’t stress yourself.” Stacy tried to soothe her. “We only have five minutes left.”
“Would you stop that goddamn countdown!” Vera screamed. “I feel like I’m watching the New Year’s Eve countdown on TV! Just let me go. Turn yourself in…”
Stacy shushed her. “Don’t come undone on me, Vera. I told you before that you had to be the skeptic in all this—the objective observer. We can’t have you cracking up.”
“You expect me to sit here calmly with your dead, naked boyfriend lying there, and you holding a gun on me!”
“Sure, why not? If I can stay here, then so can you.”
“You’re not well!”
Stacy opened her mouth to say something, but Vera interrupted her. “Please, don’t talk to me anymore—do whatever you’re going to do, but don’t talk.”
Stacy smiled at her. “Talk makes things go faster. Besides, don’t you think it would be kind of morbid to just sit here silently in the dark, staring at a dead body?”
“I think it’s morbid to kill your boyfriend and then abduct someone to brag about it.”
Stacy laughed again. “I guess this is a little odd.”
“A little odd!” Vera bristled at the phrasing. “He’s dead. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? …Look, you’re not well. I can help you if you wish—”
Stacy was laughing so hard that she looked as though she would collapse. “I told you before that I’m not one of your patients, Vera.”
“You subconsciously know that you need help—that’s why you kidnapped a psychologist.”
Stacy scoffed: “You blasted psychologists and your subconscious motives!” Yet, there was still a satisfied smile on her face. She was pleased with the way everything had turned out. She glanced at her watch now: “It’s almost time,” she announced. When she looked up, there was an excited expression on her face: “…We can start now.”
“Start what?”
“Start cleaning him up.” And as she said it, she reached into the corner, to her right, and picked up a plastic bag. She took a dark towel out of it, then she returned to the body and pulled the ice pick out of the corpse’s chest. There was a trickle of blood, but she pressed the towel into it. Vera watched all this with new fascination, wondering what strange ritual Stacy was going to perform on the body. Now, Stacy was rubbing the towel over the body tenderly. There was something almost erotic about it and Vera’s face creased when the thought registered in her mind.
“Did you love him?” Vera ventured.
“More than that, Vera. I need him.”
“Just like you need me?”
“Exactly,” she said, looking up at Vera with the same odd gleam in her eyes.
Vera forced herself not to look away: “Do you always kill the things you need?”
Stacy thought about it for a while, and then she chuckled.
Vera continued: “You said you’ve killed two other people. Did you need them too?”
Stacy laughed louder. “I told you not to overanalyze, Vera. Just wait three more minutes.”
“Three more minutes until what!”
“Patience,” she said with a smile. She finished toweling off the body and placed the towel back in the plastic bag.
“Why’d you do that?”
“I told you that everything has to be ready.”
Vera groaned in frustration: “Ready for what?”
“Patience, my friend.”
Vera glanced at the body again. “The other times you killed—were they men as well?”
“Yes,” she said coyly, “—all men.” And then, with another laugh: “You’re thinking I have some kind of hang-up against men—some kind of insane grievance.”
“Do you?”
Stacy laughed carelessly, almost falling over again. “You mean that I hated my father and I’m trying to get back at my first boyfriend for breaking my heart—that kind of thing?”
“You tell me.”
“Nah,” she said with a nonchalant chuckle, “men are just easier to kill than women.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know many women intimately enough to kill them.”
“You only kill people you’ve been intimate with?”
“Of course: killing is a very intimate act, Vera—like sex. You can’t go around doing it to everyone. …I mean, you can, but then it loses its significance.”
“And what is the significance of all this,” she said, gesturing about the van, “—proving your theories?”
“Proving them to you: I’ve already proven them to myself. …The truth isn’t useful until it’s known to others.”
Vera stared at her for a while. “How long have you been killing?”
“Since last weekend.”
Vera went to say something, but Stacy shushed her then. She was looking down at her watch again. “It’s time, Vera,” she said at last, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “Get ready!”
How to Kill Your Boyfriend (in 10 Easy Steps) Page 3
