Chapter 4

"I know you RSVP'd the Mayor, dear. I'll be ready to go. Just give me a couple more minutes," he spoke patiently into the phone, the nagging overtones of his wife shattering the euphoria he had felt a few moments before. "Yes dear, we have plenty of time before the opening speeches. I promise, I'll be right in."

He stared blindly at the wall next to the phone, a wall covered by sheets of pegboard where his tools hung neatly and in order by size. Everything was clean, kept that way by his almost obsessive polishing. It kept him fixed, kept him ready at anytime. He was prepared for when the Knife told him it was time.

He looked at the gray filing cabinets that lined the space under the pegboard that were filled with his notes and pictures, his life's work, as the voice over the phone continued to harangue him. He opened one and let his fingers walk over the files, everything alphabetized and titled in his carefully neat block letters. He picked up a file at random, opening it to look at the pictures encased in plastic protectors. Then he fixated on one picture, automatically responding to the demands of his wife in the quiet tones of the subservient husband she thought he was. If she only knew.

The picture was of a beautiful redheaded girl who couldn't have been more than twenty years old. She was actually eighteen and she was dead. She wasn't one of his, instead belonging to another of his chosen. She was a victim of a past killer and beyond him in physical form. But her death, her purpose of death was his to study and to alter as he saw fit through his imagination.

He imagined his wife tied and tortured as this girl had been. Pictured her raped over and over by a man old enough to be her grandfather, disgusting enough to consider as filth. He imagined his wife humiliated, her place as the dominating spouse degraded to cowering slave by an illiterate pervert who would use her as he pleased, urinate on her, use her as an ashtray, starve her and then torture and murder her. And he smiled, though he made sure the smile never reached his voice.

He replaced the file, closed the drawer silently and spoke softly into the phone. "Yes, dear. The sooner I get this work done the sooner I will be in. I love you too dear." He hung up the phone and turned back to the table in the middle of the old fruit cellar that he had refinished and enlarged, adding a steel door and sturdy locks, electric lighting and a bathroom complete with a shower.

It would never do for his wife to find any trace of his time here upon his person or his clothing. So he used the shower here, kept clothing in the modern bathroom to change into when necessary. He never worried about her coming down here. He had brought her down here himself before he had done any of the back breaking work. Had brought her down the rickety steps and taken her into the damp, dark cave full of cold stale air and creepy, squirming bugs. She'd lasted all of two minutes before leaving and telling him that he was more than welcome to the space, she didn't want it.

He thought of his fussy wife, of her fastidious life, of her phobias and irritating fears. If she knew what he did down here, he giggled at the thought, how repulsed would she be then. She thought he was a weak man, that he wouldn't get out of bed if she wasn't there to make him. She thought he had no back bone, no ambition. She would never understand his true ambition, his Purpose. But when the time came, he would make sure that she saw him for who he actually was. He smiled.

The girl on the table cringed at the sight of the smile. He had seemed so nice, offering to give her a ride when the tire had gone on her car. He had pulled over behind her, a God's send in her time of need. At that time of day, on the tiny back road they had been on, it would have been hours before she could have gotten help.

And besides, he had been so handsome, outfitted in a classy dress shirt open at the throat, dark hair brushing the collar in the back. His slacks fit well, showing off a nice ass as he crouched down next to her tire to take off the flat. When he had explained that she had the wrong size lug wrench, as if she knew what that was, she had been happy for a ride to the next town to call for a tow.

She hadn't expected a flash of white and the stench of something strong and nauseatingly sweet clamped over her nose and mouth. She could barely breath against the pressure and had tried to fight her way out but had weakened so quickly and passed out without so much as a scream or a scratch. Now, she was awake and mad. She was tied to some kind of table. It smelt foul, felt rough and hurt her back. Her arms were above her head, tied tightly, her legs spread and tied to the corners at the opposite end. There was tape over her mouth and across her cheeks into her hair. It pulled every time she turned her head.

