Jilling (Kit Tolliver #6) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) (8 page)

“We’re on the same page. But I’m not gonna bother cooking. You up for it if I order a pizza?

“Sure. And I don’t know when I’ll be home, so don’t order it until I get here.”

“And this time I’ll buy the wine. How do you say what we had, Nooey San George’s?”

“Close enough.”

“And don’t worry that this is going to make us lesbians. I mean, that was a guy I was on the couch with, you know?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she said. “the thing is, I still get a lot of pleasure out of it.”

“Acting out?”

“Right. I realize I’m compulsive about it, and it’s almost as if I don’t have any choice, but, you know, it feels good.”

“Of course it does,” he said. “And you may not be ready to stop. It always felt good to me, too.”

“It did?”

“But less so,” he said, “toward the end. That’s not why I stopped, I stopped because sexual compulsivity was making my life unmanageable, but the pleasure did drop off as time went on. Even at the moment of release I’d find myself thinking about the next time. And, of course, regretting everything that was regrettable about the present moment.”

She told him she guessed she could relate to that.

She’d met him in the parking lot at a quarter to twelve, wearing jeans and a modest top, with a capacious shoulder bag on her arm. She’d locked her bike to the cyclone fence and joined him in the front seat of the Subaru. And now they were on their way to the meeting in Redmond, and conversation was no problem, because all she had to do was get it started and he’d carry the ball, telling her chunks of his story of sin and redemption. It would have been more interesting if he’d gone into detail, but as she already knew, not going into detail was part of the SCA program, because God forbid any of them should get any pleasure out of anything for the rest of their miserable lives.

“Here we are,” he said, eventually, and waited to make a left turn into a church parking lot. There were a handful of cars all clustered at the front of the lot, and nothing but a van farther back.

She said, “Graham? Could we stop for a minute? There’s something I need to say.” He braked, and she said, “Maybe if you could pull up, oh, near that van? Like, away from all these cars?”

He drove to the rear of the lot, swung the Subaru around and pulled up next to the van. That vehicle’s side bore the name of the church, and the injunction to get right with God.

Now you tell me.

She unbuckled her seat belt, slipped her right hand into her shoulder bag. He kept his own seat belt fastened, she noted with approval, so he’d be safely buckled up during the hazardous five-mile-an-hour return trip to a parking spot with his SCA buddies.

“There’s this thing they do in AA,” she said. “According to what I’ve read. Like, sometimes when they’re taking a man to his first meeting, or to a rehab, they give him one final drink on the way. So he won’t go into withdrawal. So what I was wondering—”

Oh, the look on his face!

“I guess that’s a no, huh?”

“Kim—”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “That was a
joke
, for God’s sake! But what I really do need to do is I have to tell you why I came on so strong.”

“Believe me, Kim, I understand. I’ve been there myself. The idea of taking no for an answer—”

“That’s only part of it. See, I’ve got this list. There are only four names on it, and you’re one of them.”

“Well, I’m flattered, but as I said—”

“No, don’t be flattered. What I wanted to do, I wanted to be able to cross you off the list, and in order to do that I’d have to sleep with you first.”

There was a padded mailer in her bag. Her hand slipped into the open end, fastened on the handle of the knife. He was saying something but she paid no attention, concentrating instead on the move she’d make, visualizing it in her mind’s eye.

“And when you turned me down,” she went on, “I just couldn’t stand it, and I was so upset that it kept me from seeing what should have been obvious.”

“Sometimes the hardest thing to see is what’s right in front of our eyes.”

Gee, Graham, I’d better go write that down.

“What I didn’t let myself realize,” she said, “is that I’d already fucked you. I mean, that’s how you got on the list in the first place, right? So I didn’t have to fuck you again, much as I might want to. All I had to do to cross you off the list, was, well,
this.
”

Just as she’d visualized it: her right hand emerging from the shoulder bag, gripping the kitchen knife, bringing it in one graceful motion into the center of his chest.

Just like that.

“You fucking idiot,” she said. “You sanctimonious asshole. You could have died happy.”

Did he even hear the words? Hard to say. There was no blood to speak of, so she must have found the heart and stopped it. His eyes were wide, but the light was leaving them.

Three
.

Now what? Her plan had worked perfectly, but it hadn’t included the aftermath.

Just leave him here? But she had to go back to the Barling lot for her bike, and how was she going to get there? Call a taxi?

Take his place behind the wheel? The key was right there in the ignition, and despite what she’d told Rita, she was perfectly capable of driving it. All she had to do was dump his body and drive his car back to where she’d left the bike. His car could return to the slot where it belonged, and she could bike off into the sunset.

Dump his body where? Just leave him in the church parking lot? They’d find him soon enough, and connect him to the SCA meeting, and who was to say he hadn’t talked about her with some of his we-don’t-fuck-anymore buddies? It might not lead to her, but it would guarantee headlines.

How about the church van? It was dusty, so it probably didn’t get used much, and by the time anybody found a body in it there’d have been a dozen other 12-Step groups meeting there. Not a perfect idea, but—

Forget it. Fucking thing was locked up tighter than an SCA member’s asshole.

If the Subaru had a trunk, that would work. Probably be a struggle getting him into it, but she could reposition the car first so that it screened her actions from observers. But the thing was a squareback, the contents of its rear compartment glaringly visible, so scratch that.

So what did that leave?

Switching seats with him wasn’t the hardest part. It was a little complicated, she had to maneuver him from behind the wheel into the passenger seat, but it went smoothly enough. She fastened his seatbelt and tightened it so it would keep him in position, then took his place behind the wheel and drove out of there.

Now it got tricky. Not finding her way—that was easy, as the Subaru had a GPS device, complete with a woman’s voice to tell you when and where to turn, and Barling Industries was already available on his list of recent destinations, so all she had to do was select it and follow the prompts.

But there she was, driving through traffic with a dead man sitting up next to her. The premise, of course, was that his condition wouldn’t be evident to a casual onlooker, and no one would see blood, because she’d adjusted his necktie to cover the wound. But he still looked dead as a doornail to her, and every time she braked for a stoplight with another car alongside, she found herself holding her breath. At any moment she’d hear sirens and there’d be people screaming and cops yanking the doors open and—

And each time the light changed and she drove away.

“
Approaching right turn,
” the voice told her at length, and this final right turn brought her into the Barling lot. “
You have arrived.
”

No shit, Sherlock.

Did the GPS doohickey have a memory? Could it tell the police where it had been?

Well, they’d have to find it first. She unhooked it from its moorings and dropped it into her handbag. Something to get rid of down the line, along with the knife.

Did the SCA people know about the GPS? Like, were they okay with him having an authoritative female voice telling him where to go and what to do? Like, couldn’t he have a male voice, just to remove another possible occasion of sin?

Fucking moron.

She left him in his car, parked right where it had been when she joined him for the ride to Redmond. She took a moment to put him back behind the wheel; it would help keep him upright, and was a more natural spot for him, although it wouldn’t fool anyone who took a good look.

They’d think he’d had a heart attack. Got behind the wheel, stuck the key in the ignition, and the poor devil’s ticker quit on him. They’d know different soon enough, and it wouldn’t take a formal autopsy to spot the knife wound in his chest, but by then she’d be long gone.

She took a moment to wipe the surfaces she might have touched. And at the last minute she remembered to go through his wallet. He had just over three hundred dollars, mostly in twenties and tens, and something made her look in the compartment behind his State of Washington driver’s license, where he’d tucked away two fifties and a hundred for an emergency.

Well, this was an emergency, all right. The Nuits-Saint-Georges had left her alarmingly close to broke.

She locked the car on her way out, unlocked her bike, and left.