My Boss is a Serial Killer
Page 10
“I know.” He pressed his forehead to the glass of the window. It would leave a slightly oily print there when he raised his head again.
“And that any number of things could clog a gutter or cause a car accident, and you don’t have any way to control them all?”
“I know.”
“Come on with me; let’s go look at the gutter together.”
That was how I ended up standing in a gutter with Bill at midnight last autumn, as we inspected the tendency of the fallen leaves to bank themselves against the curb.
“Let them sit for a minute,” I told him. “Let’s see what happens.”
It was not easy for him to let them sit. The ritual was that he could let them sit while he watched from the lobby, but once he’d been defeated into coming out here, he needed to remove them right away. But I put a restraining hand on his arm and told him to have courage. After a few very tense minutes, the wind picked up again and we watched many of the leaves rise and swirl away again.
Bill tried to go remove the remaining leaves, but I made him play “Twenty Questions” with me. He was always keen to try winning a game with me because I invariably chose fairly obscure television shows as my mystery answer and he had yet to get one right. This time my answer was Strange Luck, a short-lived (but I thought quite good) series that had been one of many to try filling the primo time slot before The X-Files, back when that ultimate paranoia-fest was still on Friday nights and gaining a cult following. Bill was determined to someday figure one of these stumpers out. Alas, it was not going to be that night. But that was okay, because the real point was to distract him from the leaves. This method of diverting Bill had helped us before, at the office. Focusing on another, albeit unthreatening, problem upset the ritual enough that he was no longer compelled to perform it. Finally he said, “It’s getting better.”
“Good. Do you think we can go inside? It’s cold out here.”
He didn’t want to come inside, but my appeal to his manners forced his hand; he couldn’t let his secretary shiver on a nighttime street. I insisted on accompanying him up the elevators to his eighth floor apartment. If I left him in the lobby, he might start up again.
“Now, Bill,” I said, stifling a yawn. “You can’t do this to me anymore. It’s not good policy for me to come to your rescue any time you get stuck.”
“I’m sorry. She just wouldn’t stop asking.”
“It’s okay this time. And I wouldn’t have reported you to Donna. Still, we can’t do it. It’s not even for my own sake. I don’t think it does you any good, either.”
“I have this problem,” said Bill. “I get these ideas in my mind. They won’t go away. Even as I tell myself it’s ridiculous, I still can’t stop.”
We stepped off the elevator, and reluctantly he moved toward a drab doorway in the midst of all the other drab doorways on the drab hall. The place was not a dump, but I’d seen more friendly atmospheres in prisons from TV shows I’d watched. He opened his door, and I saw over his shoulder a tiny, nearly bare apartment. It distressed me to see Bill live this way, even though I knew why he had to. Having surroundings that were easy to control was vital to his mental well-being. The apartment I saw beyond that door had one purpose only—to allow Bill three rooms small enough that he could effectively control every inch of the space. It’s not dirt with Bill. It’s chaos he can’t stand. Open-ended things. Loose threads. Everything he had was made of plastic, I saw, or encased in it. It reminded me of a daycare center minus the color, everything smooth and safe with no little pieces to swallow.
“I think there are medications, Bill,” I said at his doorway. “If you went to a doctor or a psychiatrist. There’s a medication for everything out there, and I’ll bet they have one that could help you avoid these kinds of things.”
“Oh, it’s not that serious.” He couldn’t look me in the eye when he said that.
“You have an obsessive-compulsive disorder, Bill. You just spent a perfectly beautiful Saturday monitoring the leaves in your gutter to prevent a car pileup that most likely never would have happened anyway. Have you eaten today or been to the bathroom in the last few hours or anything?”
“No, I guess I haven’t.”
I considered him, and he considered his shirt cuffs, tugging and straightening them as he always did. “What happened to set you off?” I asked.
“Got a call this morning,” he replied, “from an heir in an old estate I worked. Says he’s going to sue me for malpractice.”
“Over what?”
“Coercing his father into signing a will.”
