Hello Kitty Must Die

by Angela S. Choi

CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  KATIE LAY IN A SHINY COFFIN, looking like an anorexic geisha in a purple Zac Posen dress.

  She would have loved the way she looked. Of that, I was certain. The mortician did a fantastic job with her pasty makeup. Saint Peter would not be able to chastize her for being too dark or too fat when she arrived at the Pearly Gates. If she was any whiter or thinner, he would be welcoming a skeleton in a kabuki mask.

  Aunt Lydia spared us the horrors of a customary Chinese burial so she could openly mourn her daughter. God bless the woman. I would not have to burn my clothes.

  But the manner of Katie’s death ruined all the good energies of her All-American funeral for me. Instead of the usual grief and satisfaction, anger hung in the heavily-scented air of the funeral home. Hatred and resentment oozed from the pores of Katie and Peter’s families.

  “Don’t look at them,” my father whispered.

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t talk to them.”

  “They’re not even looking at us, Dad.”

  “So don’t look at them.”

  “I’m not. I’m looking at my shoes.”

  “Go sit next to Aunt Lydia while I talk with your uncle.”

  I didn’t want to sit next to Aunt Lydia, who was crying and seething with bad energy, but I did so anyway.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Aunt Lydia.”

  “Thank you, Fiona. You are such a good girl.”

  Uh huh. Of course I am.

  So I sat there next to my aunt in front of Katie’s coffin until a fight broke out in the waiting room next door. Aunt Lydia sprang to her feet and joined in.

  “Your son killed my daughter!”

  “No, he didn’t. It was an accident.”

  “It was no accident! He pushed her!”

  “She was clumsy. She tripped over her own feet. It’s not his fault.”

  “Of course it’s his fault!”

  “She was a terrible wife!”

  “What? She was wonderful to him. And he murdered her!”

  “If she was so great, they wouldn’t have fought, and she’d still be alive!”

  I got up and sauntered into the waiting room for a peek. My uncle thrashed his arms at someone cowering in a corner. My father held him back. A woman shielded the other man from my uncle.

  “Fiona, go back in the other room.”

  Hai, Daddy.

  But I didn’t.

  I wandered off to explore the other rooms of the funeral home, leaving the fight behind.

  “Excuse me, where is the ladies’ room?” I asked a young woman in the front office.

  “That way, to your right.”

  I love checking out the restrooms at restaurants, hotels, funeral homes. Restrooms tell you a lot about a place and the people who work there. Whether they value cleanliness, aesthetics, utility, atmosphere, décor, quality. Because restrooms aren’t the first things patrons see. They’re the places where you can skimp or neglect. And most places do.

  It’s like people who dress up to the nines but go around in dirty underwear or with untrimmed toenails. No one can see those things. So they don’t care.

  The funeral home’s bathroom smelled like lemons. Plain, but clean and cheery with its baby yellow tiles. A large bouquet of daisies in a clear glass vase sat on a whitewashed wooden stand. Even the hand soap had a citrus scent. The stalls boasted clean walls, toilets which had a powerful flush, and plenty of toilet seat covers and quilted toilet paper. The floors were free of paper towels.

  We are a no-nonsense, practical, cheery, and sanitary funeral home. Clean like lemons. That’s what the bathroom said.

  Shouting voices assaulted me as I stepped out of the peaceful bathroom. My uncle and Peter’s parents were still fighting. Their voices carried down the carpeted hallway.

  “I hope your son rots in jail!”

  “I hope your daughter rots in hell!”

  So I kept exploring.

  At the end of the hall, a large sign read “RESTRICTED.” Morticians prepared the dead for their big day beyond that point. It would be rude to walk in on the dead in their indecent state while they were getting a manicure or haircut.

  I wondered if the morticians gave their clients pedicures. After all, no one would ever know.

  Urns. A whole table full of them stood in a room on my right. Marble, silver, gold, porcelain. You name it. Different sizes, different shapes with little tags on them.

