Under Cover of Darkness

by James Grippando

  “And that’s supposed to make what you did okay?”

  “She came on to me. I wasn’t looking for it.”

  She checked her watch, ready to go. “What do you want from me?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Okay. You’re forgiven. No hard feelings. Now drop dead and get out of my life.”

  She turned away. He stepped toward her and grabbed her arm. She stopped and shot a look. “Don’t touch me.”

  He squeezed tighter. “You made a fucking fool out of me.”

  “You are a fool. Now take your hand off me.”

  His face reddened. His grip tightened. “What are you gonna do, Andie?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. For a second he looked like he was going to kiss her. On impulse, her knee came up and caught him squarely in the groin. He doubled over and fell to the pavement. He was groaning, then dry-heaving. He got up on one knee but could climb no farther. His eyes filled with rage.

  “You…are gonna…pay for this. Bitch.”

  She returned the glare. “Send me a bill,” she said, then turned away.

  “I mean it!” he shouted. “I’ll make you pay!”

  Andie just kept on walking.

  “Listen to me!” His senseless shouting followed her down the sidewalk, ceasing only when Andie was inside the building.

  After Carla left, Gus was tired enough to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t allow it. The lights were off, the master bedroom was dark. He was flat on his back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

  As his pupils adjusted to the darkness, the jewelry box on the bureau caught his attention. A thought crossed his mind that bordered on panic. He couldn’t remember if he had told the FBI if Beth had been wearing any jewelry when she’d disappeared. Maybe he could tell from the box. A ring or some other distinctive item might conceivably help identify her—if the worst of Agent Henning’s suspicions were true. He switched on the lamp and rose from the bed.

  It was a beautiful antique box made of burled walnut. It used to play music, but that had died years ago. Metaphorical, in a way.

  He opened it carefully and peered inside. It was well organized. Earrings and less expensive pieces were in the felt-lined squares on top; larger and more precious pieces filled the bottom. He noticed right away the engagement ring was there. The wedding ring was missing. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, whether she’d worn it faithfully till the day she had disappeared or symbolically discarded it as she walked out the door.

  It was difficult to account for everything, but as best he could tell, everything else he had ever given her was still there. A pear-shaped diamond necklace. A diamond and emerald bracelet. Some of the items were almost too precious to keep in the house. Strangely, the only stones that evoked any emotion were the smallest of all. He’d bought her a pair of diamond-chip earrings for her twentieth birthday, the first they had celebrated together. Years later, after he’d started making real money, it used to make him smile inside when Beth would still wear those tiny little earrings.

  He held them in the palm of his hand. Two sparkling specks, not much bigger than flecks of glitter. Beth used to wear them on anniversaries of certain milestones in their early love life, silly little things like the date of their first kiss, the first time he’d said “I love you.” It was a shame he’d never told her how good it made him feel to see them on her, how much he appreciated the sentimentality. She probably thought he hadn’t noticed. He had.

  He’d noticed most when she’d stopped.

  She’d stopped when she’d gotten pregnant—when a lot of things seemed to change. It hadn’t been an easy pregnancy, though it had started out happily enough. They had talked about furniture shopping together and painting the nursery. He’d even made it to the first three office visits and signed them up for Lamaze classes. He was adamant about being a partner in the experience. Then things blew up at work. He had to go to New York for six weeks to help save his biggest corporate client from a hostile-takeover attempt. When he returned home, Beth had changed. Not just physically, though the difference between her fifth month and the seventh was undeniably dramatic, especially to a husband who had been away. It was more a matter of her mind-set and personality. She seemed worn down by the constant nausea—and it did seem constant. Early in the morning and late at night, Gus heard the honking from behind the closed bathroom door. Beth had called it morning sickness, and he had accepted the explanation at face value, knowing better than to argue with a pregnant woman. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. He was thinking of what Dr. Shippee had said, how the enamel on her teeth suggested that her eating disorder had been going on for a long time. Those awful sounds from the bathroom might well have been the early signs of trouble. He remembered how Beth had almost seemed happy about the nausea in the first couple of months, because it had kept her weight down. In hindsight, she’d seemed unduly intrigued by the rare reported cases of women with nausea throughout their entire pregnancy. Maybe it wasn’t nature that had extended her morning sickness beyond the normal thirteen weeks. It might well have been as vulgar as a finger down the throat.