“If he called you, Bill, I doubt he’s really going to go through with it. He would have gone to a lawyer by now, and the lawyer would have told him not to contact you.”
“Maybe so. But this guy was awful. Mean and bitter. Made me feel like I’d done something corrupt.”
“Never on this earth,” I insisted. “You just had to talk to one of the assholes, that’s all. I’ll bet you five bucks you never hear from him again.”
I was with Bill in a weak moment, when he’d had little time to prepare his game face for me. He seemed both younger and stranger than I’d ever known him to be at work. He didn’t take me up on my bet, but said, “Carol, I couldn’t go to a psychiatrist. I couldn’t possibly explain.”
“I know it’s hard to explain, but their job is to listen. And it’s not even stigmatized any more. It’s positively fashionable to see a therapist.”
“I’m almost always okay. It’s only once in a while that it goes out of control.”
My skeptical look told him what I thought of that remark.
“I’ve been like this all my life,” he said pleadingly.
“Aw, it’s okay, Bill. Most of us are so in love with our eccentricities that we couldn’t bear to part with them.”
He appreciated my saying that, I think.
Chapter Eight
On Tuesday night, I was watching my chosen TV show for the week: an intensely good one-season-only show called Nowhere Man starring Bruce Greenwood. It combined many aspects I liked: it was a mystery, a thriller, a little bit of hard science fiction and a lot of conspiracy theory. Possibly watching something this heavy with conspiracy theory wasn’t a great idea for me right then, sort of like when I watched too much thirtysomething right before a high school reunion and showed up feeling fat, poor, and unable to make fascinating small talk.
What’s with my preoccupation about conspiracies? I had spent a good part of the day rushing through my work so I could continue my research in Bill’s old files, and what I had found was pushing all my paranoia buttons. I had uncovered not only Bryony Gilbert and Bonita Voigt as past suicides, but also another woman named Wanda Breakers. That was four, if I included Adrienne Maxwell, but of course she might not have been a suicide, so I wasn’t sure if I could include her in my list.
Regardless of whether I had three or four suicides, I was a little freaked out about the whole thing. Tomorrow morning, I planned to spend a bit more time in storage to retrieve an additional three files that might or might not add to my list. I was beginning to think that our law firm was a magnet for suicidal women. My mind was busily spinning, trying to think of a reason for this, and of course what I imagined could only be described as vague and paranoid, or in other words, conspiracy theory.
Still, I rent or buy TV shows on DVD expressly so each night I can watch a couple episodes. That’s my treat for working all day. This week it was conspiracy theory and Nowhere Man. And that was just a coincidence. Besides, my only alternative was to shut off my DVD player and actually watch real television, something that had become almost unbearable.
Gus called me. He’d said, on Saturday, that he would call me Tuesday night when he would be free to make plans, and here he was, calling just like he said he would. My caller ID said “HAGLUND A,” but it might as well have said, “HAPPINESS.” I took such a long pause to appreciate his consideration that I nearly forgot to pick up the phone.
“Hey, how’s Lyvia coming with her term paper?” I asked. The young woman had only called me once, on Sunday, to ask how to justify her footnotes.
“She left here yesterday morning to turn it in, and I haven’t seen her since,” said Gus. “I assume she’s at her apartment sleeping it off.”
“And how are you?”
“I’m doing pretty darn well. Some kind of charm has been on me this week, like somebody might have kissed me for luck. How are you?”
I couldn’t get over this man saying things like “pretty darn well” and “kissed me for luck.” I thought that detectives were supposed to be hard-boiled and swear a lot, smoke and drink whiskey with Pepto-Bismol in it, and be world-weary and glum.
“Carol?”
“Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t ignoring you. I was thinking about you, and I forgot to talk. I’m fine, thank you. I’m just fine, better than fine, now that you called.”
I was gushing. I shut up.
“This weekend,” he said, “I’ve got my son from Friday night to Sunday night, and I was thinking that next week seems like a pretty long time to wait, you know, before I can get any more free legal advice, and I was thinking maybe some night this week, maybe…well, my schedule is unpredictable sometimes…”
“Any night is fine.”
