Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

Marion nodded but didn't move.

"Ed," Justin prompted. "You've got to turn the key and start the car if you're gonna do all that."

Marion still didn't speak. Just kept nodding. But he reached for the key and turned it. Justin rode back with him the few miles to the motel. He walked the terrified man inside, checked him into a room, closed the curtains, and told Ed Marion once again not to open the door for anyone until the FBI arrived. Then he walked outside and stepped behind the wheel of the Buick sedan, which was waiting in the parking lot. He began to fill Deena and Kendall in on what had happened. But even as he spoke, his mind was elsewhere. Another song lyric forced its way into his head. A Randy Newman lyric: I'm dead but I don't know it. I'm dead but I don't know.

And as he drove slowly away, Justin Westwood was busy wondering, as he almost always did when his work took him too far beneath the surface, how a world like the one in which Edward Marion lived, a world that looked so clean and pure and manicured and untroubled, could hold, in its heart, such violence. Such terror.

Gordon Touay liked killing things.

There were other things he enjoyed; he did not consider himself one-dimensional in any way. He got great pleasure, for instance, out of looking in the full-length mirror that hung in the hallway. He had to concede he never really tired of that. Especially when he was wearing nothing but his beige bikini underwear, the one with the little blue stripes on the front, which was what he was wearing now. He loved looking at his washboard stomach, at the ripples, the flatness. He didn't have an ounce of fat on his sides, either. At thirty-one years old, there wasn't even the slightest hint of love handles. And his chest was perfectly formed. Not like a bodybuilder's, more like a swimmer's. Thin and tight and hard. Like Charles Bronson's used to be in those early Westerns. Gordon liked to turn sideways and flex his arms, too; liked the way the muscles on his back and shoulders and even his neck bunched up and bulged and made him look so powerful. He particularly admired his hair, so very blond and straight, cut short on the sides, medium on top, a tiny lock tilting forward over his forehead. He often thought he was as handsome as Brad Pitt or DiCaprio or any of those guys. He'd practice smiling into the mirror, looking cocky, and he'd think: I should have been a movie star. I've got what it takes. I would look magnificent up there on a giant screen, looking down on an adoring audience.

Then he'd think: We both would.

Wendell, his younger brother, was just as handsome. Gordon liked looking at his brother's body, too. The same hard stomach, the perfect buttocks and powerful back. Long legs, but not too long. The short blond hair. In the eyes of the world, they were identical. No one could tell the difference between them. But Gordon could, of course. He knew the small mole on Wendell's shoulder. Could see that Wendell used just a touch more mousse in his hair, that the forehead lock was slightly stiffer and shinier. Gordon was seven minutes older than his twin, and he was convinced that Wendell looked younger, that the skin under his eyes was smoother, that his forehead had one less crease. He wasn't jealous. It was fine with him. He loved his brother. There was no one on earth he loved more. And he was happy to be the elder. The mentor. The decision maker.

Staring at himself in the mirror, Gordon smiled. He loved his smile. He thought it made him look elegant and mysterious. Relaxed but deep. He decided he should show it more often. Then he went back to thinking about all the things that could keep the smile on his face.

That show on Fox about animals that turned violent and attacked their owners. He liked that a lot. War movies. He loved war movies. Black Hawk Down was a great one. Very gory. Private Ryan was good. At least the first part, the battle. After that it was pretty sappy. Of the old ones, he liked The Dirty Dozen, particularly the part where the Spanish guy parachutes out of the plane and breaks his neck, and Paths of Glory, where everybody gets marched off to the slaughter. He had a collection of filmed disasters that he watched over and over again. The Challenger exploding, he never got tired of that. The Hindenburg going down. Various assassinations. He had that L.A. robbery, where the guys in masks kept firing their automatic weapons on the street and finally got cut down by the cops. He paid a lot of money over the Internet for several home movies of fiery plane crashes. And he owned several bona fide porno snuff films, which cost him a fortune. All those things were satisfying diversions. But nothing was as good as actually killing something.

Although he couldn't really take credit for it, he liked to think that his first victim was his mother. She died in childbirth, right after he and Wendell came out of her womb. Gordon never forgave her for leaving them so unexpectedly because when their father remarried it was to a woman who wanted her own children, who resented the two boys as unpleasant reminders of a past that had nothing to do with her. She didn't bother to hide her distaste for the twins; in fact, she reveled in it. And that distaste was soon championed by her husband, their own father. He saw his sons as two beings who had destroyed his first marriage and whose sole reason for existence was to interfere with his new one. The first time Gordon remembered their father beating them was when they were five years old. It was with a ruler he'd picked up off the desk. He made both boys lie down on the floor while he struck the backs of their legs over and over again. After that the beatings never stopped. Sometimes he used the ruler, sometimes his fists, occasionally a belt. Once he used a broomstick. But he gave Wendell a concussion and social service workers got suspicious when the boy was rushed to the hospital, so good old Dad went back to less obvious tools and body parts.

Gordon was seven years old when he killed his first animal. It was a squirrel. In their backyard in the small house in New Jersey. He watched it scamper down the trunk of a tree, perch on a patch of grass, and nibble on something, a nut maybe. The squirrel's head was cocked as he ate, and the boy thought it looked cute. While he was watching, Gordon saw a rake propped up against the back of the house, had an image in his mind of the handle cracking against his brother's skull, and the next thing he knew, the squirrel was on its back, its head smashed in, its eyes still and lifeless. Gordon was surprised how good it made him feel.

Three weeks later he killed another squirrel. A month after that he killed a cat, a stray that was always coming into their yard looking for scraps of food. He fed it for several weeks, won its trust, then strangled it. After that, he killed on a regular basis, at least every two weeks or so. More squirrels, cats, dogs, birds. He preferred strangling, although poison was also acceptable. Stabbing was fine, too, as was fire. Methodology and type of victim didn't much matter to him. He just liked the moment when he could actually see life disappear, when movement stopped and something warm turned cold and colorless.

When the twins turned eight, Gordon told Wendell about the animals. Wendell's eyes lit up and he smiled. He said he wanted to try it too.

A few days later, their father took them into town to go shopping. They asked if they could go into the diner and have a soda. He agreed, told them to wait there for him until he came to pick them up. The boys sipped their Cokes at the counter until Gordon looked at Wendell and nodded. In the corner of the diner, by the cashier, there was a myna bird. A big black one that talked all the time. His name was Randy and he was always saying, "Randy wants a coffee and a Danish," which everyone thought was hilarious. The diner was pretty empty and no one was minding the cash register, so when Gordon gave the signal, Wendell walked by the myna's cage, quickly stuck his hand in, and broke the bird's neck. Then he continued on his way to the bathroom. When he returned, the cashier and the waitress were standing by the cage, distraught. Wendell walked up to them, asked what had happened. They told him it was something terrible, that their bird had died. They told him not to look, that he was too young to see a dead thing. Wendell nodded, said he was sorry about Randy, he seemed like a nice bird, then went back to sit beside his brother and order another Coke.