Don’t act like the character. Be the character.
He remembers the handwritten sign taped to the inside wall above the door of the drama classroom. It was a shortened version of his teacher’s axiom.
DON’T ACT. BE.
Murphy is no longer theorizing about how the killer might get into someone’s home. He is actually breaking into a woman’s house. He isn’t a cop anymore. He is the killer.
Looking down the hallway, he sees four doors. The two nearest him are across from each other, a third of the way down the hall. Both are closed. The other two, also opposite each other, are at the far end. The door on the right is closed, but the one on the left is open. Through the open door he sees the flickering glow of a television. Murphy strains his ears but can’t hear any sound coming from the room. Maybe she sleeps with the TV muted.
He has done what he set out to do. He has gotten inside the house without being discovered. He should leave now. Right now.
How close can I get to her?
Just a little closer.
He creeps down the hall. The floor is dark wood with a tan rug runner stretching down its length. The rug absorbs the sound of his footfalls. When he draws even with the first set of doors, he pauses to listen at one, then the other. He hears nothing except the soft drone of the air conditioner.
The woman came home alone and there is only one car in the driveway.
I can get closer.
Murphy continues to edge down the hall. Two feet. Four feet. Six feet. He is halfway to the open door when he hears a toilet flush behind him.
Behind him.
He spins around. One of the doors he just passed, the one now on his left, pulls open. The dull glow of a night-light shines behind it.
A woman wearing a flannel nightgown steps into the hall. Her long black hair is pressed flat to one side of her head as if she has slept on it. She is looking down at her feet. Then she looks up. She locks eyes with Murphy.
And screams.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sunday, August 5, 1:10 AM
The killer unlocks the iron gates at the house on Burgundy Street and backs his car into the driveway. When he opens the trunk, the young woman, Kiesha, is lying on her back, her eyes wide with fear. Tear streaks of mascara run down her face.
He holds the stun gun in front of her eyes and triggers the charge. The arching flash and crackle of electricity make her jump. He presses the twin contacts against her forehead. Speaking in a low voice, he says, “I have set the charge high enough to kill you. Do exactly what I tell you and do not make a sound. Do you understand?”
She nods.
He points to the door at the back of the house. “Get out of the car and walk through that door.”
The killer backs away. The stun gun doesn’t have variable settings. But she doesn’t know that. “Get out slowly,” he says. “Do not test me.”
In her black dress, her face drawn tight in terror, and her jerky, ether-induced clumsiness, she reminds him of a corpse in an old horror flick, clawing its way out of a coffin. Before closing the trunk, he grabs the rag and the bottle of ether. Then he shoves her toward the house. She walks, zombielike, through the door as he follows close behind, his stun gun jammed against her spine.
Inside, he locks and dead-bolts the door, then points toward the stairs. “Up.”
She turns toward him to plead. “Why are you doing this?”
Holding the stun gun a foot from her belly, he triggers the charge.
She jumps back.
“Upstairs,” he says.
She trudges up the steps. The killer follows.
The scream pierces Murphy’s brain like a knife thrust.
The woman turns to run. Murphy lunges at her and catches the back of her nightgown. He hears it tear. She half turns and swings an elbow at him, connecting with the left side of his head, just above his ear. He wraps his arms around her and lifts her off the ground. She kicks at him.
“Be quiet,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She screams again and Murphy clamps his right hand over her mouth. She bites him.
“Goddamnit, stop it,” he shouts.
But she doesn’t stop. She catches her breath and screams again.
Murphy shoves her into the bathroom. In the glow from the nightlight, he catches sight of their images in the mirror above the vanity. His face is twisted. Hers is terrified. For an instant their eyes lock in the reflection.
If he doesn’t shut her up right now, the neighbors are going to hear her-if they haven’t already-and call the police.
He wraps his left arm around her waist and grabs a handful of hair with his right hand. He tries to hold her still enough so he can talk to her, but she won’t stop fighting him. He shoves her face against the wall. Something cracks. Her nose. This time her scream is not one of terror but of pain.
Murphy clamps his right hand over her mouth. He feels blood spill across his knuckles. He slips on the tile floor. They fall. Instinctively, he rolls to protect her from the impact. He lands hard on his left arm. Pain shoots from his elbow to his fingertips. In the instant that his grip relaxes, the terrified woman twists away from him. She scurries toward the bathroom door, crawling over Murphy’s stunned left arm.
Despite the numbness in his hand, Murphy manages to close his fingers on the woman’s nightgown as she claws at the doorjamb. He rolls up onto his knees and grabs her right ankle. He tries to drag her backward, but his left knee slips in a smear of blood. As he falls, he dives onto her back.
His weight presses her into the floor, and he wraps his right forearm around her neck and wedges her throat into the crook of his elbow. He rolls onto his back and pulls the woman on top of him. He locks his right fist into his left elbow and jams her head forward with the palm of his left hand. A classic police carotid chokehold.
She still has enough breath left in her lungs to belt out one more scream.
He squeezes tighter, increasing the pressure on both sides of her neck, sealing off the two main arteries that carry blood to the brain. “Shut up, Mother!”
Mother? Where the hell did that come from?
She stops screaming. He can hear her gasping for air. Then she stops making any sound at all. Then she stops moving.
Murphy relaxes his chokehold. The bathroom is dead quiet. He slides out from beneath her and pushes himself up to his knees. She is on her back. He bends over her. The flow of blood from her nose has stopped. Her face is blue. He presses his fingers into the side of her neck. Her skin is slick with blood. She has no pulse.
A white-hot panic rips through Murphy’s chest, a panic more terrifying than anything he has ever known.
She’s dead.
She’s fucking dead.
I killed her.
His mind races back more than a decade, to his police-academy training. Like all cadets, he had to pass a CPR certification test, but he has never used it. He doesn’t know one cop who would go mouth to mouth with a shitbird on the street.
Now he needs it.
Murphy grabs the neck of Marcy Edwards’s nightgown with both hands and rips it apart, exposing her torso down to her belly button. He places the heel of his left hand two finger-widths up from the bottom of her sternum, on the bony center of her rib cage between her breasts, then lays his right hand on top of his left and interlaces his gloved fingers.
The he remembers the four quick breaths.
Shit!
He pulls his hands away and scoots toward her head. He lays his left hand on her forehead and curls the fingers of his right hand under her chin. Exerting pressure in opposite directions, he pushes the top of her head down and pulls her chin up.
Head tilt, chin lift, his CPR instructor called it.
Murphy pulls her jaw open and wipes away as much of the blood from her busted nose as he can. He pinches her nose shut, seals his lips against hers, and blows four sharp breaths into her lungs.