The Feeder (18 page)

“Yeah,” he said, moving his eyes lecherously over my body. “Looks like we’re neighbors.” He flashed another of his repulsive brown grins. “Lucky me.”

“Lucky you,” I repeated, twirling my hair around my fingers, trying to keep my hand from curling into a fist.

“So…” he continued awkwardly, “it’s just you and the quad, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t that get a little lonely?”

“Sometimes.”

“Feel like some company?”

“Maybe. Depends on the company.”

He replied with a shit-eating grin that looked like he was actually eating shit… and hadn’t swallowed it yet. I smiled back, fighting down a faint wave of nausea. It was ironic; in my time, I had handled miles of intestines and other disgusting stuff, both human and animal, yet looking into Pete’s nauseating meth mouth was enough to make my stomach do a flip-flop. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe it meant I still had some humanity left even after all of the horrible things I had done.

“Well?” he asked expectantly.

“Well what?”

“Do you want to drop by my campsite for a beer?

I gave him my best
come-fuck-me
grin as I sashayed saucily toward the driver’s door of my truck.

“Yeah! Why not?”

“Fucking rights! Let’s do it!” His Jack O’ Lantern grin widened even further as he skipped backward toward his car, nearly tripping over the front bumper. His engine roared to life, along with the ear-busting blast of his stereo, which he immediately turned down so he could talk to me.

“You should follow me!” he called, over the rumble of his motor, “I gotta protect my paint job!”

My first thought was that the best way to protect his precious paint job was to avoid driving on gravel roads altogether. Boy was this asshole stupid.

This dumb fucker actually believed that a ‘girl’ with my looks would give him the time of day. He would be easy to kill. Probably too easy. Too bad, because I would have enjoyed a bit of a challenge for my final kill.

~ Chapter 25 ~

Pine Point

I followed him up the dusty gravel road back up to Pine Point, where his campsite was. He handed me a beer from the cooler in his trunk and then lit a joint and offered it. I waved it away. I had tried smoking pot a few times; enough to understand that I didn’t like the way it made me feel. I had never tried any other types of drugs and had no desire to. Drug use had been a major part of Camille’s life, and I had loved her in spite of it but personally, I had no use for drugs of any description.

Pete released the little white dog from its prison. The poor thing immediately fled from him and his torturous loud music and made a beeline for the first human being it saw, which was me.

The puppy stood on its hind legs, leaning its front paws against my legs and looking up at me, almost pleading. The tiny dog’s walnut-brown eyes, peering out from beneath a fringe of fluffy white fur, were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Something strange happened inside my heart at that moment. My throat began to hurt and for a second or two, I thought I was going to cry. What the hell was wrong with me?

Suck it up, princess
, I told myself.
It’s showtime!

I bent down and picked up the tiny creature, which wasn’t much larger than a kitten. There were still traces of shit in its fur but I didn’t care; I hugged the puppy anyway, allowing it to lick my face as it whimpered urgently. The poor little thing seemed to be begging me for help.

I will help
, I promised the dog silently.
Hang in there, little one.

I wondered what an asshole like him was doing with that type of dog in the first place. It was a tiny little thing; not much more than a little white ball of fluff. It looked like one of those miniature mop-dogs that rich women carried in purses.

Douchebags who drove obnoxious hotrods and blasted thrash metal music loud enough to burst a helpless puppy’s little eardrums typically preferred larger dogs. Dogs that made them feel like tough guys: Pit Bulls, Rottweilers and other notorious ‘tough’ breeds.

“Well, I see you’ve met my baby,” he said.

I looked up from my puppy kisses and projected my very best Barbie doll façade, perhaps overacting a little in order to conceal the way I was really feeling. I batted my eyelashes and kept my voice at a high, girly pitch.

“Ohmagawd!” I gushed. “He’s just so adorable!”

“
She
,” Creepy Pete corrected me.

I hadn’t immediately seen the dog’s gender under the shaggy coat, which I noted, was matted and in dire need of a good grooming.