  SYLVIA LYNN BRETON

  NORMAN JERROLD KRAMER

  BURT ALAN SMITH

  I switched all the name tags around. Ashes to ashes. It’s all the same. Might as well send them all on a final adventure. Never too late to have some fun.

  Farewell, Sylvia.

  Rest in peace, Norman.

  Godspeed, Burt.

  “You are not supposed to be in here.”

  The funeral director, a middle-aged Chinese man wearing a black suit and gray tie, stood at the entrance of the room.

  “Oh, sorry, I got lost. I’m waiting for my cousin’s service to begin.”

  “This way, miss.”

  Katie’s funeral service put everyone in a foul mood. We sat on one side of the room. Peter’s family sat on the other. My delicate porous psyche suffered from the terrible mounting tension. Not even the delicious pecan pie at the wake could dispel the tidal wave of bad energy.

  Still, I helped myself to two slices. And talked to the two homicide detectives who attended Katie’s funeral. I failed to realize their presence until one of them approached me, interrupting my second slice of pie.

  “Were you a friend of Katie’s?”

  “Cousin.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m Detective Dubler. I’m looking into your cousin’s death. That guy over there is my partner.”

  Detective Dubler. Big, tall, white guy. Ex-military build. Moustache. Middle-aged. Definitely not green and not too jaded to get after the truth.

  “You mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Sure. Why not? I’m Fiona.”

  “Fiona, were you close to your cousin?”

  “Not really. I live in San Francisco. I only visited her a couple of times. L.A. is not my kind of town.”

  “I understand. Did you know her husband, Peter?”

  “About as well as I knew my cousin.”

  “Did they get along?”

  “I don’t know really.”

  “So you never heard about any issues that they might have had?”

  “Detective, every couple has issues. But no one’s died until now.”

  “Did Peter ever lose his temper or become violent?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But then again, I wasn’t married to him. He had to be nice and polite to me.”

  Detective Dubler chuckled and then quickly recomposed himself. He was at the wake of a possible murder victim, after all.

  “Fiona, you don’t seem very upset that your cousin is dead.”

  “Like I said, we weren’t very close. And she wasn’t that nice to me the few times I visited her.”

  “No? Now why is that?”

  “Just a tad bit snooty. NorCal girl versus SoCal girl kind of thing.”

  “Was she ever snooty with Peter?”

  “Dunno. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “What about your aunt? Did she like Peter?”

  “She liked him enough to let him marry Katie, but beyond that, I don’t know. Ask her.”

  “Okay, thank you, Fiona. And again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “You really don’t think this was an accident, do you, Detective?”

  “I don’t know about that. I do know that they were arguing right before Katie died.”

  Right.

  And because most of the time, it’s not an accident. Just like Don Koo, Nicole Brown Simpson, Laci Peterson. I couldn’t blame Detective Dubler for not thinking otherwise.

  “One more thing, Fiona. Did Katie ever talk about whether she wanted chi
ldren?”

  “Not to me.”

  Short and sweet. A good rule of thumb for speaking with the police. Never go into a narrative or tell them how you hated your cousin for calling you dark and fat. Or how she had been asking for it, just like Don had been asking for it. They’ll think you had something to do with the death. Or worse yet, they might think you’re a valuable witness. Then you’re really screwed.

  “POLICE ARE NOTHING BUT trouble, unless you need them,” Sean said when I returned from my Katie’s funeral. “Avoid until needed.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “At least your trip wasn’t boring, Fi.”

  “Nope, between the fight and the police, it proved quite exciting.”

  “Good.”

  “What have you been up to, Sean?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Actually he had been very busy.

  Sean had become deeply addicted to his nightly work. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, whenever I called in the evenings for dinner or drinks, I only got his voicemail. Then a few hours later, he would invite me sailing despite the freezing weather. Every time.

