to burning people. Prostitutes. You’re right. Sometimes they learn how to control it, or cover it up. A lot of things can happen with sick people. Sometimes they move on to new kinds of acting out. Sometimes something can trigger them into violence. Or they can get disorganized with stress—trouble at work, a loss of some kind—and just break down. But they don’t just grow out of it, Sergeant. They’re
The deep tan receded from Sergeant Grove’s face as he listened.
“The girl from New York April was looking for was burned,” he said when Jason was finished. He didn’t look bored or disinterested now.
“Burned? Is she—?” The acid from Jason’s stomach bubbled up into his mouth. He swallowed.
“Oh, yeah, she’s dead. But she wasn’t a whore. She was a college girl on vacation.”
The two men looked at each other. Then Grove handed over the sheet. Jason reached for it with a tremor in his hand. Well, now they had a suspect with a history of burning people that went back to third grade, and a dead girl from New York. The guy they should be looking very hard for was a draftsman in a defense company, rode a motorcycle. He knew Emma from high school, and hadn’t been seen for over a week. Emma needed immediate protection.
“Can I use your phone?” Jason asked.
44
The blanket didn’t move all the way out to Queens. Troland watched the dashboard clock and forced himself to look at the blanket only every two minutes. The traffic was so heavy on Second Avenue around the bridge he started muttering to himself. What if he hit her too hard. What if she was dead. If she was dead, she wouldn’t know anything. She wouldn’t even have met him. Shit. Then he couldn’t make things right. Not ever. He fumed at the gridlock. Thousands of cars trying to get into a single lane to get across the fucking bridge. And the fucking bridge was falling down. He didn’t want her dying before he fixed her.
The inside lanes were completely closed. There was one outside lane on each side that seemed to be outside of the bridge altogether. Getting across meant hanging over the water in a single lane that didn’t even have a solid roadbed under it. Looking down, Troland could see the water in the East River. To his left, the Roosevelt Island tram passed by on its wire string, high in the sky. It passed the one going the other way. The traffic was going only three miles an hour. Sometimes it stopped altogether.
He had been feeling so good. And now when he looked out at the cars halted around him and down at the motionless bundle he had gone to so much trouble for, he started feeling bad again. He put his hand under the blanket on the seat beside him. Touched a piece of bare flesh. Arm, he thought. He stroked it with his finger and was excited by its warmth.
It took nearly an hour to get back to his place. A very pale light shone from the front room, which meant the old woman was probably sitting there in front of the television with her back to the window. It gave him an unpleasant memory of his grandmother who died last month. He pushed the thought aside as he got out to open the garage door. It wasn’t automatic. He had to pull it open and shut. The light was automatic. It came on when the door went up. No one saw him.
Still, he was almost jumping out of his skin when he carried her up the stairs at the back of the garage. He had hit her hard. She was a dead weight, still out cold. He almost staggered at the top when he had to get the door open.
And then he was inside with the door closed. He put her on the sofa in the living room. This must have been where the old man had his studio, because the skylight was in here. He had noticed none of the other houses in the area had a skylight. The skylight bothered him because of the planes coming into the airport. They did that in San Diego where he worked, but there they were friends. Here, they seemed to hover directly over the house, casting a huge shadow like a giant evil bird. They seemed to be watching him somehow, getting ready to dump a load. He wasn’t thinking of that now, though. He was high again with how great this was.
Yeah. He studied her on the sofa, looking for the girl he knew. He didn’t see the soft smile, the golden hair. He started pulling at her clothes. First the short boots, then the jeans. Yeah. It was the body in the film. He frowned, studying her legs and the tiny bikini briefs she was wearing. They were white, a silky material, and looked new. She looked good like that.
He struggled to get her sweatshirt off and was a little disappointed because she made no effort to wake up. The bra matched the panties. He took them both off and held them in his hand. They had a strong fragrance he didn’t know, some kind of flower. The body looked good, real good. Well kept, clean. He liked that.
The hair wasn’t blond, but wasn’t so bad. At least her breasts were bigger than the other girl he tattooed. He liked that. And there was no excess flesh around her stomach and thighs. He liked that, too. Fat women disgusted him. On his knees, he sniffed her shoulder and then her breast. The fragrance was stronger there. He wanted to sniff all of her, but he was getting too excited. He had to pull out the Polaroid of the other girl to remind himself of his mission. He didn’t want to fuck her before she was right. Yeah, he had stuff to do.
He got up and walked into the other room with her clothes, put them in his suitcase and the suitcase under the bed. He went into the bathroom and urinated for a long time, then carefully combed his hair. Wanted to look good for her. Then he figured he better get the ropes and tie her up. He put the gun down on the table in case he had to scare her. He had a whole collection of ropes. They were all thin nylon, the kind that would cut deeply into her flesh if she struggled too much. He had planned to put one around her neck with a slip knot. Now he thought that might be a mistake. He wanted her perfect, beautifully decorated, but not marked by anything else.
Looking at her, lying on her back with her eyes closed and one arm flung out, it occurred to him that just doing the torso like the other girl was not enough. He could do all of her. Her hands, her feet. He’d even seen people with the inside of their lips tattooed, their armpits. He started sweating as he thought of tattooing her cunt. He could put anything on it. It was so exciting he had to remind himself over and over to cool down or he’d never get it done.
He tied her hands and feet loosely, considering places he could work on her where no one had ever tattooed a person before. Too bad he didn’t have a table to put her on. The sofa was low. Lower than the bed. He didn’t want her on the bed in the other room, though. The black bird was on the other side of the wall. She might hear something.
Finally he was ready. He was cool. He slapped her face a few times.
“Emma, Emma. Wake up.”
When she didn’t wake up, he put a few drops of ammonia on a paper towel and waved it under her nose. She started coughing.
“Wake up, honey.”
After a long time, her eyes fluttered.
“That’s right. Come on. Look at me. Look who it is.” He dabbed a wet towel on her forehead the way a nurse had once when he was in the hospital. He still remembered how good it felt.
Dabbed at her cheek with cold water.
Emma groaned and opened her eyes.
“Hi, Emma. Guess who.” Troland leaned over so she could see his face.
She closed her eyes again.
“Oh, come on. You’re all right.”
“My head,” she mumbled. “Car crash.”
“Hi, honey. Look at me. Say hello.” When she didn’t respond, Troland got some more water and sprinkled some on her neck and forehead.
She opened her eyes and tried to focus. “Car crash, get me out,” she cried, fighting the ropes.
“Hey, stop that. You weren’t in a crash. Look who it is.”
Her eyes moved around, trying to make a picture. “Car crash. My head …”
“It’s Tro—remember me?”
She stared at him, tried to lift her hand to touch her head. It wouldn’t move. It was attached to something.