“Oops!” I giggled, holding the puppy up so I could see her belly. “So she is! Sorry little one! What’s your name?” I asked, addressing the dog.

“Her name is Missy.”

Creepy Pete lewdly ran his eyes over my body, making no attempt whatsoever to hide his ogling. Being in such close quarters with him even gave me, a ruthless killer, a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. He took a step closer to me and I casually moved away, keeping the arms-length distance between us equal at all times, observing one of my own personal rules of self-defense:

Never allow your enemy to get close enough to get his hands on you or get a swing in
.

I tried to divert his attention away from my body by calling attention back to the puppy.

“You’re quite the chick magnet, aren’t you little girl?” I said, nuzzling the puppy’s wet nose as she squirmed delightedly in my arms before settling into the crook of my arm. I had to admit, it felt good to hold a warm body in my arms, even one this tiny.

Pete didn’t seem to approve of the fact that his dog liked me. He tried to hide his displeasure but I was good at reading people, especially ones as transparent as this asshat.

“She’s only doing that for your body heat,” he said with a sneer, jerking his head in the dog’s direction. The distaste in his voice was unmistakable.

“Well, that makes sense,” I joked brightly, “I
do
have a hot body!”

He responded with a tight, thin smile that did nothing to cover his displeasure; in fact, it amplified it. He was suggesting that I shouldn’t be fooled into thinking the dog actually liked me when she was just using me for heat. I knew differently. I was that dog’s only hope for salvation and she damn well knew it. I had no intention of letting her down.

“What kind of dog is she?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation light-hearted.

“Purebred Maltese,” Pete boasted, “Sixteen weeks old. I just bought her a couple of days ago.”

“Yeah? Where did you get her from?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation on the dog for as long as possible.

“Answered an ad from someone over in Agassiz,” he replied. “Paid five hundred bucks, can you believe it? Hard to believe a puppy costs that much.” The disgust in his voice when he mentioned the dog’s price shocked me. I also detected impatience in his tone, a sort of coldness that surfaced at about the same time the dog made her appearance. He seemed to resent her for being the center of my attention.

Fuck him in his ugly ass
, I thought, looking down at the tiny white bundle in my arms. I’d be giving him some attention in the very near future but not the kind he was hoping for.

“Anyway,” Pete continued coldly, “it was a helluva good deal because those fucking things go for at least eight hundred in the pet stores. Everybody wants these goofy little things nowadays, ‘cause they’re easy, just like cats.”

We’d had a lot of family dogs in my lifetime. My mother was an avid animal lover and had volunteered at a local animal shelter. She had rescued many dogs from death row over the years, bringing them home for us to love. With Mom no longer with us, we hadn’t gotten around to adopting a replacement dog after Cyrus, our shepherd-lab cross, died from old age.

After my father died it was just me, alone in the house with an occasional visit from Camille. Then I met Rita, who wasn’t much of an animal person. After we broke up, I didn’t feel capable of dedicating the amount of time and care a dog would require. That was what I told myself, anyway.

The truth was, after Rita I didn’t feel capable of loving anyone or anything anymore.

Except Camille.

I knew very well that no dog, regardless of size, was in any way similar to a cat. It was a common mistake made by people who were inexperienced with animals; particularly ones who lacked experience with dogs.

“They’re not exactly like cats,” I pointed out. “You still have to walk them and stuff.”

“Ffft,” he snorted, waving his hand dismissively at the puppy, as if disgusted that there was anything desirable about her. “No ya fuckin’ don’t. They’re small enough to keep in a cage, that’s why everyone wants ‘em. I’m gonna get a male and breed them. I’ll get my cash back plus profit on the first litter alone and don’t need much space to do it.”

He could have just as easily been talking about a car or some other inanimate object instead of a living, breathing, sentient being.

A being that was still just a
baby
, for fuck’s sake!

My stomach churned with revulsion. What he was talking about amounted to nothing more than a puppy mill. When you thought of puppy mills, you thought of large-scale operations with hundreds of dogs but a lot of puppy mills started out just like this; some asshole gets dollar signs in his eyes when he sees how much breeders charge for dogs. Small breed dogs were especially vulnerable because it was possible to cram more of them into a small space.

