In the Belly of Jonah (18 page)

HE ENDED HIS PREPAID
cell phone call and tossed the card into a Dumpster behind the commons.

Everyone was accounted for now that he had confirmed Genevieve Liv Bergen was thirty miles north at her workplace. She was the only one he hadn’t been sure about. Her SUV would be parked in the garage if she was home, but he couldn’t get close enough to the garage windows to see for himself. Close enough without being noticed, that is. He hadn’t seen her all morning, but even so, he had assumed she was not in the house. He had had to make sure.

He had slept soundly last night, enjoying his dreams and the thought of his adventure today. He had awakened with a morning missile that ached to fly a mission, so he indulged as he studied his wall, his gallery of masterpieces, and imagined his Awakening soon joining them.

When he had arrived this morning, Agent Streeter Pierce was working at the computer with Agent Lisa Henry. Now, nearly four hours later, was the first opportunity he’d had to act. William Tell had left shortly after lunch when Detective Doug Brandt stopped by with what looked like some files. They had been in a hurry. Such a hurry, in fact, that they hadn’t even noticed his truck, even though both men had seen it parked here the night before. He imagined them thinking it belonged to one of the neighbors. And they would be wrong.

It was a stroke of luck, actually, that none of the neighbors had complained of his old truck being parked in front of their home. It was also a stroke of luck that none of the press had parked outside Liv Bergen’s house in search of an exclusive story or to glean information from those closest to the case. After all, it had been so incredibly easy to learn who the lead investigators were and where they’d been staying. He puzzled through why the press hadn’t done the same. For a town as small as Fort Collins, it wasn’t as if there were too many competitors in the media. If one got the scoop they all got the scoop since they were largely one and the same. He sighed and snapped the latex gloves over his delicate-looking yet strong hands.

Broad daylight. He was about to do this in broad daylight.

That was new for him. A frisson of ecstasy quaked through him.

Arousal was accompanied by opportunity, which had presented itself like a long-lost friend. He had already seen the three other neighbors in Bergen’s cul-de-sac leave this morning. One little man and lady in their late sixties, living to the south of Bergen, had left just after he’d arrived. One car full of screaming kids, a weary father, and a haggard mother had pulled out of the driveway to the north and east of Bergen around eleven. A young man decked in the brightest spandex he had ever seen practically skipped out of his garage toting his bike helmet, a water bottle, and a sporty yellow mountain bike, and was on his way west to the mountains.

Unless he had miscalculated somehow—and he was certain he had not—no one was home. Just Awakening.

He would wait until she left the living room and retreated to the back of the house so that she wouldn’t hear or see him approach the front door. He watched as she drank her water, tapping away on her computer. She was getting close. She was on to him. Figuring him out. He could feel it.

She flicked her head and brushed the long, sweeping bangs from her forehead just like his mother used to do.

Ah, Ma Mère, he thought, I picture you happy, content, sitting at the table working your needlepoint and chatting with my sister, all of us safe from Father. Like so many descriptive words and creative ideologies he discovered as a boy visiting the museum, Ma Mère was one of the most profoundly appropriate, albeit his mother had not an ounce of French ancestry. His reminiscences filled him with a warmth he hadn’t experienced in many years, even in the solitude of his long soaks in the tub late at night. He had not recognized the similarities between Ma Mère and Awakening until now.

And he wasn’t sure how he felt.

Ma Mère had believed he was special, hadn’t she?

She didn’t tease him about his need to be alone for hours, although she punished him when it became excessive. She didn’t mock him for his need to dress like a magician for six straight months when he was twelve, but she had shredded his cape in a fit of rage one night after he refused to eat his dinner. She understood that the torture he inflicted on his little sister was merely a unique plea for his mother’s attention, which she gave him through each lovingly painful beating. She nuzzled and cradled him with love for each and every nosebleed that followed.

Despite her unpredictability—scolding then praising him for the same behaviors, beating then rewarding him for the same hard-earned grades year after year—her belief in him was constant and her understanding of him had transcended that of all others. Yes, he was sure of that now. She had understood him, accepted him, treated him as the brilliant prince he was.

Ah, Ma Mère, how I miss you.

She was the one who had introduced him to the fine arts, to culture, to his inner genius. She had taken him to the museums of St. Petersburg rather than the sunny beaches Florida was so well known for. It was at one of these museums that he found his calling, his passion, his life. He discovered an artist who, like himself, could think like a madman without being mad. He prophetically shared the same birthday, six decades later, the same capability of fantasy, the same appreciation for surrealism, and the same manic craving for solitude. His mother had fostered his newfound freedom by encouraging him to describe and draw his dreams, to fantasize, and to contemplate what he imagined and pictured in the clouds, rock formations, and ocean waves.

The development of his creativity and imagination had further blossomed upon Ma Mère’s death a few short years ago.

He had her to thank.

For all he had become.

And for what he was about to do.

Awakening rose from the desk and headed down the hall, presumably to the bathroom or even to take a nap in her room. In either case, she would be a long way from the front door.

He slipped on his sunglasses, zipped up his coveralls, and tugged his cap low over his eyes. He started the engine and drove the truck farther into the cul-de-sac, eventually backing up into the driveway. He opened his door and quietly closed it, taking in the surrounding houses, cars, and sounds of the neighborhood. Two different dogs were barking, but not at him. They were much farther away. Four kids were playing in the green open space across from where his truck had been parked a few minutes ago. They were more interested in the football than they were in his comings and goings. No one stood at a picture window. No curtains moved or were askew in anyway. He walked to the back of the truck and popped open the window of the camper and lowered the truck’s tailgate. He worked quickly to retrieve the syringe and the toolbox from the back, leaving the topper window and tailgate wide open for his return.

