"An hour? We'll have the place mostly to ourselves before catering gets there."
"Sure, okay."
The Body hung up carefully. Olivia, the hated one. Not as hated as Catherine, but no one was as hated as Catherine. Olivia was too damn pitiful to hate that much. She was talented, but ditzy and on top of that, a heavy drug user. Not that half the people in the movie didn't use drugs, but none with such uncaring abandon as Olivia. She had sometimes shown up for a shoot with her eyes so glassy Cam had to put off the filming until he had plied her with two pots of coffee and whatever drug might counteract the one she'd taken. If she was on tranqs and lethargic, Cam got a few hits of speed for her. If she was high flying on cocaine or crank (or twice lately, when she admitted to having cooked just a little bit of smack, just a little tiny bit), he found something to bring her down. Not without cursing like a bandit whose treasure had been stolen. And stomping around and threatening to fire her off the film, but no one believed that, not even Olivia, who continued to abuse herself to the detriment of the project. Silly old bitch.
She had sounded too damn full of snap, crackle, pop for this early in the morning. Hell, dawn hadn't even broken and a pewter light heavy with falling dew still swirled over the lawns, flowerbeds, and white poplar trees in the neighborhood.
No time then to study the scene, to work out the plan for Karl LaRosa's swan song. It would have to be put off until tomorrow. One more day before the end could not matter one way or the other. That the final chapter was close gave The Body an electric feeling of power.
45
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
The babies would have given The Body a reason to live. The twins. The dead ones who would have lived in the nursery. That's what the new crib was for, the mobile, the colorful wallpaper. The Body believed Catherine loved him, loved him, loved him so much. He believed she would have his babies, she would marry him first, and have his babies.
But she left him and she killed the babies so that she could have an affair with another man. With Karl.
Oh, how The Body grieved. As much as for poor Michelle.
No one had ever loved The Body except for Michelle. Not mother or father. Not really. They were too busy with their professional lives to love their children.
Catherine had not loved him.
The twins would have. If she'd carried them to term and let him have them to raise. They would have loved him with such fierce loyalty that no one could have parted the three of them, ever.
As a child growing up, The Body had tried very hard to be like other children. But without Michelle, it was impossible.
It was as if half of him was missing. He was a shadow, superficial, not really all there.
He had a friend once. In junior high school. A boy named Davy Cotersill. He even told Davy about Michelle and how he missed her, how bereft he was yet. And Davy didn't make fun of him.
But then, after a few months of close friendship where he and Davy rode their bicycles everywhere together, and went to the same parties, and played tennis on their parents' tennis courts until after dinnertime, something began to happen. The Body noticed it first, but was unable to stop it from happening. He started first with the haircut. He went to the barbershop and had them cut his hair just like Davy's. Short on the sides, long on top. Then The Body found out where Davy's mother shopped for clothes and he had his own mother take him there and buy him a new wardrobe. He picked out the same style of jeans, the same shirts, belts, socks, and shoes. Finally, when Davy began to notice and look at him strangely, The Body had his father buy him a bicycle just like Davy's. Dark blue ten-speed Schwinn. When he took it over to show his friend, that's when Davy accused him of being some kind of clown.
"What's the matter with you?" Davy asked. "It's like you're sucking me in. It's like you're becoming me. What happened to your clothes, your hair, and now you got a bicycle like mine. Is this a joke or what? I don't like it if it's a joke. It feels funny looking at you now when you're starting to look like my twin or something."
The Body hung his head and scuffed his Reebok that was the same kind of Reebok that Davy wore. "I just like you, Davy."
"Well, it's okay to like me and it's flattering to be copied up to a point, but this is ridiculous! When school starts and you do this, other kids are gonna make fun of us. They'll think we're dating or something, for crying out loud.”
“No, they won't, they won't even notice . . ."
"Yes, they will! They'll think we're fags. You're not a fag, are you? You don't want my body, do you?"
The Body felt the insult right down to his toes. He had never even entertained such nasty thoughts. Of course he didn't want to have sex with Davy. He just wanted . . . he wanted to be like him. He wanted to be like . . . someone.
They had had a big row and wound up swinging at one another. Davy's dad had to come outdoors and break them up. The Body went home with a bloody nose and never spoke to Davy again. He threw all his new clothes in the trash. He let his hair grow out long and scraggly.
He never tried to have a best friend again.
Because friends disappoint you. Sisters die on you. Lovers betray you.
Only his own children would have given him the kind of unconditional love he had always wished for. And Catherine never even asked him if he wanted those children. Before her pregnancy, if asked, he would have said a woman had the right to make that sort of decision on her own. But after it involved the loss of a set of twins he wanted in his own life—to save him from loneliness and despair—he realized he did not believe it was a woman's sole right to make the decision. The babies were half his! His sperm had created them. Their cells came from his cells, their genetic makeup came partially from him, and even the fact that Catherine had come up pregnant with twins had to do with him being a twin.
