by Linda Barlow
The guard oughta be fired.
The necessity to make it look like a convincing accident was what had made Morrow decide on her building. The trouble with real accidents was that other people were frequently involved. In car accidents, for instance, either someone else besides the Target was in the car, or you took the risk of injuring someone in another car (or a pedestrian, of course). Also, car accidents were unpredictable. All too frequently the Target didn’t die. Especially with all these new cars equipped with air bags—modern technology was putting a crimp in the car accident business for professional assassins.
In certain parts of the country you could force the Target off the road and over a cliff, which virtually assured the desired outcome, but that didn’t work in New York City.
What the city did have in abundance were high buildings. Still, tossing somebody out of one without making it obvious that they’d been pushed wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to accomplish.
Household accidents were Morrow’s particular favorite. They were common and believable. And since they happened indoors, when the Target was alone, they were less risky and unlikely to go wrong.
They also allowed for personal contact. And for this case especially, personal contact was an intriguing possibility. The Target was a lovely woman. The more he stalked her, the more attached to her he had grown.
April Harrington was going to die in a household accident. In her kitchen perhaps. Or her bathroom. People were oh-so-vulnerable when they bathed.
Her bathroom. Yes. She would leave the world as naked as she had entered it.
As he gave a quick check to his equipment—gun, surgical gloves, nylon rope, and a few other items, Gerald Morrow savored the thought.
“What are you doing?”
The voice was like the crack of a whip, and Kate leapt away from her grandfather’s bookshelves.
He snapped on the overhead lights, illuminating her in her nightgown, her feet bare, holding a volume that she’d just removed from a high shelf in the library. It was one of Rina’s books, and she’d been checking it, and others, in hopes of finding a computer diskette tucked between the pages.
Kate was spending the night at her grandfather’s. Her plan to search his penthouse apartment for the diskette last weekend hadn’t worked out; he’d been indisposed and unable to see her. But tonight she’d come for dinner and together she and Granddad had played Scrabble (she’d beaten him, as usual), and then she’d yawned and said she was so tired and could she please sleep here instead of going home?
“I thought you were an intruder,” her grandfather snapped. “I was just about to summon the police.”
“I’m really sorry,” she said, closing the book. “I was trying to be extra quiet. I didn’t think you’d wake up.”
“Why are you in here? What are you looking for? Don’t you have better manners than to go poking around in people’s personal things?”
He sounded really angry. Looked it, too. He got angry sometimes, she knew. But she didn’t think he’d ever been angry at her before.
“I was just—” She hesitated, yelling inwardly at herself for not planning for this eventuality. “I couldn’t sleep. I needed something to read.”
“I thought you were extremely tired, which was why you asked to stay here in the first place.”
“I was. I fell asleep and all, but then I, like, had a bad dream and woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. It was a really nasty dream. A nightmare. I was scared and I kept tossing and turning and finally I got up and came downstairs.” Kate could hear herself speaking too fast and she wondered if he was buying it. Granddad was usually so—so nice. He always smiled, gave her hugs, listened to her, encouraged her. But now—
He came across the room toward her, and Kate tried her best to look innocent. Maybe she should just tell him what she was really looking for? But April had ordered her not to tell anybody. For that matter, April had ordered her not to look, but to leave that to the proper authorities.
Granddad reached out and took the book away from her. Quickly, he flipped through it. “This is one of your grandmother’s books. Its subject is the treatment of cancer.” He looked up, his blue eyes nailed her like lasers. “I doubt that this would have made pleasant bedtime reading for you. Why were you examining it?”
Oh, Jeez, she thought. He wasn’t buying it. “I wanted to read something of hers. Something that she wrote, even if it wasn’t very interesting. I—I miss her.” She tried to make her bottom lip tremble and realized that it was trembling already. His unexpected arrival had startled her, and she was beginning to wish she’d never left her bed.
“Kate, I expect you always to tell me the truth. It would wound me deeply to think you were lying.”
“I am telling you the truth!” she cried. “I loved Gran! Somebody murdered her and I want to know who. So does April. Somebody killed her mother and my grandmother and we both want to solve the crime!”
Granddad sighed deeply. His expression changed and his anger seemed to dissipate. He shook his head once, back and forth, then he drew her into his arms and hugged her. “We all want to solve the crime,” he said gently. “But you are only twelve years old, little one. Solving murders is something you must be content to trust to the police.”
“That’s what April says, too,” Kate admitted.
“That is very sensible of her,” he said. “Now come. I will take you upstairs and read you a real bedtime story. A French fairy tale, just like the ones my mother used to read to me when I was a child.”
But I’m not a child, Kate thought rebelliously. She didn’t say it aloud, though. She figured she was in enough trouble already for one evening.
“Thanks, Grandfather,” she said.
April slipped off her robe and stepped into her bath. She was looking forward to luxuriating in a tub of warm fragrant bubbles. Closing her eyes, she sank into the hot water, feeling her body slowly relax.
