The Birthday Girl (12 page)

Buffy was asleep in her basket but her ears pricked up and her eyes opened as soon as Mersiha stepped into the kitchen. 'Shhhh!' Mersiha whispered. The keys to Katherine's car were hanging on a hook by the kitchen door. Buffy whined, asking to go out, but Mersiha glared at her and pointed to the dog's basket. 'Bed,' she hissed. Buffy did as she was told, her tail between her legs.

Mersiha slipped out of the kitchen and carefully closed the door behind her. It was a cool night and she breathed in the night air like a drowning man. Her heart was racing so fast that she thought it would explode. She put a hand to her chest and took deep breaths. It wasn't what she was about to do that made her so nervous, it was the fear of getting caught. Of what her father would say. Of the hurt she'd see in his eyes.

She switched the flashlight on and walked across the grass to the garage. Both cars were parked there. She pushed Katherine's car out on to the road before starting the engine. It had been a long time since she had been behind the wheel of a vehicle. Her new parents had steadfastly refused to allow her to drive their cars, insisting that she wait until her sixteenth birthday. She'd never told them she'd learnt to drive when she was twelve years old, that her brother had fixed wooden blocks to the pedals of an old Russian truck so that her feet could reach and so that she could change gear without the sound of crunching metal. She used to drive while her brother and his friends rode in the back, guns at the ready, and compared with the war-torn roads of Bosnia, Route 83 North from Baltimore was a breeze. She kept the car at just under the speed limit all the way to Parkton. She knew there would be few police around at that time of night, but there was no point in tempting fate. The further away from her house she drove, the calmer she felt. By the time she arrived in Parkton she was completely calm, totally focused on what lay ahead.

Art Brown always slept face down, had done ever since he'd been at college and a friend of his had died after an all-night drinking session, choked on his own vomit. After a few years it had become a habit, and now, a quarter of a century after the death of his friend, he couldn't sleep in any other position. The right side of his face was pressed into the pillow, his eye squashed shut, but he could open his left eye to see the blue luminous figures of his bedside clock. It was a quarter past two. Something had woken him from a deep sleep, a noise from somewhere downstairs. Normally he never woke up in the middle of the night so he listened intently, trying to pin down whatever it was that had startled him awake. Maybe he'd left a door open, or it could have been a car backfiring. Parkton wasn't a hotbed of crime burglaries were relatively rare because most of the homeowners were armed or had big dogs, and the crime of choice among the well-heeled suburban residents tended to be tax evasion rather than breaking and entering. Somewhere off in the distance a dog barked. Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe it had been the dog.

He closed his eyes and relaxed, trying to get back to sleep. The warmth of the bed turned his mind to thoughts of Katherine Freeman. God, the woman was incredible; there wasn't anything she wouldn't do in bed. He sighed as he remembered the last time she'd come to his house. She'd walked straight by him as soon as he'd opened the door and headed up the stairs unbuttoning her dress and calling over her shoulder that she could only spare an hour. By the time he'd run up the stairs she was lying naked on the bed, a sly smile on her lips. She hadn't even given him time to take off his shoes, let alone his trousers. She'd motioned with her finger for him to lie on the bed, then she'd expertly unzipped his trousers and slipped him inside her, fastening her legs around his waist so that he couldn't have withdrawn even if he'd wanted to. He'd exploded inside her in a matter of seconds, but she'd carried on moving, pounding 94 STEPHEN LEATHER against him until he'd grown hard again. She knew just what to say and do to get a man aroused and to keep him that way until she'd been satisfied. And God, the woman took some satisfying.

Brown could feel himself growing hard. Even when she wasn't with him, she could turn him on. He knew it was unethical, sleeping with a patient's mother, but he'd known that the first day she'd stepped into his office. She was so obviously available, it had stood out a mile, and within a week of their meeting she'd been in his bed. He knew that he was taking advantage of the resentment she felt towards her husband following the death of their son, and he doubted that he was the only extramarital lover she had, but he couldn't stop himself. Their relationship was purely sexual. They had almost nothing in common except for bed and her daughter, and he knew there was no question of her ever leaving her husband to live with him, but for the moment that was enough for him. He sighed as he remembered how she'd taken him in her mouth, straddling his chest as she went down on him, brushing his thighs with her hair. Brown slid his hand down the bed, between his legs. If he couldn't have her there and then, at least he could have her in his mind. He gripped himself tightly, and pictured her soft, wet mouth.