He walked to the front door, which he knew would be unlocked, feigned pushing the doorbell, and waited the appropriate amount of time in case someone in the neighborhood had been paying attention. Not that it would matter if they saw him. He had on work coveralls as if he were a handyman or a repairman in uniform. He opened the door quietly and stepped inside.

He climbed the steps, set the toolbox on the floor, and retrieved what he needed from it. Like a cat, he was across the living room and halfway down the hall when the phone rang.

He froze.

Lisa stepped from the bathroom. Her breath caught in her throat and he watched her eyes widen for a brief moment before he closed the distance between them. She threw a punch that landed square on the left side of his lower jaw.

He staggered back a step, and then he felt his right eye explode in stars, her left jab having connected squarely with the fleshy socket. His hands flew to her neck, squeezing it tight. He hissed, “You’re a fighter. Good.”

Her hand shot up toward her shoulder holster, toward her weapon. He kneed her in the crotch and clocked her in the head. Her hands cupped her left ear, blood seeping through her fingers.

The sudden chirp of a phone caught him off guard again. It was her cell phone, and nearly his undoing. In the second he had lost focus she had freed her nine-millimeter SIG Sauer pistol from her holster and was pulling it up to fire. He charged and slammed her against the wall, driving the breath from her. Weighing at least twice as much as Lisa did, he pinned her to the wall with his shoulder and batted at her hands until he realized she was no longer holding the gun. He hadn’t heard it drop.

She kicked his shins and with her one free hand pushed at his chin, her fingernails clawing at his cheek. He turned his head and chomped down on her finger as hard as he could until she screamed. The blood from her finger was warm on his tongue. Her cell phone kept chirping and chirping.

“You’re messing up my picture,”he growled, shoving his shoulder under her rib cage. He shoved again, digging his shoulder deep into her solar plexus. She struggled to regain her breath. He delivered a swift undercut and she slumped to the floor in a heap at his feet. The chirping of the cell phone stopped.

“Finally,”he panted, kicking the pistol away from her unconscious body and pulling the plastic baggie from his pocket. He opened the seal, pulled out the needle, and shoved it into a vein in Awakening’s right forearm.

She never had a chance.

“Crazy bitch,” he said, giving her a swift kick.

He entered the bathroom, pulled off his latex gloves, washed his face and arms, and scrubbed the sink with wadded up toilet paper, assuring he would leave no blood in the sink or on the towels. He worked quickly, his mind racing through all the details. He turned his wrist to check his watch. Seven minutes. He’d been in the house for seven minutes.
Take a deep breath and take your time
, he told himself.

He looked in the mirror and liked the calm that had settled on his face. Better. He shoved the used latex gloves into one pocket of his coveralls and pulled a new pair from the other pocket, snapping them over his hands once again.

“You’ve got work to do,” he said to his reflection.

He canvassed the spare bedroom on the right. Awakening had been neat. A place for everything and everything in its place. He ducked across the hall, stepping over Awakening’s body. William Tell was a minimalist and tidy too.
Pathetic obsessive-compulsive types like me
, he thought. He rifled through Tell’s belongings, finding little. He rifled through Liv Bergen’s dresser drawers and surveyed the personal belongings on top of the dresser and hanging on the walls. Nothing caught his eye except a picture of an army of children surrounding their mother and father. A cluster of rocks encircled the picture frame.

He grabbed one of the small crystals and stuffed it in his pocket for later.

He stepped back over Awakening and walked down the hall toward the living room. Well away from the windows, he peeked outside and noticed no change in the neighborhood. He returned to Awakening and pulled off her shoes, her socks, her pants—everything—until Special Agent Lisa Henry was completely naked. He hefted her over his shoulder and carried her to the bed. He arranged her body so that her right leg was bent at the knee and her right foot was tucked under her backside. He turned her head to the right and splayed her hair on the pillow exactly the way he had envisioned.

Except for the nasty bruise where he had jabbed and kicked her in the ribs. He shouldn’t have done that, he realized. The bruising would definitely detract from an otherwise perfect shot.

He tucked Lisa’s hands beneath her head in a casual pose. He returned to his toolbox and retrieved a pomegranate from the large compartment on the bottom. Again in the bedroom, he slid the camera from beneath his coveralls and readied it to shoot some stills.

Then he grabbed the nine-millimeter SIG from the hallway floor where he had kicked it away from Awakening’s body earlier. He turned it over in his hands several times, enjoying the coolness, the weightiness, before laying it on the bed to the right of Awakening’s right arm.

“There now.”

Awakening was beautiful, peaceful. She truly looked as if she were one second away from awakening from a dream, as intended. Surreal that he had brought the painting to life, to perfection. Her skin was remarkably pure and white. White. With blemishes. The dreamlike euphoria faded as the angry swelling and bruising around her left ear, the trickle of blood trailing down her neck, and the purple bruise along her left ribs colored his vision. Her neck was red, as was the soft area beneath her chin.

She had ruined the moment for him. By fighting back, she had nearly ruined it all.

He would need to make final adjustments to his newest work of art. He slipped into the master bedroom across the hall, and then into the master bathroom, pulling out the drawers one by one until he found what he was looking for. Genevieve Liv Bergen’s makeup. He returned to Awakening and opened the bottle of liquid foundation. He poured some over the bruise on his model’s side and dabbed it with a cotton ball until the bruise faded. Her friend’s skin tone was apparently darker by a shade or two than Awakening’s, but it was working. He did the same around Awakening’s neck, stepping back and making a frame with his fingers to see how she would look through the camera lens. He dabbed some more on her neck and left ear, making sure he covered the trail of dried blood. Finally, he pulled the cap off the red lipstick tube and applied it to Awakening’s lips.