It was clear that Pete was no different from any of my other victims. He was nothing more than a pimp. He planned to exploit that puppy just as a pimp would use a whore, profiting from the proceeds of her sexual activity. He would breed her again and again until she died from neglect, selling the puppies for hundreds of dollars each.

Pete had only had the puppy for a few days and he had already succeeded in making her terrified of him by punishing her for not being potty trained. I shuddered to imagine what horrors would have awaited the poor little girl if he’d gotten her home.

Without my intervention, the tiny white dog was destined to a life of abuse and neglect, with nobody to hold her and stroke her silky fur.

She would have nobody to love her.

Just like me.
A hard lump formed in my throat.

I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to keep up my dumb blonde routine. I fought back the urge to put the dog on the ground and disembowel the fucker right then and there. My knife was still in my truck, or I might have done just that.

Six months ago, when my murder spree was at its peak, I would have had no reservations about slaughtering the creepy little bastard right where he stood.

In spite of all I’d been through, I still believed things happened for a reason. If there was some higher power or unseen force controlling the universe, then it had placed me at that gas station at that precise moment for a reason.

I
was the one who could save that pup.
I
was the one who had the power to stop Creepy Pete. I had no choice but to kill one more time. I could not allow this monster to live. The puppy needed my help.

We sat next to Pete’s smoldering campfire in a couple of folding chairs and sipped beers. I cuddled Missy while Pete talked.

He was really putting on the act, trying to impress me but it just made me want to kill him even more. All he did was brag about himself – how much money he had and how many things he’d bought with his money. Apparently he was a lowlife who had come into an inheritance. From the sound of it, he was pissing through the money even faster than he’d gotten it, buying big boy toys like the orange Buick. I smelled a lot of bullshit on his breath.

I let him talk, encouraging his endless chatter by asking him an occasional question about himself. I wanted to find out a few things about him before I killed him: where did he live? Did he have anyone at home who would miss him when he didn’t return? Considering all possible contingencies was key when planning a murder. I needed to know what kind of collateral damage I might have to deal with.

I couldn’t believe my good luck. He was from Chilliwack, a large town about a forty-minute drive from where we were. Chilliwack was a little too far from Vancouver to be considered one of its suburbs but it was still conveniently close in case I had to pay a visit to his home.

He was divorced. His ex-wife (that conniving bitch) had turned his children against him. His children were adults and he no longer had to pay child support, a fact which seemed to please him immensely. His parents were dead and his brother wouldn’t speak to him because his wife (another conniving bitch) controlled him, even turning him against his own brother. He lived alone and couldn’t stand any of his neighbors – they were all conspiring against him (more assholes).

I saw a distinct pattern in Pete’s personal relationships. It seemed everyone he encountered was some sort of asshole who conspired against him. Even more specifically, Pete blamed women for turning other people against him. He was a true-blue misogynist. I was confident that I could make Pete disappear without alarming his loved ones, because he didn’t have any. I had the feeling ex-wife and kids wouldn’t give him a second thought if they never heard from him again.

Being in his company was excruciating. It was even more painful to keep smiling and appearing to be interested in what he was saying as he rambled on and on. A couple of times I tried to contribute to the conversation by talking about ‘myself’ (‘myself’ being Lacey, the imaginary female persona I’d invented) but he barely listened, if at all. He paused impatiently in his monologue each time I tried to speak, then interrupted with a disconnected sounding, “Uh-huh, uh-huh…” before jumping right back in with his “
me-me-me
” speech. It was clear that he had no interest in anyone other than himself, aside from what he thought he could get from the other person. In my case, sex was what he wanted.

I gritted my teeth behind my cutesy-girl grin and imagined what he would look like with his large intestine hanging out of his mouth. Creepy Pete had a bad case of verbal diarrhea. It seemed logical that he should learn how it felt to have shit coming out of his mouth. A warm glow of inspiration began to form in the back of my brain as I contemplated the different ways I could kill him.