Ed Gorman - Night Kills

With that he raised his head slightly behind the arm of the recliner and shot the girl once, twice, three times, in the chest. She had still been on the couch; she rolled off, in a mixture of cries and blood, to the floor.

Wagner cried out, too, and started blindly firing toward the recliner. He needed to use both hands, and he wasn't much of a shot-he was better at hitting the wall decorations than anything else-and about all Foster had to do was wait till the little pecker ran out of bullets.

Which came soon enough.

Knowing he was safe, Foster stood up in the echoes of gunfire and Wagner's sobs and went over to the man and slapped him hard across the face.

"I told you I'd kill her, you little prick," Foster said. "If you'd done what I said, she'd still be alive." He wasn't excited. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact, and his breathing was quiet and regular.

He had never heard a man sob the way Wagner was sobbing as he wheeled his chair over to Denise, who lay sprawled and unmoving on the floor. Blood was everywhere in small and large pools, in flecks that had spattered the furnishings.

Foster wasn't unsympathetic. He felt sorry for the little prick. "You should have listened to me," he said again. "I wouldn't have had to kill her if you'd just listened to me. Don't you understand that?"

Foster snapped up the tape, dropped it in the pocket of his overcoat.

And then he was gone, the door banging behind him, Wagner's sobs raging against the vast, empty night.

At the last moment Kathleen decided to pack the doll, which was her way of admitting to herself that her flight from Minneapolis was probably not going to be temporary after all.

There was nothing special about the doll. It was a Barbie from the early sixties, one of the few expensive gifts her impoverished parents had ever bought her. She'd kept it with her all these years. Once, a lover who found her unfaithful had tried to smash the doll with his fist but before his knuckles reached its face, Kathleen had struck the man across the back of the head with a large clock radio. The pleasure she took in this violence almost shocked her. It felt good to strike the man, to feel the intersection of clock and skull, to hear his cry of pain and to see him sink in a heap to the floor.

She brought the doll in its blue taffeta dress to her face and kissed it as tenderly as she would a sister. Parts of the doll's forehead had started to crack. Kathleen smiled wryly about this. So, even Barbies got age lines.

She set the doll down carefully among the blouses, skirts, and two pairs of designer jeans she'd stuffed into the single piece of carry-on luggage. Her flight was less than an hour away. She had to hurry.

The sound of a car door closing startled her.

She ran to the window of her second-floor bedroom and looked below to the driveway and then to the street.

In the house directly across from hers, a man and a child bundled up in a snowsuit were exiting a large green van. The headlights lit up the front of the garage so that it looked like a cave of light in the wintry darkness.

She put a hand to her heart. Her pulse was racing, and she felt sticky and dizzy. She'd been afraid it was Stu Foster. At one time their plan to get big league clients by blackmailing them seemed smart. As did having an affair with Brolan. He was a nice guy, and fun to be with, and there'd really been no reason not to… But Brolan had made the mistake (a mistake for both of them) of falling in love with her… And the other night Foster had killed a woman… Emma the strange, quiet, sad hooker they'd gotten to know through Charles Lane. After killing the woman, Foster had changed. She'd always sensed the violence in him, but then it surfaced completely. Violence had always been a part of their lovemaking but the other night… An image came to mind: his squeezing her breasts until they hurt, until she had to scratch his back bloody before he stopped. And then his laughing and staring at her, obviously aware that she'd seen him for the first time as he really was.

She couldn't go to the police. She was too much a part of all this. But neither could she trust Foster. She was the only other person who knew he'd killed Emma. Which meant he might well decide that now he must kill her, too…

Then she heard it.

A creaking on the stairs.

True, this old house made many plaintive moans and groans on freezing winter nights, but she knew that the sound hadn't been made by the house but rather by somebody creeping up the stairs.

Looking toward the partly opened door, she listened once more. Hard.

It was amazing how many things you heard when you really listened. The blower in the furnace. The creaking of the roof under the burden of a sheet of ice. The distant sound of a siren.

And footsteps.

Coming up the stairs.

Coming after her.

Kathleen laughed aloud. "My God," she said to herself. "My God, what a stupid, frightened little girl you are."

She went to the door and flung it back and walked out into the hallway and over to the head of the stairs.

Empty. Just as she'd expected.

She'd left the vestibule light on downstairs, so she could see, even from here, that the front door was snugly closed and the front part of the house empty.

She felt so relieved, she was practically light-headed, and that was when he grabbed her.

From behind. Wearing gloves.

He clamped one hand hard over her mouth so she couldn't scream. With the other hand he put the small butcher's knife to her throat.

She could hear him gasp and feel him sweat. He was pressed tight to her backside, and she could also feel the hardness of his erection.

"You fucking bitch," he said. "You were going to walk out on me, weren't you?"

He drew a little blood, then, from a spot right next to her jugular.

"You fucking bitch," he said.

By the time Brolan finished with Charles Lane, the motel owner was bleeding from his mouth, nose, and ear. Brolan hadn't shown much patience or sympathy.

In the car Brolan thought about the most astonishing part of Lane's confession… that Kathleen was working with Foster.

As he moved onto the Crosstown, heading toward Kathleen's place, he thought of all the elaborate ruses they'd used to convince him that they hated each other. He should have asked so many questions… How could they both go out and do what nobody else in Twin Cities advertising seemed capable of… steal some of the largest accounts in the area, in some cases, accounts that had even been held by New York and Los Angeles agencies.

So stupid… stupid.

He was almost afraid of seeing Kathleen. Afraid of what he might do when he saw her beautiful, lying face. He'd never struck a woman… and he did not want to start.

He gave the car more gas… and hurried.

Foster threw her on the bed, held her captive, and mesmerized her with the knife he held out in front of him.

She could see in his handsome features a different man… the crazed man who had been hiding inside Foster all these years.

He grabbed the large glass lamp with the rattan shade and hurled it into the corner. The noise it made smashing against the wall made Kathleen clamp her hands over her ears.

"You bitch," he said again, moving toward her.

"Stu, what's wrong with you? We're supposed to be working together." The closer he got, the more she scrabbled up the bed to huddle near the headboard.

"Yeah. And that's why you were packing your bag, huh?"

She tried to find her voice. Her whole body seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Her throat was dry; her bowels felt loose; her breathing came in ragged, painful bursts. "I just wanted to get out of here so I could take a little time off and-"

His first swipe with the knife came perilously close to tearing a gash open on her throat