She was sick, her stomach roiling, gorge rising into the back of her throat. She was so scared and she wanted to go home. Not home to her old apartment with the bad heating, no air conditioning and lousy hot water. Or even back to Toledo. She wanted to go home to her parents in Arizona. She wanted them to forgive her and love her again. And now she would probably never see them again. Her mind flashed onto the newspaper images. Men in jackets with the word CORONER emblazoned on the back in big white letters carrying a black bag that contained a body. The body of some girl that they hadn't been able to identify. The second girl that had been found murdered and dumped in old houses. And she knew that she was to be the third.

She didn't want to die here by the hands of some whacko that whined to his wife and played with knives. It wasn't fair. She wasn't ready to go yet. She had so many things she still wanted to do.

She watched as he came closer to the table, stopping by a tray to pick something up before standing next to her. He grabbed the edge of the tape in her hair and pulled quickly, giggling as she cried out. He took the tape, ignoring her cries for the moment and placed it in a large plastic bag, making sure that it was spread out flat, the adhesive side sticking to the plastic, preserving the hair and skin that had been pulled with it. He took a thin black marker and carefully lettered her name across one edge and slid the whole bag into a file, folding it to fit.

"Please don't hurt me."

Those were the first words that filtered through to his consciousness. They fell over him like warm rain on a spring day, flowing into him like nourishment. He smiled gently down at her and placed a warm, large hand on her arm. He pushed her hair back from her face, careful not to pull anymore. He wiped her chafed cheeks, drying tears with the back of his thumb. Then he reached back and picked up the knife.

She screamed at the sight of it and he shook his head.

"No one can hear you scream, but go ahead if it makes you feel better." He thought he sounded like that persona on TV. The program was about some crime scene unit that almost always solved their cases in one commercial interrupted hour. He liked to think of himself as the lead character who always sounded so wise and gentle to all the idiot victims and witnesses he counseled and who almost always found his man. He liked that image, wise and gentle. He was caring without being weak and not afraid to show the world that he could be human, that he could make mistakes.

"This knife won't hurt you, Sweetness."

It was all in the tone of voice, soft and understanding, that did it. He had found out the right tone of voice could sooth anyone, even someone in the predicament that this girl was in. She quieted, sobbing softly.

"Please," she begged, her voice hoarse from the drugs he used to subdue her, tears streaming down her cheeks again. "Let me go, blind fold me. I don't know you. I don't know where we are. I won't tell. I won't call the cops. You don't even have to take me back to my car, just put me on the side of the road somewhere. Please. Let me go."

She looked beautiful with big tears glistening on her soft cheeks, her eyes large and luminous, thick lashes dark and spiky. He leaned back and grabbed the Polaroid camera, getting the picture before she could turn her face away from the flash and ruin the symmetry of those tears.

"Nice," he muttered to himself as he fanned the picture that was ejected from the bottom of the camera. He waited until it was fully developed before showing it to her. "See how beautiful you are?"

The thought entered her mind for the twentieth time since she had looked in his eyes in this place that he was fucking crazy and she was dead.

He marked the picture on the white plastic strip, date and time written with the black marker then placed it in a plastic folder and put it in with the tape, making sure that each piece of plastic lay neatly and didn't fold at the corners before closing the file.

Then he picked up the knife again and turned toward her. He ignored her scream of horror and pushed the knife into her blouse at the cuff, neatly slicing through the seam up to her arm before turning the knife to cut the side seam down to the hem. Then he started on the opposite side, never nicking her skin even though she strained away from him and struggled, pulling her bonds tightly into her wrists and ankles.

"See what you've done," he said softly, pulling a little on the knots to loosen them just a bit. "The more you struggle, the tighter they become. If you lay there, they won't hurt you."

This psycho really believed that she would lay here without struggling while he raped her, tortured her and killed her. As if her hands and feet were going to do her any good unless she could get free. He expected rationality in a situation like this. Fuck him. And she told him so.