Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

He undressed her there in the kitchen. He used a paper towel to protect his hand and went through drawers until one yielded an electrical extension cord. He cut it in half and used one piece to tie her ankles together and the other to bind her wrists behind her back. He stripped to the waist and picked her up in his arms and carried her through the house until he found the bathroom.

He set her down on the tile floor, stopped the bathtub drain and ran a lukewarm tub of water. The tub was still running when she groaned and opened her eyes.

She looked at him. Her mouth opened but she didn’t make a sound. It didn’t too much matter if she did; the window was closed, and he had drawn the bathroom door shut. No one could hear any sound she could make.

When the tub was as deep as he wanted it he shut off the water and turned to her. “Now I’m just going to give you a nice bath,” he said. “That’s all.” And he picked her up in his arms — she had luxuriously soft skin, she was wonderful to touch — and placed her on her back in the tub.

He used his hands and ran the soap over her teacup breasts, down over her belly, lathered her pubic hair. He put the soap back in the dish and sluiced water over her to rinse her. Her eyes were wide, rolling in terror, but she still hadn’t uttered a sound since regaining consciousness.

“You’re so sweet,” he said, bending to kiss her on the lips. He took hold of the hair at the back of her neck and drew her head down under the water, pinning her down with his other hand on her breast. She tried to struggle, and he could feel her heart hammering. He looked down at her face, just an inch or so below the water surface. Her huge eyes stared at him. She held her breath until she couldn’t hold it anymore, and bubbles issued from her nose and mouth. He pressed down on her chest and her lungs emptied, spewing forth more bubbles. He took his hand away and her lungs filled with water. Her eyes still stared up at him from under the water, but the life was gone from them now.

#58.

When he was breathing normally again himself he unfastened the electrical cord from her wrists and ankles, dried off both pieces, put them in his pocket. He used a washcloth to remove his prints from the edge of the tub, and he dropped the soap into the water; if it held any of his prints, they would soon melt away.

He got his shirt from the kitchen and put it on. He picked up all of her clothing and left it folded on a chair in the master bedroom. By the time he left the house, clipboard in hand, he had erased every trace of his presence in it. With any luck at all, she’d go in the record books as a victim of accidental drowning.

He walked back to his car and drove away. For a few minutes he was lost in the suburban maze of Florissant, but then he got his bearings and found his way to the motel. He parked, but before getting out of the car he took the two lengths of electrical cord from his pockets.

They triggered a sense memory — the girl rolled onto her side while he drew her wrists together behind her back — and he followed the memory all the way to the end, with the blue eyes staring up at him from underwater, the lips parted, the life gone from her, his now, part of him. His body thrilled with an electric sensation not much reduced from the orgasm that had transported him as he drowned the darling little bitch.

Without thinking much about it, he fashioned a loop at either end of the piece of cord he was holding. The loops were large enough to admit his hands, and the length of cord between the loops was about eighteen inches. He flexed his fingers and felt the muscles working in his forearms.

Why not?

He started up the car, drove out of the motel lot and took the belt-way around to Webster Groves, a suburb not unlike Florissant but southwest of the city. He drove around until he found a neighborhood substantially identical to the one where he’d left the girl floating in her bathtub, and he parked the car at the curb and walked up to the first house he came to, clipboard in hand, and the woman who opened the door was a willowy brunette in her mid-thirties, and he just could not wait to kill her.

He said, “Electric company. I’m afraid we’ve got a problem. Could you show me where your fuse box is?”

It was in the basement, but he never did see it. He let her get to the bottom of the cellar stairs, and there he clubbed her on the nape of her neck with his closed fist. The blow drove her to her knees, and before she could recover he had his own knee planted in the small of her back for leverage. He dropped the wire around her throat, and an instant later she was dead.

Oh, heaven!

#59.

Hitchhikers were so easy. It seemed to Mark that they were virtually asking to be killed, and he wondered if there wasn’t something fundamentally suicidal about a girl who stood alone by the side of the road, actively seeking rides from passing strangers.

He’d been driving on 1-70, heading toward St. Louis, and at Columbia he’d left the Interstate and drove north on 63. The main campus of the University of Missouri was in Columbia, and there were always students on roads in the area, thumb out, looking for a ride.

Today was no exception. It was right around the end of the term and the highway was full of young people in jeans, most of them with suitcases or duffel bags in tow. There were more boys than girls on the road, and what girls he saw were accompanied, either by other girls or by boys. He slowed once at the sight of two girls. He had never done two at once outside of fantasy, and his pulse quickened at the thought, but he knew the risk was far too great. One of them would stand a very good chance of getting away, and if that happened he would be in trouble.

Still, he braked the car almost to a stop just to let himself get a good look at them. They were both blondes, both clad in jeans and sneakers and school sweatshirts, both round-faced and pug-nosed and plump. And both gave him the finger when, just as they rose to approach the Lincoln, he bore down on the gas pedal and sped away.

He smiled at their reflection in the rearview mirror. He wondered if they were sisters and decided they probably were. He had slowed down to look at them in the expectation that it would fuel his fantasy, and indeed it did. He saw himself with the two of them, making one watch while he did the other, letting her know just what was coming, and then finishing her off.

Oh, nice.

He kept driving, slowing down again at the sight of a woman alone, speeding up angrily when a second glance revealed a slim boy with long hair.

A couple miles farther he found her.

She was perfect. Jeans, UM sweatshirt, Birkenstock sandals on dirty feet. Long dark brown hair in a pony tail secured by a rubber band. An oval face. Pale blue eyes, a short straight nose, pale thin lips, even teeth. Unplucked eyebrows, unpolished nails. No makeup, no lipstick.

Narrow waist, slim hips, nice little ass. Hard to tell about the breasts because the sweatshirt was baggy.

Time would tell.

She had to struggle to get the duffel bag into the backseat. Then she climbed in front, propping her large handbag on her lap, reaching over to fasten her seat belt across her body. She said, “Are you going as far as Kirksville? I live in Edina, that’s down the road from Kirksville.”

“Well, I can run you all the way to Kirksville.”

“Oh, that’s great,” she said. “This is a great car, too. This a Lincoln?” He said it was. “I guess they’re nicer than Cadillacs, aren’t they?” He said it was probably a toss-up. “I’m getting a car in the fall. They didn’t want me to have one my first year, like it’d be too distracting? Like if I had a car I wouldn’t go to my classes, but if I didn’t have a car I’d have to study out of boredom? But, you know, that’s how parents think, isn’t it?”