The land of dead flowers: (A serial killer thriller)

by Natasha A. Salnikova

  When Morris turned back to his redhead, she had already returned to her work.

  “Goodbye!” he said loudly.

  Redhead turned to him, waved her hand, and turned back to the computer.

  “I’ll see you in three days,” Morris said to the blonde.

  “Yes,” she said as she passed a white box to a more attractive client. Morris wanted to slam the door going out, but gently closed it. He didn’t need any extra attention. If people paid attention to him, remembered him, would he be able to remain invisible? It was all for the best. Redhead would remember him, she would. She had amazing eyes. Like an awaken ocean.

  He returned to his car in a fine mood and tore off his mustache right after he got inside, grimacing from the sharp, but momentary pain. He glanced in the mirror to check for traces of glue, ran his finger over his thin lips. This mustache bothered him when he talked.

  On the way home, he smiled. In three days, he would pick up his business cards. If he failed, they would try to reach him at the phone number he had left. Another three, four days to settle things down and he would be ready.

  The thought aroused him. It was difficult to wait now, but he could do it. He could do anything.

  CHAPTER 36

  Max’s hands shook while he was making coffee. He couldn’t wait to get back to the computer. Thoughts about Angelica occupied his mind. His dreams became chaotic; he couldn’t catch or explain strange images, shadows, feelings. No people with familiar faces or consecutive actions. He forgot about them almost immediately after awakening. His dreams didn’t affect him anymore and he didn’t depend on them, but his connection to Angelica didn’t break because of it—it became stronger. She settled in his head and she wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Max poured milk in his coffee and stood by the window, waiting for his computer to load. Even at this time of the day, Manhattan was alive. Six o’clock, not as many people as during the day, but still enough to make his eyes dart. He could see clothes, actions, and feel the energy. Anna still slept, but he couldn’t stay in bed. He had to write. The events had gotten closer to the prom. Angelica and her mother went dress shopping. Some of her friends went to the tailor, and she had to decide whether to buy or order.

  If somebody had told Max a month ago that he would write something like this, he would have laughed.

  Drinking his coffee, Max looked at the people running their businesses, then sat at the table and put the cup near him. He pulled up the file that was over five hundred pages long and scrolled down to the end.

  He started to write and noticed his wife coming in and out through the fog. Everything around him was drowned in the fog. He thought his wife had told him something, but he couldn’t make out the words. They came from far away. He stood up to fill another cup of coffee at some point, went to the bathroom then checked the living room before returning to the kitchen.

  “Ann?” Silence. “Did you leave?”

  He made sure that his wife was gone, and then returned to the computer. He didn’t know how long he had been working, when the phone rang. Max didn’t want to answer at first, didn’t want to go to a different room for his cell phone, but then he realized the letters went out of focus, his fingers wouldn’t unfold, and he decided to take a break.

  Stretching, he went to the living room, but the phone had stopped ringing. Max checked to see who it was and called back right away. It was his best friend, Kelvin, and Max hadn’t talked to him in a while. It was a good chance to tell him about his new project. About the project of his life.

  Max settled comfortably on the couch, and clenched and unclenched the fingers of his right hand while waiting for his friend to answer.

  “I was leaving you a message!” Kelvin said.

  “I’ll listen to it,” Max answered. “How are you?”

  “Fine, fine. I haven’t heard from you in ages. Buried in your new book?”

  “You could say that. Up to my ears.”

  “Great. I’m back to work from my little vacation. My daughter—”

  “Kelvin, I have to tell you about my book.”

  There was a short pause.

  “Okay … Go ahead. You’ve never talked about your books before we had our gift copies.”

  “Now I want to talk only about this book.” Max didn’t lie. Nothing in his life was more important than this. What would Kelvin tell him? About a plane’s schedule? About his daughter starting to use the potty? All of this was so insignificant compared to what he was doing. He talked to the universe. It opened him to its mysteries. That was important. That had meaning!

  “Yes, Anna told my wife that you are deep into your new book,” Kelvin said quietly.

  “Why did she talk with your wife about my new book?” Max became angry. He felt like somebody had taken something important from him without asking and only now let him know about it.

  “Well …” Kelvin coughed and Max waited for an explanation. He didn’t lounge anymore. He moved to the edge of the chair and bent down, staring at his bare feet. “They always talk about us. They’re women. They love to babble.”

  It made Max even angrier. Babble. What a plebeian word. He grabbed on to this thought and frowned. It scratched at his mind unpleasantly. He had never thought like this, especially about his friends.

  “Listen, maybe you want to take a break. Come over here. I’m leaving work early today. We can have some beer, talk about your book. I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  Max stood and went to the kitchen. He sat in front of his laptop and looked at the black screen. He didn’t see the text, but he could feel it. She and Alex would kiss on their prom night for the first time.

  “What?”

  Max was startled. He forgot about the phone by his ear.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You said she and Alex would kiss.”

  “I said that?”

  “I can’t read thoughts.” Kelvin chuckled. His chuckle sounded uneasy. He forgot about it after pressing on the space key, and the monitor brightened, revealing the document. Revealing the life.

