My Boss is a Serial Killer

by Christina Harlin

  “That dirty rat.” I performed the requested action and the empty package drifted to the floor beside my blouse. Then suddenly I was lifted, my back against my cold hallway wall, my only means of support the imposing bulk of Gus Haglund. You always see people having stand-up sex in the movies and stuff and it looks cool but it doesn’t entirely seem plausible. Turns out all you need is a strong enough guy. I linked my ankles behind his back and my arms around his neck and held on. He still had on his work clothes and his trench coat, making me feel more than undressed. I felt positively and thrillingly exposed. Inside me he felt big enough to tear me in two, but, you know, in a good way. I kissed him deep and hard, I trusted him to take care of everything, and I let him have at me. The next day my shoulder blades would have pale purple bruises, my back would be scraped as if by a rough plaque of cardboard. At the moment, though, I noticed no discomfort except for the yowling ache inside me and Gus was fixing that problem. He pinned me with his eyes and shoved—at the count of five, I think my whole uterus turned inside out. It was that hard. He almost scared me, because we did this so well together. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

  When Gus let me back down on the ground, a few magnificently grueling moments later, I could barely stand. I grabbed his arm for support and he toppled; we both fell to the floor and Gus clonked his head on my wall. He held his head, laughing and howling in pain at the same time. I climbed over his bulk, inspecting him for blood while trying heartily to control my own giggles.

  “Oh, you devil woman,” he accused.

  “Listen, I have a perfectly good bed, and no one said you had to perform acrobatics in the hall. Can we do it again?”

  “No strength…condom made of Kryptonite…can’t reach…utility belt…”

  “You seem to have a concussion. You’re speaking in a delirium.”

  “Need beer…”

  “You need to either zip up your trousers or take them off altogether. You’re making quite a spectacle of yourself.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Find a chair or something. I’ll be back in a second.” I left him lying in the hall and went to my fridge for the much-needed refreshment. Walking around in my heels like a hooker. A hooker with a heart of gold? Maybe that would be the next game we could play. I heard him moaning and making his way to the bathroom.

  When I returned to Gus with beer, he had refastened his clothes and lost the trench coat—it was really too hot outside for that anyway—and done as instructed by finding a chair in my living room upon which to recuperate. He looked me over carefully, as now I was the stark naked, spike-heeled woman handing him a beer, and he asked, “Is this heaven?”

  “You’re a corndog.” I went to my room. Rather, I should say, I sashayed to my room like a trollop, lost the shoes and found a robe, and went back to Gus.

  “Oh, well, that’s nice, too,” he acquiesced, looking a little disappointed at my wardrobe change. I picked up the clothes that had been scattered in the front hall and wondered if I could wear them to work again with a straight face. “What kind of food do you like, Carol My-Last-Name-Is-Frank? Cause I’d like to take you out sometime. You know, as much fun as it is to show up at your house and have you win the naked-contest, I thought…” His facial expression changed suddenly. “Hey, I was going to tell you something.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I did recall that he’d mentioned a discovery, when he’d first called. I snuggled up on my couch and smiled receptively. “What did you find today?”

  “Something very interesting. And since you’re the one who pointed me in this direction, I thought you should know.”

  I begged to know.

  “Tuesday night you asked me if I had investigated many suicides, and whether it seemed like a lot of middle-aged women did themselves in. So when I had a little free time today, I did a records search of the Kansas City coroner’s database for the past five years.”

  My post-coital glow suddenly didn’t seem as warm and glowy.

  “In addition to Adrienne Maxwell, I found five other suicides in the past five years for women in that age group. These were definite suicide rulings, of course, and didn’t include auto accidents or self-inflicted injuries that most likely were not meant to be fatal. Here’s what’s interesting. Of the five, two killed themselves in an almost identical fashion to Adrienne’s method. Both widows. Alone in the house, overdose with a combination of sleeping pills and painkillers, and no suicide note.”

  I couldn’t pinpoint precisely why I felt alarmed. But I asked, as if quite interested, “Were those suicides investigated?”

  “Apparently not in any depth. They weren’t considered suspicious.”

  “Do they seem suspicious to you?”

  “In light of Adrienne’s case, I’m inclined to look at them a little harder.” Gus drank a good portion of the beer I’d brought him, and then said, “I’ve been so god-awful busy this week. I wish I had more computer time. Or a better computer. Anyway, after I ship Doug back to his mom, I’m going to expand the search to the past ten, maybe fifteen years and see if I turn up more of these.”

  “Why, what do you think you have there, Gus? A serial killer?” As soon as I’d asked the question, I wished I’d kept the term to myself.

  “I know, I know,” said Gus, not noticing my discomfort. “Every detective secretly hopes he’ll encounter a serial murderer because it’s a great way to get famous off a book deal. It’s also a great way to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “But that’s kind of silly, isn’t it? How could suicides be the result of a serial killer?”

  The question was a stupid one, and I knew it as soon as I’d said it. Gus had the graciousness to answer me anyway. “I guess it wouldn’t be the first time that someone committed murder and made it look like suicide. If that’s what actually happened, the killer was good, because the coroner and the crime scene investigators never picked up on it.”

