Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

Tonight was no different. After he backed the van next to the woman’s vehicle, parked outside a two-car garage, he checked his appearance in the rearview mirror. The hair looked real and the nose was perfect. Good enough to fool anyone, even up close.

He opened the van’s rear doors, and followed the walkway at the side of the garage to a small enclosed patio. He paused to check for any activity in the neighboring units, saw nothing worrisome, and put on a pair of gloves before unlatching the gate. He sidled up to the sliding glass door and glanced inside the house. The room was unoccupied. He used a knife to jimmy the locks, and slipped inside.

He could hear the sounds of movement coming from an adjacent hallway. From the look of things, the woman was still in the process of unpacking and moving in. He found her in the guest bathroom breaking down empty cardboard boxes and stacking them neatly in the tub.

“Come with me,” he said softly, pressing the blade of the knife against her throat as he grabbed her by the hair that fell to her shoulders.

The woman’s mouth formed a silent scream. She was pretty in a used-up way, with interesting lines around her chin and eyes.

The bald-headed man shook his head. “Don’t say a word.”

He pushed her down the hallway, through the alcove, and into the garage, which was filled with stuff from the woman’s recent move.

He leaned the woman against a wall, the knife still at her throat, and held out the specially prepared cookie he’d made for her. “Eat this.”

The woman shook her head.

“Or die,” the bald-headed man said.

“What is it?” the woman asked through thin lips, her body shaking uncontrollably.

“Eat it and I’ll let you go.”

The woman shook her head.

The man dropped the cookie on the floor and put away the knife. “Have it your way.”

He spun her around, put his full weight against her back, pulled a length of rope from inside his shirt and tied her hands. He forced her to her knees, used more rope to tie her ankles, and rolled her over.

The woman looked up at him from the garage floor. “Why are you doing this?” she whimpered.

“You’ll never know.” He bent down, took a small box of rat poison from his shirt pocket, poured some into his gloved hand, squeezed her mouth open, forced the pellets into her mouth, and pressed her jaw shut.

She died fast, hard, and ugly. A bit too fast to be completely enjoyable.

A cat came in through a pet door and rubbed against the man’s leg. He picked it up before it could sniff the cookie and stroked its back.

“We have lots to do, and not much time,” he whispered to the cat before he broke its neck.

Stuck on protective service duty with Norm Kaplan for the remainder of his shift, Seth Neal was finally relieved by another officer, asked by his superior to work a double, and assigned to the roving patrol team that was looking for the blue van. By ten o’clock at night, the streets were fairly quiet and traffic was light on the through roads in and out of the city. Sheriff’s deputies and state police officers were checking rural camp-grounds and back roads, rangers were cruising in the national forest and at the state park, even motor transportation officers were out on the Interstate and state highways looking for the vehicle. In town, every parking lot, commercial district, and residential area was being patrolled.

It was a night when cop cars were everywhere but no motorist needed to fear getting a traffic ticket.

Neal took his meal break at headquarters so he could do his dailies from his regular shift and turn them in. Because it was part of a homicide investigation, he worked carefully on what he’d come to think of as the dead dog incident report. Neal knew the traffic code inside and out and could put together perfect paperwork for DWI arrests and accident reconstructions. But when it came to writing felony investigation narratives, he never felt all that competent about it.

Finished, Neal dropped the paperwork off on the shift commander’s desk, told dispatch he was back in service, left the police parking lot, and hit the brakes when he saw a dark-colored GMC van with the back door open sitting in front of the nearby municipal court building.

He put the spotlight on the vehicle. It carried the plate stolen out of Socorro. He adjusted the light to shine inside the open door. He could see a naked human figure on the floor of the vehicle clutching what appeared to be the head of a dog.

E xhausted but unable to sleep, Sara sat in the living room hoping the baby would either stop kicking or just get on with being born. She was weary of being pregnant, and thoroughly disgusted with the notion that, at such a supposedly wonderful time in their lives, she and Kerney were under siege.

Arriving home, she’d found no comfort in finding a state cop on guard duty outside, nor had she particularly enjoyed waiting in the car while Kerney conducted a room search before allowing her to go inside. The events of the last two days had become surreal and nightmarish.

Four hours ago, after an early light dinner, Kerney had gone into the bedroom to nap. He was still sleeping, stretched out on his side fully dressed except for his boots, his sidearm within reach on the night- stand.

The quiet house, the drawn shades, her reluctance to risk sitting on the patio to enjoy the cool night air made her feel caged. She sighed, got up, and went to the Arts and Crafts writing desk, one of a number of antique pieces she’d inherited from her grandmother, and tried to distract herself by studying the architectural drawings for the house.

Months ago, she’d shipped her heirloom furniture from Montana to Santa Fe and put it into storage, where-except for the desk and matching chair-it remained. But since Kerney had so few personal possessions, they would need a lot more than Sara’s contributions to outfit their new home.

She studied the floor plan, visualizing where she might want to arrange the pieces she had and those that needed to be selected and purchased. Since they wouldn’t be able to move in until well after Sara’s maternity leave ended, furnishing and decorating the house would be an ongoing task with many decisions delayed until she could get back to Santa Fe on weekend trips.

However, she could do a number of things after the baby came: buy linens and housewares, perhaps some lamps and end tables, order a custom-made piece or two, and get a freestanding kitchen center island she’d spotted in a local store. But putting the house in any kind of reasonable order would have to be accomplished in bits and pieces.

That sucked, and she wondered if everything-the marriage, the baby, the new house-was nothing but a big romantic daydream on her part that had gone badly awry.

She blocked the negative thoughts from her mind. It wasn’t like her to be so moody and disheartened. She did love Kerney and did want this baby. No matter that the task was daunting, she would turn the new house into a home, even if it took years.

The desk phone rang. Larry Otero needed to speak to Kerney. Sara asked why.

“We’ve got another homicide and another note,” Larry replied.

“I’ll get him.”

She walked to the bedroom thinking one down, one to go, and for once she really didn’t give a damn. The baby had stopped kicking and all she wanted to do was go to sleep.

She quietly opened the bedroom door, gently shook Kerney awake, and softly told him the killer had struck again.

Kerney rolled up to the crime scene. The blue van was awash in light and ringed off with police-line tape strung between the police cars that surrounded the vehicle. Andy Baca, Larry Otero, Russell Thorpe, and Sal Molina were standing at the perimeter with Officer Neal, all of them looking somber, watching the ME and two paramedics at the back of the van remove the body. Techs stood off to one side, waiting their turn at the vehicle, while two detectives videotaped and photographed the scene. Except for the sound of traffic coming from Cerrillos Road, silence hung thick in the air.