Getting Off

THIRTY-ONE

Zero.

The first thing she did was take a shower. He had one of those infinitely adjustable shower heads, and she fixed it so that hot water sprayed down on her with great force. His shampoo and conditioner were one of those overpriced signature brands they sold in hair salons, and she used them lavishly, because what good would they do anyone after she left?

Zero.

Nobody left on her list, because while there might be only a single body in the bedroom, slowly working its way from 98.6° to, say, 72° on the Fahrenheit scale, Kellen Kimball wasn’t the only man who’d just died. He’d also been Sid, the man she met on Race Street, the man who took her to bed in Philadelphia and never paid the price.

Until now. Now he was dead, and she’d killed him.

Oh, not literally. She wasn’t delusional, she knew what she’d done and to whom she’d done it. But she also knew that Kellen Kimball was a Mormon, that he’d participated in proxy baptisms, and if a proxy baptism could get some dead guy into heaven, why couldn’t a proxy marriage get Sid off her list? Yes, she’d killed Kellen — but the same thrust of the knife had killed Sid as well. And if there was a real living and breathing Sid out there, well, so what? Because in her own little world he was a dead man.

She got out of the shower, finally, and used two of his towels to dry herself. There’d been a third towel, the one he’d wrapped himself in, the one that had hidden his hard-on-in-progress when he returned to her. His sport shirt and chinos were folded on top of the lidded toilet, along with his socks and underpants, and she carried them to the bedroom and arranged them on the chair next to the bed.

She thought there ought to be another article of clothing, and she found it on a hook behind the bathroom door, a single white cotton affair with some marks on it that might have been Nordic runes, or perhaps Masonic symbols. This, she knew from her Internet research, was his Mormon garment, to be worn beneath his clothes at all times, for reasons the Internet had been unable to explain all that coherently.

Should she put it on him? It was constructed like a jumpsuit, except without arms or legs. Sort of like a clumsy and loose-fitting leotard. No cinch to get a live person into it, and sure to be trickier still with a dead one.

Never mind. He seemed a safe candidate for Mormon heaven, whatever sort of place that might prove to be, and she didn’t figure he needed to be wearing his garment to get in.

She went through his wallet. His cash came to less than a hundred dollars, but she took it all the same. If there was any more money hidden in his apartment, she certainly couldn’t find it.

She took the knife. She’d bought it in Provo, in a sporting goods store, and the clerk might remember the sale. Not that it mattered— plenty of people had seen her with Kellen, in Dragon’s Keep and the juice bar and on the streets of Provo, and they could describe her to the cops, and what good would that do them? A pretty young woman in a skirt and blouse. So?

Still, she held the knife under running water for a few minutes, then closed it and stowed it in her purse. She added the ring from her finger and went back for the one she’d placed on Kellen’s. The rings and the knife could all go in a storm drain, or could as easily be abandoned in some public place where they’d be quickly scooped up and carried off by new owners.

She left, and locked the door after herself. With any luck at all, she’d be long gone before anyone unlocked that door, or broke it down.

Zero.