Bar one.
A ring of deep bruises form a necklace around Daniela Walker’s throat from strangulation. They aren’t consistent-ruling out a scarf or a rope-and look like they were formed by knuckles. More pressure can be applied with knuckles than fingers. It’s also harder to defend against. The problem with strangulation is it takes four to six minutes to complete. Sure, they give up struggling within the first, but the pressure needs to be kept on for at least another three to starve the body of oxygen. That’s three minutes I could be using for something better. Using knuckles increases the chances of crushing the victim’s windpipe.
Beneath the corkboard is a set of shelves, and on top of these are seven piles of folders-one per victim. I head over to them. It’s like looking at a menu and already knowing in advance which item to choose. I walk to the fourth pile and pick up one of the folders from the top. Every detective on the case has one of these folders and the spares are here for anybody who becomes assigned.
Like me.
I unzip the front of my overalls, stuff it down my front, then zip them up again. Back to the wall of the dead. I smile at the latest two. This is their first morning here in the assembly. No doubt they were pinned up last night. They don’t smile back. Angela Durry. Thirty-nine-year-old legal executive. She suffocated on an egg. Martha Harris. Seventy-two-year-old widow. I’d needed a car. She had caught me taking hers.
I take my spray bottle and rags and move to the window. I spend five minutes cleaning it, staring beyond the streaks and my reflection at the world outside to the little people walking among the little streets. I spend some quality time with the plant. I replace the microcassette tape from the audio recorder I have hidden in there, careful to touch the recorder only with the rags. I tuck the tape into my pocket. I still have a job to do, and I head back to my office to grab the vacuum cleaner, then return and use it to clean up.
Ten minutes later I leave the conference room as I found it-only tidier and without as many files. I wheel the vacuum cleaner into the supply room on the other side of the floor and start vacuuming. Nobody is around so I do the Boy Scout thing and stock up on a few more pairs of gloves-not that I’ll be killing anybody tonight. I don’t suffer from compulsions to kill all the time. I’m no animal. I don’t go running around venting childhood aggressions while looking for excuses to kill. I’m not itching to make a name for myself or gain the notoriety of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. Bundy was a freak who had a following of groupies during and after his trial, and he even got married after he was sentenced to death. He was a loser who killed more than thirty women, but he got caught. I don’t want fame. I don’t want to be married. If I wanted fame, I would kill somebody famous-like that Chapman chap who loved John Lennon so much he shot him. I’m just a regular guy. An average Joe. With a hobby. I’m not a psychopath. I don’t hear voices. I don’t kill for God or Satan or the neighbor’s dog. I’m not even religious. I kill for me. It’s that simple. I like women, and I like to do things to them they won’t let me do. There have to be maybe two or three billion women in this world. Killing one every month or two isn’t a big deal. It’s all about perspective.
I grab some other stuff. Nothing major. Gear officers are always taking. Nothing anybody will notice gone. Nobody notices anything around here. The supply room is good like that. It supplies. No reason for it not to supply me. I look at my watch. Twelve o’clock-lunchtime. I head back to my office. The tools and the cords and the paint-this gear I don’t get to use. All I do is clean. Everybody here thinks I have the IQ of a watermelon. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s perfect.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My chair is uncomfortable and my lunch isn’t that great. With several nice sights out the window, I lean over and look at the women out there as prospective lovers. Should I go down there? Find where one works? Where she lives? Then, one night, find her in between those two places?
Men and women are walking back and forth, treating the warm afternoon street like a singles bar. Women dress like whores and take offense when men stare at them. Men dress like pimps and take offense when nobody notices. I use the two-inch knife to cut into my apple, small drops of juice spraying out. I slice it into sections. I’m chewing them while picking a target. My mouth waters before taking each bite.
Of course, I can’t go down there. I have other things to do now, a new hobby. What sort of guy would I be if I picked up a new hobby and dumped it after only an hour? I’d be a loser. The sort of guy who can’t finish what he starts. And that’s not me. I didn’t get to where I am by never finishing anything.
My thoughts are interrupted by a knock on my door. Nobody ever comes here while I’m eating lunch, and for the briefest of moments I’m sure the police are going to burst in and arrest me. I start to reach for my briefcase. A moment later the door swings open and Sally is standing there, making me think I need to put a lock on that door.
“Hi, Joe.”
I lean back. “Hi, Sally.”
“How’s the apple? Is it nice?”
“It’s nice,” I say, though I’m quickly losing my appetite now. I jam a slice of it in my mouth so I don’t have to make more conversation. What in the hell could she want?
“I made you a tuna sandwich,” she says, closing the door behind her and heading over to my bench. My office has only one seat and I’m in it. I don’t offer it to her because I don’t want her to stay. I take the tuna sandwich from her and smile at her, showing my fake gratitude along with a mouthful of apple. She offers me the kind of smile that suggests she would sleep with me if only, please God, if only he would ask. But I’m not going to ask. Her tuna sandwiches are always pretty good, but not that good. I swallow my piece of apple and take a huge bite of tuna and bread.
“Yummy,” I say, making an effort to have crumbs spill from my mouth. Just because Sally is an idiot doesn’t mean I can drop the Slow Joe act around her. I can never, never let anybody-not even Fat Sally-get an idea just how intelligent I really am.
Sally leans against the bench and looks down at me as she takes a bite out of an identical sandwich. I guess that means she’s planning on hanging out here for a bit. She keeps smiling at me as she chews. Crumbs don’t fall out of her mouth, but if they did it might help her lose a bit of weight. I can’t remember ever seeing her without that stupid grin on her face. She talks to me as I eat my lunch. Tells me stuff about her mom and dad, about her brother. She tells me it’s his birthday today, but I don’t bother asking how old he is. She tells me anyway.
“Twenty-one.”
“You doing anything to celebrate?” I ask, since it’s expected of me.
She starts to say something, then pauses, and I realize she’s going through one of her simple/special people routines where she has to think things through, starting with whether or not she even has a brother, and if he really is twenty-one today. Women may be from Venus, but nobody knows where the hell people like Sally come from.
“We’re just having a simple thing at home,” she says, sounding sad, and I guess I’d be sounding sad too if I had to have a simple family celebration at home. She reaches for the crucifix hanging from her neck. I’ve always found it ironic that retarded people can not only believe in God, but think He’s a pretty good guy. The crucifix has one of those bulky soldered-on metal figures of Jesus, and this Jesus looks to be in pain-not because he’s been crucified, but because his head is permanently cast downward forcing him to look down Sally’s top.