DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (54 page)

Well, he could, that's what Lisa wanted. He could if he could stay alive long enough.

After one more go-around with Catherine, he'd have to try to reorganize his thoughts. He might have to throw out all earlier presumptions and start over again in another direction. Perhaps it wasn't a past lover at all, despite the mash notes. The phone call he'd received still nagged at him. It might have been a man. What if it was a man trying to set all the evidence up to make it look like a woman was stalking him?

Hell. A man!

Hadn't the voice on the phone been asexual, an indefinable gender with the voice tones low, but neither definitely masculine nor feminine?

It could be anyone trying to kill him. Anyone at all.

The thought lodged in his brain and would not go away. It was more frightening than the thought an old wounded lover was out to ruin and kill him. If his stalker was a man, then how could he ever determine the reason behind it? Nothing so easy as a woman scorned to make the motives clear. But a man? What had he ever done to deserve such an elaborate plan? This seemed to be a mystery that was growing like a box of poison mushrooms in a cellar; undercover, silent, and deadly.

A headache bloomed just up from the back of his neck and he rubbed his scalp there over the rounded ridge of bone. He would see Catherine again and try to rule her out. One step at a time, methodically, he would find out who had killed Jimmy and Marilyn.

44

"She's gone. I am abused, and my relief

Must be to loathe her."

William Shakespeare, Othello

The Body woke in the closet. It was black as darkest night though it must be early morning for the mind to feel so alert. A breeze from the overhead fan stirred the air. Reaching out both arms, The Body's fingers just brushed the walls on either side of the mattress on the floor. It was understood that sleeping in a small cramped space such as the closet in the child's room was tantamount to returning to the womb. However, understanding a psychological motivation did not always clear up the source of the underlying need. The closet provided safety, enclosure, and comfort, of course. A bed in an open room did not. Why the small net of safety was so needful might have to do with seeing Michelle's ghost (she never came to The Body in the closet) or it might be that a return to wombness preserved the mind that was attacked from all sides out in the wide, dangerous world. There was nothing and no one in the closet to betray The Body. There might be a stray single spider weaving a web in one of the corners or around the base of the ceiling fan, but other than that the closet belonged to one living being and no other.

It was time to sit up, crawl to the door, and greet the day. There was nothing more refreshing than a full night's rest in perfect surroundings to prepare a body for the ultimate scene.

On the chair sitting before the computer in the nursery the script lay open and face down. The Body took it up and flipped it over. Here was the climax. When acted on the silver screen, it would be a stunning piece of work. When carried out in reality, it would surpass the screen image by a hundredfold.

Karl LaRosa might have succumbed in any scene leading up to this one, yet he had survived. It was preordained that he survive until the end shot, the culmination scene, the denouement of the tale.

When the phone rang, The Body placed the open script on the white desk next to the computer and wandered into the kitchen where a wall phone hung next to a framed picture of a hummingbird frozen in flight over a bright red feeder.

"Hello?"

"Hi, glad I caught you at home."

It was Olivia. Bright as a cottontail bunny this morning, her voice sparkling with cheer.

"I just got up. What do you need?"

"You sound cranky."

"I'm not."

"Well, shake a leg. We have that scene today and I was wondering if you'd meet me early on the set so we could rehearse. I want to do it right."

"I guess I can go in early. When?"

"An hour? We'll have the place mostly to ourselves before catering gets there."

"Sure, okay."

The Body hung up carefully. Olivia, the hated one. Not as hated as Catherine, but no one was as hated as Catherine. Olivia was too damn pitiful to hate that much. She was talented, but ditzy and on top of that, a heavy drug user. Not that half the people in the movie didn't use drugs, but none with such uncaring abandon as Olivia. She had sometimes shown up for a shoot with her eyes so glassy Cam had to put off the filming until he had plied her with two pots of coffee and whatever drug might counteract the one she'd taken. If she was on tranqs and lethargic, Cam got a few hits of speed for her. If she was high flying on cocaine or crank (or twice lately, when she admitted to having cooked just a little bit of smack, just a little tiny bit), he found something to bring her down. Not without cursing like a bandit whose treasure had been stolen. And stomping around and threatening to fire her off the film, but no one believed that, not even Olivia, who continued to abuse herself to the detriment of the project. Silly old bitch.

