Signature Kill (22 page)

His beautiful Sunbeam, her meat is rotten, clean cuts impossible. Flesh comes off of bone. He uses every technique he’s learned over time, but things are
liquefying
. He’s been diverted and now he’s waited too long. Timing is everything in life, in work, in death. Now she is a waste, a total goddamned waste. Foreigner is on the radio, the lead singer wailing about how it feels like the first time. It is as if they are singing directly to him. That is the worst part—how amateurish it makes him feel, like it
is
his first time. It brings him back to memories he hasn’t entertained in so long.

She worked on post. That’s how it had started. He didn’t know, yet, that that was how it would always begin—with chance or fate dropping a project in front of him. As a paymaster for the MPs, at the end of his service, he had access to the personal information of almost everyone on post; he had the run of the installation and not enough to do during his shifts. He’d already met Margaret, a major’s daughter but a civilian who worked at a local car dealership, and they’d begun their courtship. They’d been spending a lot of time together, but not enough to keep his mind straight. The inhibitions were still in control then, before they weakened and eventually fell. The thought of what
could be
was always with him.

Then he’d started seeing
her
, given name Lorie, around post far
too much. He’d spot her at the PX, in the mess, in the parking lot, and in the base commander’s office, where she was a nonmilitary personnel secretarial assistant. She was as popular as could be, tossing her mane of flaxen hair around, clipping it back off her face, hugging soldiers hello, laughing. He was living in a small apartment off post, and when he ran into her at the King Soopers, he knew it was a sign. She was buying dog food, magazines, and a multipack of Kit Kat candy bars, which is how he always remembers her: Kit Kat.

There had been smiles and hellos exchanged between them. That’s the way it was at Fort Carson. She might’ve known his name. She’d probably seen it stamped on the pocket of his BDUs when he delivered payroll reports. He knew hers. That level of personal connection was not a risk he ever took again, but back then, before the first time, he didn’t know better. He’d been running on instinct. Things were so pure then.

There hadn’t been any conversation at the supermarket that day, just a nod in passing. He turned the aisle, abandoned his cart, and went right out to his car in the parking lot. He waited and she came out and got in her Jeep Cherokee, and he’d followed her to her home, a narrow town house with a slanted roof bunched together with hundreds of other units on Gold Rush down toward the Springs. He
needed
to tie her up, to touch her, to taste her, to hear her scream.
Other
, that bestial force that dwelled within him, had awakened, and he’d never felt anything like it.

And so it began, the following. Every day and night for weeks. When she left her job at the post, he trailed her out. When she was home, he’d be outside. When she went to the store or the mall or the bar, he’d be there. It was safe to say she became his obsession. He wasn’t sure if he ever had greater focus on anything in his life than he did on that project. And with each passing moment the ache inside him grew.

Before he knew it, his kit had started coming together—rope, tape, blindfold, tarps, hacksaw, knives—the ingredients assembled from far-flung stores, all purchased separately, all paid for with cash. He had too much stuff. He didn’t know what he truly needed yet, didn’t know that he’d find a way to use everything he brought, but that using
more
wasn’t the idea. He had easy access to Tasers and stun batons through his job, but he went to a gun store and bought a commercially made civilian model—a small piece of black plastic with metal electrode teeth that snapped a thirty-thousand-volt bite. He hadn’t used a stun gun since then, but that was back before he trusted himself.

He had a friend, a sergeant in the motor pool, who’d helped him unbolt the rear seat of his Corolla. He’d never again ask anyone for help in any manner, but he’d told the sergeant he had to move some things so he needed the space. The real reason was he needed a way to transport Kit Kat without her being seen. It haunted him for years, that loose end, and whether the sergeant would put it together and repeat the request to law enforcement. He even considered killing his friend, but decided that would only magnify the risk.

Finally, one night, just as his service commitment was about up, the need was boiling within him, and he couldn’t wait any longer. He followed Kit Kat from her condo to a Laundromat. He waited until she’d done her wash and was carrying the basket back to her car, and then he stepped out behind her with the stun gun. The crack of the voltage in the quiet night sounded like a shot to him, and
other
was finally loosed.

Kit Kat slumped into his arms, and he dragged her to his car. He tied her wrists and ankles and gagged her. He had no idea how long she’d remain unconscious. He covered her with a blanket and closed the door. Straightening and turning from his car, he breathed hard, vapor clouds fogging the crisp night air. He took her laundry basket, her keys resting on top of the clean, folded clothing, and put it in her car. He was wearing rubber gloves, so fingerprints were not an issue. As he rushed back to his car, he felt he’d been on the street for hours, though it was probably less than two minutes. It seemed it was plenty of time for countless witnesses to come running up screaming for him to stop, or to call police who would converge on him in a wash of strobing blue lights and drawn weapons. But nothing had happened and nobody came. The fluorescents of the Laundromat glowed in the distance. He saw the figures of a few customers moving about within. Besides that, all was quiet. He hadn’t been seen. He drove away.

