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

“I can’t,” she said, grinning.

“Do you feel helpless?”

“Sort of.”

“I may do things that frighten you a little,” he told her. “That’s part of the excitement. Let yourself be frightened, but at the same time remember that it’s safe.”

“Like a horror movie,” she said. “It’s a way you can be comfortable with your fear.”

He ran a hand lightly over her body. She moaned softly, appreciatively. “I think I could learn to like this,” she said.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her.

In the bathroom medicine cabinet he found a roll of white adhesive tape. He tore off strips and made a patch three inches square. He returned to the bedroom and sat down on the bed beside her.

“Now I’d like to tape your mouth,” he said, “but first I want to make sure it’s all right with you.”

“Well—”

“Because obviously you’re more helpless when you can’t make a sound.”

“You’re really an expert on this, aren’t you?”

“Well—”

“And you weren’t going to say a word about it, were you? I had to coax it out of you. How can you get what you want in this world if you don’t ask for it?”

He shrugged.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Tape my mouth. It’s the only way you’ll ever get me to shut up.”

He fastened the patch over her mouth, but first he gave her a kiss. Then, when she could not make a sound, he put his hands between her parted thighs and began playing with her. Her eyes were locked with his at first, but after a few moments she was sopping wet and she had to close her eyes. He made her come with his fingers, and when she opened her eyes at last she looked awestruck and overwhelmed. He knew that she wanted to say something, but of course her mouth was taped and she couldn’t.

He went to the kitchen. Sabatier carbon-steel knives hung on a magnetized board next to the sink. He took down the largest one and tested its blade for sharpness with his thumb. In old Japan they had tested samurai swords by lining up peasants and seeing how many the blade would slice through in a single pass. “Ah, very good, a six-peasant sword.” And what would be a fitting test for this knife?

He saw himself sitting on the bed beside her, showing her the knife, then laying the flat of it upon her stomach. “Now here’s the part you might not like, angel. Here’s where I cut your tits off.”

She would think it was part of the game. She would be frightened, but not really frightened, not really thinking she was in danger, and she wouldn’t really believe it until she felt the knife.

He swayed, leaned against the sink for support. Ignorant armies clashed on a battlefield within him. At length he opened his eyes and put the knife down on the sinkboard.

His clothes were piled on a rush-seated chair in the bedroom. He scooped them up, bent to retrieve his shoes. From the bedroom doorway he told her he’d be back in a minute. “You stay right where you are,” he said.

He dressed in the kitchen. Making as little noise as possible, he let himself out of the house and got behind the wheel of his car. The motor was running before he realized he had brought the kitchen knife with him. There it was, gleaming on the seat beside him. He didn’t dare try to return it.

A mile down the road he thought he ought to call someone. An anonymous phone call to the police, saying merely that a woman needed assistance at such-and-such an address. She’d be embarrassed when they showed up and found her like that, but at least she’d be cut loose.

But how could he make the call? He didn’t know the name or address of the apartment complex, or the number of her unit. He didn’t know her name, either, not her last name or her first name, just a pair of initials.

So let her work it out herself. She wasn’t tied all that tightly, or that securely. Sooner or later she’d work a hand loose.

In any case, he couldn’t go back. If he went back, if he set foot again in that apartment, he’d kill her.

There was no way out.

Driving, driving aimlessly, he began to see the hopelessness of his situation. He had almost killed T.J. Never mind that the knife was never in the same room with her; in point of fact, she had been within inches of death. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, he had made a firm conscious decision that he was not going to kill her. It wasn’t just the risk he’d have been running — his pubic hairs shed in her bed, his fingerprints idly impressed on more surfaces in her apartment than he could ever remember to wipe. More to the point, he had wanted the night to end with the woman alive and well. He had made love to her, he had felt something for her, and the last thing he’d wanted to do was kill her.

Yet he’d very nearly done it anyway. He’d had to fight with himself, and he’d come very close to losing.

He wasn’t going to be able to stop killing. If it had ever been a matter of choice, it had long since become something else. He would go on killing, and he would never entirely enjoy it again.

It would still thrill him. It would have thrilled him just now, with T.J., although it would have sickened and revolted him in the bargain. It would even continue to provide a measure of satisfaction. But he had reached that point in the cycle of addiction where he could no longer genuinely enjoy what he now more than ever required.

And what would happen to him?

Well, sooner or later they would catch him. They might already have realized that a serial killer was circling the region. As much as he’d varied his victims and his methods, the sheer quantity of his work would establish some sort of pattern. There was probably something about the way he tied a woman’s hands behind her back, for instance, that would mark several of his killings as the work of a single killer.

And he’d take more chances, not to test limits or raise the stakes, but because there seemed less reason for caution. Sooner or later they’d catch up with him, and when that happened he suspected he would most likely confess. Once it was over, why draw it out?

And then? A death sentence, a life sentence, or a state hospital for the criminally insane. All three prospects seemed about as attractive. Until then he would do what he had no choice but to do. He would keep traveling, and he would continue killing, and he would play the string out to the end. He would not make it easy for them.

He stopped for gas at an all-night station on the highway. He filled the tank, went to pay. The clerk was a woman, not pretty, but there was something about her. He put his credit card away and paid cash and went back to the car for the kitchen knife.

#101.

Driving again, he thought of T.J. By now she had surely realized that he wasn’t coming back. She’d think it was the kinkiest thing ever. She might even like it.

But she’d never guess how close she had come to dying. And, thinking of that, he realized why he had been unable to allow himself to return to Kansas City. Somehow he had known that he could no longer trust himself around his wife. Or his daughter.

He drove into South Dakota. He didn’t pay any real attention to the route. The car seemed to know where it wanted to take him.

Belle Fourche, the first place they reached after cutting across the northeast corner of Wyoming, was a dusty cowtown with wide streets and a population of around five thousand. There were still some banners to be seen proclaiming the annual rodeo, which had taken place the first week of July.

They spent a whole day in Belle Fourche, splitting up into twos and threes and exploring the town. The laundromat got a steady stream of business, and at the Lariat Motel on Elkhorn Street Guthrie made arrangements with the owner for them to take over three of the units for showers. All day long they were drifting over to the Lariat, stripping and bathing and dressing and moving on. The owner, a stolid widow with arms like hams, sat in the office throughout the day and tried not to think what her water bill would come to. She kept reminding herself that she was getting paid six times the day rate for the rooms, and that they’d be vacant and cleaned up in time for her to rent them out that night, and that would pay for a lot of water. Her good feelings were qualified somewhat later on, however, when she had to make up the three rooms herself; the Indian girl who normally took care of those things had walked off with the rest of them, and it didn’t look as though she’d be coming back.