  Had he not been so busy, maybe he would have taken a different look at her obsession with gaining no more than eighteen pounds, her insistence on wearing her tight blue jeans just as soon as the cesarian scar healed, her crying jag when she couldn’t button them. Something more than pregnancy and hormones was going on. But Gus had let it go.

  He’d let too many things go in the last few years. And, as Carla had said, it came with a price: He’d stopped knowing his own wife. He wondered what exactly that meant. Was she criticizing him for not being sensitive to her needs? Or was she telling him that if Beth came back today, if he sat down and really talked to her, he’d literally find he didn’t even know her?

  Whatever she’d meant, the entire train of thought was leading him in one direction. He was becoming ever more intrigued by something he’d been afraid to check out, something he could never have believed was true. Until now.

  Gus put the earrings back in the box and went to the walk-in closet. It was huge, with rows and rows of his business suits on the left. To the right was Beth’s space. It was more like a room than a closet. A silk-covered settee faced the big triple mirror. The lighting was indirect candescent, not the fluorescent kind that made it more difficult to determine subtle shades of color in fabrics. The shelves and built-in drawers were solid maple. Nearly an entire wall was devoted just to shoes and sweaters. Hanging clothes lined the other three walls, organized from casual to formal, left to right.

  He opened a few drawers randomly, seeing nothing unusual. He flipped through some skirts and dresses on hangers, then stopped. One dress still had the tags on it. He pulled it down. It had an empire waistline. Beth hated that style. He remembered how she’d nearly died when an old sorority sister had gotten married and all the bridesmaids had to wear burnt-orange gowns with empire waistlines. She’d felt like the long, glowing end of those flashlights cops used to direct traffic. It was funny at the time. Not so funny now.

  Gus scanned the rack for a dress he was sure she had worn. He found the beaded evening gown she’d worn to the firm’s Christmas party and checked the label. It was a size six. He glanced at the other dress. Size twelve.

  He draped it over his arm and quickly searched the rack for more dresses with tags. He found a sundress, size ten. A wool skirt, size two. Quickly, he did the same with the shoes on the shelves against the other wall. He found a pair of heels she used to wear and a pair of hiking boots. Both size seven. On the bottom shelf was a leather boot with no mate, the tag still on the sole, never been worn. Size eleven. A beige pump, size four. Again, no mate.

  He felt chills down his spine. He stared into the triple mirror, seeing himself from all angles, his arms full of odd-sized clothes his wife could never wear.

  It was just as Morgan had said. She was stealing things just for the sake of stealing. Clothes that didn’t fit. Odd shoes with their mate
still in the back storage room at Nordstrom’s. She was filling her closet with useless trophies of the hunt.

  “Dear God,” he said softly. “What happened to you, Beth?”

  Twenty-six

  She was alive. He could feel it. With two latex-covered fingers pressed against her neck, he detected a hint of a heartbeat. She was unconscious but slowly coming back for another round. The discovery thrilled him, as if her fading pulse were pumping the blood through his own veins. The icy-cold blood.

  After weeks of anticipation, all the tedious preparation, this was the payoff. Everything had gone exactly according to plan.

  For nearly three hours he had waited patiently inside the closet in the guest bedroom. Around eleven he’d heard her car pull up in the driveway. The front door opened and closed. The keys jingled in the lock; her heels clicked on the tile floor. Through the slats in the louvered closet door, he watched her pass in the lighted hallway. He heard the toilet flush, listened as she brushed her teeth. The lights went out. The bed squeaked gently beneath the weight of her body. The television played for twenty minutes, then was switched off. It was an instant rush—routine noises that telegraphed her complete unawareness. It made him want to spring early, but he contained himself, sticking to the schedule. He waited. With time, silence filled the house. He allowed another thirty minutes for her to fall asleep. And then he’d made his move.

