Now or Never (24 page)

The cat ran to her. He jumped onto the bed, then crouched, gazing at her, tail swishing.

“What’s the matter, Quentin?” she asked, surprised. “Settle down, why don’t you.”

She stepped out of the overall and took off her bra, then sank onto the bed, rotating her neck slowly, trying to ease the pain. Wearily, she picked up the phone and dialed Terry’s number, waiting patiently for the answering machine to pick up.

He stepped from the closet. Her back was toward him. He tiptoed closer.

“Hi, Terry, it’s me,” she said when the machine picked up. “I’m not feeling too great—it’s this migraine thing again. They gave me some pills at the hospital. They’ll make me sleep, so I don’t think I’ll be able to make it tomorrow…. Well, it’s today really….”

The cat stiffened, staring balefully over her shoulder. It arched its back, hissing, its eyes glinting like red coals in the lamplight.

“Quentin, what’s gotten into you?” Suzie turned to see what he was staring at. Cats go spooked at nothing sometimes….

“Oh, my God,” she said in a strangled whisper. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” She clutched the telephone receiver to her heart, anguished. “What are you doing here?” she said. “What—”

He swept the phone to the floor and grabbed her. With a terrified cry she slid down through his arms and out. She was running. He hurled himself after her, took her in a tackle, grabbed her leg, brought her crashing down.

Suzie screamed. She screamed and screamed….

He was sitting on the floor. He grabbed her thick curling
red hair in his fist and dragged her viciously toward him until her head rested in his crotch. She lay helplessly on her back between his legs. Her face was drained of color, her eyes dark with shock.

He wrapped her hair around his hand, twisting it tighter, and she moaned with pain. Suddenly, she began to scream again, a high-pitched wailing sound.

He held the tip of the knife against her throat. “Scream, and I’ll kill you,” he whispered.

She stopped screaming and lay still. He shuddered with relief. He was in control again.

Next door, Alec Klosowski was returning from his job as a barman. He had just put his key in the lock when he heard a noise. He swung around, listening. He could have sworn it was a scream—and that it came from next door.

He noticed, surprised, that Suzie’s car was back. He had assumed she was working the night shift. A light was on in the kitchen too. He guessed she had come home early and that the noise had been a cat yowling. There were plenty of strays around here, and they often made a racket at night. Suzie had even adopted one of them, though she said it still acted like a stray.

He unlocked his door and let himself in. It had been a long night.

The two-pound package of peas chilled Suzie’s spine where she had fallen on top of it. She shifted slightly. He nicked the knife across her throat, and she felt blood trickle down her breasts.

She stared up at him, too terrified to speak. He was mad, she could see it in his eyes. She knew she had to do something, but she dared not scream. Tremors ran through her body, and she understood she was in shock. She was fading into unconsciousness—this was her last chance. She slid her right hand under her body. Arching her back slightly, she clutched the bag of peas.

His eyes were closed; he was thinking of what he was
about to do, enjoying as he always did this ultimate moment of power. Even though it was not happening exactly the way he had planned, Suzie Walker was his.

Suzie grasped the frozen peas, her only weapon. If she could distract him even for just a moment, she could run out into the street and shout for help. Surely then someone would come and save her.

It was now or never. Heaving herself up, she flung the frozen peas into his face. The bag split from the force of the blow, and the peas rattled onto the floor.

He let out a roar, and his hands went automatically to his eyes. She was on her feet, crunching over the peas. The front door had never seemed so far away….

She heard him cry out. She had three more steps to go…. Oh, God, she couldn’t get the latch to open….

He grabbed her from behind, and dragged her head back. Suzie’s eyes were black with horror as she gazed back at the face of her killer. “Don’t,” she begged. “Please don’t.”

And then he raised his arm and brought the knife swiftly down across her throat.

A gurgling scream erupted from her. He let go of her hurriedly as the blood spurted. Still making that terrible bubbling, retching noise, she staggered toward the bedroom. She reached the door, clutched at it. Her bloody hands left a red trail down it as she sank to her knees. He watched for a minute, then he went and stood over her.

