Chapter 9
After a week, no report of the three deaths had broken the headlines of the Los Angeles Times and he had been even more surprised that a digital print like Bloomberg hadn’t picked up even a hint of the bitches’ murders. For someone who was intimately acquainted with the LAPD, who knew the inside running of things at the department, he was rather amused that news of the deaths hadn’t reached even his ears yet. How was it even possible that the LAPD had hushed up three murders? And not just any murders—the murders of young, single women, that had all taken place within three days of each other?
He tapped the long, strong fingers of his huge palm against the walnut desk that looked out over downtown Los Angeles and found himself irritated by the radio silence. At the very least, he should have been informed about the murders by now. Or, at least, informed through official means, not because he had strangled the sluts himself.
For the briefest moment, he felt a small flicker of panic, a little constriction in his chest that forced distant memories of an anxiety-ridden childhood back to the forefront of his mind. His own mother had been a whore, a loose woman who hadn’t thought twice about bringing her social life home with her to a shabby apartment with her young son inside.
The melancholic turn of his thoughts amused him because he knew that his mother, who was long dead, had nothing to do with his current predicament. No. He was just panicking because he hadn't heard anything about the murders yet, a fact which loosed a whole hoard of paranoid thoughts into his mind. They couldn’t possibly suspect me…Could they?
It wasn’t as if he had enjoyed killing the women. To him, murder was like fucking a whore. Fun for a few minutes and then, once over, pure anxiety and days of buyer’s remorse. Regret and fear that you’d be caught or that you’d contracted a disease for a few minutes of tepid pleasure.
Strangely though, he hadn’t felt regret for killing those particular women. He thought he would, since it was his first go at premeditated murder—well, at least premeditated for the second two. The Tally bitch he’d just wanted to talk to, but the little hussy had tried to slap him, something which no woman would ever do to him again.
He hadn’t even planned on strangling her when he’d followed her and then used a blue light that had been accidentally left in his car from the last Police Activities League event to pull her over on the side of the road, had nearly upchucked his filet mignon dinner once the job was done and he’d made eye contact with her dead stare. But once he’d taken a few hours to calm down, he’d felt vindicated. Relieved. Of course, he’d had no choice then, but to take care of the other two also. Their deaths had been necessary, essential to his success and, by default, to the success of the entire City of Los Angeles.
Thoughts of the city made him wonder if he’d have to tie up the loose end after all. Just to be sure. He hadn’t been aware of the fourth girl’s involvement, still wasn’t entirely sure if she was involved. He had seen her with the girls at the diner, seen her walk up to their table, and then leave with Selma Holt, but there had been something removed about her, something that suggested that she hadn’t been meeting them there.
Even when he’d been sitting in her apartment, he hadn’t been certain, hadn’t been convinced that he should kill her. He’d only moved to do just that because the memory of taking Veronica Tally and Selma Holt had been fresh in his mind and because, after watching her sleep for ten minutes, his desire to wrap his hands around her slender neck had overcome his practiced control—something that he was not proud of. Especially considering the bitch had gone from a dead sleep to screaming before he had even wrapped one hand around her neck.
So, like a common criminal, he had run away, had kept driving until he’d found a quiet, secluded patch of darkness to pull over so that he could throw up. And still, he hadn’t found the courage to go back and finish her, which was also unusual considering he’d had no issues stringing up Deborah Duran the night after.
Thinking about the girls, about the reason that they had been meeting in the first place, he clenched his jaw and pounded one large fist on his desk. The movement, a heavy thump, sent the framed photograph of his wife bouncing off the corner of the desk and crashing to the floor.
Glancing down, he took in the shattered frame, the web of glass that extended through his wife’s face and chest. He could kill her for this, he realized with absolute clarity.
But you won’t. Too risky.
Picking up the broken frame carefully so that none of the glass slipped off the picture, he tossed it, photograph and all, into the trash.
Killing his wife just wouldn’t work; besides, as useless as she was, he’d been married to her for nearly thirty-one years and she was stable. As a man of particular tastes, he wasn’t blind to the fact that she was prepared to let him do anything to her. He also couldn’t underestimate her current value; if need be, he could use her as his alibi for all three nights and nobody would blink at the suggestion that he had been anywhere else.
So, although she had betrayed him, he knew that she was indispensable. For now. When a second, swift stab of anger lanced his stomach, he forced himself to calm down by alternately clenching and releasing his fists. She still didn’t know that he had discovered her little secret, didn’t know that he had taken care of her friends in the only appropriate manner. As far as he knew, she just thought that he’d had a bad day when he’d come home and fucked her until she’d bled all over him.
Useless for anything else anyway.
A knock on his door brought his eyes up and he plastered his pleasant smile onto his face, perked up in his chair, and straightened his tie. “Come in,” his deep voice boomed.
His secretary, a twenty-five-year-old hopeful, fresh out of Harvard smiled when she poked her head in. He noticed that she wore a tight pencil skirt and silk blouse today and enjoyed the way that the fabric clung to her young, tight ass. If he hadn’t had so much to lose, he might have considered making a pass at her.
“Sorry to interrupt, Sir.”
“That’s okay, Melissa.” He smiled kindly, making sure to keep his eyes soft, polite. When she walked fully into the room but didn’t say more, he asked, “What did you need?”
She sputtered. “Sorry.” Pulling her binder out from under her arm, she opened it and read, “A captain from the LAPD, Doug Brennan, called to make an appointment. Said he needed to speak to you urgently. Today.”
He nodded slowly, perfectly antagonistic to his wildly beating heart.
“He said it couldn’t wait.”
The blood rushing in his ears made her voice sound far away, but when she said, “Sir? Are you okay?” he snapped back to the present.
“Yes, thank you, Melissa. I’ll be sure to call him back myself. He’s a friend of mine.”
She nodded, and he got the impression that she knew that something was bothering him. Raising his eyebrows just enough to have her flushing, he asked, “Was there anything else?”
“No, Sir. Your Outlook calendar is up-to-date.”
“Thank you.”
He waited for her to leave, waited for the door to click quietly behind her before he allowed his smile to spread high, pulling his handsome face into a manic grin.