'Dr Brown?' At first he thought he'd imagined the whisper, that he was hearing Katherine in his mind, but when the voice spoke again he realised that there was someone else in the room. His eyes shot open and he whipped his head around, so fast that he heard his neck crack. He was still lying on his right arm, still holding himself, and he couldn't raise his chest off the bed.

'Who is it?' he mumbled, his throat so dry that the words sounded strangled. It was a girl's voice. What the hell was a girl doing in his bedroom? He felt something hard press against the back of his neck. Something hard and circular. His stomach churned as he realised what it was. The barrel of a gun.

'Don't move,' the girl said. It wasn't a ghetto voice, that much he was sure. There was none of the sing-song bravado that he heard in the voices of the inner-city kids whom he treated at his surgery whenever the city's welfare services came up with the money. The girl was young, the accent suburban, the voice THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 95 vaguely familiar. The pressure of the gun increased as she leant across and switched on the brass lamp on his bedside cabinet. He could see her out of the corner of his left eye, but not clearly enough to recognise her. He heard a clunking sound and then three musical tones. She'd picked up the phone and dialled a three-figure number. He realised with a feeling of dread that she'd called 911. Emergency services.

'Yes,' she said, quietly. 'Send an ambulance to 113 Lauriann Court, Parkton. Gunshot wound.' She replaced the receiver, then Brown felt the gun barrel pull away. 'Turn over,' she said.

Brown rolled on to his back. His right arm tingled as the blood began to flow again. 'Mersiha?' he said as he recognised his visitor. 'What's going on?'

Mersiha Freeman was standing at the left side of the bed, a gun in her right hand and two towels draped over her left arm. Her black hair was hidden in a baseball cap and her face seemed unnaturally white in the light from the lamp. He tried to sit up, but Mersiha pointed the gun at his head. 'Stay where you are,' she said, her voice cold and flat.

'What are you doing?' he asked. His mind was racing. Mersiha had never shown any violent tendencies in all the time she'd been undergoing therapy, and she'd seemed perfectly rational during their last session. She was generally a bright, well-balanced girl, and while she had problems, they weren't the sort that would be expected to lead to her standing in her therapist's bedroom brandishing a pistol.

She threw a towel at him and it fell across his chest. He'd last seen it hanging on a rail by the shower in the guest bedroom. 'We can talk about this, Mersiha,' he said. It was important to get her talking, he knew. He was a trained psychiatrist, she was just a troubled teenager; once they began communicating he'd be able to calm her down. He'd dealt with manic depressive teens before. They were relatively easy to defuse, once you got them talking. 'I want you to tell me what's upset you. We've always gotten along so well in the past. I'm not just your doctor, I'm your friend.'

Mersiha wrapped the other towel around her right hand, enveloping the gun so that all that could be seen was the last half-inch of the barrel. 'There isn't any problem that can't 96 STEPHEN LEATHER be solved by talking it through,' Brown said. He flashed his professional smile, but his legs were shaking under the quilt.

'Hold the towel,' she said, waving the gun at his chest. He gripped the towel with his right hand. She took hold of the quilt and pulled it off the bed. He was naked and he could feel his penis shrivel and his scrotum contract.

'Mersiha, come on, this is getting out of hand,' he said, unable to stop his voice from quivering.

'You will not see Katherine. Ever again.'

'What are you talking about?' Brown said.

'You know what I'm talking about. If you even so much as talk to her, I'll kill you. Do you understand?'

'Mersiha, listen to me. What happened between your mother and me, it didn't mean anything. It doesn't mean that she doesn't love you.' Brown could see that she wasn't listening, he wasn't getting through to her. He looked across at the telephone. If she really had spoken to 911, it wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and the police would be sure to come, too. Gunshot, she'd said. Brown tried to calculate how long they'd been talking. Two minutes. Three, maybe.

'This isn't about Katherine,' Mersiha said. 'It's about my father. I don't want him hurt. If he ever found out...'

