The Cryo Killer (2 page)

The traffic is easy, and soon I’m sitting at the
deli in Catherine Square. It’s one of those afternoons that makes
me want to live forever. I get that pastel-blue feeling. When all
the pieces of a killing fall into place. When all that’s left is to
pull the trigger. I watch Purple Martins flit this way and that
through the ancient oak tree towering above us. Sunlight dapples
the bricked pavement. The scent of freshly baked ciabatta layers
the air between the laughter of children at a nearby table. The
table behind Mr. Oglevy’s.

Tod Oglevy is absorbed in his Parma ham
wrap, masticating protractedly. As if the wrap offers him some
great message. Maybe it does. I reach beneath my suede coat, and
grip the pistol. I debate whether or not to let him finish his
meal. But a stroke wouldn’t wait, no matter how good the ham. I
stand, and toss thirty dollars on the table beside my half-eaten
olive ciabatta.

My heart hardly accelerates as I stroll in
the direction of Mr. Oglevy. This will be number six hundred and
three. Only my ninth stroke, but nothing too unusual. He’s less
than two yards away. I place my finger on the trigger.

I’m so close to Mr. Oglevy now, I can see
his untrimmed nose-hairs brushing the wrap as he takes another
bite. I slide my coat aside, place the barrel an inch from his
neck, and pull the trigger.

The pistol is silent. The gentlest
whoosh
of air, and I’m ambling toward the far corner of the
square. I don’t look back. Not until I’m standing behind a pillar
by the second hand book shop where I bought Janet a guide to house
plants last month for her birthday.

Mr. Oglevy continues munching on his wrap,
but scratches at his neck. Without swallowing, he lowers his fork,
and peers at the great oak tree. Even from where I stand I can see
that his face is asymmetrical. One eyelid is barely open, as he
considers the leaves. And then he slides to one side. Silently
collapses into a heap on the floor.

I wait until someone sees him. Until I see
them call for help. Paramedics arrive minutes later. When they
don’t find a pulse, they scan the man’s iris. Right now, the
scanner is telling them that Mr. Oglevy is registered for Cryo
preservation. And there it is – the blue needle. Once they inject
the Cryo serum, my work is done. He’ll be taken off to the Cryo
Bank. Another happy customer. Sure, they might investigate.
Unlikely, but it could happen. Chances are – chances are very good
– that he’ll be frozen by sunset. So long as the coroner rules the
cause of death anything but suicide or assisted suicide, Mr. Oglevy
will be frozen along with the rest of my clients. Until the day
they wake him. The day they can repair his stroke, and give him the
anti-aging treatment that the docs in white coats say will be ready
in the next decade or so. The docs don’t have much hope that
they’ll be able to reverse aging, but preserve a man’s age – that
they’ll be able to do. Tod Oglevy will be thirty-six forever.

I take the mag-lift down to the parking
lot.

“Did you see his face just before it
happened?” says a teenager in the lift. “Was like he saw God.”

“Ain’t no God anymore. Only Cryo,” says his
friend.

My stomach lurches as the elevator drops too
quickly. Don’t know why they couldn’t just stick with good old
steel rope for elevators. Sometimes newer ain’t better.

Out of the six hundred and two cases before
Mr. Oglevy’s, I’ve only had seven ruled assisted suicide.
Unfortunate. The Cryo Bureau refuses to preserve them, with suicide
being illegal and all. But a failure rate of just over one percent
is better than most Cryo Killers can boast. The young Cryo Killers
today use all sorts of overrated and overdated methods to kill
their clients. Just last month I heard about a client whose head
was smashed in by a bus. The Cryo Killer he’d hired dimmed his
Google Glasses at the wrong moment. The bus had made short work of
his brain. And his memories. Nothing left but a smudge on the
pavement.

“I wonder,” says the teen, “whether you
still have your soul when you wake up? If you ain’t a zombie?”

The doors open, and I stride out the
elevator. I find the Buick easily enough. Gleaming crimson body.
Like the Buick, I do things the old way. Proper. Only Roberto, at
the burrito stand on corner 4
^th
and Queens, has a better
hit rate. If I ever wanted a New Year’s Special, I’d use him.
Roberto’s been around forever. He taught me the ropes, all those
years ago. We haven’t spoken in decades. Some say he doesn’t do the
work himself any longer. Hands too shaky. I heard from Janet that
he has a kid who does the hits for him nowadays. Keeping it in the
family.