  He was in the groove now and he didn’t want anything to disrupt the rhythm of his deadly dance. So I became a liability. He stopped taking me with me on his nightly drives. “Having to take you home ruins the mood, Fi.”

  Soon the whispers began. As more and more hookers disappeared off the streets, people started talking. It was as if the City suddenly realized that some of its inhabitants had evaporated into thin air. It felt lighter, roomier, cleaner. And the change wasn’t due to any efforts by the mayor.

  The credit lay elsewhere.

  Rumors began spreading about a serial killer on the loose in the Bay Area. Like the Zodiac Killer.

  The City waited for cryptic notes to be sent to the San Francisco Chronicle or The Examiner. The media waited for mysterious packages to be mailed to NBC, ABC, CBS. Even to FOX. The police prepared for taunting phone calls and puzzle boxes.

  But nothing came.

  Everyone continued to wait. And the prostitutes continued to disappear off the streets.

  The police got tired of prostitutes and pimps streaming into the stations reporting missing colleagues, pretending that the missing woman was their friend, or a friend of a friend. After all, no pimp was going to walk up to the desk sergeant and say, “Hey, man, my ho didn’t show up on her corner,” or, “Hey, I’m missing a ho.” But still, in the end, their visits generated too many reports that needed to be filed. Too much paperwork. So they doubled the number of patrol cars in the Tenderloin, bringing the number up to two.

  “Maybe the weather got too cold for them and they went to L.A.”

  “Those mini skirts sure aren’t too warm.”

  “Chapped lips are a bitch. Upstairs and downstairs.”

  So I imagined the one-liners being exchanged in the police cruisers.

  As word spread, Sean stayed home more often. The risk of exposure forced him to take a break. So instead he invited me over for dinner and drinks at his place, but his attention drifted elsewhere.

  No feather boa. No light-hearted banter. No fun.

  “Go beat the baby if I’m boring you, Fi.”

  Even the big punching bag baby hung still and unmolested while storms brewed inside of Sean.

  He paced back and forth in front of the television, drink in hand. I sat on the couch, watching him. Like a caged animal slowly going crazy from boredom, he started biting his lower lip and rubbing his chin. He tried to wear a smooth patch on the hardwood floor. Until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Fi, go home. I need to get to work.”

  So I went home.

  Never get between a man and his work. People culture.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  PETER’S CASE NEVER MADE it to trial. Out on bail, he hung himself in the bathroom one night, after his parents had gone to bed. They found his body the next morning.

  “We’re not going to his funeral,” declared my father. “Aunt Lydia is not going. So we don’t have to.”

  “I’m not surprised, Dad. He killed Katie.”

  The police took Peter’s suicide as a confession of guilt. Peter’s parents took it as a proclamation of his innocence—an act of desperation to escape the endless accusations. Unfortunately, if that had been his true motivation, the plan backfired. Most people took his death the same way the police did.

  Peter should have left a note. But he didn’t.

  “He just couldn’t face the jail time, Fi,” Sean told me.

  “I don’t blame him. Not a fun place to go.”

  “Nope. No more Armani or bellinis.”

  “No.”

  “And all the butt sex you never wanted. Think of all the action Petey missed out on.”

  The murder-suicide reinforced my father’s decision to stop pressuring me about marriage. Thanks, Peter.

  I HOPED PETER’S SUICIDE would persuade Sean to give up his night job. It didn’t. I wondered what he would do if he ever got caught.

  “If you were Peter, would you have killed yourself?” I asked. “Never.”

  Sean took a swig of his beer, tucked his arm behind his head, and continued staring at the television. We were watching South Park episodes on DVD and snacking on nachos and beer. It was still early in the evening.

  “You would have gone to trial, Sean?”

  “And gotten off.”

  “It didn’t work for Bundy or Unterweger, you know.”

  “Losers.”

  No, they weren’t. They were among the elite of psychopathic serial killers. And their charm still failed them at trial.