Suzie could no longer lift her head. She knelt on the floor, staring dully at his shoes. She was drowning in her own blood, and she was never going to come up again. She slithered in slow motion down and down and down. Her head came to rest on his black Gucci loafers.

He stared coldly at her. She was finally quiet. But she had seen him. He had to be sure.

He grabbed a handful of her hair, lifted her head, and slit the carotid artery. Just to make sure.

He let her drop back to the floor and stood there, breathing heavily. She was naked except for her underpants, but he had no sexual feeling toward her. It was not the way he did things; this was different.

He glanced down at himself, and saw her blood on his shirt, on his pants, on his shoes.
Her blood was all over him
.

Panic set him trembling violently. Suddenly he was like a man in the final stages of malaria, sweating and shaking.
It was all her fault. She shouldn’t have come home when she wasn’t meant to. It would have been so precise, so clean, so satisfying later, if only she had kept to her usual pattern of behavior. He had had it all planned.

Crazy with rage, he dropped to his knees and began hacking at her. He slashed her over and over again. Tears ran down his face,
“Whore,”
he sobbed,
“vile filthy bitch
….”

It was over in a minute. He controlled himself and stood up. He stepped back from her, contemplating his handiwork. Then he looked at his bloody hands. He was still wearing the thin rubber gloves. He had been clever after all.

He walked into the bathroom and rinsed the blood from the gloves. He patted them dry, blotted her blood from his clothes with the damp towel, cleaned the knife, and put it in his pocket.

He turned off the bathroom light, then the lamp in the bedroom. He took one last look at Suzie lying in the doorway. Then he stepped over her body, walked into the kitchen, and turned out the light. He peered anxiously through the window into the street. It was empty. The frozen peas crunched under his feet as he went to the front door.

The terrified cat ran from its hiding place under the hall table. He stumbled over it, cursing as it fled into the darkness.
The small knife slipped from his pocket and fell, unnoticed, to the floor as he eased open the front door.

He closed it softly behind him, hearing the latch click shut. He looked left and right, then hurried across the street into the shadow of the parked cars.

Alex Klosowski was just opening his bedroom window when he saw him. He smiled—so that was why Suzie was home early, he thought as he climbed, yawning, into bed. He heard the engine start up and then the car pass his house. But by that time, he was almost asleep.

“I missed Squeeze tonight,” Mal said, snuggling further down in the tan coach-hide bucket seat as Harry drove down an almost-empty Charles Street back to the Ritz.

He shook his head, disbelieving. “Malone, you hardly know him.”

“I hardly know you too.”

“You surely know me better than I know you.”

She glanced warily at him. “We’re not back to that again, are we?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Okay, I promise to tell you all about myself this weekend. Not that it makes fascinating listening, but I guess there’s not much else to do in the mountains.”

“It’s a good place to purge your soul.” She was silent, and he added, “I’ll let you take Squeeze for a long walk in return for your confidences.”

“Thanks.”

“Here we are, Cinderella.” He pulled up in front of the hotel. She had insisted she must get back to the Ritz before dawn, saying she couldn’t just walk into a hotel at breakfast time wearing last night’s evening dress and makeup. Even though it was all innocent.

She smiled at him, then leaned across and kissed him on the mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Today.”

“Seven o’clock,” he said. “Bright and early.”

“Hardly worth going to sleep.”

“Certainly not alone—and at the Ritz.”

She was laughing as she walked, with that tantalizing little cream-over-peaches movement, away from him and into the hotel. He would carry the memory into his dreams.

The man forced himself to drive the Volvo slowly. He couldn’t afford to get stopped by the police, not in the state he was in.

The journey home seemed to take forever. He didn’t even hear the classical music he usually enjoyed while driving back from his killings, sated and happy. It had never been like this before—out of control. It was all he could do to concentrate on driving. He knew that if he got stopped, he was sunk.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he finally turned into his own street and then into his own driveway. The garage doors swung shut behind him. He cut the engine and leaned limply over the steering wheel. He was shaking.