  “So you’d really be shaking things up, if you cracked the case of the Suicide Killer.”

  Gus smirked at me patiently.

  “I wasn’t making fun of you.”

  “Naw, I didn’t think you were. Anyway I just thought you might be interested in what I’ve found, since you were the one who brought it up first.”

  “Did I?”

  “You made me think about it, sure. Since we don’t have much information on Adrienne except for the worst witness’s description ever, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to check past files, see if anything similar has ever happened. And you said that not many retired women kill themselves.”

  “No I didn’t. I asked you if they did.”

  “Was that it? Well, they don’t. The coroner’s database shows suicides, in Kansas City, anyway, are mostly committed by young adults, the terminally ill, or depressed elderly men.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.” Of course it made sense. I could hand him a copy of the Surgeon General’s report that confirmed how much sense it made.

  “Carol, honey, don’t look so mortified.” Gus tried to get me to smile, goofing a big grin on his face that I was meant to mimic. “I don’t really think there’s a madman on the loose, talking widows into overdosing on their headache medication. There’s some other explanation for it.”

  “Sure. Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet. But if it’s something that can help me with this Adrienne Maxwell case, it’ll be great. The whole thing’s gone pretty cold, and I’ve been helping on this shooting case this week. Departmentally, I think the Maxwell case is getting pushed to the backburner because it isn’t nearly as topical. You know, gunplay is more newsworthy than an ordinary old suicide.”

  He finished his beer and declined a second, since he would have to drive himself home later. Then he continued, “But the Maxwell case is mine. If I could turn up a result on it, it would look good. I just wanted to let you know that you might have helped me. Especially if it turns out to be something juicy, like a suicide cult.”

  “A suicide c
ult!” I exclaimed, startled because I had thought of this before myself.

  “That’s a joke. I’m joking.” Gus examined my expression and grew worried. “I’m sorry. You don’t think it’s funny. Am I being an ass?”

  I wasn’t accustomed to men who made inferences or had logical trains of thought. Had to remember this was a detective. I liked him an awful lot, and I wasn’t upset that he’d gone digging into something I hadn’t even realized I was suggesting.

  What bothered me was that, if he did a more thorough search of the coroner’s database, he’d find at least a couple of the ladies on my own list, and when he did, he’d try to find out what they had in common. Aside from their age, sex, and manner of death, that is. How long would it take him to discover that they’d all had their estate documents prepared by my boss? And what did that mean, exactly?

  Serial killer, I had joked.

  I could tell him right then. Gus, the strange thing is that Bill Nestor represented these women.

  I almost said it. And then I didn’t. Why not? I was just uneasy, not even frightened or truly suspicious of Bill at that point. As much as I liked Gus Haglund, I had been with Bill Nestor longer so I was obligated to talk to him before I spoke to the police.

  “It’s fine. It’s very interesting,” I assured Gus. “Really. Let me know what happens. You know how much I like detective stories.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Gus had his son Doug for the weekend, and I wasn’t nearly established enough in his life to warrant an introduction. He could hardly bring the boy to me and say, “Doug, this is Carol. I’ve known her for ten days, and we’ve been having lots of sex.” That’s not a cool thing to do to a kid, particularly when he only gets to see his dad every other weekend. That was father-son time, not meet-the-squeeze time. Anyway as much as I enjoyed my temporary all-access pass to Gus Haglund’s body, I was accustomed to being alone and not unhappy about it.

  After Gus departed my house on Friday evening, I finished Nowhere Man and then on Saturday morning I gave up on Season Three of MI-5 after only four episodes. That was quite a disappointment, but I hadn’t liked it nearly as much since Season One anyway. Besides that, I guess half the cast got movie deals and left the program. Most shows can’t survive major cast changes, yet in this case, my disappointment was more about the tone of the program turning gloomy and dull. Ah, well, they can’t all be masterpieces. For Saturday night and Sunday, I had Wire in the Blood Season 2, and that would be enough to round out my weekend. Sunday is an excellent day to watch British mystery series. Something about the atmospheres of a lazy Sunday afternoon and a murder mystery complement each other perfectly.

  Always, in the back of my mind, were the two conversations I’d had with the two most important men in my life. My talk with Bill, in which he’d promised to review my suicide data, with a look on his face that had been forlorn and dreadful. My talk with Gus, in which he’d promised to find out all about Kansas City’s suicidal widows, with a look on his face that had been clever and eager.

  What did it mean? Hell, I kept telling myself, it didn’t have to mean anything.

  I almost called Bill’s cell phone to talk to him about this. I didn’t, though, because I’d been so vehement with him about keeping our off-business hours separate that it didn’t seem right. If I called, it would mean I was really worried about something. If I didn’t call, it surely would mean everything was fine.

  *****

  I took time on Saturday afternoon to continue my chair-painting project. The first chair was orange with apple-green piping, the next would be apple-green with orange piping. Oh sure, it sounds gaudy, and it probably was, but I thought the colors looked like a fruit salad, and I wanted them in my house instead of the same old stained wood crap that I’d been looking at for years. It wasn’t as if I was painting over quality oak. These chairs were cheap factory knockoffs, and I was doing them a favor.