She thought, fondly, about Rob. He’d left about an hour ago. Too early, as always. She would have loved to sleep in with him some morning. But he was a slave to his work… to his frustrating murder investigation.
Things were getting better between them all the while. At first she had thought that he was the sort of man who withdrew emotionally after lovemaking. The first night they’d been together he had fallen asleep afterwards, and made only a halfhearted protest when she’d risen early the next morning to leave. And subsequently, for several nights, despite their easy camaraderie and the passionate abandon of the sex, he had remained a little tentative with her.
But last night something had changed. He had loosened up… well, perhaps they both had. At one point, she had looked up into his face as he’d leaned over her, playing idly with her hair, and whispered, “I could get used to this,” she’d said.
“You’re not the only one,” he’d returned with a smile.
The whole thing had been awkward for him, she was sure. It was against his personal rules to get mixed up with one of the suspects in a murder investigation—if indeed she still was a suspect from his point of view.
Besides, he obviously still had a lot of unresolved feelings about the death of his wife. But last night, neither of these considerations had seemed the least bit important.
As for her own feelings, she liked him more each time she saw him. She respected his thoroughness and his intelligence. And she loved his body. The sexy things he whispered in her ear when they made love aroused her to a fever of excitement that was stronger than anything she could ever remember. She could almost imagine falling in love…
Whoa, she thought. Better not get carried away.
She reminded herself that Rob had made it very clear on their first night together that for him this was an adventure, not a serious involvement.
She had better slow down a little. And she had better guard her heart.
He would give her five more minutes, Morrow decided. By then she would be totally relaxed. The water would still be w
arm and she would be most comfortable. After a few more minutes it would be cooling off. She would notice that and no longer feel quite so much at ease.
He wanted her at ease. Death should be a time of serenity and peace. For so many people the last few moments of life were harsh and painful, but she deserved better. She deserved to slide as effortlessly out of life as she had slid out of her clothes.
In some ways, he would have preferred to simply put a bullet in the back of her neck. She wouldn’t know it was coming, wouldn’t be afraid, wouldn’t feel a thing. Sadly, though, because of the client’s demands, her death would not be that peaceful—for either of them.
Getting into her place had been ridiculously easy. In fact, this whole thing had been rather dull so far. No challenge to it at all.
Her lover had left on schedule. Morrow had lurked in the utility room, which gave him both a clear view of her apartment entrance and quick access to the stairs. The new rosebud he’d ordered delivered had come at precisely 9:00 A.M., and he’d watched as April had gone downstairs in response to the call from the mail room. As soon as she was in the elevator, he’d let himself into the apartment and concealed himself in the closet in her spare room/office, usually the door least likely to be opened.
He’d been prepared to wait as long as necessary. Or to seize any unexpected opportunity that might arise. Sooner or later she would either use the kitchen or take a bath or a shower, and he’d preferred to wait for one or the other. If she’d tried instead to leave, he would have resorted to a quicker—if riskier—method.
One way or another, April Harrington was going to die.
She had chosen the bath.
He waited, watching her through a crack in the bathroom door. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful. Slowly, he pushed open the bathroom door.
He had the nylon rope in his hands.
“April,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Hmm?” She almost seemed to be dreaming. Lazily she opened her eyes. Morrow watched the confusion, then the fear come into them. Those blue eyes widened as she jerked herself upright, and he thought, oh, yes, she is exquisite.
She cried out something like “who are you?” so he showed her the gun. Then he watched her face as she realized who he must be, and why he had come.
In the personal cases, this was always the moment of truth: knowing they were going to die, how did they confront it? He had seen every possible reaction from fear to denial to crazy resistance to devil-may-care courage. One man had flipped him the bird just before having his brains blown out. Another had smiled and thanked him. “You’re doing me a favor, friend,” he’d said.
April Harrington clenched her fingers into fists and raised her chin. “Who hired you?” she demanded.
He shook his head. It was never a good idea to engage in unnecessary conversation with the Target.
“You killed my mother, didn’t you?”
She sounded more angry than afraid. “Stand up,” he said.
She shook her head. “No.”
He cocked the gun and moved two steps closer to the bathtub. “Stand up, please,” he amended, giving her a genial, if slightly mocking, smile.
“Just shoot me and get it over with!”
“I’m not going to shoot you.” Since this was the truth, he felt comfortable saying it, even though it might give her momentary false hope. He didn’t like to lie to them. It was dishonest. But when finishing the job meant getting some cooperation from the Target, a little fudging on the truth was sometimes necessary.
Besides, people needed to have some hope. It made them much more willing to please.
“You’re not going to shoot me?” Her voice was quavering a little now.
“No. Stand up.”
“I’m naked.”
They worried about the oddest things. “It doesn’t matter. Open the drain first. Let some of the water flow out.”
She stared at him a moment, then leaned forward, and flipped the metal drain release.
“Good,” he said soothingly. He would close the drain again before he left, but the tub was too full at the moment. Nobody took a shower in a tub full of water.
