Dark Pursuit

They stared at the phone as if Craig himself might crawl from it.

After a moment the music stopped.

Kaitlan set the phone on the counter. “No message.”

“Evidence. He wouldn’t be so foolish.” Darell gestured with his chin. “Turn it off.” The location of a live cell phone could be traced.

She held down a button. Notes sounded, then the phone went silent.

“If he did that …” Kaitlan checked in her purse again. “Hah!” She pulled out a car key. “Look. He gave this back too. Why would he do that?”

Darell’s mind chugged. He frowned at the key.

Margaret shifted. “Maybe—”

“Quiet!” He massaged his jaw, frowning at the floor.

The answer surfaced.

Darell’s head came up. “He was afraid you’d gotten to someone for help and would tell what’s happened. The only thing he could do was make you look crazy. With no sign of the body you claimed to find, and your keys and phone in your purse where they should be …” Darell lifted his hand and shrugged.

Kaitlan’s eyes rounded as if she couldn’t believe Craig’s cunning. “What about the bruise on my face?”

“He’d claim to know nothing about how you got it.” Darell’s gaze roamed over her cheek. The scrapes were redder now. “Your fall hasn’t helped matters any. Now it would be hard to prove the bruise didn’t come from that.”

“Oh. Of course.” Kaitlan’s expression flattened. Shoulders slumped, she put the key back in her purse, then pressed her palms to her temples. She looked like an orphan, hollow-cheeked and lost.

Her gaze drifted to the cell phone. She scooped it up with a sigh and dropped it into her purse. Turning away, she did a double take. She leaned over the handbag. “What … ?”

Reaching deep inside, she pulled out two white rectangles. Kaitlan turned them over. Her skin blanched white. She cried out and shook the objects from her hands as if she’d been stung. They landed on the floor face up.

Photos.

Darell squinted. What were they of?

Margaret’s wide eyes locked on the pictures. She cut a glance at Kaitlan, then edged over to pick them up. As she bent down, her face registered horror. Air seeped up her throat. She hesitated.

“Give them to me!” Darell thrust out his arm.

Gingerly she picked up the photos by one corner and shoved them into his hand. He peered at them.

The victim’s body.

One was taken from the right, one from the left. Vivid color shots of her ghastly frozen features, the black and green fabric around her neck. Clear in the photos were the surroundings. A bed, a cheap wooden headboard, walls and furniture.

Kaitlan’s bedroom, no doubt.

OBSESSION

forty-two

You think you have problems? Your issues are nothing.

After that second kill my life plummeted. Or did it soar? I couldn’t tell. One minute I’d feel free as I’d ever been. The next I’d be eating dust.

The killing itself was the soaring part. The rightness of it. The seductive call of the fabric, the way it felt in my hands. Its power to take life—just like that. A living, breathing human choked to a deserving, sudden end.

Then out of nowhere fear would drive me to my knees. Utter chest-constricting fear of getting caught. It would descend at the most unexpected of times. When I was at work. Watching television. Taking a shower. On the phone. The thought of friends, family, society at large knowing what I had become petrified me. They would never understand. They would hate me, judge me.

Punish me.

I can’t go to jail. Not me. That happens to other people. Criminals. People not so smart.

When the panic is at its worst my brain swells like a rushing river. Visions of being apprehended roil and plunge, dragging me under. The worst thought is of being separated from my black silk fabric with green stripes. From its touch and smell. Its comfort.

I’d be undone. Purposeless.

In those horrific moments I tell myself I won’t kill again. I’ve succeeded undetected so far. Why push it?

But deep inside I don’t believe my own words. Because even then the fabric calls to me.

The very same night of that second killing I cut another strip of cloth.

Sliding it through my fingers, I remembered the knowledge that had surfaced within me. That I would soon pursue death, not wait for it.

When you first ingest something sweet you get the full effect of the sugar. But sip perfectly sugared coffee, then follow it with candy. The next drink of coffee will no longer taste sweet enough. We humans always want more.

Where did our craving come from? Why are we never satisfied? Why couldn’t I, of all people, be content, hoarding the incredible gift of life the fabric had given me?

Three weeks after that killing I found my next target.

I was reading the paper at the breakfast table, a piece of toast in my hand. My eyes grazed the woman’s name in some small article—one I would have ignored. The letters leapt off the page.

The fabric in my car’s glove compartment switched on. Waves of heat radiated through the car window, into my kitchen. Caressed the back of my neck.

I stared at the name. Why this one?