  Quietly out of the closet, then down the hall, dressed in a hooded black body suit that rendered him invisible in the darkness. The hunting knife was in its sheath, strapped to his forearm. A set of plastic handcuffs was in one hand. His strangulation stick was in the other. The bedroom door was open. He stood in the doorway, opposite the bay window on the far wall. Outside, a big full moon radiated just enough light to cast shadows across the room. A collage of framed photographs covered another wall. A queen-size bed faced the bureau. His analytic eye traced the gentle curve of her body beneath the blankets. She lay on her right side, facing away from him. She was surely asleep, but he would wait for the furnace to kick on before closing in. The hum from the blowers would muffle his footsteps. He stood motionless for several minutes, watching over her, never flinching a muscle. Finally, the furnace tripped. A stream of warm air poured from the vents. The lace curtains on the window began to stir. That was his cue. He hooked the plastic cuffs to his belt. He put his arm though the loop of his strangulation stick and brought it up around his right shoulder. Both hands were free. He took four steps closer, right to the edge of the bed. She was easily within his grasp.

  Half her sleepy face was hidden beneath the covers, but he knew exactly what she looked like. He knew all about her. She met the essential requirements. Brown hair, brown eyes, mid-thirties. A very suitable selection, given the compressed time frame.

  He took a deep, silent breath, then unleashed his fury in one fluid motion. He grabbed her hip and shoulder and jerked her backward, arching her spine against his knee with such force that it cracked the seventh vertebrae. He dragged her to the floor, flat on her stomach. Her limbs flailed as he mounted her, nearly two hundred muscular pounds planted firmly on her kidneys. He extended his arms, and with cupped hands he slapped her simultaneously on the ears. It stunned her long enough for him to gain control and lock her wrists behind her back in the plastic cuffs. He jerked her upward and sat her on the edge of the bed. She screamed once. The strangulation stick dropped over her head and tightened quickly, silencing her. It was a simple but lethal device, a two-foot loop of nylon rope attached at both ends to an eight-inch wooden handle. It allowed him to twist with one hand and choke his victim, leaving the other free to control her. He knelt behind her on the bed as the rope twisted and tightened around her neck. The blood flow to her brain stopped. She weakened with each breathless moment. He propped her up with his free arm around her waist, beneath the rib cage, like half a Heimlich maneuver. As long as she was alive, he wouldn’t let her fall. She sat facing the mirror. He was directly behind her, facing the mirror, too, though his face was unrecognizable behind the ski mask. There was just enough light to show their reflection. In every attack, there had to be a mirror.

  It was the only way his victims could watch themselves be strangled.

  Her legs kicked, her body tightened with resistance. The futility of her efforts only heightened his excitement, underlined his total control. This one had fought for nearly half an hour. The fight, however, was on his terms. Every few minutes he would give a twist of the right hand and tighten the noose. She would groan and squirm, then slowly lose consciousness. And then—at precisely the right moment—he would release. The loop at the end of the strangulation stick would loosen. Her swan-like neck would lose the hourglass effect. The air passages would reopen. Blood flow to and from the brain would resume. The purple ring of bruises around the neck would swell, then throb. Slowly, her near-dead body would return to life. He could enjoy it all over again. Three times so far.

  And now she was coming back—again.

  She coughed lightly. Once more she was gaining strength. He could feel the change in her neck and shoulders. She was no longer dead weight. This was unprecedented—four times, up and down, then up again. Either she was an amazing fighter, or he was getting better. More likely the former. He was already the best. He knew just how far to take it, how tight to squeeze, how long to hold it. It had taken years of training, much of it at the expense of his own neck muscles. All those afternoons in his garage as a teenager, standing on a ladder, hanging by the neck with his makeshift pulley. Practice had made perfect. He knew what it was like on the other side. The rope had taken him there. More important, he knew the way back. He could show others the way, too. He could bring anyone back.