“Wednesday? Thursday?”
I blurted, “Either. Both. You can come over right now, if you want to.”
There was a pregnant pause at the other end of the line.
I put a hand over my face, though I’m not sure who I was hiding from. Whatever happened to playing hard-to-get? “What I meant…”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” said Gus.
*****
He was there in twelve.
I was a little out of practice at the art of seduction. Would you believe I spent the entire twelve minutes just waiting for him, twiddling my thumbs in my lap while watching my driveway? I wasn’t bored or overanxious. In fact I was thinking such naughty thoughts that the time passed pleasantly. When he actually rode up, on his motorcycle, for God’s sake, it was like a bonus prize. The bike made a fair amount of racket, but I live in a neighborhood full of hot rods and biker dudes, so I doubt any of my neighbors took notice. That single headlight in my driveway snapped me to attention, and I realized that I might have employed this time to brush my hair, find some sexy underwear or make sure I didn’t smell like copy machine toner. I glanced down, remembering that I was wearing long white cotton pajama bottoms and an MBS&K casual-Friday T-shirt that I had gotten for my second-year anniversary. My underwear, as far as I knew, was clean but made of faded pink cotton. I looked not awful, but not really like a tempting siren, either.
Well, I reminded myself, it might be jumping the gun a bit to assume he had come over to for sex.
I opened the door before he knocked and caught him as he stepped onto my porch. For a moment we looked at each other. Gus pretended that he was about to say something, and I pretended that I was going to raise a hand in greeting, but then it all seemed kind of silly. He shot a killer grin at me, and I shrugged in grateful defeat. A moment later I was tangled in his arms. He was so big that he lifted me effortlessly right off the ground.
I need not have worried about my clothes. I was out of them so fast that I doubt Gus noticed what I wore. At first I was just clinging to him like he was the world’s best set of monkey bars, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, kissing him hungrily. His big arms went clear around me, and I felt him smile again under my mouth. I felt T-shirt, denim, and flesh under my hands. And I had no qualms about this; I was utterly shameless. I mean, if there were even the slightest doubt in my mind, some iota of restraint that tried to rear its stupid head, it was squashed quickly enough when Gus shut my front door by kicking it. I love stuff like that. It’s so physical. That gesture alone would have closed the deal, had it not already been pretty well closed.
Gus broke his lips away from mine to ask, “Bedroom?”
“That way.” I glanced behind us, showing a direction with my eyes. My question was “Condoms?”
“Plural, eh?” He chuckled into my hair. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t have to carry me,” I said obligingly, unwrapping my legs from his waist, dropping to the floor. He kept hold of my hand, looked like his missed me already. I said, “Follow.”
Down the hall we went. I removed clothing on the way. Off went my T-shirt, down scooted my pajamas. I’m not a bad girl. I just wanted to save him the trouble of wondering when it would be appropriate for him to slide his fingers under my clothes. No clothes, no worry.
In my bedroom, which was badly rumpled with panty hose on the floor and an unmade bed of green-print sheets, I lifted my hair off my neck and asked, “Help?”
Hard warm fingers touched my back and slipped under my bra to unfasten the hooks. “Is this some kind of dexterity test?” asked a perplexed Gus, but his voice was a good deal lower than usual and pleasingly rough, like his fingertips. I smiled secretively; I was perfectly capable of undoing my own bra, but I wanted him to do the work. I really didn’t care if he tore it off, so long as he touched me while doing it. He managed the hooks with only a little trouble, and I shrugged out of the battered old garment. Without being asked to help this time, Gus hooked his fingers in my panties and slid them right down my legs.