Once she had destroyed them, The Body could hardly go on. No use to reproach her. A modern woman. A career woman, like his mother. She wouldn't have listened to him. She probably didn't even know now how much pain she had given him.
Or how much she would have to pay for her sin against life. If he knew of a way to murder her and never be suspected, he would have long ago done it.
The script was the only way he knew to bring harm to her. He had harbored his hate for all these years, through her dismissal of Karl, and her marriage and her new pregnancy, and the birth of her little girl, who he coveted. That hate had done something irrevocable to his soul, he knew that. It had warped him. It had left him half sane. He was functional in society, but not a part of it. He could never be right again because of her.
Finally, if he could finish up the shooting of the script and he could kill Karl so that Catherine was suspected, he might find a little peace. Or at least more than he'd ever enjoyed before. Michelle's ghost might not desert him, and his hunger for his lost children might not ever leave him, but at least Catherine would feel a little of what he had endured all these many lonely years.
The murders he had performed so far had left not a smudge of guilt on his conscience. He would feel nothing for Karl when he died, either. And nothing for what Catherine would be put through.
For The Body knew what to do once Catherine was out of the way.
He would take her little girl, steal away Barbara, and he would make her his own. If he could not have the babies who had been his flesh and blood, he would at least have a small child he could pretend was his own to share his life with and to be a father to. She was still young enough to learn to love him.
Dear Karl,
I know you know why you were picked now. She'll be blamed because it's her fault you're going to die.
Good-bye, Karl. It's been fun.
XXXX
OOOO
Same cream-colored stationery, folded as usual in half. Karl read the note over again. It had been slipped between the windshield wiper and t
he glass on his new BMW parked in the lot next to his office.
Karl looked up at the roar of a car engine, fearing his death was coming in the form of a hit and run. He stood pinned between the BMW and the building, expecting to see a car racing toward him.
But no. The car he'd heard was on the nearby street and it was not turning into the lot. It sped away from the stoplight at the corner, leaving burned rubber and acrid smoke in its wake. Just some hotrod crazy kid.
Karl took a deep breath. How great it was to be alive—and he had to stay that way—on this balmy night.
He stared at the note again. Someone was going to be framed for his murder. That's what this was about all along. He'd been thrown off the trail with the love notes. Biggest mistake he'd ever made. One that was testament to his vanity. Who else, he had thought, would hurt me but a wronged woman? The stalker had depended on his vanity and ego to keep his identity safe. It had worked, hadn't it?
He had to tell this to the detective working on the case. Morales. The man who didn't believe Karl was in any real danger or that the department needed to expend a lot of time and effort running down the fingerprints they had lifted from his wrecked Jaguar.
Karl turned from the car and hurried back to the office to use the telephone. He was in such a hurry, he didn't bother to lock the door behind him although it was past office hours and all his employees were gone for the day. He had just gotten Detective Morales on his extension line when Karl heard the front door open, a few seconds of silence pass, and then the door closed.
"Hold on," he told Morales. Dropping the phone, he moved quickly around the desk and through his office door into the outer waiting room. His senses, tuned to any hint of a change in the routine, caused him to smell first the overpowering scent of gasoline, then he saw the smoke before the noticed the fire. He was faced in the waiting room with confirmation of his fears. Flame rose in a line across the carpet from one end of the room to the other. The fire licked the walls and reached out for the upholstered chairs. His eyes widened in runaway fear. Something primitive and dark as a large worm turning over in his belly uncoiled so that his arms broke out in goose bumps and he felt paralyzed.
His heart kicked into an irregular rhythm. He gulped and smoke filled his mouth. The whole room was dimming and blackening with smoke. An oily, thick cloud of it streamed from the carpet and roiled in ugly, thickening corkscrews near the ceiling. He was forced back, the heat already intense, the flames licking and gliding like orange-red wraiths from floor to ceiling.
Turning, feeling himself drop into a dreamy state, everything set to slow-mo, he slammed the door to his office with a bang that sounded like thunder. The sound galvanized him. He grabbed the phone and yelled, "I'm in my office. It's on fire! The whole building's going to go up."
It was a moment before he realized his call had been put on hold. Muzak played over the receiver. He dropped the phone and panic overrode his thinking. Black smoke billowed from beneath the door. Soon the doorknob would melt and the door would turn into a wall of flame. He couldn't hear any sirens of fire trucks. Maybe no one yet knew the place was on fire.
What should he save? All his records were here. Had Lois backed them up on the computer and had she deposited the tape backups in the safety deposit box the way he had asked her?
Save nothing, get out, his mind screamed. Get out now!
Something that sounded like a small bomb blew up in the outer waiting room. The computer monitor. The whole place was going up.
Without further thought, he lifted the big desk chair onto his right shoulder and ran with it toward the window. He hurled it forward and brought both his arms up to protect his face from flying glass. The crash was drowned in the roar of the fire from the other room. The chair had gone through the glass and tumbled across the sidewalk to the gutter.
