Night bait, page 10
She was sitting in the corner, as if in hiding. After ordering a drink at the bar, he stood and faced the front window, surveying her in the corner of his eye. Young, slender, pretty, the right kind of face. Her expression was sullen, her eyes dreary. She looked sad. Her hand lay on the table in front of her, and her slim, white fingers encompassed a half-filled glass of vodka and orange juice. Several other glasses, empty except for watery ice cubes settled at the bottom, formed a crude circle around the one she held. If she were like most American girls, that meant she was already drunk.
A note-perfect prospect.
Casually, he walked over to her table. "May I join you?"
She looked up at him without moving her head. "Sure."
Only a few minutes of small talk verified his assumptions. She was drunk. Her words slurred from her lips like fluid, and she would sometimes say things that didn't make sense. Several times, she lit herself a cigarette, but she lit the filter end. Yes, darling, he thought, drink up. The drunker, the better.
When it became obvious to her that he sought a one-night stand, she made all kinds of trite gestures so that he would more easily notice her: leaning forward over the table so that the edge would press against her breasts, mentioning that she was hot to render an excuse to unfasten the second and third buttons of her blouse, getting up to go to the ladies' room but standing there long enough for him to get an eyeful of her lithe rump. He wasn't sure why she had taken an immediate liking to him. Perhaps it was the way he dressed, or the walletful of cash he had made obvious to her everytime he had bought her another drink, or maybe just his looks. But whatever the reason, it didn't matter. She was definitely attracted to him—that's all he cared about.
Soon, their discourse grew more detailed, and that gave him the opportunity to assure her that he was rich. He had heard that these American girls get the hots for rich, older men. It also gave him a chance to tell her about himself. When he had told her that he wasn't a native-born American, a foreigner actually, she had acted surprised. That reassured him. He had always worked hard on his English; most people could only detect a trace of an accent, and the girl's reaction reaffirmed his belief that he didn't look particularly foreign. When he told her about his job, she seemed even more impressed. He told her the truth about what he did, since there was no need to lie. After all, she would be dead in a few hours. Dead girls keep their mouths shut forever.
It pleased him to know that, though he hadn't lived there for long, he had already learned how to manipulate American women. He knew all the right moves, the proper things to say, the attractive way to act—he knew how to make a girl say yes.
And she did say yes. When he had asked her if she would like to come home with him, her answer had been unmediated, as if she hadn't had to think twice, as if she had wanted to go home with him from the very beginning. It amazed him how trusting these girls were, how they could be so eager to go to bed with a man they'd met only an hour or so ago.
As they were leaving, he put his arm around her waist, partly to feign affection, but mostly to make sure she didn't fall flat on her face. By then, she was sizzled through and through, so drunk that she could barely walk.
The crisp, fresh air out on the streets didn't do a thing for her. She was still all giddy, jabbering away, slobbering her words. He thought she would never shut up. She told him that her boyfriend had dumped her, and that she was glad because he was immature anyway, that she liked mature men who were sophisticated and important like him. Then she started talking a little dirty.
They approached the Mercedes, and as he unlocked the door on the passenger side, the girl drawled a compliment regarding the automobile. He smiled and helped her inside. While he walked around to the other side of the car, he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and gently grasped the small, cylindrical syringe. It wasn't an ordinary syringe; it was a special kind, referred to by pharmacists as a "chicken spike." It was made of metal, not glass or plastic, and it injected its contents automatically rather than by the usual hand action. Its needle was not visible; instead, it was spring-loaded back into the nose of the cylinder, and when pressure was applied to the lever on the end, the short needle would pop out and instantly inject the drug into the recipient. To insure that it did not go off by accident, the syringe had a thumb-operated latch, like the safety on a gun, and the needle would not engage unless the latch had been moved down first. All in all, this automatic injector device made his job much easier. The sodium pentathol he used was about the fastest incapacitating drug known.