  “Yes, it’s from the book.”

  “Are you writing romance? Teenagers?”

  Max didn’t want to talk about the book anymore. He didn’t want to talk at all. To Kelvin or to anyone else.

  “Yeah, something like that,” he said as he grabbed the empty cup and went to make more coffee. He remembered that he hadn’t had breakfast today and decided to make a sandwich or maybe eat some cookies. Cookies had to do. It was faster.

  “Maximilian, come over. Let’s talk about books, life, dreams.”

  “Sorry, Kelvin, but I’ve got to work.” Max put the phone on speaker and put it on the table, while pouring fresh coffee into his cup and taking out a bag of vanilla cookies. The ones Wilma made were gone.

  “You work nonstop. It’s not healthy, dude.”

  “On the contrary. I’ve never felt as much energy as I do now.” Max tore the bag and brought it to the table along with his coffee.

  “That’s awesome. Do you still have dreams about that girl? Do you write about her?”

  Max pressed his lips, and took a cookie out of the bag, spreading crumbs over the table. Some fell on his keyboard and he blew them off.

  “Did Anna ask you to talk to me?” he said.

  “No! We talk at least twice a week on the phone with you. I mean, we used to.”

  “Kelvin.”

  His friend sighed. “Listen, Anna worries about you, okay? She’s a woman, yes. She can be overdramatic, but I don’t ever remember her being so worried. She means well, you know.”

  “So you think I’m crazy?” Max asked, swirling a spoon in his coffee cup.

  “Great! No one thinks you’re crazy. Anna thinks you work too much and you need some rest. That’s all.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Absolutely,” Kelvin muttered. “So, you’re absolutely telling me to get off your case. Is that right?”

  “I need to go.” The spoon hi
t the side of the cup.

  “Max, come on! Really? Your woman is going crazy. She thinks you have cancer or something, and you’re just making it worse.”

  “Bye, Kelvin.”

  Max punched the off button and threw the phone on the floor. He kept the spoon in the cup and slung the cup down alongside the phone by accident. It shattered. Coffee spilled all over the floor, white cabinets, and Max’s feet. He gazed at it, and then looked at his computer. He stepped over the glass fragments, pulled out another cup, made more coffee, and returned to the table. Then he picked up the phone, turned it off, and sat down with confidence that no one would interrupt him.

  CHAPTER 37

  It took Anna less than thirty minutes to design cards for Smith. She could have done it faster, but she experimented with fonts and text arrangement so it wouldn’t look like something made in a hurry. People designed business cards themselves now, so they had to offer something different, professional. Most clients who came to her company wanted something special with photos or graphics, but here everything was simple. Maybe some people wanted to show off and others just wanted to pass on their contact information. Today, they had printed them out and she checked the product before packing it.

  Anna read the name one more time. Too common, nothing special, but she was sure she’d seen that guy. Why didn’t she have Max’s photographic memory? He remembered faces easily and could usually tell from where he remembered a person, but she could meet her ex-classmate and never recall who it actually was. She didn’t go to school with him, he was much older, but his image was too distinct in her mind, even two days after he’d come to the office.

  “What are we thinking about?”

  Anna was startled and looked at Katy’s hand on her shoulder. This girl didn’t have any problems in life, always happy, never lost in thoughts.

  “Nothing, really.” Anna stretched her arms up and Katy tickled her stomach. “Hey, you.”

  “Oldie, you have the look of a limp French fry.”

  “Oldie, French fry, really? I’ll have to talk to your dad.”

  Katy looked serious for a second, thinking over the threat. The company belonged to her father and they often joked about it. Then she realized that Anna was joking and laughed, running her hand through her light hair.

  “How’s your star’s book? Tell him I have nothing to read.”

  Anna stopped smiling, though she didn’t want to show her real mood. She couldn’t hold her smile no matter how hard she tried.

  “What?” Katy’s eyes widened. She moved closer to Anna, and whispered, “His publisher dropped him?”

  “What? Publisher? Why? No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing.” Anna stared at her computer, at another business card that was ordered through the Internet. She thought about going to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee to get rid of Katy. She didn’t want to discuss anything with her, especially not her husband.

  “Anna, come on,” Katy pushed. She didn’t understand and refused to understand that somebody didn’t feel like talking to her. She bent to Anna and tried to look into her eyes. “I see you acting strange lately.”

  “Nice. Now I’m acting strange.” Anna closed the file with obvious irritation and turned to Katy, hoping she would understand the conversation wasn’t going to start. It didn’t work. However, her wide eyes, friendly and sympathetic, almost made Anna cry. She took a deep breath, amazed by her own reaction. She probably had more stress than she had thought. She almost cried on the shoulder of a girl who was ten years her junior. Maybe Kelvin talked to Max and knocked some sense into him. This story had turned their lives into some surreal theater with bad decorations and actors.

  Anna was convinced now that something was wrong with Max. Maybe he wasn’t crazy, but something had changed in his head. If she believed his stories about dreams, houses and a girl—now she doubted them. She thought her husband made it up in an attempt to get out of the niche he was in, get rid of his image. He didn’t just want to experiment with a new genre, but also his approach to writing. He wanted to break his routine, start from scratch. Even if it seemed silly. This whirlpool drew him in, separating him from everything he was connected to. Separating him from her.