Karl looked back once before climbing over the jagged glass edge of the window frame. He saw fire had eaten through the door. Only then did he remember this scene from the script—all except the note left on his BMW. It was uncanny how the script showed the lead trapped in an office with the only way out a large window. He'd even used the office chair to break out. He'd had a feeling of déjà vu from the moment he'd heard the outer door open. He should have been on alert, but how could he know when the stalker would try to implement the script scene? He might know what was coming, but never when.
As he stepped out into fresh air, his fear subsiding now that he was out of the fiery building, a blow fell on the back of his head. Karl slumped to the sidewalk, unconscious.
~ * ~
PERRY JOHNS: Detective Apollina, please. This is an emergency.
POLICE OPERATOR: Your name, sir?
PERRY JOHNS: Perry Johns.
POLICE OPERATOR: All right, hold a minute, while I see if the detective is in.
There's a suspicious crackling sound that draws PERRY's attention from the desk.
INTERIOR-FRONT WAITING ROOM: Front door snicking shut. Flame bursting from poured gasoline, leaping out of control, engulfing the exit.
CLOSE UP: PERRY standing in open door between waiting room and his office, shocked at the fire raging across the floor and moving up the walls.
INTERIOR-OFFICE: PERRY slams shut the door and rushes to grab up the phone.
PERRY JOHNS: Apollina! The waiting room's on fire. I can't get out the front of the building!
DETECTIVE APOLLINA: I'll alert the fire department. Do you have a window or a rear exit?
PERRY JOHNS: I've got a plate glass window. I'll have to break it out. I can't get from my office to the back door.
DETECTIVE APOLLINA: Someone will be right there. Get out now.
PERRY drops the phone, picks up the chair behind the desk and throws it through the wide window that faces the sidewalk. He crawls through, relieved to be away from the flames.
FADE OUT.
~ * ~
The Body raised the pipe again to strike a killing blow, but a car slammed its brakes on the street and pulled over awkwardly to the curb, the tires bumping up over the concrete lip. The grill halted no more than a foot from The Body. Time to go. No time to finish it.
He swiveled and ran away, throwing down the pipe as he ran. He turned down the next street at the corner, looking back over his shoulder to see the driver of the car wasn't following. A man had come from the vehicle and was squatting next to Karl.
The goddamn luck.
~ * ~
Karl did not come to until he had been moved away from the burning building so the firefighters could get their hoses across the sidewalk where he had been lying. He woke with a massive headache and his vision all out of whack. There were two Morales clones staring down into his face. So many teeth. So many eyes.
"You okay, buddy? There's an ambulance on the way."
Karl struggled to a sitting position. "I don't need an ambulance." He felt the back of his head where a goose egg knot had risen.
"You might have a concussion, need to get it checked out."
Karl remembered the note. She would be blamed, it had said. What if the bastard had left evidence somewhere near the building? The evidence could belong to Robyn or to anyone he'd ever dated. He couldn't let the fire inspector find it.
"Here. Help me up."
Morales took his arm and pulled him to his feet. Karl felt a little light-headed, but it passed. He stared at the building. Half of the roof was gutted. Smoke and an occasional cloud of sparks still streamed toward the night sky. The fire appeared to be put out, or almost. Firefighters still pumped in gallons of water.
Where would the stalker leave evidence? Near the front of the building where he'd entered, Karl assumed. He couldn't leave it inside in the fire, of course.
Morales was talking to a uniformed officer. Karl took his time walking slowly away from them, rubbing the back of his head, and toward the building. He passed over the thick snake-like water hoses and past two firefighters. They paid him no attention. Everyone was involved in doing their jobs
. An investigator wouldn't arrive until later, maybe after the fire was completely out.
The front door was burned completely up. A gaping black hole spewed foul scorched odors of plastic wafting from within. Karl went closer, his eyes on the sidewalk. He saw light glinting off the pen. It was burnished stainless steel, a slim ballpoint, expensive. He leaned down and picked it up, stuck it in his shirt pocket. He looked for anything else out of the ordinary, but it was dark and he couldn't see a thing but puddles of sooty water speckled with flakes of burned material.
Karl wished he had the note, but it was gone. He had taken it with him inside when he first meant to call the detective. He could see it now in his mind's eye. He'd dropped it on the desk as he dialed.
Well, at least he had the pen.
Morales scared him by coming up from behind and placing a hand on his shoulder. "This is tough," he said. "Looks like a firebug. You smell anything in there when the fire started?"
"Yeah, gasoline."
"I want that list of women you were supposed to get together for me. I want it now."
Hell. How could he explain anything to Morales? It would sound insane. He nodded his head. "I'll get it for you."
Morales cocked his head and he gave Karl a curious stare. "You do want to find out who has been doing this, don't you? You could have been killed in there."
"Of course I want to know who it is. Why?"
"You just seem reluctant about the list. I've been after you to give it to me for three days."
"So you believe me now."
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