Sometimes I wish I’d had kids. A wife.
There’d been Sally, of course. She’d wanted, but nothing had
happened. Months. A year, we’d tried. Nothing.

I check my watch. Five minutes to four.

“Lock up for me, please,” I call in to
Janet. “Any appointments tomorrow morning?”

“None, Barker. I’ve cleared your schedule
for the next three days so you can focus on the double that came in
this morning.”

*

I know I should be researching the technicalities of
gassing. Survival time after the leak. How to gas them without
their noticing the stench. Response time of the emergency services
in the area. Paramedics will need to get to the couple within an
hour of their deaths for the Cryo preservation to be effective.
Which poses a problem – how to alert the authorities without
tipping them off that there’s been foul play.

These are the sorts of issues I’ll need to
resolve by Friday next week. This is what I should be focusing on.
But all I can do is watch her. Watch Inesa.

It’s one of my standard procedures to trail
clients before the killing. Learn their habits. Routines. What time
they get home. Typical neighborhood behavior.

But it’s day two now, and I’ve forgotten
about gassing techniques and emergency response times. I don’t know
when it started exactly – my fascination with Inesa. No, actually,
I do.

I followed her to the grocery store
yesterday. And you’d think grocery shopping couldn’t be sexy. You’d
think. But Inesa lifted the melons to her nose as though they were
holy relics. She worshipped their fragrance. And the way she
studied the ingredients on the pasta sauce, with a hand on her hip,
and a lock of raven hair falling across one eye …

But it was when she paid at the till, that
it happened. That’s when my heart lost its rhythm. I guess, to an
outsider, it was unremarkable. I mean, people talk to the cashiers
all the time. But the woman operating her till was grizzly. The
lips on that old sow hadn’t curled into a smile in over a decade.
She scowled as Inesa offloaded her shopping onto the counter.

“The peaches,” growled the cashier.

“The peaches?”

“Weigh ‘em.”

“Do you like peaches?” asked Inesa.

“What?” The cashier’s wrinkled brow
arched.

“Peaches. Do you like them?”

The cantankerous old woman eyed Inesa
sideways. “They’re okay, I guess.”

A minute later the two were chatting like
they were old friends. The cashier’s jowls bobbed up and down as
she laughed. A grating sound. Unpracticed, but pleasant.

After Inesa had weighed and paid for the
fruit, she ‘forgot’ the peaches on the till. The old woman snuck
them beneath the counter greedily. Inesa looked behind her as she
left the store, with her cheeks bunched into that that smile. The
very same as that day in my office. And since then, I haven’t been
able to take my eyes off her.

Beside the technical details of her killing,
there was another problem: Paul. Before following Inesa to the
grocery store, I’d watched him go through his morning. Golf with
yuppy execs. All morning.

I slotted in as the caddy.

“Inesa expects me to
talk
during
dinner.”

“Yeah, Barbara was the same. Until I
explained the way things are.”

“Hey!” shouted Paul. “I told you last hole.
Three iron. Not Two.”

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

“Idiot,” he grumbled. “She’s difficult,” he
said to the others after a moment. “Demanding. Never shuts up. And
expects me to do the same. You know how hard I work. Don’t have the
energy when I get home.”

“How’s the sex?” asked one of the other
execs.

“More trouble than she’s worth. Inesa gets
pains. Especially around her time of the month. Wish she’d told me
about that before I married her. But we’re Catholic. I’m
stuck.”

“Jesus. Yeah, Barbara is pretty wild. I was
lucky. But she’s dog-ugly down there. I never look. Just shove it
home.”

It had carried on like this for nine holes.
By the end of it, my TMJ was so bad I wanted to scream.

*

The next week passes in a blur of Inesa. I cease
trailing Paul, and focus on her instead. My Inesa. I tell myself
there’s a professional reason for this. For following her for so
long. But as the days pass, I no longer have a reason. And I don’t
need one.

All I need is Inesa.

Almost every morning she meets with her
neighbor, Daisy, at a rustic coffee shop a few streets away. I
listen to them laugh over frappes. Inesa’s cheeks bunch into that
smile, and Daisy slaps the table as they guffaw together. Those two
are joined at the hip. On the days when they don’t meet, Daisy
comes over for dinner with her husband. Don’t know why – Daisy
isn’t worth Inesa’s time. Plain brunette with a pig nose, Daisy
ain’t no oil painting. Inesa could do better.

