Signature Kill (17 page)

What does he know, and what is there yet to learn before he acts?

There is no man in Sunbeam’s life. No husband or boyfriend who lives with her, he is fairly sure. He’s been watching her for the better part of the last several days and hasn’t seen one come or go, and she sleeps at home each night. So no husband or boyfriend, or even one of those popularly, and disgustingly, referred to as “friends with benefits.” He could be wrong, the significant other could be out of town, or merely a much more infrequent visitor, but he just has a feeling: she’s alone.

He’s learned she works at Crossroads Hospitality Group, which oversees a group of mid-level restaurants, according to their website, in a freestanding building off Rangeline. He knows she parks next to the building and that the lot is too well lit. And that her daily jogging is limited to daylight hours, with plenty of traffic on the streets, and that the sidewalks and paths she uses have too many people on them for his taste. On an inclement day he saw her drive her Honda Accord to a fitness center that has a row of treadmills and stationary exercise bicycles displayed behind a plate-glass window, where she and her brethren worked themselves into a repetitive sweat in the name of health. He admires it as much as he doesn’t understand it. The only strength building and fitness he is familiar with is the kind that comes with hard labor. Muscles built by and for utility, and not for vanity or as a mere hobby.

Still, he just can’t seem to get her good and alone outside the house. Darkness has fallen while he’s been sitting outside, waiting and watching. She doesn’t lead an external life. She doesn’t bebop down to local bars, or to liquor stores like Cinnamon did, so her home will have to do. In fact, she is home now. He clicks open his car door and feels the cold night air flood in, washing over him like river water. He closes the door behind him and walks deliberately across the street. He doesn’t belong, but nothing announces that more than creeping about, lurking and hoping not to be spotted.

He nears her front door. It is solid and well fitted with shiny, new-looking locks. The windows appear almost new as well, weather-tight and strong. He can test them and see if any are unlocked, but there is risk to it—if neighbors catch sight of him doing that, they’ll call Sunbeam or the police right away. Instead, he steps out of the throw of the streetlights and melts into the shadows along the side of her house, then heads toward her backyard.

The yard itself is more of a patch of grass, bordered by her neighbors’ chain-link fences on two sides and on the other her detached garage—which she doesn’t seem to use since she parks her car in front. There are a few skinny young trees, red maples maybe, without leaves, and he stays near them in order to break up his silhouette, although he isn’t much worried about being seen now. The lights are on inside, which makes her visible to him and prevents the opposite. From where he stands, he sees her emerge from the depths of the house and enter the kitchen. She pours herself a glass of red wine. She opens the refrigerator and cabinets repeatedly as she prepares some kind of food. She shakes and moves as she works, and he realizes music must be playing because she is dancing.

He glances at the glass sliders—which wouldn’t be difficult to bypass unless she was smart enough to place a bar or wooden dowel in the track. Then he looks past them and stares for a long moment and drinks in her life force. It is beautiful. It is why he is here. He wonders if she takes that energy for granted, if she recognizes how important her life is right now. Then he wonders how long she’s lived in the house, wonders from where she’s moved, where she grew up …

Suddenly he knows how he’ll get inside and be with her, and he won’t need to break any locks or climb through any windows to do it. No, she’ll invite him in. He doesn’t have his hit kit with him right now, so it won’t be tonight. But it will be very, very soon. It is practically done already.

A thousand things can go wrong when you work quickly. But they won’t. They didn’t. Not for him
.

He is alone and alive in the night, every nerve ending firing, perceiving, sending him information as he gets out of his car, dusk just falling, an unthreatening canvas shoulder bag dangling in his left hand, and knocks on her door with his right. This is the moment. The door swings open and Sunbeam faces him. Her eyes are blue and clear, her teeth are white, her skin pale, and her hair the color of Acacia honey. It shines like liquid glass. There can be fleeting disappointment when he is finally up close and personal with a subject. But not this time. No, this time perfection is close at hand.

“Hold on,” she says into the cell phone she is talking on, and then addresses him. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, maybe. It’s no big deal,” he says. “I used to live here. In this house. I can come back some other time …”

He sees her eyes light with curiosity, then she speaks into the phone again. “I’ll call you back, sweetie, someone’s here.” She hangs up.

“Like I said, I used to live here.”

“When was this?”

“It was a while back. A long time ago. When I was in high school. Did you guys buy the house from the Halls? We sold it to them.”

“No. It’s just me, and I bought it from the Putnams—with a little help from my dad. The Putnams bought it from the Halls. I think.” She
is right, they had. He’s researched the chain of buyers and sellers on the place going back thirty years. It is all in the library and on the Internet—tax payments, real estate listings, sales announcements. He is pretty sure he knows it all better than she does.

“Right, we sold when my dad got transferred. We moved away right when I was supposed to finish high school. Then they held on to it for quite some time,” he says.

“They did.”

“It sure looks different now.”

“The Halls did a lot of work on it, I did the rest. I’m doing it anyway, as fast as I can.”

“You’re doing good, the place looks great.” He smiles. “I carved my initials on the wall down in the basement. You see that?”

“Basement? You mean the little furnace room?”

“Yep, that.” He feels a momentary sense of concern surge in his chest. He didn’t anticipate there not being a basement.

“I never saw any initials down there,” she says.

“I could show you where.”

She hesitates for the first time then.

“I know, I know,” he says. “Just feeling nostalgic, I guess.” Then he looks at his watch. “Well, I have to go meet my wife in five minutes.”

The idea that he has someplace to be, and a wife, puts her at ease. Then he reaches for his back pocket.