She had sounded too damn full of snap, crackle, pop for this early in the morning. Hell, dawn hadn't even broken and a pewter light heavy with falling dew still swirled over the lawns, flowerbeds, and white poplar trees in the neighborhood.

No time then to study the scene, to work out the plan for Karl LaRosa's swan song. It would have to be put off until tomorrow. One more day before the end could not matter one way or the other. That the final chapter was close gave The Body an electric feeling of power.

45

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

The babies would have given The Body a reason to live. The twins. The dead ones who would have lived in the nursery. That's what the new crib was for, the mobile, the colorful wallpaper. The Body believed Catherine loved him, loved him, loved him so much. He believed she would have his babies, she would marry him first, and have his babies.

But she left him and she killed the babies so that she could have an affair with another man. With Karl.

Oh, how The Body grieved. As much as for poor Michelle.

No one had ever loved The Body except for Michelle. Not mother or father. Not really. They were too busy with their professional lives to love their children.

Catherine had not loved him.

The twins would have. If she'd carried them to term and let him have them to raise. They would have loved him with such fierce loyalty that no one could have parted the three of them, ever.

As a child growing up, The Body had tried very hard to be like other children. But without Michelle, it was impossible.

It was as if half of him was missing. He was a shadow, superficial, not really all there.

He had a friend once. In junior high school. A boy named Davy Cotersill. He even told Davy about Michelle and how he missed her, how bereft he was yet. And Davy didn't make fun of him.

But then, after a few months of close friendship where he and Davy rode their bicycles everywhere together, and went to the same parties, and played tennis on their parents' tennis courts until after dinnertime, something began to happen. The Body noticed it first, but was unable to stop it from happening. He started first with the haircut. He went to the barbershop and had them cut his hair just like Davy's. Short on the sides, long on top. Then The Body found out where Davy's mother shopped for clothes and he had his own mother take him there and buy him a new wardrobe. He picked out the same style of jeans, the same shirts, belts, socks, and shoes. Finally, when Davy began to notice and look at him strangely, The Body had his father buy him a bicycle just like Davy's. Dark blue ten-speed Schwinn. When he took it over to show his friend, that's when Davy accused him of being some kind of clown.

"What's the matter with you?" Davy asked. "It's like you're sucking me in. It's like you're becoming me. What happened to your clothes, your hair, and now you got a bicycle like mine. Is this a joke or what? I don't like it if it's a joke. It feels funny looking at you now when you're starting to look like my twin or something."

The Body hung his head and scuffed his Reebok that was the same kind of Reebok that Davy wore. "I just like you, Davy."

"Well, it's okay to like me and it's flattering to be copied up to a point, but this is ridiculous! When school starts and you do this, other kids are gonna make fun of us. They'll think we're dating or something, for crying out loud.”

“No, they won't, they won't even notice . . ."

"Yes, they will! They'll think we're fags. You're not a fag, are you? You don't want my body, do you?"

The Body felt the insult right down to his toes. He had never even entertained such nasty thoughts. Of course he didn't want to have sex with Davy. He just wanted . . . he wanted to be like him. He wanted to be like . . . someone.

They had had a big row and wound up swinging at one another. Davy's dad had to come outdoors and break them up. The Body went home with a bloody nose and never spoke to Davy again. He threw all his new clothes in the trash. He let his hair grow out long and scraggly.

He never tried to have a best friend again.

Because friends disappoint you. Sisters die on you. Lovers betray you.