“Is there a bathmat? Are you sitting on one?”
She nodded. There was a hint of a tremor in her jaw.
“I want it out of there. Slide it out from under you and give it to me.”
Her eyes never leaving his face, she lifted herself and reached underneath her body. The mat was suctioned to the bottom of the tub, so she had to wrestle with it. He was growing impatient when she surprised him. Her hands came slapping out of the water, splashing water directly at him and sending the bathmat of soap flying at his face. He cursed and ducked. The Target screamed. If he hadn’t checked the soundproofing on this place he might have been worried.
With his gloved hand he seized a hunk of her hair and jerked it taut. She screamed again, in pain this time. He leaned over her, his face close to hers. He could smell her fragrance—it was quite seductive. “Shut up. I don’t want to hurt you. But I will.”
In fact he didn’t care about hurting her, but he didn’t want to leave any marks on her body. The cops would be looking closely for any signs of a struggle. Homicide victims who. came into contact with their killers almost always had defensive wounding—it was one of the primary ways of establishing the difference between murder and accidental death.
For the same reason, he had dressed in his light nylon running shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. The running shoes now had rubbers fitted over the soles. Surgical gloves, of course.
“Stick your right foot up on the side of the tub,” he ordered in the same calm voice.
She made no move to obey. Clearly, she was the stubborn type. He dropped a two-foot-square piece of clear plastic to the floor beside the tub and quickly knelt there, one hand still fastened in her hair. Then he shoved her face forward into the several inches of water that were left in the tub.
Her entire body stiffened as she fought to get free, but with one hand in her hair and the other firmly planted between her shoulder blades, he had purchase, strength, and leverage. Her hands grabbed at the sides of the tub, but these were porcelain, further slickened with bubble bath, soap, and water. There was nothing for her to hold on to, and nothing to do any damage to her flailing hands either.
He counted slowly to thirty. It didn’t matter if she got water in her lungs—the official cause of death would be drowning anyway.
He jerked her face out of the water. She gasped for breath, coughed, choked, cried. Tears were streaming out of her eyes. He reminded himself to be sure to wash any dried tears off her face before he left. Tears—body fluids—would be deemed physical evidence.
The proper manipulation of the physical evidence was the secret of making a murder look like an accident. The crime lab people had made such huge advances in the past decade or so that it was getting increasingly difficult to put anything over on them. Close personal contact between two people—such as between two lovers or between a killer and his Target—almost always resulted in the transfer of physical evidence—the most minute sort only detectable with the latest high-tech methods and instruments.
Like all true professionals, Morrow had studied the latest techniques in crime scene analysis. The slightest mistake, he knew, could give him away. This case had already had too much contact for his liking.
“Put your right ankle up on the side of the tub,” he repeated. This time, coughing and sputtering, the Target obeyed.
With quick economical movements he looped a hobble around her ankle and pulled it taut. It was thick cotton that he had carefully encased in plastic to avoid the transfer of fibers. The nylon rope went over that, and the padding prevented it from coming in contact with her body.
It would leave no marks, transfer no evidence.
“What—what are you doing?” she whispered.
The rope was secure. “Stand up.”
“If you’re going to kill me, just�
��”
He shut her up by grabbing her head again and slamming her face back down into the water. This time he only held her there for ten seconds and she was screaming, “No, no! All right, all right!” when he let her up.
She rose clumsily to her feet. The water level was down to no more than three inches now—good enough. “Close the drain and turn on the shower.”
Her hands were trembling as she moved to obey.
Holding the rope loosely in his right hand, Morrow moved around behind her. She was fumbling with the shower controls. He tried not to be distracted by her slender body, which was even more lovely nude than dressed. Perfect breasts, nice ass. He’d have loved to run his hands over that ass—without the gloves so he could feel her warm supple flesh—but it was impossible. Forensics would find his sweat, his hairs, tiny flakes of his skin, and enough DNA to send him up for the rest of his life.
Her body jerked as the shower came on full force.
Morrow tightened the rope, but not enough yet to pull her off balance. She was still confused—she hadn’t figured it out. He was going to jerk hard on the rope, pulling her right foot out from under her. She would go down hard, striking the front of her head against the wall, the tub, or the metal taps. If the blow didn’t knock her right out, it would daze her, giving him the opportunity to take her head in his hands and smash it down harder against whatever part of the tub she had naturally landed on.
Once she was unconscious, the three inches of water left in the tub would enter her lungs and do the rest. He would wait until he was sure it was over, of course. He would slip the rope and the cotton batting from her ankle and take everything with him when he left.
He reminded himself that he’d better draw the shower curtain before he left. Nobody took a shower without drawing the curtain…
The cops would find a dead woman who had regrettably slipped as she was turning on the shower, knocked herself out, and drowned. Maybe if she’d kept the rubber bathmat in the tub when she’d bathed it wouldn’t have happened. People were so careless.
