Killing Ways

24

Ren stood at the stove in her kitchen, preparing a supper of popcorn. The buzzer rang.

She went to the intercom.

Whoa: who is this hotness?

She picked up. ‘Hello.’

‘Mrs Bryce?’

Not so much. ‘This is Ren, yes.’

‘I’m Luke — Everett King’s friend. I’m here to put up a curtain rail.’

Cue porn music. ‘Come on up.’

Ren opened the door. Luke was six two, dark, frowning, dressed in tight black work gear and boots, muscles everywhere. Tool belt on, tool box in hand.

Well, hello.

‘So,’ he said, all business. ‘You have a curtain that needs mounting.’

Curtain. ‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘And thank you so much for coming.’

‘Pleasure.’

‘Straight ahead,’ said Ren.

He stepped past.

‘I’m hoping it’s your easiest job today,’ said Ren, ‘Two screws in a wall...’ Or up against it.

Shit — the wall.

‘Actually,’ said Ren, ‘could you go into the kitchen for a moment? Help yourself to whatever.’

She ran into the living room and took all the documents off the wall and brought them into her bedroom.

What a pain in the ass.

‘You can come in now,’ she called. As if I’m standing here nekkid.

Luke put down the toolbox. ‘OK, tell me what I’m doing here.’

‘I’d like a curtain rail across that wall,’ said Ren, pointing to the wall opposite the sofa.

‘Can I ask why you’re putting a curtain right in front of a wall?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Ren. She waited.

‘Are you like this all the time?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘I’m lots of fun. To answer your question, the curtain is a decorative feature.’ Or to hide shiz.

‘You want it up to the ceiling?’

‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘Let me get you a chair.’

Ren watched as he worked, specifically the hollow in his lower back when his T-shirt rode up. He was like a bigger version of her ex — confidential informant, Billy Waites — who had a body made to be admired. Ren imagined these men sketched, like concept cars, by the hand of God. Concept men. This guy, Billy Waites, Ben... they were concept men. Gary was too, in his own way, like some sort of intelligent design special...

Luke jumped down. ‘Do you have the curtain here?’ He gestured to the floor. ‘Like somewhere among the hundred shopping bags?’

‘I was running low on...’

‘Every product ever made?’ said Luke.

Ren grabbed the curtain from where it was hanging over the back of the sofa.

‘And I took it out of the bag,’ said Ren. ‘I even ironed it.’

‘Sounds like that’s rare for you.’

‘Of course it is. Jesus.’

She handed it to him. It was petrol blue with teal backing.

‘Aren’t these things usually a little more sheer?’ said Luke.

Not if you’re covering up the faces of killers and victims, wounds, dump sites... ‘It’s a little fancy,’ said Ren, ‘but I just wanted something pretty to look at.’ Like you, hot, practical man.

Universe: stop, yet continue, to send concept men my way.

‘That looks great,’ said Ren. ‘And super-speedy.’

‘That will be one hundred dollars.’

Whoa.

‘I’m kidding. It’s on the house.’

‘What do you mean on the house?’

‘Any friend of Everett’s...’

‘No way — I’m paying you.’

‘No, ma’am, you’re absolutely not. Take this up with Everett.’

‘Man, this is wrong.’

He shook his head. ‘It was a pleasure. Good to meet you.’

‘You too. I really appreciate this.’ And feel awkward.

He shook her hand. ‘See you again, hopefully.’

Ooh...

Ren closed the door after him and went back into the living room. She pinned everything back up on the wall: row after row of names and images, faces and bodies and wounds. She used the opportunity to streamline everything. She moved things around. She made everything clearer... to her. After three hours, she drew the curtain across and went to bed.

The next morning in Safe Streets, she went straight for Everett.

‘Well, thank you very much for Luke,’ she said.

Everett laughed loud, sat back in his chair. ‘I thought you might like him.’

‘He wouldn’t let me pay!’

‘Suck it up. He’s a good guy.’

‘So, so hot,’ said Ren. ‘He’s lucky he made it out in one piece. Only kidding. Don’t tell him I said that. Has he got a girlfriend?’

‘You’re a bad girl,’ said Everett. ‘No, he does not have a girlfriend. But I’m sure if he wanted one, he’d pick you.’

Ren laughed. ‘Oh, you guys.’

‘You’re a disgrace,’ said Janine.

Gary walked into the bullpen.

