by Joe Konrath
“That’s the poet in you, fighting to get out.”
“You keep pulling all-nighters and Don is going to hit the bricks.”
Don. I’d forgotten to call him and tell him I was staying late. Hopefully he’d forgive me. Again.
“Why don’t you go home, get some rest.”
“Not a bad plan, if I could.”
My partner frowned. “Then go spend some time with your gentleman friend. Bernice is constantly on me about working too much, and you’re here twenty hours a week more than I am. I don’t see how Don puts up with it.”
I met Don in a YMCA kickboxing class about a year ago. The instructor paired us up for sparring. I knocked him down with a snap-punch, and he asked me out. After six months of dating, Don’s apartment lease ran out, and I invited him to move in — a bold move for a commitaphobe like me.
Don was the polar opposite of me in the looks department; blond, tan, with deep blue eyes and thick lips that I would kill for. I took after my mother. Not only were we both five feet six inches tall, with dark brown eyes, dark hair, and high cheekbones, but she was a retired Chicago cop.
When I was twelve, my mother taught me the two skills essential to my adult life: how to use a liner pencil to make my thin lips look fuller, and how to group my shots from forty feet away with a .38.
Unfortunately, Mom relayed very little information when it came to the care and feeding of a boyfriend.
“Don goes out a lot,” I admitted. “I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”
I closed my eyes, fatigue working slender fingers through my hair and down my back. Maybe going home would be a good idea. I could pick up some wine, take Don out to a nice lunch. We could try to openly communicate and work out the problems we’d been avoiding. Maybe I’d even score, as Mike Donovan had put it.
“Fine.” My eyes snapped open, and I felt a surge of enthusiasm. “I’m going. You’ll call if anything shakes loose?”
“Of course. When do the Feebies show?”
“Tomorrow, noonish. I’ll be here.”
We nodded our good-byes, and I stretched my cramped body out of my chair and went to go make a sincere effort with the man I was living with.
After all, the day could only get better.
Or so I thought.
Chapter 3
HE HAS THE WHOLE THING ON video.
It’s playing right now on his forty-inch screen. The shades are drawn and the volume is maxed. He is alone in the house, sitting on the couch. Naked. The remote is clenched in a sweaty fist.
He leans forward and watches with wide eyes.
“I’m going to kill you,” he says on tape.
The girl screams. She’s on her back, tied to the floor, jiggling with fear. Completely his.
The light in the basement is clinically harsh; his very own operating theater. Not one freckle or mole on her nude body escapes his attention.
“Keep screaming. It turns me on.”
She chews her lips, her body shaking in an effort to keep quiet. Mascara leaks down her face, leaving trails of black tears. The camera zooms in until her eyes are the size of bloodshot volleyballs.
Yummy.
The camera zooms back out, and he locks it into position on the tripod and walks over to her. He’s naked and visibly aroused.
“You’re all the same. You think you’re hot shit. But where’s all that confidence now?”
“I have money.” Her voice cracks like puppy bones.
“I don’t want your money. I want to see what you look like. On the inside.”
She screams when he picks up the hunting knife, fighting against her bonds, her eyes bugging out like a cartoon. Nothing but an animal now, a frightened animal fearing for its life.
It’s a look he’s seen many times.
“Please-oh-God-no-oh-God-please…”
He kneels down next to her and wraps his free hand in her hair so she can’t turn away. Then he tickles her throat with the edge of the blade.
“So pretty. I’m only giving you what you deserve. Don’t you realize that? You’re an example to the others. You thought you were famous before? Now you’ll be even more famous. The first one.”
She trembles before his power, fear radiating from her body like heat. He sets down the knife and fetches the extension cord.
This is the good part.
“Beg for your life.”
More screaming and crying. Nothing coherent.
“You’ll have to do better than that. Do you even remember me?”
She catches her breath and stares at him. The moment of recognition is like candy.
Sitting on his couch, he pauses the tape on the scene, eating up her terror. Fear is the ultimate turn-on, and this is the real thing. Not an actress in some fake S/M porno flick. This is the genuine article. A snuff film. His snuff film. He lets the tape play.
“You can’t treat men like that. All of you think you can do that to me and get away with it.”
He twists the cord around her neck, pulling it tight, getting his shoulders and back into it.
It isn’t like in the movies. Strangulation isn’t over in fifteen seconds.
She takes six minutes.
Her eyes bug out. Her face turns colors. She bucks and twists and makes sounds like a mewling kitten.
But slowly, sweetly, the fight goes out of her. Oxygen deprivation takes its toll, knocking her out, turning her into an unconscious blob.
