A Killing in the Hills

20


He didn’t get his money’s worth, not by a long shot. But who could you complain to? Was there a Better Business Bureau that dealt with whores?

Chill snickered at his own little joke. He’d zipped up his pants and now he was sitting on the side of the bed, feeling a faint edge of satisfaction. Not full satisfaction, but close enough. It was as if his fingers had just touched the fringe of satisfaction. Just ruffled it a little bit. Not like he’d grabbed it and held it.

Turtle Girl was sitting on the floor, leaning against his left leg. Her legs were sticking straight out. Her hands were dumped in her lap, as if her arms didn’t have any bones in them.

She looked, Chill thought, like a doll somebody had propped there. A broken doll from the Goodwill store, like the kind his little sister always ended up with. She’d never had a new doll in her whole life.

He lit a cigarette. He started to ask Turtle Girl if she wanted one, too, but he didn’t, because he was afraid she might say yes. And then they might have to have a conversation, or something close to it.

She still hadn’t said a word to him, beyond asking for the money. Which pleased him. When he’d given her the money over by the door, she’d folded the twenty-dollar bill and folded it over again and pushed it into the front pocket of her jeans. Then she’d followed him over to the bed. He sat down. She’d started to sit down on the bed too, right next to him, assuming that that’s what he wanted her to do, but Chill said, ‘No you don’t, girlie,’ and he’d grabbed her wrists and pulled her down until her knees hit the floor. He didn’t have to pull hard. She gave way instantly. She wilted. She was flaccid, her bones like water.

Once she was on her knees, he arranged her greasy head in front of him just so, and he worked at the zipper of his trousers. He had a job to do, getting himself where he needed to be. She didn’t help. That was the part that irritated him: She didn’t even try to help, goddamn her. What – she was too good for him, maybe? Some skanky whore was too good for him? Finally he was there, and he made her do what he’d paid her for, and once he was finished he wished he could shove her dirty face into the carpet and step on the back of her head, grinding it in, grinding her face until it ended up even uglier than how it started out, which was pretty damned ugly.

She was lucky he’d let her touch him. Anywhere. She was lucky that he hadn’t just slammed the door when she first showed up. You’re lucky. Lorene, he thought. Hell. It probably wasn’t her real name. Or maybe it was. He’d known a lot of Lorenes while he was growing up. It was a popular name.

His first girlfriend’s name was Cheryl. She would do all kinds of things to him, crazy things, but she didn’t kiss him. That drove him up the wall: Like, you’ll suck me off but you won’t kiss me, bitch? Kissing on the mouth was, like, personal, he figured. Kissing was what you did when you were in love. Like in the movies. Cheryl’d had a friend named Lorene. Or was it Lorrie? Or Laura? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. Everybody was the same. Everybody he knew was all the same. Appetites. It was all about appetites. Everybody had the same appetites. That’s what made them all the same.

‘Hey,’ Chill said. He shifted his leg.

She still didn’t move. She’d fallen asleep, which made him mad. He got to fall asleep, damnit. Not her.

‘Hey,’ he said again. He reached down and jiggled her shoulder.

Nothing.

She slumped over even farther. One more nudge and she’d be flat out on the floor. And then what would he do with her?

He twisted around so that he could kick her with his other leg. Hard, with the tip of his steel-toed boot. Right in her stomach. That did the trick. She jerked like a dog would, and her cry of pain was sharp but it was also like a kitten’s mew, kind of gooey and spread out, helpless-sounding, and it was enough to get him going again. He wanted more. He’d paid twenty bucks, hadn’t he? So he put the cigarette in the side of his mouth and he secured it with his teeth, so that he’d have both hands free, and with one hand he started fiddling with his zipper again, while with the other, he grabbed a hunk of her hair and tried to pull up her head, to get her to participate.

‘Come on,’ Chill said. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

She wouldn’t do it. He tried to angle her head the right way but she wasn’t playing along this time. She leaned away from him.

Now he was mad. ‘Hey,’ he said, hoping she’d pick up on the dark note in his voice. Fact was, he was getting seriously pissed off.

‘Hey,’ Chill said again. ‘Listen, Lorene, twenty bucks is twenty bucks. We ain’t done here, bitch.’

Her eyes were closed. It was as if she wasn’t in the world anymore, as if she’d left a while ago and had just forgotten to take her body along.

He was a bad-ass. Didn’t she know that? He’d killed three old men, yessir, and in a day or so, he’d get the prosecuting attorney as well. This time, he’d do it right. No farting around. And the boss had pretty much warned him that after he killed the Elkins lady, there wouldn’t be a hell of a lot for him to do anymore. Chill wasn’t stupid. He knew you only got so much use out of one employee. He was just about used up. So he was reckless. Couldn’t this bitch smell the recklessness on him?

Lorene moaned again, and again it excited him. But she was back to being the busted doll. She wouldn’t respond, not even when he shook her head, wringing it back and forth like a worn-out old mop. Who was she to reject him? Goddamnit. She was a drug addict and a whore – and she was saying no to him? This motel was the kind of place, he knew, where nobody called the cops, no matter what they heard. Nobody wanted to get involved. Also, nobody gave a rat’s ass about what was happening to anybody else. You could do what you wanted to do. The mess he’d make? Well, shit. He was going to be checking out in a couple of hours anyway. So sue me.

He let go of her hair. She flopped back against the side of the bed.

Chill reached over to the nightstand by the shitty little bed in the shitty little room, which made a deluxe matched set, he thought, with his shitty little life, and he yanked open the top drawer and he pulled out the Steyr SPP. It was the one thing he possessed that wasn’t shitty. It was gorgeous. When he’d first seen this pistol, a semiautomatic version of a submachine gun made by the same company – he’d looked it up, he’d read about it, he’d done his homework – Chill knew it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Just a foot long, barely three pounds, fifteen-round magazine packed in the short grip, but Jesus, the damage it could do.

With his free hand, Chill grabbed another handful of her hair and he jerked up her head and he pressed the muzzle against the center of her forehead. It would, he knew, leave a mark, an indentation in the shape of a little O, even if he did nothing at all. Even if he put the gun away now. For the first time, he looked in her eyes. They were blue.

Blue. Who’da thought? Chill wondered if her mama had ever looked into these blue eyes when she was a little girl and sang her a song. What would your mama think of you now? Now that you’re a whore?

He might not have done it, after all, he might not have shot her dead, except that he saw something in those washed-out eyes, something that said: Go on. Please. I want you to.

So he did.

He knew what he’d do with the body, how he’d get rid of it. And shortly after that, his nerves still jangling and jazzed up, his head ringing, it came to him: I know how to get Belfa Elkins. I got it now. Yeah.