Kill Me Once (31 page)

Moments later – as he’d known would happen – someone enters the bathroom. The overhead light goes on and he hears the hollow sound of plastic connecting with porcelain as the toilet seat goes up.

It is the husband, James.

In a trance, he thumbs off the safety on his gun and noses the shower curtain aside. He assumes a shooter’s stance and his finger twitches once, setting off a tremendous bang. Chunks of brain matter and skull slide down the wall above the toilet in a fascinating rainbow of grey and white and red.

James Whitestone is dead before he hits the floor.

A concerned voice sounds outside the door a moment later. ‘James, honey? Are you okay? What was that noise? Did you fall?’

It is his mother, sexy little Sara.

‘I’m fine,’ he coughs. ‘I’ll be out in just a minute.’

Unbelievably, the dumb bitch buys it. ‘Jesus Christ. You scared the shit out of me, babe. I thought you broke your neck in there or something. Hurry up and come back to bed already.’

He smiles as he listens to the sound of her footsteps receding down the hall. Stepping over the dead body of her husband, he re-enters the dark hallway.

The master bedroom is no more than fifteen feet away. He pauses a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then swiftly covers the distance.

His mother is in bed lying on her side, wearing only a flimsy off-white negligee. Her pretty head is propped up coquettishly on one hand.

‘You just gonna stay out there all night, or are you gonna come keep me company in this big old bed, lover boy?’

Smiling, he crosses the threshold. She bolts upright in horror when she realises he is not her husband. A tiny squeak escapes her lips, but the mouse is too stunned to scream immediately.

‘Good evening, Sara,’ he says calmly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you again at last.’

When she finally screams, it is a loud, ear-splitting wail that startles him. This is not good, not part of the script. If she screams, someone will hear her and come to try to stop him. They will try to cage the eagle and he simply cannot have that.

Racing across the room, he clamps a large hand over her mouth. ‘Shut the fuck up, bitch,’ he hisses, spraying hot saliva all over his mother’s smooth cheek. ‘One more sound and I’ll chop your precious goddamn daughter up into so many pieces they won’t be able to put her back together again for the funeral.’

His mother squirms wildly in his strong grasp, an impotent little field mouse struggling to escape the eagle’s powerful talons. He smiles and leans down into her face. From this distance, he can actually
smell
her fear – a scent not unlike urine mixed with battery acid. ‘Tell me something,’ he says. ‘Do you even know who I
am
?’

And in that precise moment Sara Whitestone
does
know.

‘Jeremiah,’ she whispers.

He almost breaks a finger slapping her across the face. ‘That’s not my name any more, slut. You made damn sure of that a long time ago, and now I’m going to kill you for it. But tell me something first, Mom. How could you do it, anyway?

‘How could you give your own fucking
baby
away?’

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

As a sophomore at Trinity Catholic Academy in Eastlake, Ohio, during the 1950s, Sara Beth Quigley drew a lot of attention.

For one, she was generally considered the smartest person in the entire school. Not just the smartest
girl
, mind you, but the smartest
person
– teachers included.

She’d already aced the PSATs twice, won a national science fair as a freshman for her study of mutating genes in Lake Erie carp, and was a confident and eloquent public speaker at an age when the majority of her female contemporaries suffered from such low self-esteem that a single blemish might very well cause them to call in sick for the day.

Receiving straight As every quarter, there were even rumours that the teachers just pencilled them in for her on the first day of class. These rumours were patently untrue, of course. Sara Quigley had
earned
every mark she’d ever received and, what was more, was the furthest thing from a grade-grubber on the planet.

Like just about everybody else who’d ever come into contact with her, the nuns at the school absolutely
adored
Sara, and with very good reason. She was an extremely sweet and pious young girl, the kind who volunteered to clean the church every Saturday afternoon. Many of the Sisters were even quietly encouraging her to look into joining the convent after graduation and Sara was actually giving it serious consideration. After all, a life completely devoted to God was certainly a life well worth living. Besides, there was a long and respected tradition of religious service in her family and she wouldn’t have minded being a part of that one little bit.