His victims would usually lose consciousness in fifteen seconds, and that made the task of getting them into his house a lot less difficult, especially with the prostitutes whom he knew would put up a fight when they realized he was taking them someplace other than the agreed upon motel. The effect of the drug lasted just long enough for him to get them home, get them undressed, and get them into the tub. A minute or two later, they would regain consciousness. Then he would finish them. He would always wait for them to come to before turning on the power. Killing them unconscious deadened some of the thrill. He wanted them to know they were going to die before he actually killed them; he wanted to see that stifled, undeniable look of horror in their eyes.
He wasn't worried about the girl seeing the syringe before he had a chance to use it. She'd be out cold before she knew what hit her—no time for her to react. Beside, as drunk as she was, he could probably wave the injector in front of her face and she still wouldn't suspect a thing.
As he closed his door, it crossed his mind that using the injector on this particular girl might be dangerous. She was pissy drunk and he suddenly feared that the pentathol might have an adverse reaction with all the alcohol in her blood. Why hadn't he thought of that before? It could easily kill her in that state. He hoped that he would be able to kill her his own special way. That was half the fun: charging the life out of them, then getting his rocks off in their lifeless bodies. Oh well, he said to himself, I'll just have to try it and see. If it kills her, it kills her.
He kept the syringe hidden in the palm of his hand after he had closed his door. Pretending to be passionate, he reached his arm around her shoulder and pulled her lips to his. Her kiss tasted like orange juice and cigarette tar. As they kissed, his thumb moved the safety latch down on the injector which was still concealed in his right palm. Then, he pressed the end of the cylinder into the side of her neck. He could hear the tiny click of the spring snapping the needle out. It took her a dumb second before her nervous system registered pain. When she finally felt the sharp stab to her neck, she whipped her face forward, eyes and mouth sagging. Very, very slowly, she said, "What did you put on my ..."
Her eyelids snapped shut, and she passed out, her body slumping against his.
He lived in Georgetown, his house only a few minutes away. But when he pulled out of the parking space, he steered left on Μ Street, away from Georgetown. He always did this, to make sure that no one followed him. He would zigzag through some of the poorer residential sections, then head back home.
Fortunately, the streets were all but vacant. He only spotted a handful of cars between Μ Street and Vermont Avenue. The power steering unit hummed as he turned the car onto Pennsylvania Avenue. He smiled amusingly when he passed the spectacular, white-lighted pillars of the White House. Even from there, he could see the sky-reaching tower erected on St. Thomas Circle. The cold, glowing dial of its lighted clockface read 3:04.
Time had gotten away from him; he didn't realize the late hour. He would have to do this one in a hurry, and then dump her off somewhere before daybreak. That wouldn't leave much time for him to go home, carry her upstairs, get her ready, and begin. He hated having to rush; he liked to be able to take his time with each girl, savoring each delicious thrust into the warm, sweet, dead flesh.
When he was sure he wasn't being tailed, he turned back the way he came. His foot jabbed the accelerator, and he continued toward the outer-section of residential Georgetown where his small yet luxurious two-story house was located. He drove quickly, deliberately, but not recklessly, on the off chance that a police car might be hiding around some bend out of sight.
Every few minutes, he pressed his hands up between the girl's breasts. There was still a faint heartbeat; so far, the pentathol had not caused a fatal reaction.
Ten minutes later, he was driving through his own secluded neighborhood. All of he lights were out in the surrounding houses. The car rocked over the end of his driveway. He picked up a small, plastic box off the dash and depressed the button in the middle. Another ingenious American invention, he thought as the garage door opened all by itself.
Excitement welled in him. He drove the car hastily into the roomy garage and pushed the button again. The motordrive unit whined and lurched the chain into reverse, hauling the garage door back down again, where it closed with a deadened slam. He got out and dragged the nameless girl along with him. Then he hefted her light body up in his arms and went into the house.
It was very dark inside. With a free elbow, he flicked on the light switch, then made for the staircase. He dashed up the steps, each footfall pounding into the carpeted stairwell like hammer blows. He seemed oblivious to the human weight cradled in his arms.