  I felt very industrious and craftsy. I set up a big square of newspaper on my back porch, laid out my brushes, cans of paint, and the hammer and screwdriver I used to open the paint cans. Then I hauled my chair and supplies outside in the sunlight and ran a little scrap of sandpaper quickly over all the chair’s surfaces. God, I hate sanding things. First I can hardly bear to touch sandpaper; it gives me the shuddering willies from my fingers clear into my brain. Second, it’s just stupid. My father would doubtless have plenty to say about my shortcuts on this project, as men in general seem to believe that painting a chair is a project that should take about five years. I’m supposed to strip it, then wash it, then sand it, then sand it with some different grade of sandpaper, then use steel wool, and then perform some other wood-techno chores—like stain, maybe varnish and possibly peel—and then for sure I must sand it some more until I’ve reduced the mass of the chair by 30 percent, and then I can prep the wood or by golly just sand it some more. Fifty-eight months later, I’d be ready to put on the first coat of paint. Men love sanding things. But there weren’t any men here. I guess I was just going to have to paint the frigging chair all by myself and pray that everything turned out all right.

  Against all the carpentry gods’ mandates, the paint was willing to stick to an unprepped chair, and in less than an hour, my dull kitchen chair was a happy apple green. It looked yummy. The weather was clear and mild, so I thought that I would go to the grocery store, and by the time I returned the chair would be dry enough to paint the orange doodads. My kitchen chairs were going to be cool. In the spirit of painting whatever color I wanted, I thought about other things I could paint as I went to shop. My bed stand. My cabinets. My shutters.

  I didn’t live in the most affluent neighborhood. Be fair, Carol. My neighborhood had almost no affluence at all, except for the retired guy down the road who had an RV. I also think my across-the-street neighbors had a trampoline. Is that affluence? To add some perspective, I’ll say that the RV was probably worth more than any house on the block.

  The stupid ex-husband and I moved here when we first married because it was all we could afford—and it continued to be all we could afford because he never kept what one might consider a “job” or made what one might call a “steady paycheck” or bothered to help in earning what one might call “money,” so I was paying for the place all by myself on a not-great secretarial salary. I had been there for almost ten years now. I liked the place quite a bit without the stupid ex-husband in it. I was making a much better salary now, and I could have moved, if I’d really wished to, but I’d fixed the place up and I felt very comfortable there. One woman certainly does not need more than six little rooms, unless she builds cars inside or, I don’t know, conducts exercise classes or holds candle parties. God, don’t get me started on candle parties.

  What was I saying? Oh, yes, about the affluence. We weren’t a gated community, and our population was diverse—retired people and young couples and slightly less young couples with hundreds of badly behaved children that roamed all hours of the day through the yards, doing what, I don’t know. Hunting? Gathering? They looked about as smart as your average chickens, scratching and pecking in the dirt. So many people came and went that we as a neighborhood barely noticed a new face or a different car. There was a different car every week in front of that house where the slutty teenage twins lived.

  Still, someone was being nosy in a philanthropic way because when I returned home from the grocery store, as I pulled into my garage, I saw ZZTop guy from across the street hurrying toward me. I should have known this guy’s name; we’d been neighbors for a decade, and I’m sure I’d been told his name three or four times. It was one of those names in the category of Bob, Rob, Tom, John, Ron, or Don that simply slide out of my mind to be replaced by a much more descriptive name like “ZZTop guy,” thus called because he had a beard worthy of the band and usually wore sunglasses, probably to hide the fact that he was always high.

  I got out of my car to see what he wanted. The last time he came over to speak to me, his son had run the car
up into my yard and torn up my grass. If he hadn’t said anything, I might never have noticed.

  “Just thought I should let you know,” he said, “that someone was looking around your house.”

  “Looking around?” I joined him on my front lawn, and we looked back and forth as if whoever it was might still be there, waiting to be caught.

  “He was out in front for a minute, and then he moved around the side for a while. When he was done, he walked off down the street. You should be careful. He might’ve been looking for unlocked windows or ways he could get inside.”

  “God.” What a thought. “Did he seem to be doing anything besides looking?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Did he have a camera or a notebook or anything? Was he reading the meter? Maybe he was my insurance agent. They assess the property every so often. What did he look like?”

  “Eh, kind of a medium-sized fella. Had on a baseball cap and a big jacket so I couldn’t tell how big around he was.” Back and forth we went for a while, with ZZTop guy giving me a completely unhelpful description that could have described most Caucasian men and a good number of women living in the United States. What emerged was that someone, probably a not particularly tall man wearing jeans and a big dark jacket, and with no features that could be discerned by a stoned ex-hippie, looked at the front and the side of my house. Maybe he was carrying something, or maybe he wasn’t.

  “The FBI is going to have trouble drawing a composite on this one,” I said. For all I knew, some guy out walking had seen a raccoon and watched it around the house, maybe stepping up through my lawn to make sure the little devil wasn’t going to get into my trash. Our neighborhood was like a small-animal wildlife preserve.

  “Might be a good idea to check yer windows and such,” remarked ZZTop guy.