But Sara Quigley wasn’t all just brains and good deeds. Far from it. She was also a remarkably beautiful girl. Extremely petite, with long shiny blonde hair and enormous twinkling blue eyes, her early-developing body and peaches-and-cream complexion drove her classmates completely crazy – for very different reasons, of course.

The girls all ate their hearts out with jealousy every time she passed them in the hall, and the boys did what boys do in the privacy of their own homes after school each day in an effort to deal with the overwhelming lust that she inspired in them.

Behind her back, the girls would sometimes call her a
slut
, and the boys would laughingly refer to her as a
dick-tease
, but everybody knew that neither label was true in the least. As a matter of fact, Sara had been kissed just once in her entire life, and it hadn’t been an especially pleasant experience at that.

Bobby Andrews, a hulking junior and the swaggering bully who was the captain of the varsity football team, had forced his slimy tongue down her throat at a school dance a few weeks previously. While it was happening, Sara was terrified she would throw up directly into his liquor-coated mouth before she finally managed to push his huge body off her.

To say the least, Bobby Andrews had not been pleased with her reaction.

*

It was a sunny spring day a few weeks before the prom as Sara strolled down the wide, locker-lined hallways with her best friend, Nicole Applebaum. Both girls wore long skirts, virginal white blouses and saddle shoes with bobby socks. They moved down the hall with their school books clasped against their chests.

‘So who are you going with, anyway?’ Nicole asked. She was a very pretty girl with glittering hazel eyes and short dark hair cut into a bob. ‘I hear Bobby Andrews is going around telling people you’re going with him. Please tell me that’s not true.’

Sara looked sideways at her best friend and crinkled up her nose. ‘Please, Nikki, give me a little bit of credit over here. I wouldn’t go to the prom with that boy if he were the last available option left on Earth.’

She leaned over and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘Actually, I was kind of hoping
Ben
would ask me.’

Nicole rolled her eyes. ‘Well, he wouldn’t be
my
first choice, but speak of the devil,’ she said as the topic of their conversation rounded the corner by the gym and headed their way. ‘I’m out of here, honey. Write me a note and tell me how it went, you bad little girl, you!’

Nicole Applebaum ducked into her biology class and Sara felt her heart skip a beat in her chest. Benjamin Martin was a tall, slender, almost
painfully
shy boy who she’d been surprised to find herself falling for when they’d been paired up together in a creative-writing class. His sensitive language touched her heart in a way she’d never known before, and she knew a lot of people were missing out on his gentle soul by misreading the cover of the book. He certainly didn’t talk very much but, if the way he blushed whenever she spoke to him was any indication, she knew he probably felt the same way about her.

He put his head down and quickly began passing her in the hall before she called out cheerily to him. ‘Hey, Ben! How are you doing today?’

The auburn-haired boy stopped dead in his tracks, unable to bring himself to look her in the eye. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was little more than the soft whisper of satin against skin. ‘Hey there, Sara.’

His shyness was so damn cute that Sara surprised herself by what she blurted out next.

What the hell. You only live once
.

‘Ah, Ben? I know it’s pretty short notice, but I was kind of wondering if you’d like to go to the prom with me.’

Though it was unheard of for a girl to ask a boy out in those days – pretty much an unwritten rule, as it were – Sara didn’t especially care. Besides, it was a
stupid
rule, anyway.

To her complete horror, Ben Martin’s face first blanched, then turned so red she was afraid that he would
pass out
. His lips were moving but no sounds were coming out. His mouth had morphed into a silent, trembling
O
.

Sara reached out a hand and touched his arm lightly. ‘Well, what do you say, silly? Come on, it’ll be a blast.’

Ben shuffled his brown-loafered feet and stared down hard at the floor as though he might somehow find the answer to her question written there. ‘I’d love to,’ he said finally. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve been trying to get up the courage to ask you the same thing for the past week.’

Sara’s heart skipped another beat in her chest. ‘Great! It’s all taken care of, then. I’ll tell you what. I have to clean the church tomorrow afternoon, but why don’t you stop by around two so that we can devise our plan of attack?’

