The Deepest Cut (28 page)

He’d seen Enrique’s mother crying, but she’d be better off in the long run. Sometimes, people needed to learn lessons the hard way. After all, she was the one who’d given birth to the asshole.

Retrieving his bags, he unlocked the several bolt locks on his reinforced door and entered his single-wide mobile home. It wasn’t anything lavish, but it was more than sufficient for a man of modest needs.

It was pitch-black inside. He never left lights on when he was gone. It was a waste of money. He had sufficient money to cover his living expenses and to have some left over. Anything extra, he preferred to spend on his ladies. Lately, that hadn’t amounted to much. He was
socking away a lot of money. He found himself in a holding pattern not of his choosing. He was in a rut and couldn’t seem to find his way out. He was stuck in Covina, saving money and thinking about his next move.

He was a good, steady employee and had never had trouble holding on to a job. He didn’t steal or lie and he was respectful to his superiors and co-workers. He had a life outside of work that some might find … exotic. But that was his business. As long as he showed up on time and put in a full day’s work, who cared?

He entered the small kitchen, flipping on the switch for the fluorescent ceiling lights, and set the bags on the counter. He went into the hallway and switched on the central air conditioner. Heat built up inside the flat-roofed, thin-walled mobile home during the day, but the air conditioner cooled things off quickly.

From the refrigerator, he took out a bottle of Coors beer, twisted off the top, and drank half of it while he leaned against the sink and thought about his day. He had what he supposed were typical frustrations with his job. Probably less than most people because he chose to work in the middle of the night.

Still, when tensions threatened to spill over, he found a great deal of release by taking care of small problems like Enrique. It helped him maintain his equilibrium so he could focus on his larger goals.

From a cupboard, he took out a bag of Laura Scudder potato chips. He used to buy the Granny Smith brand, but started buying Laura Scudder when he learned that she was buried not far from where he lived. He had visited her grave. He was impressed with how it was marked. A stately granite stone was engraved simply:
SCUDDER.
Flat markers for the different family members interred there were beneath it.

The headstone was so elegant in its simplicity. T. B. Mann decided right then that he wanted a large granite stone like that, with just his family name on it. He was saving money for that, too. Death comes to everyone and if you don’t make plans, who knows how you’ll end up. Could end up like Enrique, who was disintegrating about six feet below where T. B. Mann was standing right at that moment.

The open bag was two-thirds empty. The top was neatly folded
down and held in place with a bright-pink plastic Chip Clip. He carried the bag of chips and the beer to the dinette set that was in the living room, but positioned close to the pass-through to the kitchen. The rest of the room was furnished with a leather swivel rocker-recliner, an end table on each side, and the largest flat-screen TV the room could accommodate. When it came to the few luxuries he enjoyed, he didn’t scrimp.

There were no accommodations for guests, but he never had guests, except for Bob. For Bob, he had found a perfectly good easy chair that someone had left beside the Dumpster. The mobile-home park had also provided the old aluminum and Formica dinette set. An elderly woman had died and her daughter was selling her furniture.

The daughter was nothing more than a lumpy, frumpy hag herself. She impressed him as someone who hated life, and thus, everything in it. She poured her animosity into her negotiations about the price of the dinette set. He’d remained preternaturally calm, knowing his equanimity would further aggravate her. She finally gave him the price he’d originally offered, from which he wouldn’t budge. She’d made a rude parting shot, “Now you and your boyfriend can have intimate dinners together.”

It would have been so easy for him to have taught her a lesson. He could have grabbed her during one of her trips to the Dumpster and strangled her in the shadows. He would have enjoyed the paranoia the murder would have sent whipping through the park like a brushfire in love with the Santa Ana winds. But he realized he’d actually be doing her a favor. A more appropriate fate would be for her to live out the days of her miserable life, finally dying after years of suffering from a degenerative disease that, given her shabby physical condition and poor attitude, she was bound to contract.

Plus, he had bigger fish to fry. As rewarding as the immediate pleasure of watching the fear in the hag’s bulging eyes as the blood vessels burst, hearing her final pathetic sounds, witnessing that wonderful, priceless, oh-so-rare moment when the life, the
life,
faded from her eyes, like a final dying ember that flashes brightly before it turns to ash, it would have been unwise to expose himself to such a risk right now. He needed to keep his eyes on the prize.