A trace of warm breath brushed his hand when he entered his room. Not his bedroom—his murder room. There was a bed there though, already covered with a large sheet of tough plastic, and he threw the girl down on it, her body bouncing and jostling on the mattress as she landed.
Starting at the top, he pulled her shirt buttons out of the eyelets, then pushed her on her tummy and took it off, bending her arms backwards like chicken wings. He tore the skimpy bra off in one forceful motion. Her boots clunked to the floor, and he yanked her pants away from her legs, as if peeling off a used prophylactic.
When she was nude, he opened a cabinet by the bedside and removed a single, bright, day-glow green tennis ball. It seemed a harsh measure, but it was necessary for two reasons. First, he simply could not stand to hear them scream; even during the days of his prison assignment, when the screams did not matter, he always used a gag. He would not tolerate his victims' screams, so he cut it off at the source. But what was even more important was the fact that if he allowed them to scream, the neighbors might hear. It was different now, no longer being able to do as he pleased. Before, it didn't make any difference, but now he would have to be very careful. One of the so called doctors back at the blockhouse had told him that a tennis ball was the perfect gag: large enough to prevent any sound whatsoever from escaping the victim's lips, yet not so large to cause strangulation.
He pried the girl's jaw open with his fingers, then squeezed the tennis ball together and inserted it between her teeth. Open-palmed, he then shoved the ball the rest of the way into her mouth, where it then popped back to its original protuberant form. Next, he unraveled a good length of duct tape from the thick roll next to the other tennis balls in the cabinet. He pressed one end of the strip of tape to the girl's lips, then wound the rest of it around her head several times, sealing her mouth shut.
Now he was ready to begin.
After laying his jacket on a chair in the corner of the room, he stared down at his prize, looking at her the way an overenthusiastic entomologist would look at a rare butterfly pinned to a board. She lay there, stripped bare, innocent, defenseless; her smooth skin glimmered softly in the electric light. His eyes detected the ever-so-slight rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. Still alive. Her nipples stared back at him like pink accusing eyes. His hand jittered with excitement as he ran it over the smooth, poreless surface of her immaculate skin. Her flesh was warm to the touch.
He stepped into a pair of black rubber overshoes, donned a pair of heavy electrician's gloves, then lifted the girl off the bed and carried her into the bathroom. The bathtub had been filled earlier, and he had made sure to add a generous amount of liquid bath soap—a long time ago, an electrician had told him that soapy water conducts electricity ten times better than pure water.
He lowered the girl into the tub very gently, careful not to splash any water on the floor. Then he stood by the switch on the wall. One end of a green extension cord had been plugged into the socket that most men would use to plug in their electric razors. The cord ran straight up, fastened along the top of the doorway by eyehooks, and then descended on the other side. He had stripped the other end of the cord, leaving two inches of bare wire, and this end dangled, completely submersed, into the tub.
His gloved finger hovered over the power switch as he waited for the effect of the pentathol to wear off. The cold water on their naked bodies usually brought them back quickly.
A minute or two later, she began to move. Her head wobbled from side to side, and she opened her eyes. She stared dumbfoundedly around the small bathroom and then down at her legs under the water, her eyes widening with every passing second. She brought her fingers to her mouth and felt the tape. He could hear muffled gagging sounds coming from the back of her stuffed throat.
"You are going to die," he said, blank-faced.
Her knees broke the surface of the water, and her hand took hold of the side of the tub in an instantaneous effort to get out and run. When she had half-risen out of the tub, he flicked the switch.
For a moment, there was absolutely no sound.
She dropped back into the water as if she had received a hard shove. Her eyes seemed to be bulging out of her skull, and her jaw moved in a desperate attempt to scream at the titanic wave of electric shock. Her head jerked back, seemingly farther than nature had intended. Her entire body went stiff and straight as a ruler, then arched forward like a grotesque bridge as the one hundred and ten volts of high-tension current continued to surge through her bones. She went slack for a moment—they always did just before the grand finale—then her body went wild, twisting, convulsing, the back of her head knocking into the tile wall, arms and legs thrashing into the sides of the tub, her hips bouncing in and out of the water as if on a springboard.
