THE morning was ripe with possibilities.
While most people abhorred the rain and cold, Parker found it satisfying, a balm on any ruffled feathers of his soul. It soaked into his skin, plastering his clothes against his body, hugging him with its cold embrace. He took a moment to stand by the gate, hidden from the camera sweep by the building’s outer brick wall.
Those few seconds before he stepped into a planned job were the best. Anticipation rippled through him, and he shivered, reveling in its sensual pleasure. Checking the fit of his latex gloves, Parker snapped the bands and bounced a step forward, testing the off-brand sneakers he’d bought for the job.
The knives he brought with him were ground-down throwaways he’d stolen from a swap meet vendor nearly two weeks ago. Cheap steel, they would only hold their edge for less than half an hour’s work, but they would be enough. He wasn’t planning on keeping to just one, especially since there’d been three paring knives in the bundle he’d dropped into the paper bag of clothes he’d brought with him to mask his theft.
If he got to all of the people on the list his employer gave him, he would need to get more blades. That alone was enough to make him hard. This time, he thought as he checked his camera for the security code he’d been sent, he would go for something expensive, maybe even a specialized edge. A few random killings with that knife and the cops would be off sniffing at a serial murderer, taking any heat off of him.
Breaking in was easy enough. People placed a lot of faith in small pieces of metal and bolts to keep the unsavory away, but those were simple to thwart. With a long piece of steel hooked into the lock, the tumblers fell under Parker’s twisting slide and the deadbolt clicked open. Poised, he stood silent, waiting to see if someone had been near enough to hear the lock shift, but no footsteps came toward the door, and no one called out to see who was there.
“Grab the tape feed,” he murmured to himself as he slid into the house. There’d been a rough schematic of the residence, detailed enough for him to pinpoint where a server hummed away in a pantry, saving the video feeds from the three cameras set up on the outside perimeter. If he couldn’t pull the drive out, he’d have to be happy enough with destroying it somehow. “Maybe they’ll have a can of peaches I can pour into it. Sugar is hell on electronics.”
From the looks of the place, it was empty, but Parker knew better. Somewhere in the echoing rooms his target waited for him, unaware and peaceful. A few beeps, then the security panel flashed, giving him a green light to continue.
“Excellent.” He almost kissed the box, then thought better of it, not wanting to leave behind any trace of his entry. He closed the door behind him, relocked the deadbolts, and took a deep breath, savoring the moment anew. “Ah, time to get to work.”
He pulled one of the knives from his jacket, drew it out of its newspaper coffin, and walked softly through the front room. Little sounds gave life to the place, wood floors sighing as they breathed and the rattle of an air conditioning unit set someplace on the roof. Filmy curtains wafted against tall windows, driven by the artificial wind coming through vents set near the high ceiling.
THE old woman left him feeling dissatisfied, an itch left unscratched under his skin, and Parker struggled to figure out the why of it. Lying in a rented motel room after the dusky-skinned whore he’d hired left, he’d smoked the last of the woman’s cigarettes, pulling cheap smoke into his lungs as he played with his softening penis.
Everything about the kill should have worked for him. It should have driven him to a height of sexual release without him needing to satiate himself with a common hooker, but instead, he’d left the hostel and sought out one of the many streetwalkers roaming the area.
The knife work was orgasmic, a soft, sticky peeling back of flesh from bone, but the experience was lacking something. With the rather bored yes-oh-Gods from the whore’s painted mouth still ringing in his ears, Parker jerked upright, suddenly realizing what was missing.
“She couldn’t scream. Damn it, I needed her to scream.” He cursed himself for tearing a strip of duct tape off the roll and putting it over the old woman’s mouth and nose. There’d been a fear of someone hearing him work so he’d taken precautions, but in doing so, he’d been left only with the snick of meat falling away and then the final gurgle of her blood draining down into the tacky carpet.
He wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time.