Dark Whispers & Other Stories

Killing Kate

One night in a bar I watched a semi-tough ad man bully and humiliate his mistress because he had just learned that his wife, the bitch, was having an affair. Hell, he'd only been having one for ten years. She sure had her nerve. Anyway, as I watched the ugliness he was inflicting on his mistress — I knew the couple only by reputation and it was none of my business; I mean, he wasn't punching her, at least not with fists — I thought of how we often use others as surrogates for the people we really long to hurt. Fifteen years later — the ad man long dead in a six-martini car wreck — I recalled that sad, nasty night and came up with this story.

One night, after he learned what was going on, he got into bed with Kate and they made love. Inside, she was cold. Always before, and quite normally, her body temperature inside had been warm. But this night and for many nights after, she was cold inside, cold against his sex, cold even during orgasm.

That’s one of the ways he learned about the man Kate was sleeping with. For the other man, her insides were undoubtedly warm. Juicy. He could imagine her moans.

Shortly after this he actually saw them together. He was eating in the park across from the building where she worked — thinking he might surprise her in the good sense — when he noticed them. Throwing bread on the tranquil surface of the sunny duck pond. The man had his big hand over hers. Up near the playground part of the park, where cute little innocent kids made the swings groan from fervent use, the man took her in his arms and kissed her.

Sitting there watching them — stunned, ashamed for himself and ashamed for Kate, all their plans for a good marriage and children seemingly dashed now, wanting to die but alive in a terrible irrevocable way — he knew then he’d kill her.

Oh, yes; oh yes, he’d kill her.

In the afternoon, he called Myrna.

“Yeah?”

God, he wished she weren’t so crude. Over the past two months, he’d tried to teach her some manners. Little things. Not smacking your gum. Crossing your legs in a ladylike way. And answering the phone by saying, “Yes” instead of the grating “Yeah.”

“This is Robert.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“Wondered if you were busy tonight.”

“Uh, lemme think.” Smacking her gum as she riffled through pages. “Earlier I’m busy. Like five till five-thirty.”

“How about six, then?”

“Yeah. Great.”

But he sensed it wasn’t so great with her. Sensed some reluctance in her voice. Was she getting tired of it?

“Is another time better for you?” he asked.

“Six’s fine.”

“Myrna, I thought we were honest with each other.”

“Well, actually I wish it could be seven.”

“Seven would be fine with me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Great. Then I won’t have to miss the match.”

He said nothing. What could you say? You tried to help a young woman refine and reform her ways and she spends her time exulting over professional wrestling.

“You’re, uh, still being careful?”

She sighed, suddenly a little girl being chastised by her father. “I always make ’em wear a rubber, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m just trying to be your friend.”

Again, a sigh. “Oh. I got the package.”

“You did?” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.

“Weird stuff.”

“It’s called a Poet’s shirt.”

“It just looks like this weird sleep shirt.”

“It’s real silk.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Grating with the “yeah” again.

“Well, anyway, I got it. You want me to wear it, huh?”

“If you would.”

He could hear the smirk in her voice — it was always there when she addressed this subject — as she said, “We’re gunna do the same stuff, huh?”

“Yes. If you wouldn’t mind, I mean.”

“I’m in the shower again?”

“Yes.”

“So you want me to leave the front door open?”

“Please.”

“And then you come in and—”

“Yes. Then I come in and... yes.”

The sigh again. “You’re the boss.”

God, he hated it when she used that cliché, so dutiful and contemptuous at the same time.

“Seven?” she asked.

“Seven,” he said.

He kept the knife in a drawer of his big mahogany desk in the center of his big mahogany law office where he was the most senior of partners in a resolutely successful firm that specialized in criminal law. It was a chefs knife with an 8" blade and a walnut handle. It had once belonged to a client of his, a gigantic Hispanic who had used it to lob off the ears of six different women, after, that is, he was done strangling them. Somehow, through bureaucratic confusion, the knife had come back to him after the trial and after the Hispanic (a well-heeled drug dealer) had been sent upstate for a minimum of thirty years.

Now the knife — cleaned and stropped carefully with a piece of sharpening steel several times a month — rested in his hand. Ready.

For some reason, he always ate a huge meal before he did his deed. Nothing fancy, usually a McDonald’s or a Hardee’s. Greasy fries and greasy burger and fake milk shake and imitation cherry pie. The staple American repast.

It wasn’t the food that attracted him to such places, it was the suspense. He liked it when mommies and daddies burdened with screaming kids took a moment to glance over at him. The solitary middle-aged male. There was always something vaguely threatening about such a man in a family place (is he queer? does he molest children? is he wife-dumped and lonely?) and he enjoyed their contempt, wondering if in fact they suspected what he was really all about.