  Sean’s arrogance made me uneasy. I wanted to discourage him from ramping up his nightly activities, but I knew it would be useless. He was on a roll. He knew it. I knew it. Even though we both knew it couldn’t last forever.

  “Okay, ten o’clock, Fi. Home you go.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m a big boy, Fi. None of your business.”

  At least Sean told me nicely. Every time I asked my grandmother a question that I shouldn’t have, she said, “And how many pubic hairs do you have down there?” It was her way of saying “none of your business.” God bless her.

  Every evening, Sean and I met up for drinks or dinner and shot the breeze. Every night, he sent me home. I told myself it was because he was looking out for me. That if anything should go wrong, I would not end up in prison for the rest of my life as his accomplice before or after the fact.

  But I knew better.

  Sean considered himself several leagues above me now. I became the annoying little sister tagging along on her big brother’s important adult business. He didn’t need me to help him pick out his girls anymore. He wanted to do it himself.

  So I spent my nights at home.

  Or more often at the office, late into the night, plodding through my financing agreements and merger contracts with only a pixilated portrait of the Blood Countess for company.

  Eventually, I stopped hearing from Sean altogether. No calls, no emails, no text messages. No bar hopping, no drinks and nachos, no sailing trips. No Sean.

  All the modern technology in the world could not bridge the growing gap between Sean and me. He had moved on and left me behind. Like the friends you outgrow when you go onto something bigger and better.

  It’s all part of life, unless of course, you’re the friend left behind. Then it just plain sucks.

  I found myself wishing for Sean to slip up.

  And then he did.

  ALL IT TAKES IS ONE survivor. The one who gets away. And runs off to the police with your description and a story about what you tried to do to them. Like what happened with Dahmer.

  Dahmer lucked out with his first escapee. The oh-so-helpful cops who lived to serve and protect actually delivered the poor guy back to Dahmer, who could have gone on happily killing and eating boys and men if his last would-be victim hadn’t escaped. The g
uy went straight to the cops about his misadventure, and next thing Dahmer knew, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, a man named Scarver, was bashing his skull in with a weight bar. Scarver said he was doing “the work of God.”

  Aren’t we all.

  My mother called me one night while I was at the office. “Fiona, come home early.”

  “I can’t. I have lots of work, Mom.”

  “Have you seen the news?”

  “You know I hate the news.”

  “There’s a serial killer loose in the city. Lots of young women have been disappearing.”

  “Really?”

  “Come home early. Can’t you do your work at home?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then come home. And read the news. They put up a picture of him in the news.”

  “A picture?”

  I logged onto the Internet faster than ever before. Although I had been wishing for Sean to be exposed, I felt nauseous, hoping that the picture wasn’t of him.

  But it was. Sort of.

  SFGate.com showed a sketch of the man who allegedly tried to kidnap and kill a young woman. The sketch looked like a bad cross between Edward Norton and Orlando Bloom, bearing only a slight resemblance to Sean.

  Maybe that’s what Sean looked like if you had enough roofies and alcohol in you. I wouldn’t know. The only part of the sketch that had him dead on was a cold, slightly crooked sneer. I had seen that look too many times over the years, dating all the way back to the day he set Stephanie’s head on fire.

  The article read:

  Attempted Kidnapping of Young San Francisco Woman: A young woman narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt last night in the San Francisco Tenderloin District while walking home after drinking at a local bar with friends. A man tried to pull the young woman into his car while she stood at the corner waiting for the light. Police are distributing this sketch of the suspect who is believed to be a Caucasian male between the ages of twenty-five and forty...

  Like I said, it’s always a white guy between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Unless it’s some random drive-by shooting in Oakland.

  The article continued with a discussion of how young women need to be more careful and aware of their surroundings while walking around at night, how police are investigating the incident, how to contact the police if anyone should recognize the man in the sketch.