He releases the cord and splashes some water on her face to wake her up.
She’s even more terrified when she comes to. She fights so hard, he thinks she might break the twine. Her voice is raw and painful-sounding, but the screaming goes on and on.
Until he strangles her again.
And again.
He does it four times before something in her neck finally gives and she can’t breathe even when he takes the cord off.
She writhes around on the floor, a private death dance just for him. Wiggle and twitch, gasp and moan. Her eyes roll up and her tongue sticks out and she turns colors.
He climbs on top and kisses her as she dies.
Though excited and aroused, there is still more work to do before he can fully enjoy her. He goes off screen and comes back with the plastic tarp.
This next part is messy.
He uses the hunting knife like an artist uses a paintbrush. Slowly. With care.
Then he adds his signature.
He’s out of breath, slick with sweat and blood.
Satisfied.
For the moment.
“One down, three to go,” he says to the television.
All in all, a successful production. Perhaps a little quick, considering the weeks of careful planning it has taken to get to this point. But that can be blamed on excitement.
With the next one he will pace himself better. Make it last. Do the cutting while she’s still alive.
He’ll grab the next girl tomorrow and try out some new things.
In the meantime he rewinds the videotape to watch it again.
Chapter 4
DON, I’M HOME.“
I hid the wine bottle behind my back in case he was sitting in the kitchenette next to the front door.
He wasn’t.
“Don?”
I did a quick tour of the place. It didn’t take long, because my apartment was about the size of a Cracker Jack box. Except there was no prize inside.
But I wasn’t discouraged. If he wasn’t home, I could catch him at the health club. Don had vanity issues. True, he had a good body, but the amount of time he invested in it seemed disproportionate to the benefits.
I went to chill the wine, when I noticed the note on the fridge.
Jack,
I’ve left you for my personal trainer, Roxy. We just weren’t right for each other, you were too into your stupid job, and the sex wasn’t very good.
Plus your tossing and turning all night drove me crazy. Please pack up all my stuff. I’ll pick it up Frida
y.
Thanks for fixing those parking tickets for me, and don’t worry. Roxy’s place is about ten times bigger than yours, so I’ll have somewhere to stay.
Don
I read the note again, but it wasn’t any nicer the second time. We’d dated for almost an entire year. He’d been living with me for six months. And now it was over, ended with a brief, indifferent letter. I didn’t even warrant the standard “I hope we can still be friends” line.
I hit the freezer and took out an ice tray. Three cubes went into a rocks glass, along with a shot of whiskey and a splash of sour mix. I sat down and thought, and drank, and thought some more.
When the cocktail was finished I made another. I was wading deep in the self-pity pool, but there was little sense of loss. I hadn’t loved Don. He was a warm body to hold at night and a partner for restaurants and movies and occasional sex.
The only man I’d ever loved was my ex-husband, Alan. When he left me, the pain was physical. Fifteen years later, I’m still wary about giving another person that much control over my heart again.
I eyed the half-finished drink in my hand. When Jacqueline Streng married Alan Daniels, she became Jack Daniels. Ever since, people have given me bottles of the stuff as gifts, each probably thinking they were being clever. I was forced to develop a taste for it, or else open up my own liquor store.
I gulped down the rest of the cocktail and was about to pour another, when I noticed my reflection in the door of the microwave. Seeing myself, sitting at my cheap dinette set with my sleepy red eyes and my limp hair, I looked like a finalist in the Miss Pathetic America Pageant.
Lots of cops I knew drank. They drank alone, drank on the job, drank when they woke up, and drank themselves to sleep. Law enforcement officers had a higher rate of alcoholism than any other profession. They also had the most divorces and the most suicides.
Divorce was the only statistic I cared to add to.
So I took off my blazer and my shoulder holster, replaced my skirt and blouse with a pair of jeans and a sweater, and went out to explore Chicago.
I lived on Addison and Racine, in a part of town called Wrigleyville. Rent was reasonable because it was impossible to park anywhere, especially since the Cubs started hosting night games. But I had a badge, so any fireplug or no-parking zone was fair game.
The neighborhood was loud and active, as expected. At any given time there were at least ten drinking-age college students per square foot, barhopping among the area’s forty-plus watering holes. Great if you were in your twenties. But a mature woman like me was out of place in these trendy clubs, where techno music shook the foundations and drinks like “Screaming Orgasms” and “Blow Jobs” were the house specials.
