In for the Kill

50

Now that Maria Cirillo had decided to give up on New York, her mind was at ease. She was simply tired of struggling in this city that moved so fast in the same place, that clanged and chattered constantly inside her head and heart, pressuring her, pressuring her…

Losing her part-time job yesterday as an optometrist's receptionist on Tenth Street was the final and decisive blow. Dr. Wolff said he was retiring and was winding down his practice, and his daughter was going to act as receptionist and file clerk for the next few months. He offered to give Maria the highest recommendation, and told her this had nothing to do with her work-it was simply time for him and his ill wife to leave the city and retire to Florida. Maria had received a generous severance check, but in New York it wouldn't last long.

She'd used most of her severance pay to buy an airline ticket to within driving distance of Homestead, Arizona. With her three years at John Jay, she could find work in the town's small police department. Maria had grown up in Homestead, had friends and family there, and had been the high-school sweetheart of the chief of police. The chief, she'd learned in her last letter from her mother, had recently filed to divorce his wife.

Maria didn't actually plan on reviving her old romance, but she knew it was one of those things that seemed ordained and just might happen. She was only twenty-six to the chief's twenty-eight. They were both young. He was handsome, and Maria, with her shoulder-length dark hair, pale complexion, and wide-set brown eyes, was beautiful and knew it. Her small, lithe body hadn't changed from her high school days. The chief would recognize it. High, firm breasts, a tiny waist, legs not long but muscular and shapely, a strawberry birthmark near her left nipple, like a second nipple…the chief would remember.

Maria hadn't had any problem getting dates in New York, in between fighting off the creeps.

She thought about the chief as she stood beneath her lukewarm shower with her head tilted back, facing away from the needles of water that were rinsing shampoo from her hair.

Don't get ahead of yourself.

But despite her attempts to control her optimism, Homestead sure looked better to her than New York. It could get hot out there, the dry heat, but today was more proof that it could be just as hot in New York, and it was a damp heat. Not like Arizona. She found herself humming as she ran her fingers through her hair to hasten the rinsing process.

Events and circumstances made it clear to Maria that it was time to give up her struggles in New York, to use what she'd learned and return home, if not in triumph, in contentment.

Her flight to Phoenix left in two days. Her lease on her tiny Lower East Side apartment expired in a month. She wasn't going to argue with the extremely difficult real estate management firm about refunding her month's rent deposit; she would simply not mail the last month's rent and forfeit the money.

Maybe she'd finish her schooling at the University of Arizona, close to home, or maybe she'd go to work as a uniformed police officer in Homestead and work her way up through the ranks. She wanted to earn some money. Maria was tired of being poor.

She squinted through running water and turned the faucet handle so the shower got cooler.

The water was almost cold when she turned it off, stepped out from behind her plastic shower curtain, and began toweling herself dry.

When she left the bathroom, still nude, her hair damp and stringy, she immediately noticed the long white box lying in the center of her bed. She stopped and stood staring.

Flowers? Who'd send-The right side of her head exploded into a pain so white and bright that it blinded her.

She could feel rough carpet nap on the left side of her face.

Must have fallen…Odd…

The pain intensified, and now the room was dark, darker, was floating away from the pain, away from everything…

When Maria regained consciousness she was lying on her back on her bed, where the box had been.

The white box…

She had a headache, and she was cold. Something else…Why was she having difficulty breathing?

She could only breathe through her nose. Something was clamped over her mouth, sealing her lips.

Maria panicked and tried to cry out, to rise from the bed, and realized she couldn't move her arms or legs, couldn't make a sound loud enough to be heard more than ten feet away.

Calm! Damn it, be calm!

Her struggles, which had rocked the bed violently but gained her nothing, gradually stopped, and she lay still, taking stock.

I'm taped! Tape over my mouth, around my legs and arms, wound tight enough to stop circulation. Head still hurts, not thinking clearly yet, I know it…

Maria had read about the Butcher, and there'd been plenty of speculation about him at John Jay, but she refused to make any connection with what had happened to her. It was the sort of thing she studied, that happened to other people. Lecture material or newspaper grist for reading over breakfast. She craned her neck, staring around her, listening. She appeared to be alone in the bedroom.

But not in the apartment.

She could hear something…a soft, persistent sound. Water running in the bathroom.

It stopped.

The light changed in the bedroom and suddenly someone was there. Maria raised her head from the mattress and saw a medium-size, muscular man enter the room. He was reasonably handsome, mid-thirties, and also nude.

Mustn't be. Can't be.

He smiled at her, then bent over her and worked his arms beneath her back and bound legs.

Mustn't be!

He lifted her gently and held her as if she were a bride about to cross a threshold, and carried her toward the bathroom. Her mind was still numbed by pain and confusion, and she had the crazy idea he was rescuing her. She knew it was crazy but clung desperately to it.

Until he placed her in the almost full bathtub, lifted her ankles, and pushed her head down and some of the cold water went up her nose.

Full awareness came then. An awareness more acute than any she had known.

Please!

She tried to raise her head, but his hand was on her forehead, as if he were checking for a fever, and she had no leverage whatsoever. The laws of physics were on his side. He lifted her ankles slightly higher and she felt her nude buttocks slide on the slick tub bottom as she went deeper. The man held her head steady inches beneath the surface.

Please! It isn't fair! Why are you doing this? For God's sake, why?

Through cold, clear water, drowning, she watched him watching her.

Please!