By the time she was dead, her body had flipped completely around, and it had twisted itself into a ludicrous shape. He turned off the power and yanked out the plug. Then, with his sleeves rolled up, he bent over and lifted the girl out of the tub. He made haste back to the room—he knew that at any minute, the girl's sphincter would relax—and he dropped her down on the plastic covered bed. Her wide-open, hemorrhaged eyes seemed to watch him as he took off his clothes. He could feel accelerated passion mounting up and up; his blood seemed hot and dense, charged with perverted exhilaration.
As if posing a wooden puppet, he arranged her arms and legs into a splayed configuration of crucifixion. Beads of water stood out on her skin and sparkled like quartz under the light from the lamp on the nightstand.
The plastic sheet on the mattress crinkled as he climbed up between the sleek, white V of her legs. Her skin against his was soft and luxurious.
His thrusts were slow at first, gentle, almost tender; then his tempo gradually increased to a mad bucking motion. As he went on pounding into her, the wooden knobs atop the bedposts buffeted into the wall, each blow slightly enlarging the holes that had already been made there. Propped over her on his hands, he kept an eye down on her and watched her limp body shake with each fervent motion into her, her head lolling around, her breasts joggling back and forth.
His loins tingled as climax approached, and the dull thuds of the bedposts coming in contact with the wall changed into tolling malletblows. The mattress springs screamed and whined under the frantic action. Lewd, slick sounds of copulation clicked in his ears as he brought himself nearer. Waves of twisted ecstacy rippled through his body. He began to moan.
His legs shivered on the edge of eruption. His muscles grew tense and hard, flexing under a thin coat of sweat. Then, in a heroinlike haze, his naked middle quivered and throbbed, then released an instant pulse of pleasure.
His pelvic rhythm went into a rapid decline, like a piston pump that had just run out of fuel, and he fell down onto her, huffing, spent, satisfied. Exhaustion seized him like paralysis; for several minutes, he couldn't move, and he just lay there on top of the girl, his body no less physically dead than hers.
Time was wasting. It would be getting light soon.
He summoned his strength, as always finding, it difficult and unbearable to have to separate himself from her so soon, and he climbed off. He staggered over to the corner of the room where his clothes were, and he leaned against the wall, shaking off the draining effects that the orgasm played on him. As he dressed, he found that he could not take his eyes off her. To him, she was a image of beauty in its most refined form. So lovely and so peacefully still. So dead.
The rest was routine. He would have to hurry. Like preparing a birthday gift, he folded the edges of the plastic around her, wrapping her up nice and neat so that nothing might spill out and create a mess. Naturally, he wore gloves as he did this, just as he had worn gloves when he had spread the plastic out over the bed earlier. Though he knew that his fingerprints were not on record, that was no reason not to be thorough.
A minute later, the girl was tied up in a tight, secure bundle confining any stray trickles of bathwater, as well as her now obvious post-mortem excretory discharges, to the inside.
He still had not regained all of his strength as he carried the lifeless heap back down to the garage and placed it in the trunk of his car. She seemed heavier than when he had brought her up.
He started up the engine and pushed the button on the Sears garage door opener. There was an excellent commuter parking lot on 12th Street, jammed between two highrises, with an alleyway as its only point of access. The morning parking attendant wouldn't be coming on duty until seven o'clock. That would give him plenty of time to ditch the girl. He'd be able to get in and out of the lot in less than two minutes, all without being seen. At times, it seemed that Washington was designed for murder; there was always some secluded, hole-in-the-wall location to get rid of the bodies. He wished he could see the look on the parking attendant's face when he found the girl waiting for him in the booth a few hours from now. Yes, he'd be in for an early morning surprise. Something to tell the wife and kids.