Don had once dragged me into a bar called Egypto, where the only lighting in the place came from several hundred Lava lamps lining the walls. He bought me a drink called a “Slippery Dick.” I told him the drink wasn’t stiff enough. He didn’t laugh. I should have known then.
So for a woman of my advanced years, Wrigleyville gave me only two real choices: the bar at the Westminster Hotel, or Joe’s Pool Hall.
I’d only been at the Westminster once, out of curiosity. It turned out to be the kind of place where old people gather to die. The entertainment that night had been Dario, a small hairy man in suspenders with an electric accordion. He did a disco version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” while geriatrics polkaed furiously. I felt old, but not that old.
So I wound up at Joe’s. They had good beer priced cheap and a dinginess that yuppies avoided. When I pushed open the door, I wasn’t assaulted by industrial dance music. Just the clackety-clack of pool balls and an occasional laugh or swearword.
My kind of place.
I went up to the bar, resting my forearms on the cigarette-scarred counter and propping a foot on the brass railing. A fat bartender took my beer order, which set me back a whopping two bucks, with tip.
I pulled off the bottle and took in the surroundings, searching for an open table through the dim lighting and the cigar smoke.
All twelve were occupied, all but two with doubles action.
Of the singles, one was being worked by an elderly black man who was having a heated discussion with himself. At the other table was a bald guy in jeans and a white T-shirt. He was a few years my junior and looked vaguely familiar.
I picked up a cue from a nearby rack and walked over.
He was hunched over the table, his stick gliding on the solid bridge of his thumb and forefinger, eyeing the cue ball with intense concentration.
“This may sound like a come-on, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
He took the shot without looking up, banking the three ball into a side pocket. Then he righted himself and squinted at me, and I suddenly knew who he was.
“You arrested me six years ago.”
That’s one of the dangers of being a cop. People you think you remember from high school turn out to be felons.
“Phineas Troutt, right? Tough to forget a name like that.”
He nodded.
“And your name had something to do with booze. Detective José Cuervo?”
His face was blank, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Jack Daniels. I’m a lieutenant now.”
I noted his body language. His blue eyes were steady, and he held himself in a relaxed stance. I didn’t feel threatened by him, but at the same time I was aware I’d left my gun at home.
“You had brown hair before,” I said. “Long, in a ponytail.”
“Chemo. Pancreatic cancer.” He pointed his chin at my cue. “Can you use that thing, or do you hold it for some Freudian reason?”
That seemed like a challenge to me, and I was feeling a bit reckless. I recalled the bust vividly, because it had been the easiest arrest of my career. It had been an 818 — gang fight in progress. When we arrived on the scene, Phineas dropped to his knees and laced his hands behind his head without even being asked. Strewn around him were four unconscious gang-bangers in need of medical attention. Phin claimed they jumped him, but since he was the only one without anything broken, we had to bring him in.
“Loser racks and buys the beers.”
“Fair enough.”
We played eight ball, calling shots, putting the eight in the last pocket called. He beat me an average of two games to one, so I wound up paying for most of the games and buying most of the drinks. We hardly talked, but the silence was companionable, and the competition was good-natured.
By the eighth game, the alcohol was starting to affect me, so I switched to diet cola. Phin, as he preferred to be called, stuck with beer, and it didn’t seem to affect him at all. Even after I’d sobered up, he continued to whup my butt.
I liked it that way; it made me play better.
Day became night, and Joe’s began to fill up. Lines formed at all the tables, forcing us to relinquish ours.
I thought about asking Phin if he wanted to get a cup of coffee, but it sounded too much like a date, and I didn’t want to give the wrong impression. Instead, I offered my hand.
“Thanks for the games.”
His grip was warm, dry.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. It’s nice to have some quality competition. Maybe we’ll have a chance to do this again?”
I smiled. “Damn right. Bring your wallet, because next time you’ll be buying most of the beers.”
He smiled, briefly, and we went our separate ways. I made a mental note to check outstanding warrants on him. If he was wanted for something, I wasn’t quite sure what I would do. I liked the guy, even if he did have a rap sheet. These days it was rare for me to like anything. Could I arrest a pool buddy, especially one dying of cancer?
Unfortunately, yes.
Once home, my bed was uncomfortable, my mind refused to relax, and the clock mocked me with each passing minute.
I was tired, exhausted actually, but thoughts kept flashing through my skull and wouldn’t let me be.
They weren’t even profound thoughts; just random flotsam.
I tried counting backward from ten thousand. I tried deep breathing and relaxation exercises. I tried to imagine myself asleep. Nothing worked.
Time marched forward, taking me with it.
