He didn’t want to be found naked.
He looked down at the radio and stretched his feet toward it till the noose was digging into his neck, choking him. There was no way. The closest he could get was still a foot away, twelve big inches.
He decided to try for the mirror again. He scooted back, easing the noose and brought his knees to his chest again, rocked on his butt and smashed his feet into the wall. Better luck. His foot banged the wall just under the soap dish, as searing pain splashed up his leg.
He screamed against the tape, then clenched his teeth. A winner never quits. He pulled his knees back till they almost touched his nose, straightened his legs, bent his foot back, rocked his body and this time, instead of smashing his battered feet into the wall, he faced it, with his foot on the wall above the soap dish. Then he inched it down till his bent back foot was resting on the top of it.
He closed his eyes and jerked his foot down, managing to just touch the mirror, before the stretching pain caused him to relax and his legs fall back into the tub. He was downhearted. He had given it his best, his very best effort. Now there truly was no hope. He was destined to die in the bathtub, alone and naked. It wasn’t fair, he thought, to have a means of escape so close. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. Then he looked at the soap dish and gave a quick gasp of surprise.
It was empty.
He had succeeded after all. He started to feel around the tub for the mirror. It didn’t take long for him to discover that it had fallen out of the reach of his bound hands. If he lay his legs out flat against the tub he could feel it between the white porcelain and the back of his right knee. Too far to reach by hand and too close for him to use his feet to pull it toward him.
But he had come too far to give up. He raised his legs and scooted down as far as the noose would let him. Then he lowered his legs onto the small mirror. This time it was sitting a little higher under his leg and when he scooted back, letting the faucet dig into his back, he dragged the mirror a little closer to his hands.
He repeated the process, raising his legs, scooting toward the radio, lowering his legs, scooting back toward the faucet two more times, and after the third effort he was able to reach and grasp the mirror.
He closed his eyes and tensed up as he smashed it against the porcelain, breaking it into several pieces and cutting a deep gash into his right thumb. The stabbing pain and immediate red coloration of the water sent thunderclaps of terror through him. He had seen a movie once where a woman had slashed her wrists and bled to death in a bathtub. The red tinged water in the movie bathtub looked just like the red tinged water in the real bathtub.
Frantically, he felt around for a piece of glass big enough to saw through the rope and discovered to his horror that there were several tiny, very sharp slivers of glass covering the bottom of the tub and every movement he made sent one of the slivers stinging into his skin, but there were no pieces large enough. He had expended the effort to get the mirror and cut himself for nothing.
All for nothing.
Sam Storm went down the stairs with heavy feet and dark thoughts, head bent in sadness. The Black Beauty was dead. When its spirit left its body, Storm felt a sense of loss that killed much of his resolve, and he began to feel uneasy. He had done terrible things, foul unspeakable deeds, things against the laws of God and Man, things that violated his very nature, but they were things he had enjoyed doing, wrong as they were, God help him, he had enjoyed it. Part of him wanted to quit, but he had to go through with what he had started. There was no other way.
Downstairs, he went to the coffee table in the living room, opened his satchel and took out the Bowie knife. He ran his thumb along the blade as if testing the sharp edge, but a force he didn’t understand made him apply too much pressure and the knife sliced through to the bone, sending a wakeup call of sharp pain from the sharp blade.
The sight of his own blood snapped him back to his purpose. He wrapped his bloody hand around the hilt and walked through the kitchen, out the back door and down the landing, stomping on every step as he headed toward the pigeon cage.
The birds quieted their billing and cooing as he left the landing and stopped completely as he neared the cage. By the time he was standing in front of the loft, they were cautiously eyeing him, silent sentinels alert at their posts.
What was there about him, he asked himself, that made the birds eye him so suspiciously.
“ I’m not going to hurt you,” he lied.
The birds responded by cocking their heads, as if listening intently.
“ I just want a look.” He wondered what it was about pigeons that could fascinate a young boy. When he was a child his parents hadn’t allowed pets and he hadn’t missed them. Not until the Black Beauty had come into his life. The black animal had been the first pet, if he could call it a pet, that he’d ever had. He had been able to understand the animal as he’d never been able to understand a human. The animal had been more friend than any he had ever known, and he missed it.
Then something bucked up his courage, or rather reinforced whatever it was that caused him to do the horrible things. He eased the door of the loft open and slid into the cage, making sure none of the birds got out.
With a methodical and mercenary deliberation, he systematically slaughtered all twenty-six of J.P. Donovan’s pigeons, by using the knife, like a giant sword, against their tiny heads. The birds, frozen in place, sat like ducks in a shooting gallery with the motor off, waiting for the blade to fall.
Then, with the bodies of the headless birds and their heads strewn about the sandy bottom of the loft and his feet covered in their blood, Sam Storm stood and contemplated what he had done and what he was about to do. He had killed so many and part of him wanted to go on killing, but another part wanted to stop, to fade into the sunset. Jamaica maybe, or the south of France. But before he could do any fading, he had to finish Rick Gordon.
He stepped through the bloody mess and exited the loft, not bothering to close the door, and stalked back into the house, leaving blood-red footprints in his wake. There was plenty of the red stuff left on his shoes for the carpet to soak up when he entered the dining room on his way to the stairs.
On the second floor, he poked his head into the bathroom to check on the boy. He smiled as the frightened youth looked up at him from bloody bath water with his eyes wide in horror.
“ I killed your birds,” he said. Then he went back downstairs to wait for Rick Gordon.
Rick Gordon pulled up the driveway. He wanted to kick the front door down and go in like Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, with a gun in every hand, all of them blazing, but he knew that would be stupid.
He shut the engine off, looked at the house and listened. It was too quiet. He got out of the car, keeping his eyes locked on the front door, went around to the passenger side, took out the forty-five, ejected the spent magazine, reloading with the fresh one, before shoving it between his Levi’s and the small of his back. He picked up Lincoln Hewett’s thirty-eight and reloaded from a box of shells he’d found in Lincoln’s glovebox, then he stuffed it into a back pocket. Next he picked up the riot gun and jacked five shells into it, also found in Lincoln’s glovebox. Then clutching the shotgun, he started toward the house.
He approached the front door, alert and cautious, taking the steps up to the porch, like a soldier walking into an ambush. He turned the knob slowly, threw the door open when the latch clicked and leapt into the living room, diving onto the carpet and rolling toward the coffee table.