Black turtleneck, black jeans, black Reeboks, black gloves and a black hairpiece to cover his balding dome.

Myrna’s apartment house.

Up the back stairs.

Smells of fish, pizza, marijuana.

Sounds of television, heavy metal, domestic argument.

Sight of hallway walls in need of paint, apartment door numbers hanging askew, kid’s red trike sitting unused.

Look left. Look right.

All clear.

He put his gloved hand to the doorknob. Unlocked. He let himself in.

The place, as always, smelled acridly of a vague gas leak she always claimed not to notice. The place, as always, was a mess, cheap merry furniture covered with cigarette burns and stains, and littered with magazines that ran to Soap Opera Stars and True Detective. She claimed she picked the place up frequently. He’d never seen any evidence of that.

He stood in the darkness of the tiny living room, right in front of a plastic crucifix that glowed green when the lights were off, listening to the shower run. Yellow light outlined the bathroom door.

She was inside. Waiting.

The knife came up in his hand from the sheath attached to his belt.

He took four steps to the door. He was beginning to smell the dampness from the shower. The scent of steam.

He opened the door, pushed inside.

If anything, the bathroom was a bigger mess than the living room. Half-empty jars, bottles, tubes, and spray cans of deodorant, hair gel, hair spray, toothpaste and much more covered every available surface. The toilet bowl was rusty and the once-white sink a gritty gray. The mirror in which his face appeared was cracked right down the center and the petite pink wastebasket overflowing with tampon boxes and used Kleenex.

The shower curtain was plastic and white. He could see the silhouette of her body against it. She soaped her bountiful breasts and then let her hand drop to the thatch of pubic hair she kept neatly trimmed.

His loins ached.

But this was not his mission tonight. It never was on the final night.

“You’re out there, right?” shouting so she could be heard above the blasting water.

“Right.”

“This kinda scares me. You know, the way it usually does.”

He said nothing.

“I guess it’s just when you throw back the curtain and I see that phony rubber knife in your hand. Once I get over that part, it’s okay.”

“How was wrestling tonight?”

“The Cowboy won. He’s a real stud.”

“Did you wear the Poet’s shirt?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you like it?”

“It’s all right. Kinda tight around the boobs, though.”

“You ready?”

“Just like usual, huh? I mean, you throw back the curtain and then pretend to start stabbin’ me and then we go into the bedroom and get it on, right?”

“More or less.”

She was quiet for a time. “You sound kinda — funny tonight.”

“Long day at the office.”

“I’m gettin’ scared.” Pause. “I don’t know if I want to do this.” He said nothing.

“You hear me?”

“I heard you, Myrna.”

“I think I’d like you to leave. Like right now, all right?”

He said nothing.

“You’re scaring the hell out of me. In about ten seconds, I’m going to start screaming.”

But he was faster than that. Much faster.

Before she could even form a scream, he had the curtain thrown back and the knife plunged deeply into the flesh between her sumptuous breasts.

For a moment, he allowed himself the luxury of a look at her face. Even wet and without makeup, the resemblance was startling.

He stabbed her thirty-eight times.

In bed that night, they watched the late news. Kate, rumpled from a hard day with her two sons but as always still beautiful, said, “Listen.” She sat up, her breasts loose beneath the silk of her Poet’s shirt.

“What?”

“Ssssh.” She nodded to the TV set.

He put down his Tom Clancy novel and stared at the screen. Another prostitute had been found brutally slain in her apartment shower. This was the third such killing in three years. The newscaster finished the story by saying, “Police are intrigued by the resemblance of Myrna Tomkins with the other victims, all of whom bore a very strong likeness. A police psychiatrist speculates that the murderer is killing the same woman again and again.”

Myrna’s photograph flashed on TV. He looked at it and then looked over at Kate. The two women could have been sisters, maybe even twins. It was not easy, finding prostitutes who looked so much like his wife.

But he had no choice. Five years ago, shortly after he saw Kate and her lover in the park, Kate surprised him by dropping the man and devoting herself entirely to their relationship. A fling, really, nothing more. How badly he wanted to forgive her but he couldn’t, not quite — until he got the idea for the surrogate killings.

Now, whenever his rage and jealousy at the remembered affair got very bad for him, he began his search for a look-alike hooker.

He spared Kate and their two fine sons the ugliness that he knew still to be within him.

Kate said, “God, it’s so scary, knowing somebody like that is out there.”

He leaned over and kissed her tenderly. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Kate.”

She looked at him skeptically. “I wish I was as sure of that as you are.”

He kissed her on the cheek again, patted her hand, and went back to his novel.