“This is me by the way …” He extends his driver’s license. It doesn’t provide her any protection, of course, but he’s learned that a willingness to show who he is creates some kind of instant, misguided trust in his target, and this time is no different. The fact that she can identify him makes her feel safe. As if she’ll get the chance.

“Oh, I see you don’t live too far away,” she says.

“No, just moved back kind of recently.”

“Well, okay, come on and take a quick look,” she says, and steps away from the door to allow him in.

Sunbeam lies on her bed, trembling and sweating, as tears squeeze out of her eyes and slide down the sides of her face. It is very quiet. She hasn’t had a chance to scream. She’d followed him down into the tiny space that houses the boiler and hot-water heater. He walked over to the corner in the dim light of the weak, bare bulb hanging overhead and pointed.

“There it is,” he said.

He stepped aside so she could take a look, and that’s when he leapt on her and choked her unconscious. It was really quite easy, like a game the kids played at school growing up, before they’d even learned how to sniff glue. When she came to, she saw she was hog-tied and bound to her bed, most of her clothing having been disposed of via a sharp knife that had left several nicks on her previously pristine skin, and that’s when the shaking set in. He’s gagged her with rags. All of it has been precut, knotted, and arranged in his shoulder bag, his little hit kit. But he isn’t sure he even needs the gag, she’s so docile when her eyes open. Then she starts to try to say something. He edges the wad of cloth to the side of her mouth so she can speak.

“I’m … I’m going to be sick.” He pulls the gag further aside and she turns her head and vomits softly. Things can get messy.

“You’re okay,” he says. He takes another hank of rag from the shoulder bag and wipes beads of perspiration from her forehead. There is a glass of water on her bedside table, and he holds her head and gives her a small sip.

“My husband will be home any minute,” she says.

“No, Pam,” he answers. The knowing in his voice seems to devastate her. She begins hyperventilating. He considers putting a plastic bag over her head and strangling her now, but he waits. Her name is Pam Cupersmith. She is five foot seven, one hundred and twenty pounds. Hair: blond. She is an organ donor. He smiles at that. He is looking at her driver’s license, which was on her dresser, and though he’ll forget all the particulars soon enough, he’ll never forget Sunbeam. That’s what she’ll always be to him. Just like all the others, he’ll have to rack his brain or study news archives to recall their real names, but it is easy for him to call forth who they are to him. Besides Sunbeam and Cinnamon there are Kit Kat and Sweetie, Muffin, Plummy, Bean and Malibu—not the place—Starbuck, Nova, Coco, Baby, Tawny, Stork, Misty, Lonely and Pearl … All the pretty women, how he cut them up.

He stops thinking about his list when her breathing calms and the room grows quiet. That’s when he hears footsteps somewhere across the house, the sound of a door closing, and the faint splash of someone urinating while seated.

“Who the fuck is that?” he says quietly.

“My niece. My sister’s daughter. She’s staying with me. She’s feeling ill and took a nap. She’s only eleven years old please don’t hurt—” He shoves the gag back in her mouth and flies from the room, his shoulder bag clutched in his hand.

By the time he reaches the bathroom door there is water running and then the sink shuts off. The door opens in toward the bathroom, and he holds the knob pulled firmly closed with one hand and digs in his bag for a length of paracord with the other. He feels the knob jiggle, and then a girl’s voice calls out.

“Auntie Pam? I’m stuck.”

“You’re going to need to stay in there,” he says firmly.

“Who’s there? Let me out,” the girl says.

“I’m a friend of your aunt’s. Is there a window in there?” he asks.

“No. Let me out.” He hears fear in the girl’s voice.

“I’m locking you in—”

“No …”

The girl lets out a scream.

“Be quiet or I’ll have to hurt you,” he says.

The scream stops and some gulping and gasping replace the sound.

“Get away from the door now,” he commands. He loops the paracord around the knob, ties it tightly, and secures the other end to the leg of a heavy metal shelving unit. He sees the cord straining and the knob working against it. It holds, but the girl is trying to get out. “Get away from the door, I said. If you try and come out I’m going to kill your aunt and you.”

“Oh my God,” the girl screams again.

“Shut up,” he says, “or I’ll come in there and do it now.” The action on the cord stops, and he hears feet on the floor as the girl scrabbles away from the door. “Are there towels or a bathrobe in there?” he asks.

“Yes,” comes the reply.

“Wrap yourself up in ’em then, and get comfortable,” he says. He hears some movement, then waits for a moment until he hears nothing, not even sobbing, and returns to Sunbeam.

When he moves the gag again she speaks quickly.

“She’s my sister’s daughter, please don’t hurt her.”

“That’s none of your concern right now,” he says.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no …” she cries softly, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Look the monster in the eye,” he says. But her eyes remain shut. “Come on now, do it,” he says. He wonders if when she does she’ll be able to see what’s really deep inside him, and if he’ll be able to tell she has by looking at her. Finally, her eyes open and she stares into his face. “See? I’m just a man.”

He learned long ago that everyone compartmentalizes, but what is inside of him isn’t something inhuman.
It’s the most human part of me
, he thinks.

“I can’t take this,” she says, real desperation in her voice, which rises in volume to a near scream. “Let me go.”

“You have to take it. The other girls did, so you have to take it too. It’s just what you have to face. Call it your punishment if you want, or
just your lot,” he tells her. He tries to wipe down her face with the rag again, but she tosses from side to side and refuses to be comforted. She begins bucking and straining against the ropes and he sees how it is going to be, so even though it isn’t exactly how he wants it, he puts the plastic bag over her head and starts in suffocating her right there and then.