Heart of Ice

Chapter Sixty-two

Everyone has a quirk. For some, the habits are hidden, undetected for a lifetime. The fat woman who eats like a bird throughout the day, but at night sneaks into the freezer for a carton of ice cream. Or the dentist who waits for his patients and staff to go home so he can take a hit off the nitrous tank. Or the mom who sips a passable California chablis in the afternoons as her toddler sucks on the plastic straw of a juice box. Some are less apparent. Almost all have a root cause—pain they seek to diminish, or memories they seek to cloud.

The pantry in the Barton house always smelled like the laundry detergent aisle in the supermarket. No matter how much Irish Spring soap Olivia carted home, Michael always seemed to ask for more. It was, she thought, the only obsessive behavior that he engaged in and she figured it was harmless enough. After all, it was soap.

When they first got together, like all young couples, they couldn’t get enough of each other. Showering together in the morning after sex or just plain having sex any time of day fueled their desire for each other. It was during that first shower together in his apartment before they married that she noticed that the scent of her lover was the green-and-white striated bars of soap. She made a joke of it, by aping the Irish lilt of the old slogan from the TV commercials of her youth.

“Ah. Irish Spring! Ladies like it, too!”

“I guess, I really, really like it,” Michael said as he lathered her up, the water splashing through the shower curtain as the two of them huddled near the hot water to keep warm.

What he didn’t tell her, what he couldn’t tell her, was why he liked it so much. The green soap was his salvation. He sometimes used a bar of Irish Spring every two days. He’d let it soften in a deep soap dish that he’d rendered useless by most accounts—he’d plugged the drainage holes with plumber’s putty so it would hold water. By doing so, it became almost a jelly on the underside of the bar. That allowed him to rub the soapy paste over his body, particularly on his chest, armpits, and genitals. He knew he was compulsive about it, and that nothing else seemed to meet his needs. Just that soap.

Irish Spring had been the only soap that masked the smell of his own male body. Michael had been teased in junior high and high school about not participating in a team sport. He couldn’t. The sweaty smell of a locker room, the musky smell of another male body made him nearly convulse in spasms of nausea. He took up running, then swimming…then he gave up on all sports. He refused to disrobe and shower with the other teens in gym class. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to play sports, be with the guys, it was just that whiff of maleness that made him ill.

Irish Spring was the only thing that erased it.

His mind had been imprinted with the smell of Mr. Hansen’s body as he unzipped his fly and slid his pants to his ankles in the Corvette.

“Get down on me. Be a good boy,” he’d said. “I want you to drink it all gone this time.”

It was a musky scent of cotton boxers, sweaty body parts, and, after his work was done, semen. He could barely breathe as he did what the man told him in a voice that seemed to know absolutely no gentleness whatsoever. Just do it. Satisfy me, cowboy. Get it done. I’ve got things to do now.

When the phrase “comfortable in his own skin” became common in the late 1990s, Michael Barton almost wanted to laugh at the very concept of it. He couldn’t stand the smell of his own skin. Before he was able to rein in some of his compulsion, he used to scrub his skin so hard that he left track marks on his thighs and stomach. A couple of times he even bled.

This is stupid, he thought. What happened to me in that garage with that freak doesn’t define me.

He learned to bathe with a gentler hand. He learned ways in which he could get even.

It doesn’t own me.

Deep down, he knew it did.

The morning Michael’s impulses could no longer be subdued by logic flashed through his mind. The morning had been cloaked in a veneer of ordinariness that easily masked his rage. His intentions. And yet, he knew it was the point of no return. He was getting ready for the flight out of town. Olivia poked her head into the shower and was nearly overcome by the scent of Irish Spring. She caught a soapy glimpse of her husband’s muscled torso, creamy clouds of soap rolling down in the hot spray.

“God, honey,” she said, “you think you could switch to Dial or something sometime?”

It was a joke, of course.

Olivia knew that her husband had his hygiene quirks. She knew that he’d have that scent on him when he was lowered into the ground.

We all have our quirks, she thought. At least, my man is a clean one, a decent one. Who could ask for anything more?

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said, handing him a towel.

“That makes two of us.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and faced the mirror to shave. “I’ll only be gone a couple of days. Just long enough to get in and get out.”

“I know, but you just got home.” Olivia stood behind Michael and looped her arms around him.

He bent down and kissed her quickly. “Gotta make a living.” He ran the shaving gel over his face. “I’ll be gone only as long as it takes to get the job done.”

He meant that. Every word of it.

He’d booked a flight to Seattle, then on to Spokane, Washington, where he’d rent a car for the drive to Cascade University. The girls, the stupid, evil, girls had made it easy, blogging about their lives, hopes, and dreams. He’d kill them one by one. First on his list was Tiffany Jacobs. Next, he’d go after Lily Ann Denton, down in San Diego. The last would be the chapter president. Her name was Jenna Kenyon.

He’d kill her last.