That had been the smooth part. He reached the remote spot he’d
chosen. There was nothing but empty wilderness not far from the Fort, and he’d strung a dark tarpaulin against the night sky. He was carrying her there over his shoulder, a quarter mile from where he’d parked off a dirt road, which proved to be exhausting even for the fit soldier he was back then, when she came to and started kicking and screaming. He dropped her too hard because of it, mistake number one. And he’d left the stun gun in the car, mistake number two. He’d started to panic at the noise and her strength, so he’d used a rock to subdue her, mistake number three, and a messy one at that. He left her there on the ground and humped it back to the car, which he’d locked his keys inside. Mistake number four. He broke a rear window and got his kit and the stun gun. He used a plastic bag he had to cover her head so no blood got on his clothes as he carried her the rest of the way. He saw the bag sucking feebly in and out of her nose area, so he knew she was still alive.

Once he had her under the tarp and on top of a ground cloth he’d spread, the wonders of what he’d done cascaded over him and caused him to break down in shuddering pleasure. Pleasure that was punctuated by Kit Kat’s eyes flickering open. He tried to wipe her bleeding brow and to soothe her, but he was apparently no good at it. Before long, by virtue of the duct tape going on and coming off dozens of times on account of her wailing, screaming, and general noise, her lips—those lovely pouting lips that she kept pink and shiny with constant applications of lip gloss from a small pot she carried—became raw and torn. That was mistake number five, and while far from his last, it was the last he bothered counting.

Death games, negotiations, and exploration went on for hours that night, as he found his way into what he instantly recognized as his life’s purpose. Morning was breaking pale pink over a distant ridge before it was over and he collapsed next to her in exhaustion. There had been no sound or movement during that next day, save for circling hawks and indifferent squirrels and gophers, and he’d barely stirred until it was close to nightfall. He’d sat up and washed and drank from the jugs of water he’d stored at his makeshift camp.

That’s when he began on the next phase. He told himself he would take her apart to make the burying easier, but it quickly became clear
that that was just self-deception, and he was now in a place where such things were instantly stripped away. He started taking her apart because he
had
to, because he
wanted
to. He made a horrible mess of it. For a moment he wondered jealously at young novices starting in butcher shops, at how they could watch and learn at the heels of a master before trying their own hand at it. There was no apprenticeship for him. He needed to learn on his own, and the truth was: that was how he wanted it. But none of that changed the fact that clean cuts were far from clean, organs were accidentally pierced, joints that would later be severed with minimal effort were snapped with brute force. Her head came off with a pop he heard over his own grunts. His results would have horrified anyone who’d seen them. It appeared a wild carnivorous animal had done what he’d done, and not a sentient being.

The following morning he’d needed to show up to work, so he’d washed again, returned home, showered, and reported for duty. There was some talk about Kit Kat missing a shift, but so far no real concern and no authorities called in to investigate. He put off Margaret for the next three nights, instead returning to the campsite and visiting with Kit Kat’s remains, luxuriating in the viscous fluids and fecund smells. He had no real interest in ever stopping, until things became dried and crusted, then liquefied again and maggots swarmed over her disassembled flesh. It brought him back to his senses and he was sick with himself, but only for a moment. His old self was changing, going away. He realized he’d been thinking about killing a person for as long as he could remember.

He dug that deep hole with his army-issue entrenching tool—a tool he possessed to this day. He stacked up the pieces that had been her and beheld their intricate majesty. He sat on the edge of the hole for a long time, filthy, exhausted, sated, disgusted, exhilarated, and more complete than he’d ever been, a deep sense of self-knowledge glowing within.

Then he buried her, her parts tumbling in, one on top of the other, and then all of the implements he’d used, save the E-tool, and one small special part he needed to remember her by: a bone he later learned was called the first proximal phalange. He smoothed dirt and
rocks and pine branches over it, and scattered the extra soil so that no passing hiker would ever suspect what was there. It was only later that he’d regretted covering up what he had done. But at that moment he was new. He had
become other
.

And he’d sworn to himself as he drove back to his apartment and his job and life that he’d get much better at all of it, and he had, until now …

Now Sunbeam, who’d been perfect, has gone beyond the workability stage and there is nothing to do but barrel her up. What a sorry shame. And then he sees the news that the photographer, Quinn, has survived. It is a cosmic punch in the face. Sometimes the world just kicks your ass, even when you are a world creator. So now he has to dump, not display, to hide a mistake instead of show a masterpiece.