“Wait,” Flood called after the M.E. “What’d you find? How’d she die, same as last one, right?” He was shouting now because Wilson had arrived at his car. “The Hinchey autopsy is already done. What in hell is going on?”
Wilson’s voice was low but clear, caught by the westward blowing wind, and wafting back to them. As if he hadn’t heard a word Flood had said, Wilson opened his car door. “Sheriff
The remark was a slap in the face to Andrew Flood, and he glared at Slater and Cruz with muddy, lethal eyes.
Chapter 34
The killer glanced idly around the room where everyone scurried about, filled out forms, answered phones. Chattered like magpies. Like they performed some important job that no one else could do. When he was the one who conducted important business.
Sometimes he hated this job. Despised the people he worked with. He’d worked so hard to get promoted. No one appreciated what he had to deal with – the worthless scum who were everywhere in his life. No seniority, little authority. He’d once thought he was part of the inner circle. One of the guys who got the breaks, got to do something important besides complete more paperwork, answer more phones.
He fiddled with his pen, turning it over and over, end to end – his only outward sign of agitation. Restlessness skittered down his spine all the time now. Ever since the – the incident with the homeless man in Ryder Park.
An ember burned inside him, rage smoldering, ready to erupt into flame. The man roused himself from self-pity. What he’d done – that was a mercy, a favor to the community and the homeless man himself. The hobo was better off dead than living a wretched existence on the street.
And even though it was an act of kindness in the overall picture, it was still an accident, for God’s sake!
He glanced down at the newspaper on his desk.
A monster was now running around Sacramento. Copying him. He’d never do something so outrageous, so vicious, as the newspaper reported. He thought of the poor, ravaged woman and her pathetic, brutalized body, and shuddered.
Not him! He was a person who protected people not –
He glanced down at his clenched fists. For a brief moment his mask slipped.
Fran Winston across the room gave him a strange look. She was a nosy little bitch. She’d notice the smallest change in a person and blab it to everyone.
He shut his feelings down. Shut them down fast and hard.
Glancing at the wall clock, he realized it was nearly quitting time. Good thing, too, because he could feel himself falling apart, tearing into tiny shreds of anxiety.
In his apartment he kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket on the couch. Reached for a beer in the refrigerator. He hesitated, thought a minute, and pulled his stash from the kitchen armoire he’d inherited from his mother. His cache was hidden in the soup tureen, also inherited from his mother, and which he had no use for.
Well, except for the drugs – oxy, norco, percocet – whatever he scored on the street.
Settling down in his recliner, he chased a handful of xanax with the beer. He’d rather light up a joint, take a good long toke of high quality pot, but that shit stayed in your system forever.
I am not a murderer, he whispered aloud as he relaxed. The words echoed around the small apartment. Good. He repeated the words in his head. What happened with the homeless man at Ryder Park was – it was an accident. Anyone sitting on a jury would see that he was a normal, respectable citizen with a good job and a solid life. He wasn’t a killer.
Calmer now, he analyzed the situation. He wasn’t a killer, but someone was screwing with him, messing with his mind. The newspaper article of the murdered Sacramento woman was proof of that. And that was a serious mistake.
As the xanax gradually relaxed him, he allowed himself to remember the dreams that awakened him in the middle of the night. Foggy dreams filled with violent images and illicit pleasure that left him soaked with sweat. He always woke up with a major boner.
The images always ended with his hands wrapped around someone’s throat, squeezing the neck, harder and harder, choking the life out of the person lying helpless beneath him while his prick swelled like a balloon ready to pop.
With the benzo slowing down his busy brain, he admitted consciously how good it had felt to kill the homeless man in Ryder Park. More than good – great! It was a rush better than any high he’d ever gotten. Not that he was much of a drug user now. Never knew when he’d get caught up in a dirty pee test.
Most of the guys he knew drank and avoided pot. Hell, they drank like fish. Suddenly this idea seemed silly and he suppressed a giggle. Must be the norco he’d mixed with the xanax. The half-life on that stuff was short, so he didn’t worry about getting caught taking it. And he had a ‘script for the Ambien, so no problemo there.
He breathed deeply and returned to his fantasy, thinking what a rush it felt to carve the life out of another person. Thought how he’d like to do it again, but without the knife this time. The blood – and the gore – that was too much.