Slaughter (8 page)

W
hen she studied him through the peephole and then opened her door to his knock, he hardly looked like a threat. A jockey-size man in built-up shoes to make him appear taller. His dark hair was long on the sides and combed back in wings that obviously existed to cover his ears. For all of that he was somehow physically appealing. There was a force about him. A certainty that drew a particular sort of woman.

Men like this, Margaret thought. They somehow know about women like me.

“You're the man who's been following me,” she said.

He smiled. “You're the woman who's been observing me following. You've got a lot of nerve, buzzing me in and answering my knock.”

“You took a chance coming here, yourself. For all you know, I might have considered you a rapist or burglar and shot you on the spot. I've done it before.”

Some of this happened to be true, but the burglar had been her ex-husband, and she'd stabbed him in the shoulder, not shot him. None of that mattered now. They'd stitched him up, and he was fine. And she'd gotten a restraining order against him.

“I was sure you wouldn't think of me as dangerous,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not dangerous in any way. I'm sure you can read that in me.” He smiled. “You're a good reader of men.”

“How would you know?”

“I'm a good reader of women.”

“Now you're bullshitting, flattering yourself. That's an ugly thing in a man.”

“If that's true, how come you're going to invite me in?”

“Maybe I like absurdly determined men.”

“You like men who sense right off how you are.”

“Oh? How am I?”

“A good person, but always up for adventure.”

Margaret leaned against the doorframe and looked at him for a long time. She had to look down at an angle, but that didn't seem to bother him. The little bastard didn't blink.

“You've got me pegged,” she said, realizing too late the sexual connotation.

He pretended not to notice, which helped to keep her in his corner. A real gentleman.

“If you ask me,” he said, “the world needs more like you.”

“It has more like me.”

“But they're rare and hard to find.”

“You mean we're rare and hard to find.”

He turned that over in his mind. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Modesty doesn't become you.”

“That's okay. I hardly ever become modest.”

“Do you know where the Grinder Minder is?” she asked.

“The coffee shop, yeah. Two blocks over. A pleasant walk.”

“I'm not crazy enough to invite you in,” she said, “but let's take that walk. We can see through the lies, get to know each other better over coffee.”

“Learn what makes us tick,” he said, smiling. It was an unexpectedly beatific smile that made him, for an instant, look like a mischievous child.

“Sounds like us,” she said. She told him to wait a second while she got her purse.

 

 

They were one of only two couples in the Grinder Minder. The other couple was older, he with a scraggly gray beard and a bald head, she wearing faded jeans and a colorful tie-dyed T-shirt. There were winding tattoos on the woman's inner wrists and up her forearms to the elbows, probably to disguise needle marks. Or maybe razor scars.

Margaret ordered a venti vanilla latte, and, amazingly, that was what he always drank. Most of the time, anyway. The killer watched Margaret's gaze stay fixed for a few seconds on the other couple.

“Hippies lost in time,” he said.

Margaret shrugged. “As long as they're happy.”

“Big job,” he said, “not trusting anyone over thirty when you're over forty.”

“Drugs help,” Margaret said.

“We can get some. Pot's easy enough to get now.”

“That's why it's less desirable.”

“Point taken.”

“I'm a month and a half out of rehab,” she said.

“Then we won't do drugs. Tell you the truth, I was never big on them. My brother got screwed up on them. High on meth when he drove onto a highway and discovered too late he was on an exit ramp. Van full of teenagers hit him head-on. Three killed, including my brother. Four injured.”

“God! That's terrible!”

He shrugged sadly, elaborately, exemplar of all the grief in the world. “You learn to live with it. There's no choice.” He forced a smile. “Tell me about you, but nothing sad, please.”

She returned his smile and her eyes held his. “First, I think we should introduce ourselves.”

He made a big deal out of slapping his cheek, not hard, but loud enough to make the hippie woman glance over. “Good grief, you're right,” he said. “I'm Corey.”

“Margaret.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Your mailbox down in the vestibule.”

“Of course! How sneaky of you.”

“Observant, I like to think.”

“How very you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Now tell me about Margaret. Or is it Maggie?”

“Never. Only Margaret.”

“So let me into your past, beautiful Margaret.”

She sipped her latte deliberately, looking like a woman thinking up something for a parlor game. It occurred to him that she was probably a bigger liar than he was. But certainly less convincing.

“I grew up in Baltimore,” she began. “We were poor but didn't know it . . .”

He stopped paying attention, figuring it was probably all a string of lies anyway.

“. . . And here I am doing proofreading for an advertising company.”

He raised his latte mug in a salute. “You're to be admired, Margaret. Really!”

“Oh, not so much.”

“Don't shortchange yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised by what's in your future.”

So might you.

He finished his latte and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

“Should we start back?”