Only his own children would have given him the kind of unconditional love he had always wished for. And Catherine never even asked him if he wanted those children. Before her pregnancy, if asked, he would have said a woman had the right to make that sort of decision on her own. But after it involved the loss of a set of twins he wanted in his own life—to save him from loneliness and despair—he realized he did not believe it was a woman's sole right to make the decision. The babies were half his! His sperm had created them. Their cells came from his cells, their genetic makeup came partially from him, and even the fact that Catherine had come up pregnant with twins had to do with him being a twin.

Once she had destroyed them, The Body could hardly go on. No use to reproach her. A modern woman. A career woman, like his mother. She wouldn't have listened to him. She probably didn't even know now how much pain she had given him.

Or how much she would have to pay for her sin against life. If he knew of a way to murder her and never be suspected, he would have long ago done it.

The script was the only way he knew to bring harm to her. He had harbored his hate for all these years, through her dismissal of Karl, and her marriage and her new pregnancy, and the birth of her little girl, who he coveted. That hate had done something irrevocable to his soul, he knew that. It had warped him. It had left him half sane. He was functional in society, but not a part of it. He could never be right again because of her.

Finally, if he could finish up the shooting of the script and he could kill Karl so that Catherine was suspected, he might find a little peace. Or at least more than he'd ever enjoyed before. Michelle's ghost might not desert him, and his hunger for his lost children might not ever leave him, but at least Catherine would feel a little of what he had endured all these many lonely years.

The murders he had performed so far had left not a smudge of guilt on his conscience. He would feel nothing for Karl when he died, either. And nothing for what Catherine would be put through.

For The Body knew what to do once Catherine was out of the way.

He would take her little girl, steal away Barbara, and he would make her his own. If he could not have the babies who had been his flesh and blood, he would at least have a small child he could pretend was his own to share his life with and to be a father to. She was still young enough to learn to love him.

Dear Karl,

I know you know why you were picked now. She'll be blamed because it's her fault you're going to die.

Good-bye, Karl. It's been fun.

XXXX

OOOO

Same cream-colored stationery, folded as usual in half. Karl read the note over again. It had been slipped between the windshield wiper and the glass on his new BMW parked in the lot next to his office.

Karl looked up at the roar of a car engine, fearing his death was coming in the form of a hit and run. He stood pinned between the BMW and the building, expecting to see a car racing toward him.

But no. The car he'd heard was on the nearby street and it was not turning into the lot. It sped away from the stoplight at the corner, leaving burned rubber and acrid smoke in its wake. Just some hotrod crazy kid.

Karl took a deep breath. How great it was to be alive—and he had to stay that way—on this balmy night.

He stared at the note again. Someone was going to be framed for his murder. That's what this was about all along. He'd been thrown off the trail with the love notes. Biggest mistake he'd ever made. One that was testament to his vanity. Who else, he had thought, would hurt me but a wronged woman? The stalker had depended on his vanity and ego to keep his identity safe. It had worked, hadn't it?

He had to tell this to the detective working on the case. Morales. The man who didn't believe Karl was in any real danger or that the department needed to expend a lot of time and effort running down the fingerprints they had lifted from his wrecked Jaguar.

Karl turned from the car and hurried back to the office to use the telephone. He was in such a hurry, he didn't bother to lock the door behind him although it was past office hours and all his employees were gone for the day. He had just gotten Detective Morales on his extension line when Karl heard the front door open, a few seconds of silence pass, and then the door closed.

"Hold on," he told Morales. Dropping the phone, he moved quickly around the desk and through his office door into the outer waiting room. His senses, tuned to any hint of a change in the routine, caused him to smell first the overpowering scent of gasoline, then he saw the smoke before the noticed the fire. He was faced in the waiting room with confirmation of his fears. Flame rose in a line across the carpet from one end of the room to the other. The fire licked the walls and reached out for the upholstered chairs. His eyes widened in runaway fear. Something primitive and dark as a large worm turning over in his belly uncoiled so that his arms broke out in goose bumps and he felt paralyzed.