'He won't!' Brown interrupted. 'I swear. I swear on my own mother's life. But please, don't shoot.'

'I have to,' she said quietly. 'Don't you see, Dr Brown? I have to demonstrate to you that I'm serious, otherwise you'll think I'm just acting like a child.'

'I don't think you're acting like a child, Mersiha. But if you really want to behave like an adult, you should put the gun down and talk this over with me. Will you do that?' His voice was shaking and he could feel that his whole body was bathed in sweat.

Mersiha shook her head. 'Listen to me, and listen good. If you ever see Katherine again, I'll kill you. If you call our house again, I'll kill you. If my father ever finds out that you slept with her, I'll kill you. Do you understand?'

Brown nodded, unable to speak.

'No one will believe that a fifteen-year-old girl did this to you.

But if you tell anyone what I did, I'll come back and kill you. Do you understand?'

Brown nodded again. He stared at the gun barrel protruding from the towel, praying that she'd left the safety on, that she didn't know how a gun worked, that she was only trying to scare him. How long? Four minutes? Five? Oh God, they wouldn't get here in time.

Mersiha wound a flap of towel over the front of the gun barrel so that the whole weapon was now hidden from his view. Brown suddenly realised why she was covering the gun: to deaden the sound when she fired. 'Mersiha ... please ...' he whispered. He felt his bowels relax and a warm glow spread between his legs. He'd soiled himself.

Mersiha aimed the gun at his left leg and fired. Brown's leg jerked and he felt as if he'd been whacked with a baseball bat. A hole the size of a quarter spouted blood a couple of inches below his left knee. He was surprised at the pain. It felt more like a dull throb than what he thought a gunshot wound should feel like, but gradually the ache was replaced by a bolt of searing heat, like a red-hot poker being twisted in the wound. The rest of his body felt as if it had been chilled in comparison, and he began to shake violently. He could smell his own mess and he felt sick.

'Use the towel,' Mersiha said.

Brown looked up as if he'd forgotten that she was there.

'The towel,' she repeated. 'Use it to stop the bleeding.'

Mersiha turned and walked out of the room. She didn't look back.

She walked to the car, resisting the urge to run. If she were unlucky enough to be seen leaving the house any witnesses would be more likely to remember someone running. She kept her head down so that the peak of the cap hid her face. She'd tucked the gun into the waistband of her trousers and pulled the sweater down over it. The towel she carried, swinging it as if she didn't have a care in the world. The expended cartridge had 98 STEPHEN LEATHER caught in the cotton material and she'd been careful not to drop it. Now it nestled in her back pocket.

The car engine was still cooling, clicking like an insect, and it roared into life as soon as she turned the key. She kept the lights off until she'd got to the end of the road, then switched them on. She headed towards 83 South, the gun pressing against her stomach like an erection.

She heard the ambulance before she saw its flashing lights, then it rushed by her, heading for Dr Brown's house. She didn't see any police cars but she was sure that one would be sent to investigate the shooting. She smiled as she wondered what Dr Brown would tell them. She knew she was taking a risk: if the psychiatrist told them that she'd shot him, they'd be able to get to her house long before she got home. They'd be waiting for her, standing at her doorway with the handcuffs ready, her adoptive parents wringing their hands and wondering where they'd gone wrong. She snorted quietly. It would never happen, not in a million years. Dr Brown had too much to lose. It would all come out, the fact that he'd been sleeping with the mother of a patient, and the tabloids would love that. But it wasn't just the fear of being exposed that would keep the psychiatrist's lips sealed. He'd looked into her eyes as she'd pulled the trigger, and she knew what he'd seen there. He'd seen the eyes of a killer, someone who'd killed before and who would have no compunction about killing again. She was just as capable of putting a bullet into his brain as she was of shooting him in the leg. It was ironic. He'd tried for almost three years to get some understanding of what went on in her mind, yet he'd learned more about her in the few minutes she'd spent in his bedroom, too late for him to use the knowledge.

Mersiha wound down the window, checked in the mirror to see that there was no traffic behind her, and tossed the towel out. It whirled through the air, flapping like a clumsy bird, and then she lost sight of it. She looked at the dashboard clock. She'd been away from the house for less than an hour. Just as she'd planned.