He climbed out of the car, hurried to the door, and unlocked his battery of locks and bolts with numb hands. Finally he was inside. He leaned against the wall for a minute, gasping for air like a man having a heart attack. And then he stumbled upstairs to the locked room.

He wore the special key on a long silver chain around his neck, tucked into his shirt, where no one would ever see it. When he fumbled for it, his fingers encountered the soft, pungent stickiness of Suzie’s blood. He groaned, pounding frantically on the door with his fists.

“Let me in. Please, let me in….”

He began to cry.

He ripped off his bloody shirt, then knelt in front of the
lock and fitted the key shakily into it. Finally the door swung open. Moans ripped from his throat as he struggled to his feet. Then he stepped inside the room and slammed the door behind him.

H
ARRY THOUGHT LIFE
was pretty good. It was the next morning, and he was driving his Jeep. Squeeze was in the back, and Mallory Malone was in the passenger seat—where, he thought, she looked as though she belonged.

She was fast asleep. Every now and then he stole a glance at her, marveling at the long eyelashes curving along her cheeks, missing the mocking sidelong glances she gave him every now and then to keep him on his toes.

Squeeze had his head out of the window, sniffing up the fresh piney smells, as they wound up the side of the mountain. Harry took a side road through the woods, bouncing over the potholes. They drove past a small inn on the edge of a placid brown lake, famous for its trout fishing, then through a minivillage, with a red barn that was also the general store, selling everything from milk and bread to hammers and nails, and kerosene for lamps, plus gas from a solitary pump out front. A few houses were huddled together like cows in a field, painted white, with black gingerbread trim over the Victorian gables and wide front porches. A couple of dogs lazed outside and one ran after the Jeep, barking halfheartedly at Squeeze who put his paws on the backseat, eager to get out after him.

“Where are we?” Mallory slithered upright, looking around.

“We’re here,” he announced, taking the slope up to the
cabin in a final fast sweep. He swung into the graveled driveway, stepped on the brakes, and spun her around. “Only way to get her up here,” he said casually as Mal gasped, clinging to her seat. “It’s hell trying to back down that slope.”

“It must have taken a lot of practice to perfect that maneuver.” She glared at him. “I thought my end had come.”

He grinned as he opened the door for her. “That’s only the beginning. Madame.” He bowed, holding out his hand.

Ignoring him, she jumped out. “Oh,” she said, and then “Oh” again, smiling.

“Do I take those as words of approval?”

“Oh, definitely.”

The log cabin was perched at the top of a steep incline. It was square, rugged, and compact, built of cedar, with soaring windows and a peaked overhanging roof, meant to shoulder a hefty burden of snow. There was a broad porch all the way around it, and a wide chimney built of local rock. Flowers grew in mossy baskets on the porch, and the tall double doors looked thick enough to keep out an invading army.

Mal sighed enviously. “What other real-estate surprises do you Jordans have in store for me? A castle in Spain? A villa in Tuscany?”

“This is it, I’m afraid. Besides, I think you need to be at least a marquis to qualify for a castle. All we Jordans can run to is plain mister.”

“And detective,” she reminded him.

“Let’s forget the detective, just for this weekend.”

Squeeze whined, and she said, “Oh, poor darling, we forgot him.”

Harry opened the car door, and the dog gamboled around their feet in an ecstasy of excitement.

“I can see I’m not the only one who loves it here,” she said.

Harry laughed as the dog chased off into the woods. “I think he feels closer to his wolf ancestors here. He’s back to being a wild creature.”

He took out the bags and carried them up to the house. Mal followed with the picnic basket she’d had the chef at the Ritz prepare. He unlocked the door, and she stepped inside another of the Jordan set-pieces of perfection.

The curved cedar logs had faded to a mellow hue, and the wide-planked floors gleamed under colorful rag rugs. There were Navaho wall hangings, and Frederic Remington bronzes of horses and riders on the massive side tables. A Norman Rockwell of a New England family was propped on the solid six-inch thick slab of cedar that formed the mantel. The wall-sized fireplace was built of rock and was wide enough to roast an ox, if you were so inclined, and the huge sofas arranged in front of it were deep enough to get lost in.