“Back?

“To your apartment. I have to at least show you to your door. Make sure you're safe in this big bad city.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” And it makes sense to keep you dangling. Anticipation can work wonders.

As they walked through the lowering night he kept slightly off to the side so he could observe the rhythm of her stride. Her high heels abbreviated her steps; the clicking and clacking of her shoes on the hard sidewalk was mesmerizing. Her hips rolled slightly as she walked, her body like a sensuous metronome under perfect, relentless rhythm, meting out precisely the remainder of her life. There was something amazing about it.

The things we don't know until it's too late.

The Gremlin glanced up at the beautiful woman walking alongside him and felt the thrill of possession. Her lithe body kept moving to the rhythm being beaten out by her shoes. He realized he was getting an erection.

Can't have that. Not now, not yet . . .

“You a baseball fan?” he asked.

“The Yankees, when they're the Yankees,” she said.

She half stumbled—or pretended to—and found herself leaning against him. He might be a small man but he was hard and muscular. She could feel strength emanating from him like a field of electricity. Did he do sports? Did he work out at a gym? After a few more steps they were holding hands.

They talked baseball for a few minutes and then walked silently until they came to her building. She didn't say anything as they stood by the elevator. The Gremlin glanced around, saw that they were alone.

The elevator arrived, and as the doors opened he saw that it was empty. He kissed Margaret on the cheek. “I'd better go up with you, see you inside so I know you're safe.”

She didn't discourage him.

They kissed again in the elevator.

As the elevator door opened on her floor, he heard another door open and close somewhere beneath them. Then descending footsteps. Luck held. Still, no one had seen them.

He waited while she fished her keys from her purse and worked two dead-bolt locks.

The apartment door opened to darkness.

“You mind waiting while I turn on a light?” Margaret asked.

“Of course not. I'll be right here.”

As soon as the darkness swallowed her, he crossed the threshold.

She heard him enter and turned, feeling a tingle of alarm.

But when the light came on he was staring at the clock on the table just inside the door. It was an anniversary clock. Its mechanism was beneath a glass dome and revolved a gold filigreed decoration back and forth in a regular circle and a half.

“Does that thing really never need winding?” he asked.

“Once a year,” she lied.

“How do they manage that?”

“They?”

“The people who manufacture the clock.”

Margaret shrugged. “I don't know. It's got some kind of perpetual motion.”

But he knew that was impossible.

Should be impossible.

She was amused by his rapt concentration as he studied the timepiece beneath the small glass dome. He was like a child encountering a new game or puzzle.

“Real gold?” he asked.

“Hardly.”

“Gold plated?”

“Not even that.”

“It doesn't tick or make a bit of noise, yet it has the correct time. Mind if I look at it closer? See if I can make out how it works?”

She moved farther inside and laid her small brown purse on the sofa.

“Maybe when we get back,” she said.

He turned away from the clock, toward her. “Haven't you noticed?” he asked. “We are back.”

Margaret ran regularly and worked out religiously at the gym. She was in shape. She'd taken a course in tae kwon do and knew how to hip-toss a man nearly twice her size. No one had taught her how to deal with being fixated by a stare, mesmerized by the glint of a knife blade.

No one had taught her how fear could freeze her insides and make movement impossible.

No one had taught her that she was prey.

 

T
hey sat at their usual assigned places. Jason Kray at the head of the table, next to him, Kent, next to Kent, Jordan. On the other long side of the table, Nora sat next to her mother.

It had been report card day. Even five-year-old Nora, who had recently started kindergarten, had come home after school with a report card. All passing marks, of course. Jordan thought he might be the only one at the table who knew the rest of Nora's class got the same passing marks. His own grades hadn't been so good. Not like his brother Kent's.

Kent had gotten straight A's in his classes, and a note from his adviser saying that he was a pleasure in class. He also earned straight A's for good behavior. Taller than Jordan, but still of average height, he was also going to be a starter on the school basketball team.

His mother had raved when he'd shown up after school and handed the report card to her. She'd passed it to Kent's father, Jason, who merely grunted and took in another glob of collard greens and vinegar on his fork.

“What about your dipshit little brother?” Jason asked.

Kent said nothing. He squirmed in his chair, looked at Jordan, and then looked away. He knew what would happen if he decided to defend Jordan. His father would see that it would never happen again.

Jordan was well aware of his failures as a scholar. It wasn't that he was dumb. He knew that. He simply didn't like studying anything he wasn't interested in. He was curious about how things worked, which seemed to him to have nothing to do with when famous people were born or died, or who was king or queen during what era. How things worked, their inner secrets—that's where the world's real knowledge was to be found. The dates of ancient battles, won or lost, had little to do with it.

“He did the best he could,” he heard his mother say. She didn't sound as if she really meant it.

