The body of the real Jeanne Styles lay sprawled haphazardly in a pool of dark blood on the well-worn linoleum floor near the fridge. As Astrid walked toward the counter where Jeanne’s purse lay, a tawny cat, shy but curious, entered the room, and Astrid gently stroked its back. The cat arched its body and purred in a gentle and familiar way.
“Good kitty.” A soft moment, warm and alive. Maternal in its tenderness.
She scratched the cat’s forehead, then picked up the dead woman’s purse. Rummaged through it. Found the cell, turned on the speaker so that Brad could hear. Tapped in 911.
A male voice answered, speaking in autopilot. “Emergency services. How may I-”
She interrupted, her voice high, hysterical, “They’re dead! They’re both dead! Oh my God, the cops. He shot ’em, he-”
“Who? Who’s dead?”
“He’s gonna kill me. My husband is! Oh he’s-”
The sharp echo of the gunshot blast cut her off, and she let the phone clatter to the floor as Brad put another round of shot into Jeanne Styles’s corpse.
“Ma’am?” His voice sharper now. Concerned. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Actually, no. I’m dead, Astrid thought. Hurt is a whole different thing.
She slid backward, away from the dead woman, toward the living room, but she could still hear the dispatcher.
“Ma’am?” The man’s voice caught, a growing sense of dread in each word. “Are you there?”
As she left to meet Brad in the next room, she realized that the dispatcher would probably still be talking to the woman’s corpse when the cops arrived, still asking if she was all right.
Astrid was struck by the tragic and delicious irony of it all.
Talking to the dead. Hoping for a reply.
Hurt is a whole different thing.
The cat, now less hesitant, followed her.
Brad was changing into his own clothes. He’d placed Philip Styles’s gunshot residue-covered clothes on the edge of the fireplace so they would smolder but not be consumed by the embers. At least not before the next wave of authorities arrived.
This time she and Brad were not using explosives or a fire to destroy evidence. This time they were leaving carefully arranged clues behind. Clues they wanted found.
Astrid glanced out the window and saw a pair of headlights appear at the end of the long, winding driveway.
Brad followed her gaze. “Philip,” he said nervously. “I didn’t expect him so-”
“We need to leave.” She gestured toward the couch. “Don’t forget the duffel bag.”
Brad collected their things, and she walked to the hallway where the second cop lay slumped against the blood-spattered wall.
The cat strolled beside her, rubbed against her leg.
As Brad stepped past her to leave, Astrid bent beside the body. She held out her hand to show the cat that she meant no harm. “Come here.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the cat padded toward her, trusting her, and she set it gently on the dead cop’s chest. “There you go.” She stood back, and the cat began to lick the red smear that used to be the police officer’s face.
“Good kitty.”
It purred.
She petted it once more and then joined Brad outside.
The air felt clean, brisk, invigorating.
Astrid closed her eyes and listened to the delicate, invisible chatter of crickets, the soft hum of distant traffic, the emerging wail of sirens.
More cops on the way to the house. “And so they fled into the cool, Maryland night as the man who was about to find the three bodies entered the house.”
She heard the words as if they were being read by an actor on one of the audio novels she liked to listen to while commuting to work. Then Brad spoke to her from the edge of the forest. “I wish we could stay.”
She opened her eyes. The headlights from the car were halfway up the driveway.
“Just once,” Brad went on. “To watch when the police arrive. To see their faces.”
“It’s too much of a risk.”
“I know. But just once. To watch.”
She handed him silence.
“I’m just saying, it would be nice.” He sounded slightly defeated now, and she enjoyed the fact that she could control him so easily, steer his emotions up or down as she pleased…
But on the other hand, she had to admit that it would be nice to watch. “I’ll see if I can come up with a way,” she told him.
That seemed to satisfy him. He waited for her to lead him along the trail. He followed her obediently, through the forest, toward their waiting car. Within a matter of minutes the officers would find Philip Styles in the kitchen, leaning over the body of his wife. The young mechanic would be arrested and, in time, tried and then convicted of three murders he didn’t commit. Another perfect crime.
As Astrid led Brad deeper into the woods, she considered all that they had just accomplished.
Police find what they expect to find, and since nearly 75 percent of murdered women are killed by their husbands or lovers, the cops wouldn’t bother to look any further than the plethora of physical evidence: two 911 calls from a frantic housewife, Philip’s blood-spattered clothes hastily tossed into the fireplace, his gun-the murder weapon-conveniently wiped of prints, and even, in a very real sense, a witness: the emergency services dispatcher who heard the final shot right after the woman said that her husband was going to kill her.
It wasn’t a mountain of evidence, but it was more than law enforcement gets for most crimes. Along with Philip Styles’s history of drug abuse and domestic violence, it would be more than enough.
It was no mistake that she and Brad had chosen Maryland for this crime. The state still had the death penalty.
Since Philip would never be able to afford a competent lawyer, and his overworked, underpaid state-appointed attorney would almost certainly encourage him to plead out rather than go to trial and face the needle, the best he could hope for was life without the possibility of parole. And that’s just what she’d wanted, because, for her, it was even more satisfying sending them to prison than watching them die. Because then the power she had over them never went away. Just grew stronger with time.
To think.
To think that by wearing a pink housecoat, firing a gun into the wall, and making two 911 calls she’d orchestrated sewing shut the rest of Philip’s life.
Ten years, thirty, fifty, however long he might survive.
The thrill of controlling someone else’s destiny so completely, so absolutely, was intoxicating, overwhelming.
Arousing.
She paused and faced Brad, pulled him close, and kissed him deeply, letting her hand trail along the ragged scars that covered his neck and left cheek. They were deep and discolored and seemed to frighten most people, but she had always acted as if they didn’t bother her, and perhaps that was one of the reasons he was so obedient to her-he believed that she accepted him as is. Something all human beings desire.
Within the hour they would find a place to make love, and it would be as good as it was each time when the game was over, but tonight she didn’t want to wait. She let one hand slide down his back and explore his firm, toned body.
He gently eased away from her. “We should get out of the woods first.”
She caught the double meaning of his words and smiled. Get out of the woods first. Yes. Brad, the cautious one.
She kissed him one final time, and then led him down the trail toward the car that she’d hot-wired earlier when she borrowed it from a DC Metro parking lot.
When they reached the edge of the forest, he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got an idea for the next one. Something we should try.”
They arrived at the car.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
It might be nice to let him plan one; at least to hear what he had to say. “Well, then, I’m all ears.” And then, the loving couple left to find a furtive place to consummate the evening, and she listened attentively as her partner, in both crime and love, outlined his idea for the next perfect night they would spend together. The next perfect date. Game number five.