  Or not.

  Her face was red and puffy. Blood oozed from her tongue and lips, where she’d bitten herself. Her eyes blinked open, locking with his in the mirror. Hers were glassy and bloodshot. His were dark, narrow slits. He gave the stick a swift turn, harder than the last time, farther than before. The noose tightened and crushed the larynx. Her body stiffened, then quickly went limp. She had little fight left. The struggle was over.

  This one was not coming back.

  He released the tension on the rope, staring closely at a face that no longer showed expression. The brief excitement faded, then turned to disappointment. The anger should have subsided, but it was only getting stronger. This close up, eye to eye with his victim, beyond the flurry of the kill, his mistake was evident.

  This one just didn’t look enough like Beth Wheatley.

  Part Three

  Twenty-seven

  Andie finished her Monday morning run in record time. The clouds even parted as she crossed the imaginary finish line outside her town house. A quick three miles with a sprint-kick finish had left her sweaty and exhausted. The phone rang just as she reached her back door.

  She had not yet caught her breath as she raced inside the kitchen and grabbed it in mid-ring. It was Gus.

  “Good—morn—ing,” she said, each syllable separated by heavy breathing.

  “Did I catch you in the middle of…something?”

  “No, not—it’s not that,” she said, realizing she had the distinct breathlessness of recent orgasm.

  “I’d better call back later.”

  “It’s okay, really.” She drew a few more breaths. “I was jogging.”

  “Oh.” He sounded relieved.

  She pulled the scrunchie from her knotted hair, letting it fall. “What’s up?”

  “I hate to bother you at home so early, but I’ve been thinking about something all weekend that I really need to talk to you about. With your psychology background and all, I thought you might be able to help.”

  “Sure. Be happy to.”

  “It’s about Beth. She seems to have been in some kind of trouble. Even before she disappeared, I mean.”

  He had her attention. Andie sank into a chair at the kitchen table as he told her about the bulimia, the shoplifting. She got
up once to grab the magnetic message pad from the refrigerator door, then jotted down a few notes with the phone tucked beneath her chin. It took him several minutes to recount everything. She listened carefully, interjecting only a few “uh-huhs” and “I sees” along the way. As he spoke, however, she was internally debating whether to tell him on the phone that the evidence was more than ever pointing to Beth as a likely victim. When he finished, there was silence.

  Andie said, “Would you mind if I stopped by your house this morning?”

  “That would be fine, I guess. What do you have in mind?”

  She caught herself, careful not to use the term victimology with a man who might not be ready to label his wife a victim. “It would be helpful for me to see where Beth lived, how she lived. Maybe even look at some of those things you think she shoplifted. Then we can talk more.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “I can be there in about an hour.”

  “Great. See you then.”

  The Wheatley house was even more impressive than Andie had expected. The brick Tudor-style estate was set well back from the street, hidden behind an eight-foot hedge that lined the imposing stone fence and decorative iron gate. A long, curved driveway sloped up toward the house. It was set on the highest point on the heavily wooded lot, perched just above the neighbors’ trees for unobstructed views of Puget Sound.

  Andie parked beneath the portico and rang the doorbell. Gus answered. He looked tired, as though he’d barely slept all night.

  “Come in,” he said, letting her pass. The double doors closed behind her. She stood beneath the crystal chandelier in the foyer, facing the living room. It was a dramatic room with vaulted ceilings that followed the steep lines of the Tudor design. The floor was oak with inlaid borders of teak and rosewood. A huge stone fireplace covered one wall. Museum-quality artwork covered another. The furnishings were expensive European designs she had admired only in storefront windows. In the center was a silk oriental rug big enough to carpet her entire town house.