His father grunted again. “Some lessons need learnin' the hard way.”

Jordan knew what the hard way was. His mother would wield the whip while his father watched.

Then his father would—

“See that the tractor's in the barn and gassed up,” his father was saying. “You got tilling to do tomorrow.”

“He's got school,” Alice Kray said.

“What's the point? He ain't learnin' anything anyway.”

“Still an' all . . .”

“You'll till after school tomorrow,” Jason Kray said to Jordan with finality. “That soil needs breaking.”

“I can till,” Kent said confidentially.

“You got your homework,” his mother said. It was a given that Kent was going to college, either because of his grades or his athletic prowess. He could already run high hurdles in near record time and throw a baseball a mile, and now he was concentrating on basketball.

He should easily be in the Olympics, his family figured. If not that, the major leagues, or professional football, after a great college career. Maybe even pro basketball, if he got much taller. One way or another, his assignment was to make the family rich.

“I don't mind tilling,” Kent said. He actually liked driving the tractor, listening to the engine roar and watching how the oversized back tires dug into the bare earth while the tiller blades laid open the soil for planting.

“You got other after-school chores tomorrow,” his mother said.

All through this conversation, Jordan's mind was elsewhere. He liked to learn; he just didn't like school. And for sure he couldn't run track, or throw a baseball half as far as Kent. But why should he be able to do those things? He was smaller than Kent. His arms were skinny and his legs were bony. He wasn't built to be an athlete, even though he lifted weights in the barn.

It wasn't that he was weak.

He didn't want them to know how strong he was. It seemed to him that if they did know, they'd figure out a way to use it against him.

Nora spilled her juice and began to cry. Strained peas dribbled from her mouth.

“Shut up the rug rat,” Jason Kray said. He shoved his chair back so hard it turned over as he stood up and strode into the living room. Jordan and Kent's little sister, Nora, didn't quiet down that easily. She'd have to learn, and was almost old enough to be taught.

Hard lessons, not easily forgotten. That's what this family was about. What all families should be about. Hard lessons, and weathering storms inside and out.

Kent followed his father into the living room. They would sit on opposite ends of the couch and watch a replay of last night's baseball game between the Red Sox and Cleveland Indians.

Jordan, still seated in the kitchen, didn't have to be told to help his mother clear the table. Women's work, according to his father.

As Jordan worked, he became fascinated by the magnifying glass his mother used instead of glasses to help her read. She had magnifiers all over the house, but the biggest one was on the kitchen windowsill, where it was handy for her to use while reading food labels or recipes. She watched her calories and carbohydrates. Jason had told her what would happen if she let herself get fat.

The way she had the magnifier tilted up against the window was interesting to Jordan. He had read in various outdoors magazines how it was possible to start a fire with a magnifying glass. The sunlight and heat streaming through the curved glass could be focused to a tiny flammable dot.

He'd almost started a fire that way once himself. One of the magazines had a story about a guy in Alaska who'd used a single lens from his glasses to start a campfire that kept him and his sled dogs from freezing to death. Jordan didn't know if the story was true, but he saw how such a thing could have happened.

It was fascinating, the way so many things had more than one purpose.

Like a belt that would keep your pants up, or be used for something else altogether.

 

 

In the morning, when it was ten minutes past time to get up and start getting dressed for school, Jordan's mother shook his bed as if an earthquake had struck.

“I was you, I'd make sure I wouldn't miss that school bus this mornin',” she said. “You got no room to misbehave.”

“Where's everybody?” he asked, though he could hear his father snoring.

“They're sleepin' in. I'm gonna give you a note that says Kent's got a stomachache. You take that to school and give it to his teacher. Or to the principal or somebody in the office.”

“Why can't I stay home and sleep in, too?”

“It wouldn't look right, the both of you being sick at the same time.”

“I don't know. It seems—”

“Just get up and get dressed afore that school bus arrives at the end of the road. Unless you want more of what you got last night.”

“No,” Jordan said. “No more.” He wasn't sure if it was pain or embarrassment that was making his cheeks flush.

He managed to climb out of bed and stood swaying. His buttocks and the backs of his thighs were on fire, and it seemed that every joint in his body ached.

“Get movin',” his mother said. “A hot shower'll fix you up. I'll put out some cereal for you, then I'm goin' back to bed.”

Nude, he stumbled toward the bathroom.

The one thing he surely didn't want was to miss the bus.

He skipped his shower and got dressed in a hurry. He decided to skip breakfast, too.

His curiosity was nagging. More than nagging. Raging. Instead of eating the bowl of stale Cheerios his mother had put out for him, he slightly adjusted the magnifying glass on the windowsill, propping it over some crinkled tissue and wadded newspaper from the trash.

Near the kitchen curtains.