He sat at his table and thought of his prize, Nan Vining. Was there ever a moment anymore when he didn’t think of her? Now he luxuriated in his thoughts of her. It was risky. There was danger in getting carried away. His thoughts weren’t all happy. Still, they tempted him. Excited him. The combination of longing and fury, the sweet with the bitter, the idea of total
release
was enough to make him want to
explode.

He felt the excitement and fury rising, his twin towers of passion and doom. They had come up suddenly and threatened to carry him away. He grabbed onto the dinette table as if it was a rickety raft in a turbulent sea. Too often lately, Officer Vining had driven him to these extremes. It was all he could do to keep from breaking up his furniture, running crazily into the street, driving his car onto a sidewalk crowded with pedestrians, or stabbing a total stranger to death in a frenzy.

He had to get ahold of himself. This was not good thinking.

But his mind was a runaway train, going faster and faster. The pressure moved up, up, and up, surging through his chest, out his arms and into his fingers until he could just …

He fumbled to get his keys out of his pants pocket, so frantic, he was whimpering. Keys in hand, he grappled with the tiny combination pen knife and scissors on the key ring. He was sweating now. Trembling.

Control. Control.

It was too late for a pep talk. Pulling the knife blade open, he yanked up his shirt and exposed his soft belly. Without hesitation, he pierced his skin with the knife and made a shallow, two-inch incision. His belly was crosshatched with numerous cuts in various stages of recovery.

The red line hovered for a second, shimmering. Panting, watching, he held his breath, waiting for the release that would save him. Then it happened. The blood flowed. Gulping air, he tittered at the blood. He put his hand beneath it, to catch it, feeling its heat and silky texture. His mouth lolled open. He laughed with release as if he’d learned he’d been the victim of a practical joke.

He grabbed paper napkins from a holder on the table and stuck them to the bloody wound. Calmer now, feeling normal, he went into the kitchen and washed the blood off his hand, watching the redtinged
ribbons circle down the drain. Once his hand was clean, he took off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and took it off.

He peeled away the bloody tissue. From a kitchen cabinet, he took out mercurochrome, a box of gauze squares, and a roll of adhesive tape. Using the plastic wand in the bottle, he dotted the red disinfectant on the wound, wincing when it stung. He dressed it with the gauze and adhesive.

He returned to the dining room table where he removed the Chip Clip from the bag of potato chips and ate chips, now fully able to enjoy his beer.

When he was finished, he put the chips away in the cupboard and dusted his hands over the sink. He walked the empty bottle outside and put it in a garbage container that was dedicated to recyclables. Back inside, he triple-locked the front door. He was in for the remainder of his night.

He put away his supplies and put a single loose knot in the plastic bags before he stored them in another plastic grocery bag hanging from a nail inside his broom closet. The single knots made them easier to grab when he needed a bag for kitchen garbage or such.

Heading down the hallway, he opened the closed door of the small bedroom on the right. A lamp intended for a child’s room was lit. A small motor made the shade turn, casting soothing blue, violet, and green images of stars, moons, and comets across the walls. Because he had sealed up the window, the lamp provided the only light in the room ever. A large standing, rotating fan churned the room’s stale air that was benefiting from the air-conditioning.

The room was sparsely furnished with an inexpensive chest of drawers, an easy chair, a nightstand, and a bed. In the bed lay Bob.

“Evening, Bob.” He bent over to pick up a plate from the night-stand.

“Why do you hate me?” Bob’s voice was affectless.

“Was it cool enough in here for you today?” He examined the contents of the plate. “You didn’t eat much.”

“Why do you hate me?” Bob again asked in the same dull tone.

“I don’t hate you, Bob. On the contrary.”

“Oh.”

He set the plate back down and picked up a steel bedpan from the bed next to where Bob was lying. He carried it toward the door.

Behind him, Bob asked, “Why do you hate me?”

He took the pail to the tiny bathroom, dumped the contents into the toilet, flushed it, and returned to Bob’s room.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you, Bob. If I hated you, would I look after you this way?”

