Steven Womack - By Blood Written

Please …

Her grandmother. She saw her grandmother’s face in front of her.

Please …

She felt her legs kicking, her arms shaking, as if they were no longer part of her, as if they had minds and wills of their own.

She heard a voice, a soft voice, a low, masculine voice above her, behind her head: “Let go, Carol. Let go. It’s easier this way.”

Where had she heard it before?

The sparkles were larger now, like a cascade of colored gemstones spilling in on both sides of her, filling her vision.

And as the dark shapes in front of her became more and more dim, the twinkling colored lights got larger and more vibrant.

“That’s it, baby,” the voice said again, soothing, almost sweet. Michael’s voice. “Let it go. Go to sleep, my sweet baby. It’s time for you to go to sleep.”

Like a vet putting a dog to sleep …

So tired , she thought. So tired.

Her cheeks tingled red, felt full, the skin stretched almost to breaking. Carol Gee felt an overwhelming sadness that welled up inside her, and as the dancing brilliant blues and reds and greens and purples and yellows ran together and through each other and into each other until they became one pulsating, blood-red globe surrounding her, she felt the sadness drift away and the lights shift from painfully bright to soft white, and there was a humming in her head, like the bowing of a violin string, and then she let go. Carol Gee let go of everything.

And found her peace.

Michael stared down at her as she went limp. He let go slowly, ready to clamp on again if she had somehow managed to fake it better than anybody had ever faked death in the history of the species. He patted her back, felt the bra strap beneath the fabric of her blouse.

No , he thought. Not now. This is business.

He shifted her over on the seat, off his lap, then reached down and pulled her legs inside the car. He snatched the door to, killing the dome light inside the car. He listened carefully and looked all around. There was no one. No traffic, no nearby homes, no intruders. He shifted the car back into gear and eased forward down the narrow road.

He drove slowly this time. No need to hurry. Still, it took only a minute or so to get to the end of the road. He parked the car, got out, listened carefully for any unexpected noises.

All was silent, except for the wind and the crashing of the waves at the base of the cliff that was the blunt end of Point Loma.

He opened the passenger door and lifted her out. She couldn’t weigh more than one-ten, he thought. During a break in the signing, after the last idiotic inscription had been written and the last sycophant rushed through and out, he had wandered over and picked up a local paper. The tide had crested at nine forty-five, not quite an hour ago. He lifted her up and threw her over his shoulder, grateful that neither her bladder nor her bowels had let go. He’d done his research and verified it in practice: It was a myth that the body always emptied itself at the moment of death.

He walked the fifty yards or so from the end of the road to the edge of the cliff and set Carol down in the grass. He removed her ring and necklace and checked the pockets on her slacks. They were empty; there was nothing on Carol Gee to identify her.

He looked over the edge of the cliff. There was only a thin sliver of moon to illuminate the ocean floor below, but it was enough to see that the waves were still lapping at the base of the cliff.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nostrils, savoring the fresh, salty air. The hairs on his arm stood up, tingling and dancing on his skin. The sound of the waves below intensified, grew louder and sharper, more focused.

Like a needle being dragged across a record …

Every nerve in his body alive to every sense, Michael Schiftmann grinned broadly and lifted the lifeless body of Carol Gee over his shoulder, holding her by the collar of her blouse and the belt buckle of her slacks. Already she was beginning to stiffen. He backed up a few steps, held her high in the military press position, then ran forward and flung her out as far as he could over the edge of the cliff, barely missing going over with her.

He froze, a clump of dirt under his foot breaking loose and falling, and listened. Perhaps two seconds later, he heard a crystalline, full splash, clear and sharp like the breaking of glass.

The tide would carry her out, out into the vast, endless Pacific. If she was ever found, there most likely wouldn’t be enough left to autopsy. And there were a thousand Dumpsters between here and downtown San Diego. Carol Gee’s purse and the contents inside, along with her jewelry, would be spread out through a dozen of them.

Michael Schiftmann had never felt more alive than at this moment. It was a sensation beyond sexual, beyond any physical thrill he’d ever felt or experienced.

Michael Schiftmann felt …

Liberated.

He sauntered back to the car, relishing the feel of the soft earth beneath his feet, the smell of living grass, breathing plants and trees. He felt the clean air fill his lungs.

Despite the chill, he was warm all over, and in very good appetite.

Sunday morning, Arlington, Virginia Sundays were always the toughest to get through. The other days of the week he could work, even Saturday. Hank Powell had become a Saturday fixture, in fact, at his office at the FBI Academy in Quantico.

It hadn’t always been like that. When Anne was still alive, he had religiously saved Saturdays for working around the house, in the yard, or for simply spending family time with her and their daughter, Jackie. But that had all ended two years ago, when he lost her.

How had it happened so fast? It seemed in his memory that literally one day Anne was playing tennis at the country club and gardening their modest acre-and-a-half lot and then the very next moment she was withering away, her weight visibly dropping from one day to the next, her hair falling out, her eyes settling deeper and deeper into her head until the light in them faded to nothing. She had been only thirty-eight when the doctors made the diagnosis: ovarian cancer. And from the moment they identified the cancer as a particularly virulent and aggressive form of the disease, everything happened far too quickly. A matter of months, they predicted, was all they had together. From a passionate, intelligent, active woman who loved parties and cook-ing and good wine and everything about life to deathly ill in a matter of weeks …

But the doctors hadn’t counted on Anne’s willingness to fight, her ability to hang on to every second and to live every moment as hard and as fully as she was capable. The doctors had told them it would be a matter of months; Anne had beaten their odds, beaten their gloomy prognosis, beaten everything except death itself. In the end, she took two long, agonizing years to die. Anne had missed her fortieth birth-day by three weeks. By then, Hank-six months older than his wife-had turned forty and felt eighty.

It had been especially hard on Jackie, who had been twelve when her mother became ill and who had turned fourteen two months after she died. It had been Anne’s dream that Jackie attend the same boarding school she had gone to, the Butler School in upstate Vermont, and Jackie had insisted on fulfilling her mother’s dream. That was two years ago, and now Hank and Anne’s daughter was sixteen, a sophomore at Butler. And Hank lived alone in their four-bedroom house, a house he had been intending to sell ever since Anne’s death.

Somehow he’d never gotten around to putting it on the market. Just too busy, he told himself.

He worked. That’s all he did, work. Hank Powell was putting in twelve hours a day, six days a week. In the two years since his wife’s death, he hadn’t dated a single time. Not once. It was as if with Anne’s death, something inside him died as well.