As fate would have it, Bobby Andrews happened to be walking by at that precise moment. Shouldering Ben hard against the lockers, he wheeled around to glare at the smaller boy. ‘Out of my way, asshole!’ he growled.

‘Hey! Watch where you’re going, you big jerk!’ Sara called after him as he strolled away arrogantly. ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size for once in your life?’

She turned back to Ben and frowned. ‘Are you OK?’

Benjamin Martin’s face reddened again, but it wasn’t from embarrassment this time. To Sara’s great delight, she saw something of a
backbone
hiding underneath all that sensitivity. ‘Somebody ought to teach that guy a lesson one of these days,’ he muttered.

Sara waved a hand in the air. ‘Ah, don’t worry about him. He’s just a big jerk who’s so full of himself it isn’t even funny. Anyway, forget about him. So what do you say? You, me, two o’clock at the church tomorrow afternoon?’

Looking her squarely in the eye for the first time in his life, Benjamin Martin smiled. He had
beautiful
teeth.

‘I’ll be there, Sara.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Sara was on her hands and knees the next afternoon, scrubbing the marble floor in front of the altar at St Anthony’s Catholic Church. She was just reaching into a steaming bucket of soapy water when she heard the back doors of the church suddenly bang open.

She smiled to herself. Ben hadn’t chickened out.

Hearing his shy footsteps approaching cautiously from behind, by the time he was directly behind her she’d already mentally picked out her prom dress and corsage, his tuxedo, her engagement and wedding rings, her wedding dress and the names of their first three children. Two boys and one girl – Penelope Abigail for the girl.

In the next instant his powerful hand was on the back of her neck, squeezing painfully as he lifted her off her feet and slammed her hard across the altar. Rough hands ripped her shorts and lacy white panties down around her ankles. Trembling in shock and terror, Sara stared up into the eyes of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross.

When her attacker pierced her hymen with an audible pop a moment later it sent bright red blood sliding down her pale white thighs.

‘You think you can pass me up?’ Bobby Andrews hissed into her ear. ‘For that fuckin’ faggot Ben Martin?’

He pulled her hair back and drove himself into her even harder. ‘I don’t fuckin’ think so, you goddamn whore.’

When he came inside her a moment later it was all hot and wet and sticky. Sara retched painfully and threw up all over the altar, but Bobby Andrews just laughed at her.

‘Tell anybody about this and you’re one dead bitch,’ he grunted as he carelessly buckled his jeans back up. ‘You hear me, you little slut?
Dead.’

When he left by a side door twenty seconds later, Sara sat down on the steps of the altar and cried uncontrollably for the next hour. Finally leaving the church on badly shaking legs – the bucket of soapy water now spilled all over the floor – she asked God what she could possibly have done to deserve such a horrible fate.

Outside, in the harsh glare of the springtime sun, Benjamin Martin was lying in the bushes alongside the building. He was badly beaten and bloody, and the look of shame in his eyes was almost more than Sara could bear.

‘Ben …’ she began. But he was up and bolting down the street before she could finish.

Sara could barely walk home under her own power. It felt as though a white-hot lance had been thrust up hard between her soft thighs, and the blood was beginning to seep into her underwear now, staining the crotch of her virginal white shorts. Worse, people on the street were actually starting to
notice
.

She told no one what had happened, of course. You simply didn’t do such a thing in those days. Besides, nobody would have believed her, anyway.

Sara Beth Quigley didn’t go to the prom that year – she would never return to Trinity Catholic Academy again, as a matter of fact. Over the summer, her parents shipped her off to stay with ‘an aunt’ in Colorado until she could deliver the illegitimate baby boy at an orphanage run by Catholic missionaries.

On the day her son entered the world, following a nightmarish twelve-hour delivery, they let her hold him for only a moment before gently prising him from her arms.

‘It’s better this way,’ one of the nuns told her, brushing a lock of sweaty blonde hair out of Sara’s blurry eyes. ‘He’ll have a better life this way.’