‘Were you home last night?’ he said to Janine.

‘Yes — why?’

‘You’re one lucky lady,’ said Gary. ‘We have a body and it’s about a mile from your house.’

Janine was mute.

‘No fucking way!’ said Ren.

‘Our guy?’ Janine managed to say. ‘Again? In Golden? Are you sure?’

Gary nodded. ‘Her husband couldn’t get hold of her this morning and called the local PD. Two patrol officers did a welfare check... they found her—’

‘In her home?’ said Ren.

Gary nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

‘He’s going into people’s homes now?’ said Ren. ‘Fuck that.’

Gary was gone.

‘Make a call,’ said Ren to Janine.

‘You bet your ass I will,’ said Janine. She called her former colleague. ‘Logan? It’s Janine. I believe you have a homicide victim. I need you to station the biggest, burliest, most discreet, ominous-looking dudes at that property and tell them to let no one in. Zero. No one’s name is on the list.’

She listened.

‘No, no,’ said Janine, ‘You can do this. Believe. We’ll be there in about forty minutes, and we want to be the next ones in the door, OK?’

She nodded. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

She listened. ‘Oh, God — children. No. No. OK... see you in a while.’ She put down the phone. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘There were two kids in the house at the time. A son, three years old, and a daughter nine months old. Logan heard it is one ugly, ugly scene. The husband arrived home and was literally wrestled to the ground in the driveway. He was absolutely hysterical. He had to be sedated.’

‘Are the kids OK?’ said Ren.

Janine nodded. ‘But their mother most certainly is not. Logan said “be prepared”.’

Ren stood in the hallway of Carly Raine’s house. She was waiting for the gagging to stop. She had chosen not to eat breakfast, but could feel the beginnings of weakness, the hollowness, the light head.

Popcorn dinner — not wise then, wise now.

The first thing she noticed was a trail of blood that ran toward her from the kitchen door at the end of the hallway. Before it reached her feet, it moved to the right, and up the stairs. There were smears, and every now and then tiny little red footprints. Tiny red handprints and streaks on the walls.

No.

Ren sidestepped the blood to walk to the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open. There was a carton of apple juice, open and empty, lying discarded in the corner. There were flies buzzing around it. But where the flies swarmed, that was to the left in the corner, where the brutalized body of Carly Raine lay. Ren walked over.

Holy shit.

There were three pink Cheerios stuck to her lips. There was milk, spilled and stinking, lumpy and pooled, on her chin, her bare chest, on the ground. There were Cheerios stuck into the clots, scattered around the floor.

Oh, God. Your son tried to feed you. He wanted to give you breakfast. He wanted you to wake up.

I will kill the man who did this to you. I will kill him with my bare fucking hands.

Carly Raine was lying on her back, naked, with her arms out and her right leg bent and across her left as if she was trying to block her killer. As if he could be blocked. She had been savaged. Above her, on the sideboard, was a photo of how she should have looked: bright and bubbly and beaming. Underneath, on the floor, her face was beaten to twice its size, the colors a palette of blue and purple, fading and garish. Her face was turned slightly to the left and there was a sharp slice out of her scalp above her right ear. Her lips were huge. Flies were gathering in all the dead places flies gathered, all the rich moisture of the cavities, the wounds, the secretions; workers in shifts, coming to the body of an innocent to gorge on it.

Layers upon layers of damage, decay, hurt.

Outside the window, two Jefferson County Investigators were bent over, throwing up. They weren’t the first.

Ren looked down again at a body ruined.

I am walking the earth with monsters.

Mark Gaston walked into the kitchen behind her, set his bag down on a safe part of the floor.

He looked down at the body. ‘Anyone for Cheerios?’

Ren turned to him. ‘OK — I don’t know where the fuck you worked before this, but I can’t, I just can’t listen to your fucked-up, disrespectful bullshit any more.’

All around them, people seemed to freeze.

‘It blows my mind,’ said Ren, ‘that a woman gave birth to you and you can still come out with some of the shit you come out with. I don’t give a fuck if it’s a defense mechanism or if you’re just a massive prick in all your waking hours, but if for one more second of my waking hours, I have to listen to your horrible, cruel and nasty remarks, I will beat you to within an inch of your pathetic fucking life. Do your job, Gaston. You are clearly very talented at it — otherwise how the fuck would anyone hire such a fucking asshole?’

She turned around and left.