The May Day Murders (31 page)

Stanley had stood hidden behind a tree
and watched as the mayor, who had to be sixty if he were a day,
lowered his fat naked body into the hot tub and waited for Cindy to
join him. She was still inside and Stanley watched her as she
stripped off her clothes, retrieved a drink the mayor had
apparently prepared for her beforehand, then slinked out onto the
patio wearing nothing but a smile. When she reached the hot tub,
she leaned over in front of the mayor and let her gorgeous tits
dangle before his admiring eyes. Then she had sat down on the edge
of the tub with her legs spread wide open and allowed the mayor to
stick his fat face in between them and start nibbling…

Stanley’s teeth were clenched as he
recalled that night. Why in the fuck would a beautiful bitch like
Cindy Fuller screw around with an obese, ugly slob like that? And
to think that she had once thought of himself as no more than a
turd floating in a toilet bowl …

Why in the fuck hadn’t he ever been
able to score with this chick for chrissakes!
he wondered
feebly as he had watched the mayor work on her with
relish.

A smug grin came to Stanley Jenkin’s
face and he shot a glance over toward Cindy’s body slouched down in
the passenger’s seat. He had finally scored with her after all. It
may have taken twenty years and a lot of bullshit but at least he’d
finally done her. He’d nailed Cindy Fuller and nailed her but good.
He had in fact fucked her to death!

She had loved it, too. He swore he
could almost see it in her eyes as he was putting it to her earlier
that night. He could imagine her thinking to herself,
“Jesus, I
never knew Stanley was so damned cool! And what a great fuck he
is!”

Too late now, Cin, he thought. You
should’ve thought about that twenty years ago.

He was approaching the last turn before
the hairpin and he slowed down his speed. As expected, he hadn’t
seen a single car out on the road yet. There were only a handful of
people who lived around this area and those few were all most
likely watching the pre-season football game between the Broncos
and Chiefs on TV.

The incline of the road descended
sharply after he made the turn, making it necessary for him to
brake hard to keep the car under control against the fast idle
speed. Ahead of him, about a hundred yards or so, he could see the
hairpin curve. He drove another fifty yards and slowed down to a
complete stop. Time was critical now, he knew, so he was going to
have to work fast.

There was no berm to speak of where he
had stopped the car—just two lanes of asphalt heading straight for
the curve with a drainage ditch on either side. He shifted into
neutral and checked the tachometer—the car was idling just under
3,000 rpm, as he had estimated it would. He sat for another moment
as he considered the engine’s idling speed and the distance to the
guardrail and beyond. Then, figuring in the steepness of the road,
he felt confident that the car would indeed have enough gusto to
break through the guardrail and continue on to the cliff. This
debate was all academic at this stage anyway—he certainly couldn’t
risk the extra time it would take to make another idle adjustment
anyway.

Stanley threw the gearshift lever back
into drive and set the parking brake, praying the engine wouldn’t
die. It didn’t, but the car was lunging forward in a fury and felt
like it would die any moment. He got out and quickly ran over to
the passenger side, opened the door, and gathered up Cindy’s body
into his arms. Her skin was already cool to the touch and he nearly
vomited as he carried her around to the driver’s side. He stuffed
her into the seat and arranged her feet in an approximate driving
position. Suddenly the engine missed, sputtered and bogged down to
an anemic, sort of choked, purring sound.
Holy fuck, it was
going to die on him!
he thought. Then all of a sudden the
engine regained momentum and was back up to three grand again.
Stanley felt a bead of sweat run into his eye that stung like a
bee.

With a cautious gasp of relief, Stanley
quickly hopped out and ran to the front of the car, checking to see
that the wheels were heading straight forward. Satisfied, he ran
back to the driver’s side long enough to place Cindy’s upper body
against the steering wheel to help keep the wheels on
course.

Sweat was now literally pouring down
Stanley’s face as he glanced up and down the road to be sure there
weren’t any oncoming motorists. It was black as pitch in either
direction. He again considered with some regret that there would be
no skid marks left behind on either the pavement or the berm to
indicate that Cindy had hit the brakes before plummeting over the
cliff and he was certain that the police would question that. He
also knew that they would be speculating a hell of a lot of other
things while investigating Cindy Fuller’s fatal car accident,
seeing as she was such an important personage in the community. But
none of this really bothered him and the reason was quite simple:
they would never in a million years be able to pin her death on
Stanley Jenkins no matter how extensive their investigation may
be.

Because Stanley Jenkins no longer
existed.

The smug grin returned to his face as
he grasped the top edge of the door with his left hand, leaned
inside and took hold of the parking brake lever in his right hand.
Taking a deep breath and a final glimpse of Cindy Fuller’s pale but
still beautiful face, he released the parking brake and jumped back
from the car like a cat.

The Mercedes shot forward like a
sprinter from the starting line, the engine roaring and whining in
the dark quiet of the mountains. Stanley barely had enough time to
run after it and slam the door shut in a sudden panic-stricken
afterthought as the car hurtled along toward its destination. By
the time the car was half way to the hairpin curve it was doing a
good 35 mph. Stanley stood and stared in utter fascination as the
phantom runaway car grew smaller in the distance with increasing
velocity. Then suddenly the car began veering hard to the right and
Stanley held his breath. It was going to plow into the drainage
ditch! he thought. With a sickening feeling in the pit of his gut,
he realized that he had fucked up royally by not starting this
whole death car plot into motion closer to the curve than he
had.

Christ!

Then miraculously, the car began
straightening itself out as it tore onto the grassy area. Stanley
crossed his fingers and looked on, praying that the car stayed on
course. Only thirty feet to go until impact.