Sitting at a table two removed from theirs,
I listen to Inesa talk about how she’s almost finished her masters
degree in anthropology. I love her mind. I yearn to talk with her.
To get rid of Daisy, and have coffee with Inesa. Talk about
anything. Even anthropology. I’d reach across the table, and stroke
the fine hairs on her arm. The freckles on her wrist. She’d laugh
with me like she’s laughing with Daisy.

Daisy.

Daisy is the answer. The gas leak could
happen on a day when Inesa and Daisy don’t meet at the coffee shop.
On an evening, that is, when Daisy would be visiting with her
husband. They’d find Inesa and Paul, dead on the kitchen floor.
They’d call the emergency services in time for the paramedics to
preserve their brains with Cryo serum.

“Want to come over Friday night?” I hear
Inesa ask. “I’ll make those tortillas you like.”

“Of course!” Daisy replies.

Perfect. On schedule. Two days from now.
That’s when I’ll do it. Gives me enough time to clog up their
garbage disposal to mask the smell of the gas. All the pieces are
falling into place. The Cryo Bureau won’t suspect a thing. The
perfect double killing.

But instead of feeling the pastel-blue
relief I feel whenever the plan for a killing materializes, I see
an image of Inesa, her pale cheek cold against the kitchen floor,
lying in a cloud of gas. My heart chokes. Takes all my willpower to
keep my latte down.

I can’t do it.

Inesa laughs at something Daisy says. Her
voice is birdsong. Her eyes are portals to another world.

I can’t kill her. If she’s frozen in
cryogenic suspension for the next twenty years without me, well
then … I’ll never see her again.

A thought flashes through my mind. A
dangerous thought. But it feels familiar. As though it’s lurked in
the dark corners of my brain for some time. Ever since the day
Inesa walked into my store. Since the moment I suggested the gas
leak. Maybe this is what I’ve wanted all along. Maybe I’ve wanted
this from before I met her. An exit from this life. And a ticket
into a new life. A future.

With Inesa.

*

It’s Thursday night, and I can’t sleep. I glance
over at the alarm clock. Actually, it’s Friday morning. 05:00.

Tomorrow – well, later today – is gonna be
rough. I’m going to die. But first, I’m going to kill Paul.
Permanently.

If there’s one thing I do well, it’s
killing. I’ve never murdered anyone before though. And the prospect
of eliminating Paul doesn’t bring me any peace. But Inesa. Inesa’s
worth it.

I sneeze. Have a God-awful headache too.
Thankfully, by this time tomorrow, I won’t have to worry about
whatever I’m coming down with.

I’m not sure whether it’s the thought of
dying later today, the headache, or the smell, that’s keeping me
up. One of the tanks at the sulfur factory on the edge of town
exploded this afternoon, and not even my cold can mask the stench.
With the cash that I’ve earned from the ‘life insurance’ industry,
I can afford a country estate in the winelands. All fine and well,
until there’s a problem with the sulfur factory. Which, mercifully,
isn’t often.

Yesterday morning, while Inesa was coffeeing
with Daisy, I slipped into her kitchen and backed up the garbage
disposal unit. Normally, I would’ve left as quickly as I came. But
I was curious to see more of her. How Inesa lives. The house was
decorated just as I would’ve expected. Understated. But elegant.
Just like the perfect killing. Inesa and I, we think alike. She’ll
be happy with me, one day.

After my visit to the house, Doug, my PI and
go-to-tech-guy that I use for more complicated jobs, called.

“He ain’t got much love in this world,” said
Doug, “beside that gorgeous wife. Did you see the legs on that
one?”

“Go on, Doug.”

“Paul’s father died four years ago, and his
mother rots away in a retirement home in Iowa. Only sibling, a
sister who lives in Vancouver, isn’t mentioned on his Facebook
profile. They aren’t connected on any social media networks either.
And there’s no trace of a phone call or message between them the
last few years.”

“He’s a piece of work, that guy,” I
said.

“Yeah,” Doug concurred, “I think you got
yourself a missing piece.”

In other words, if Paul were to disappear,
nobody but Inesa would look for him for some time. And Inesa won’t
be looking.