“Oh.”

He set the bedpan on the mattress within Bob’s reach. He straightened the bedclothes, neatly squaring the edges of the sheet and folding it across Bob’s chest. He pressed his palm against Bob’s forehead. It was still too warm, but not as bad as it had been earlier. The aspirin he’d given Bob appeared to have brought his fever down.

“You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Bob. I had to punish you.”

“Punish me.”

“Yes, and you know why.”

“Oh.”

From the nightstand, he picked up a plastic cup from which a bent straw protruded from a screw-on lid. He shook the cup. “You’re not drinking enough fluids. This is Gatorade. It’ll replenish your electrolytes.” He held up the cup and pressed the straw against Bob’s lips.

Bob drank, smacking his lips afterward. “Why do you hate me?”

He set down the cup. “Okay, I’ll see you after I get up.”

“Why do you hate me?”

He closed the door. Now that he was done with his chores, he felt that other urge awakening in his pants.

He crossed the narrow hallway and opened the door of the second of the mobile home’s three bedrooms. There was an overhead light fixture, but he didn’t switch it on, finding the light it cast harsh. He crossed the room in the dark. Reaching out his hand, he found the fireplace and located the switch on the side of the unit. The fake flames jumped to life, casting a warm glow. He’d found the electric fireplace at a yard sale. On the weekends when he wasn’t working, he
loved to haunt neighborhood yard sales. You never knew what you might find.

By the light of the flames, he crossed to the long table against the opposite wall. He had draped it with shiny red satin that reached the floor. On top of the cloth were four white pedestals, two feet tall, fashioned from synthetic material to look like marble Corinthian columns. The pedestals had been bases for birdbaths that he’d found on sale in Target’s garden shop. He’d bought all they’d had in stock, and had thrown away the bowls that attached to the top.

He moved along the first three pedestals, turning on the strands of tiny lights that he had woven around the large picture frames on top. The first frame held the official photograph of Officer Clarissa “Cookie” Silva. The second was Ranger Marilu Feathers. The third was Detective Johnna Alwin. All three women were in uniform and posed in front of a U.S. flag. Feathers’s photo also had the state flag of California. He’d downloaded their official photos from the Internet.

The framed photo on top of the fourth pedestal was shrouded with a black cloth. It was his shrine to Nan Vining.

In front of the first three pedestals, a cherished trophy was displayed.

There was Cookie Silva’s blouse. It had been on the ground when he’d cut her throat and had been drenched with her blood. Essence of Cookie.

There was the Ranger Stetson belonging to Marilu Feathers that he’d retrieved before it had been carried away by the surf. It had fallen from her head when her horse, with the mortally wounded Feathers astride, had madly galloped away. There was a small tail of blood splatter beneath the front of the brim. Essence of Marilu.

There was the green shirt from the uniform he’d stolen from the gardening service that maintained the grounds of the medical building where he’d stabbed Johnna Alwin. A patch above the left breast said “Hinojosa Gardening.” He’d worn the uniform when he’d stabbed her seventeen times. He’d intended to triumph over Alwin via an elegant, single mortal wound, but she had made some remarks that he didn’t care for and he’d lost his temper. It had gotten messy. Johnna, sweet Johnna. Essence of Johnna.

The space in front of Nan Vining’s pedestal was empty. Only recently, the yellow Brooks Brothers polo shirt that was lavishly covered with her blood had been neatly folded there. He’d made a special trip to downtown L.A. to buy that shirt and had paid top dollar for it because he’d seen the man he was impersonating wearing the same style in that same daffodil-yellow color.

First, he’d covered up her photo, the image he’d worshipped all those long years, but now found too painful to gaze upon. Then, his beloved heirloom, the yellow shirt, began to feel as if a hex had been put on it. It lost its magic to enthrall and instead started to taunt him, to whisper his failure.

He’d once loved the shirt because it reminded him not only of the day he’d attacked Vining, but also of all the careful planning and anticipation. His mastery over his lethal ladies had taken months and sometimes years of methodical planning, but Vining in particular had been hard to nab. He’d set more than one trap, only for her to slip away. Then he had got her. Finally got her.