“I’m winning,” I said, turning to him. I took his shirt in one hand and gave it a tug, but he was looking at me, and he didn’t respond for a moment. His face had turned thoughtful, observant. That was good. I liked that he could take in a naked woman without embarrassment or slack-jawed drooling. Not that my body really inspired slack-jawed drooling, you know. It was like my face: more of the same open-to-interpretation canvas, nothing too drastic in either direction. One thing my stupid ex-husband had taught me, though he probably had not meant to, was that sexiness is not so much the body you have as what you are happy to do with it. With Gus, I was pretty willing to do anything.
When he reached out to touch me, it was to put a hand on my waist, just above the swell of my hip. I tugged at his shirt again. “Off,” I said to it, because I’d lost Gus’s train of thought. “Bad shirt.” I had to manhandle it, pulling at it to get it over his head. I flung it aside and started working at his jeans because I was impatient and enjoying myself too much. He had a very good chest, my Gussie did, linebacker shoulders and a slightly rounded tummy over hard-as-rock abs, those good hard lateral muscles, and an unbashful dose of fuzziness. I, for one, love a hairy chest, and I think most other adult women do, too. To hell with electrolysis. Give me a grizzly bear. Like this one. I pushed my face into the fur while I continued to yank ineffectually at his clothing. Finally Gus was forced to either help me or fall down. He laughed at me.
“What, am I too pushy?” I was still biting big tastes of his chest and his neck, then his chin, and then his mouth again before he could answer me. He lost the rest of his clothes somewhere in there, kicking them aside. I was not at all surprised to discover that below the waist he was also a grizzly bear, and I’m not talking about hair. My Gus was one of those guys, though personally I’d never met one in the flesh, that make you think, I’m not able to fit that inside me. No way. But let’s try anyway for the fun of it.
“You’re pushy,” agreed a breathless Gus a few moments later, “but I like pushy just fine. Wait, I need those.”
He meant his jeans. No doubt the condoms were in his pocket. But now they were way far off, probably three whole feet away, and if one of us went to get them, I’d have to stop eating him alive. Gus lifted me against him again—and as nice as that had been before, it was a lot nicer naked. He had fuzzy parts that tickled me and that great hot expanse of chest to hold me to. If we separated, I would be living a lie because I didn’t want to do much ever again that wasn’t shoved right up next to this guy.
>
“Okay,” I said. “Down on three.” I counted it off, and we lowered to the floor, me underneath Gus with a pillow under my back, a sandal by my head, a pair of panties half in my armpit, and an old popcorn bag visible under the bed. So that’s where that went. Gus apparently forgave me my slovenly housekeeping. He didn’t comment on it, anyway, but reached for his jeans and fumbled around in the back pocket.
“Carol,” he said with a desperate little gasp. “Carol, honey, we need to slow down.”
“No,” I pleaded. “No, come on, let’s speed up.”
“First impressions are important,” argued Gus, but I had him laughing again, and I think I may have been shocking him a little with my busy hands. But notice he did not complain.
“Oh,” I said hesitantly, looking up at him with unwarranted wariness, “are you one of those guys who gives it one shot and then doesn’t much like to be touched afterwards?”
“God, no.” Now I had offended his sensibilities. “But I…oh, um…” My hands were busy again. He had impressive expanses of flesh just everywhere. The condom packet fell out of his fingers, and he pressed a strained smile against me as he kissed my throat.
“Then it’s all right,” I told him. “Fast first. Then slow. Takes some of the pressure off, I think. Anyway, there’s no one here you have to prove anything to. It might not be perfectly obvious, but I’m throwing myself at you.”
“Carol My-Last-Name-Is-Frank,” said Gus as he reclaimed the condom package and opened it. “I’m a little tired of you taking all the credit for this.”
I looked properly chastened and took the condom from him. Funny little things, condoms, utterly ridiculous yet necessary and so sexy in a silly rubber way, like a slutty little sock from a school-girl uniform. “Let me,” I said. I was well-practiced at this; it’s another thing marriage can teach you. Aim and unroll, and a little affectionate squeezing was usually appreciated. Gus sucked in his breath and barked laughter at the same time. He seemed to think I was terribly funny. “Are you giving me an attitude, Detective Haglund?”