John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“Dan Martin,” he said, and Hettie knew the name of her lover.

She repeated the name, as if testing for taste.

“You never asked my name after the first time,” he said.

They were in her bed, and had just had sex. Hettie was spent and sore, but if he wanted to go around again…

“You could wear me out,” he said.

She grinned and moved her nude body against his on the perspiration-damp sheet. In the warm room their flesh seemed almost hot to the touch. “Did I hear a complaint?” she asked.

He smiled. His dark hair was damp and mussed, a lock dangling over his forehead and almost in his eyes. “You did not.”

“Well, I’m complaining now,” she said. “I’m thirsty.”

She started to get up, but he gripped her shoulder gently and pulled her back down. “I’ll get us something.” He sat up and swiveled on the mattress so he was facing away from her. Twisting his muscular body, he looked over his shoulder at her. “What would you like? I’m having a beer.”

“There’s an open bottle of Pellegrino in the fridge. That’d suit me fine.”

He turned some more so he could lean down and kiss her lightly on the lips. “Gonna miss me?”

She laughed deep in her throat. “I already do.”

He kissed the top of her head, then stood up. She watched him as he walked from the bedroom. He’d have to cross the living room to get to the kitchen. She wondered if the blinds were closed.

He returned a few minutes later with the green glass Pellegrino bottle and an opened can of Busch Lite. She sat up on the bed and scooted back so her shoulders were against the cool headboard. When he handed her the bottle she immediately took several long swallows, aware of him watching her. Some of the cold water dribbled onto her warm breasts, sending a chill through her as it mixed with her perspiration.

Dan (as she was training herself to think of him) sat back down on the mattress, exactly where he’d been before, facing away from her. She watched a drop of perspiration drip from his damp hair as he tilted back his head to take a long pull on his beer.

Hot work, she thought. It called for cold drinks afterward.

Neither talked for a while, getting comfortable with each other’s silence. The air conditioner had cycled off and was quiet. Hettie listened to the constant rush of traffic from the street below. A faraway car alarm warbled briefly, barely audible in the summer night. Closer, but still far away, a police or fire department siren called like a lonely banshee.

Loneliness. Hettie hated it. Maybe now, for her, it had ended.

She reached over and traced the fingers of her left hand down Dan’s sweaty, muscular back.

He turned and grinned at her. “You trying to seduce me again?”

She smiled. “I could’ve sworn it was you who seduced me.”

“A woman’s convenient lie,” he said, leaning back and kissing her softly, using his tongue, showing her that if she were willing…

She let out a long breath and pushed him away.

He moved his mouth to her ear. “What should we do now?” he whispered.

“It’s almost three a.m.,” she said. “Maybe we should try sleeping for a change.”

He threw back his head and finished his beer in a series of long gulps, then swiveled on the mattress and let his upper body flop back so he was lying beside her. Hettie worked herself down so she was eye to eye with him in the damp bed, lying on her side.

“You finish your water?” he asked.

“Most of it. Why, you want some?”

“No. Want some of my beer?”

“Nope. I’m fine.” She smiled. “Your beer’s empty anyway.”

“Tired?” he asked, looking over at her.

“Getting there,” she said, just before she dozed off.

Hettie dreamed, saw the dark, muscular form of Dan Martin moving about the bedroom, heard a soft, metallic clinking sound. She couldn’t imagine what was making that noise. Dim light then, shadows gliding like the wings of soaring birds.

Dan’s voice: “Tired?”

Concerned about me. So sweet.

“Are you sleeping, Hettie? Hettie?”

She decided not to answer. Why should she? It was her dream.

When Hettie awoke she realized immediately what she was smelling. Perfumed soap. Her brand.

Her brain had barely registered that when pain erupted in her ankles.

What…?

She was dumbfounded. Disoriented.

Full consciousness made its way through the thick layers of confusion, and with it came panic.

She fought the panic by concentrating on the pain, then by trying to accept the pain, to somehow push it aside.

Reason! Think!

How did I get here? Where?

It was almost completely dark.

Can’t see! Can’t move arms or legs!

She tried to call out. Call Dan’s name. Her lips and the tip of her tongue worked helplessly on a rough, sticky surface she recognized as the adhesive side of tape.

Can’t scream!

A headache she’d barely been aware of now struck her skull like an ax, and she realized she was dangling upside down. Her feet were tied together, bound to something, and her wrists were tied or taped to her thighs. She could move only her head, and that brought excruciating pain to her neck.

Her eyes were getting used to the dimness, and she made out folds of what looked like white plastic near her. The shower curtain! Nearby vertical tubular steel glinted dully to her left, and to her right. She recognized it and knew where she was-hanging upside down from her chinning bar that, along with its collapsible and portable supporting structure, had been moved from the exercise corner of her bedroom into the shower stall.

Dan! He did this! Must have planned it all along. Put something in my water bottle, something that made me sleep so he could do this. Oh, Jesus, I can pick them!

The pain in her head increased with the pressure of blood-swollen veins and began to pulse. She made another attempt to scream but could barely hear the muted hum that found its way through the tape.

Dear God, If I ever-

A scuffing, building rhythm came to her, moving closer.

Footsteps in the hall, near the open bathroom door.

The lights blinked on, blinding her.

Sometimes it made sense to go back to the beginning.

It occurred to Quinn that they’d carefully investigated the. 25-Caliber Killer murders that had happened on their watch, but the first two crimes, the murders of George Manders and Alan Weeks, had been given only slightly more than a cursory examination.

He decided to start with the first victim, George Manders.

Quinn and his team had studied the murder book on Manders, read the statements of neighbors, friends, and relatives, and looked into the life of Manders himself.

Manders seemed tailor-made to be an unlikely murder victim, a maddening conundrum for the police.

They’d found nothing in his life that might lead to his murder. But of course there must be something, because he had been murdered.

Quinn sat at Fedderman’s desk, where the light was brighter, and propped the rectangular half-frames of his reading glasses on the slightly crooked bridge of his nose. Patiently, and in a pedantic pose that didn’t suit him, he began to read.

The statements of people who knew Manders seemed to lead nowhere, and the revisited facts concerning his murder also yielded nothing new.

Manders had been a fairly successful hedge fund manager for a firm called Prudent Power, which specialized in shorting the market using exchange traded funds. Quinn could barely make himself read about that, so boring did it become. But he scanned it, learned something about puts and calls, then decided it probably had little to do with Manders’s murder except in larger and general ways whose understanding didn’t require an MBA from Harvard. He hoped.