  “Hello?”

  Anna blinked and looked at Katy. Her expression still had the same openness and readiness to take on any problems.

  “I don’t know,” Anna said unwillingly, wondering whether she should stand and leave or talk. Who was Katy to her? No one. Vent and keep working without these gloomy thoughts. “Max is working on a new book and he’s so deep into it that he doesn’t notice anything around him. He doesn’t notice me.”

  “So what?” Katy asked, and spread her arms. “Of course he doesn’t. He writes! When I write my updates on Facebook, I don’t see or hear anything.”

  I’ve noticed that, Anna thought.

  “This is the first time Max has been like this,” she said. “He could write anywhere with a bunch of people dancing the can-can around him and music playing. He could dance and sing along with them without losing the plotline.”

  “Really?” Katy was bug-eyed.

  “Not exactly like that, but I could interrupt him, for example, and he would go back to his book as if nothing happened.”

  “What about now?”

  “Now.” Anna stood and went to the corner of the office, where they had a couch, a chair, and a glass coffee table with what seemed to be permanent fingerprints and drink stains, where they always had cookies and a coffee machine. Anna checked the coffeepot; it was still warm.

  “Katy, can I have a cup?” Katy’s father yelled from the open door of his office, and Katy rolled her eyes. Their office was small for economical reasons, but their boss still had his space, with big glass windows and a door that was always open. Except when he scolded someone.

  “Sure, Mr. Eldon,” Katy yelled back.

  “I need a cappuccino,” one of the employees said, but no one answered him and Anna heard the slamming of a door. Their boss didn’t care about breaks as long as the job was done.

  “So? Tell me.” Katy sat beside Anna on the couch.

  “He’s like a different person. All other life has ceased to exist for him. Just the book.”

  “What about sex? Do you have sex?” Katy whispered and looked around.

  Anna sighed. “I think you’re right. I’m exaggerating. Nothing serious, really.” She took up three clean cups from the shelf and filled them with coffee. There wasn’t enough for three full, so she had only half a cup for herself. “You’re right. He’s a creative person like all of us. We have an intuitive connection to reality. We are all a little off.”

  Katy giggled. “I work with you and you’re okay. You haven’t killed anyone. He’ll finish his book and come back. He’ll have another bestseller and stuff.”

  “Yeah.”

  Anna sat on the couch and watched Katy taking coffee to her dad’s office. Another bestseller and stuff. Nice girl. Naïve, not too bright, but kind. Unfortunately, they could talk about fashion, celebrities, or the latest popular places, nothing else. She wouldn’t understand what it was like to live with a ghost. No, not that. To be a ghost. This morning Max didn’t see her at all, as if she didn’t exist. She didn’t try to be quiet. She stepped loudly in her high heels, slammed the doors, and rustled the cereal wrapping. No reaction.

  She wanted to believe that he would be back to his old self after finishing this book. If this book was going to be finished. Anna wasn’t sure. She thought that something alien had invaded their relationship, and it wasn’t the book. The book was corollary, not a reason. The reason went much deeper. If he wasn’t cheating on her, then what? Was he tired of her?

  Anna heard her cell phone ringing in her bag, put her cup on the table, and walked to get it.

  “Hi, Kelvin!” she said, trying to sound as happy as she could.

  “Listen, Anna, you were right,” he said. He was an optimist, always a good weath
er guy. “Something’s off. I mean, not off. I don’t know. I’ve known Max for years and he’s never talked to me the way he did today. You’re right. He’s a different person.”

  Anna wanted to sit back on the couch, but Katy was there already, so she walked out of the office and closed the door. Fortunately, the hall was empty.

  “You think it’s because of the book?” Anna said.

  “If it was his first or second book, I would understand. Anna, I don’t know. If he’s not sick, as you said, I just don’t know.”

  “Hi!”

  Anna turned to the voice. Smith or Johnson or whatever his name was had returned to get his business cards. Strange guy. Mustache that looked fake, penetrating eyes under thick glasses. Anna nodded.

  “Kelvin, I’ll call you back,” she said, and turned the phone off after he said goodbye. “Your order is ready.” She opened the door for the man and followed him into the office.

  CHAPTER 38

  By evening time Max was so tired he couldn’t see the monitor. His back ached, his fingers turned into crooks. Besides, he was stuck again. Angelica refused to tell him what happened after the prom. He felt something had happened, something extreme, but he thought she was tired too. Then he turned the computer off, took a cold shower, and decided to make a phone call before his wife came home. The book was approaching its finale; he knew that. He had few events until the end. His desire to work also lost its heat, but for the second day in a row, he couldn’t get rid of the thought. Somebody killed Angelica, somebody took the life of this young, innocent girl, and he was still free. He was free because the police hadn’t found the killer, and Wilma thought that her daughter was alive. But how? How could she disappear without anyone noticing? In a small town, on a small street. It must be somebody she knew, but the police couldn’t find any evidence of the crime.