Twenty feet. The car had to be doing
forty-five.

Only ten feet to go. It was really
booking now!

Smash!
The Mercedes crashed
through the guardrail like it was made of matchsticks and kept
right on going.
(Just like the Energizer bunny, Stanley thought
with a smile.)

A few seconds later, the car dipped out
of sight. He heard the engine race to a throaty whine as the wheels
left the ground and became airborne. A few moments later, an eerie
deathlike silence fell over the mountain as the car continued to
sail through the air and out of hearing range.

Then he suddenly heard a tree-crunching
thud, followed by a rustling sound like a wild bear on a rampage.
Finally, the entire Rocky Mountain sky was lit up like the Fourth
of July as the Mercedes exploded and caught fire somewhere down
near the base of the mountain.

What a Rocky Mountain High!
he
thought.

“
Time to book,” Stanley
breathed to himself.

The temptation to run over and look
down at the scene was nearly overwhelming but he knew he couldn’t
afford himself that luxury. It wouldn’t be long before the whole
county would be up here investigating.

He reached inside his coat pocket and
took out a flashlight, switched it on then began searching for the
path. He spotted it about twenty yards back up the road to the left
and hastened toward it. The path was narrow and overgrown but he
knew that it was accessible and where it led. He entered the path
and began scaling the hillside at a brisk gait. He had only gone
forty yards or so when he heard the sirens.

The path ascended a steep hill for
several hundred feet before terminating onto a dirt road. When he
reached the road, Stanley stopped long enough to gaze down through
a clearing in the trees at the scene below. He wasn’t able to
actually spot any of the emergency vehicles but he could see the
flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the sides of the
mountain, their eerie staccato flashes slicing into the
yellow-orange glow of Cindy’s burning Mercedes. He was pleased with
himself—he hadn’t been able to foretell whether the car would
actually catch fire when it hit and this had been one of the few
calculated risks he’d taken on this mission. He had debated on
whether or not to install an explosive device that would have
ensured that Cindy’s body would end up in cinders but had decided
not to take any unnecessary risk. The authorities might well find
the device during their investigation and that would have bungled
the whole thing. Some details simply had to be left to
fate.

Stanley turned and began jogging east
on the road. He felt good—in fact he felt excellent. His body was
in peak physical condition and at one with the road, the air was
crisp and the adrenalin was pumping. Right this moment, he felt
like he could take on the whole fucking world and win. In a sense,
he was doing just that. With each mission he undertook, the world
was getting much closer to discovering the truth: that Stanley
Jenkins was not going to be pushed around any more. He was a force
to be reckoned with—not the innocuous egghead that everyone thought
him to be. Nope, he was a fucking cool dude—just like James Bond.
And just like his idol, Stanley Jenkins was leaving behind droves
of gorgeous babes in his wake as he encountered his missions—every
one of them with broken hearts filled with regret that they hadn’t
known sooner that Stanley was not only a cool dude and a master
spy, but a super stud as well.

But even James Bond had to retire some
day. Bond had in fact retired the day that Ian Fleming, his
creator, had died. The reincarnations of Bond since then had only
been cheap imitations of the real thing. Sort of the same way that
Cindy Fuller had been a cheap imitation of the real thing…

The image of her, the real thing, as a
teenage girl flashed through Stanley’s mind for a fleeting moment
and he felt his pulse quicken even more. The prospect of returning
to his roots and settling down with her in the not too far future
heightened his euphoria. She was going to be his light at the end
of the tunnel, the one who would appreciate everything he had
accomplished. She would be able to see what Stanley Jenkins was all
about without having to be told or shown. Because this babe had
class—always had and always would. That’s what set her apart from
all the rest. He’d known it from the very first time he’d followed
her home from school and saw the way she’d strutted her sweet
little ass ever so gracefully—with confidence and poise. She didn’t
have to flaunt her obvious attributes; they were just there. She
knew it and the rest of the world knew it.

But the rest of the world would never
know her as Stanley Jenkins did. He knew her intimately—her likes
and dislikes, her habits, her routines. He’d watched her many times
as she lay in bed at night, her homework swept off to the side,
staring at the ceiling and fantasizing about the man of her dreams
suddenly coming along and sweeping her off her feet. He had read
her diary once, and she’d written that someday she would meet
someone who truly understood her and knew all the things to do and
say that made her happy. And once she found him, she would do
anything in the world for him and never let him go.

Little had she known that she would
have to wait this long to realize her dreams. But how could she
have known back then that he had already been there for her? It
hadn’t been her fault.

It had been his own.

He’d not waited patiently for just the
right moment to tell her—

He’d let that fucking bimbo
blow the whole operation.

Stanley Jenkins’ blood began to boil
and it took everything he had to compose himself. Patience, he
thought. In the not so distant future, there would be no one left
to stand in his way.

He spotted the rental car up ahead and
a smile returned to his face. We reached the car, unlocked the door
and got in, flung the nylon bag of the passenger seat and started
the engine. In ten minutes he’d be on the main road and in another
fifteen minutes would be on the interstate heading north to Denver.
After a late supper and a couple of drinks, he’d crash out at his
hotel and be up early the next morning to drive to the airport to
catch his flight.By the time he landed at New York’s La Guardia
Airport, he would have a good four or five hours to spend
sightseeing and taking in all those wonderful things that made New
York City such a hip city. That would be his own little treat to
himself, by God. On the following day, it would be time to get back
to work.

Locating and casing out Sara Hunt’s
apartment would be a cinch, but it was going to take a
master
spy
to devise a way of making a date with her that she would
truly never be able to forget for the rest of her little life…