The knife felt right at home in his hand.
Yes, he remembered.
And then his grandmother turned and saw him holding it, and she wiped her hands on her apron and asked what he was doing and would he please put down the knife because knives are dangerous and not to be handled carelessly and he should know that, a boy his age.
And he remembered how glad he was that she’d turned around because he hadn’t really wanted to push the knife into her back and this way he could watch her face when it happened.
“Your Honor, the boy is too young to understand his actions. There’s no precedent for a child under fourteen years of age being convicted of first-degree murder. He’s a deeply troubled young man who needs psychological help. He should be offered counseling, not incarceration.”
Everything was clear.
When his grandmother saw that he wasn’t going to put down the knife, she took a hesitant step backward, pressing herself against the sink. She was still holding the dishrag, and soapy water was dripping from it and forming a small uneven puddle at her feet on the checkered linoleum floor.
He remembered that, even after all these years.
Giovanni finished with Travis’s neck and set the blond, curly haired head in a plastic bag, then wrapped it carefully in a large white linen sheet and placed it in the duffel bag.
It took him only a moment to wash up and then change into the doctor’s scrubs he’d brought with him. He stuffed the custodian’s clothes into the duffel, covered the body again, and rolled it into the freezer.
Kelsey would be arriving in less than ten minutes.
Good.
He went to the sink to rinse off the saw and prepare the needle.
For some reason, as Giovanni stepped toward his grandmother, the crickets stopped chirping. Maybe they knew. Maybe somehow they could tell what was about to happen.
His grandmother’s eyes grew large, and then she dropped the dishrag and tried to push him away, but he was strong for his age, stronger than she was, and she didn’t slow him down. Not at all.
Giovanni had cut steak; he knew that cutting meat wasn’t easy, and that his grandmother’s body would have meat on it, that everyone’s does, so he expected that it would be difficult to push the knife into her belly, expected that there would be more resistance, but it was much easier than he thought it would be. Quite easy, as a matter of fact. And pulling it out was even easier than pushing it in because it was slick and shiny with blood and other juices that he didn’t recognize.
She didn’t scream or cry out, just coughed slightly. A moist cough, and she trembled a little, and then leaned more of her weight against the counter beside the sink, and then sank to the floor.
Giovanni bent over her, and every time he pushed the knife in, it became easier and easier, especially after she stopped quivering so much. And it was quieter then too, after she stopped making those awkward sounds in the back of her throat.
Giovanni heard a knock at the morgue’s door, and then, wearing the somber, empathetic expression of a concerned doctor, he opened it and found Kelsey Nash in the hallway.
He told her how sorry he was for her loss and apologized for having to call her in so late like this, but then explained that he needed to ask her a few questions about her husband, now, tonight, before the cremation, because it might help clear up some questions that had come up concerning the circumstances of her husband’s death.
Kelsey wiped away a stray tear but didn’t enter the morgue.
He added that the police feared that Travis might have possibly been murdered, and that once again he was terribly sorry about the whole ordeal, but that this would only take a minute and then no one would be bothering her again.
And at last she stepped hesitantly into the room.
As Giovanni returned the knife to the counter he heard the crickets slowly resume their chirping. And he liked that. Liked that the world outside was still normal, that, really, nothing much had changed.
Except for his grandmother, who lay motionless in a widening pool of warm blood that was beginning to find the grooves in the linoleum and make straight, bright lines on the kitchen floor as it spread away from her.
That was something he liked to think about. The red lines traveling away from her like the streaks of sunlight he would make when he drew a sun in the corner of his papers at school.
He watched the blood slide through the grooves in the shiny floor, watched the sunlight escape from the body of his grandmother.
“Giovanni, did your father ever touch you?”
“Touch me?”
“Yes. In a bad place. In a place where your swimming suit covers?
On your buttocks or-”
“Is that a bad place?”
“No, no. It’s just-maybe a coach or someone? Did Coach Simons ever touch you there? Or your grandmother?”
“In the bad place?”
“Where your suit covers.”
“No. Uh-uh. No one. Just good places. Just nice hugs. Nothing in the bad place.”
Giovanni motioned toward the freezer. “His body is right over here, ma’am.”
Kelsey looked so fragile and shattered by her husband’s recent death. She took one step, paused.
“I know how difficult this must be for you.” He put a compassionate hand on her shoulder so that she wouldn’t be afraid. “I promise you, I’ll make this as painless as possible.”
And with his left hand, he slid the hypodermic needle from his pocket.
He leaned over so he could look into his grandmother’s eyes. They seemed so odd, staring up at the kitchen light without blinking, and they were so round and glossy that they looked like oversized marbles that might roll out of her head at any moment.
“What was it like, Grandma?” His voice sounded large and strong and manly in the empty kitchen. He liked the grown-up sound of his voice, and he repeated the question, even though he knew she wasn’t going to answer him. Not anymore.
He watched those glassy eyes for a while, wondering if maybe they would blink, because, even though he was only eleven, he’d heard that sometimes things like that happen. Really, they do. Sometimes people move after they’re dead. Reflexes.
But no. Not his grandmother. Even though he waited until the blood stopped spreading and began to grow dark and angry-looking, even then, his grandmother didn’t blink.
He placed a finger lightly against the drying blood and found that it had turned sticky and thick and did not feel at all like the warm, soft rays of sunlight that had been landing on his face all summer.
It smelled coppery and warm.
And he liked how it felt on his skin.
Giovanni lowered Kelsey gently to the floor.
The muscle relaxant made her limp but left her conscious, and he could see her eyes moving, telling him that she was aware of what was going on. Her lips whispered silent syllables. Words that never formed.
He wheeled her husband’s corpse out of the freezer, removed the sheet that covered it.
“Officially, you’re supposed to die of grief,” he said. She lay motionless, except for her eyes, her lips, and her chest: her eyes, alert and tracking him, her lips, quivering slightly, her chest rising and falling, rising and falling with each breath. He wondered what it would be like to be conscious but unable to move, able only to anticipate what was about to happen. He wondered if she would be able to cry anymore. He wasn’t sure.
Tenderly, he slid one hand under her back and the other beneath her legs so that he could lift her without hurting her.
“I tried to think of a better way to do this, but I couldn’t come up with one.” He set her on the gurney beside the headless corpse. “I guess you could call this the next best thing.”
Since she was unable to offer any resistance, she was pliable, and it was easy for him to position her on her side and drape one of her arms across her husband’s bare chest.