Getting Off

“Well, I’m flattered, but as I said—”

“No, don’t be flattered. What I wanted to do, I wanted to be able to cross you off the list, and in order to do that I’d have to sleep with you first.”

There was a padded mailer in her bag. Her hand slipped into the open end, fastened on the handle of the knife. He was saying something but she paid no attention, concentrating instead on the move she’d make, visualizing it in her mind’s eye.

“And when you turned me down,” she went on, “I just couldn’t stand it, and I was so upset that it kept me from seeing what should have been obvious.”

“Sometimes the hardest thing to see is what’s right in front of our eyes.”

Gee, Graham, I’d better go write that down.

“What I didn’t let myself realize,” she said, “is that I’d already fucked you. I mean, that’s how you got on the list in the first place, right? So I didn’t have to fuck you again, much as I might want to. All I had to do to cross you off the list, was, well, this.”

Just as she’d visualized it: her right hand emerging from the shoulder bag, gripping the kitchen knife, bringing it in one graceful motion into the center of his chest.

Just like that.

“You fucking idiot,” she said. “You sanctimonious asshole. You could have died happy.”

Did he even hear the words? Hard to say. There was no blood to speak of, so she must have found the heart and stopped it. His eyes were wide, but the light was leaving them.

Three.

Now what? Her plan had worked perfectly, but it hadn’t included the aftermath.

Just leave him here? But she had to go back to the Barling lot for her bike, and how was she going to get there? Call a taxi?

Take his place behind the wheel? The key was right there in the ignition, and despite what she’d told Rita, she was perfectly capable of driving anything with wheels. All she had to do was dump his body and drive his car back to where she’d left the bike. His car could return to the slot where it belonged, and she could bike off into the sunset.

Dump his body where? Just leave him in the church parking lot? They’d find him soon enough, and connect him to the SCA meeting, and who was to say he hadn’t talked about her with some of his we-don’t-fuck-anymore buddies? It might not lead to her, but it would guarantee headlines.

How about the church van? It was dusty, so it probably didn’t get used much, and by the time anybody found a body in it there’d have been a dozen other 12-Step groups meeting there. Not a perfect idea, but—

Forget it. Fucking thing was locked up tighter than an SCA member’s asshole.

If the Subaru had a trunk, that would work. Probably be a struggle getting him into it, but she could reposition the car first so that it screened her actions from observers. But the thing was a squareback, the contents of its rear compartment glaringly visible, so scratch that.

So what did that leave?

Switching seats with him wasn’t the hardest part. It was a little complicated, she had to maneuver him from behind the wheel into the passenger seat, but it went smoothly enough. She fastened his seatbelt and tightened it so it would keep him in position, then took his place behind the wheel and drove out of there.

Now it got tricky. Not finding her way — that was easy, as the Subaru had a GPS device, complete with a woman’s voice to tell you when and where to turn, and Barling Industries was already available on his list of recent destinations, so all she had to do was select it and follow the prompts.

But there she was, driving through traffic with a dead man sitting up next to her. The premise, of course, was that his condition wouldn’t be evident to a casual onlooker, and no one would see blood, because she’d adjusted his necktie to cover the wound. But he still looked dead as a doornail to her, and every time she braked for a stoplight with another car alongside, she found herself holding her breath. At any moment she’d hear sirens and there’d be people screaming and cops yanking the doors open and—

And each time the light changed and she drove away.

“Approaching right turn,” the voice told her at length, and this final right turn brought her into the Barling lot. “You have arrived.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Did the GPS doohickey have a memory? Could it tell the police where it had been?

Well, they’d have to find it first. She unhooked it from its moorings and dropped it into her handbag. Something to get rid of down the line, along with the knife.

Did the SCA people know about the GPS? Like, were they okay with him having an authoritative female voice telling him where to go and what to do? Like, couldn’t he have a male voice, just to remove another possible occasion of sin?

Fucking moron.

She left him in his car, parked right where it had been when she joined him for the ride to Redmond. She took a moment to put him back behind the wheel; it would help keep him upright, and was a more natural spot for him, although it wouldn’t fool anyone who took a good look.

They’d think he’d had a heart attack. Got behind the wheel, stuck the key in the ignition, and the poor devil’s ticker quit on him. They’d know different soon enough, and it wouldn’t take a formal autopsy to spot the knife wound in his chest, but by then she’d be long gone.

She took a moment to wipe the surfaces she might have touched. And at the last minute she remembered to go through his wallet. He had just over three hundred dollars, mostly in twenties and tens, and something made her look in the compartment behind his State of Washington driver’s license, where he’d tucked away two fifties and a hundred for an emergency.

Well, this was an emergency, all right. The Nuits-Saint-Georges had left her alarmingly close to broke.

She locked the car on her way out, unlocked her bike, and left.

Now what? Back to Rita’s house?

For pizza and French wine and another session in the living room? This one, she knew, would go further than the last. Their hands wouldn’t be limited to their own flesh, and she could see how the evening might well end with one or both of them getting eaten out.

It wasn’t really a lesbian experience, Kimmie, because we’re not lesbians.

What would it be like, having another woman do that?

Or doing it herself?

She was getting hot thinking about it. But it wasn’t going to happen, and she was going to make sure it didn’t happen by skipping the pizza, skipping the wine, and skipping Rita’s house altogether. If she went there, what could possibly happen afterward? Either she’d want to stay with Rita and try to make some kind of a life together, or she’d feel the need to kill her before moving on. She didn’t want to kill Rita, not now, not in the least, and she couldn’t stay with her in a town where she’d just murdered a man. She wanted at a minimum to be on the other side of a state line, and ideally clear across the country.

And she’d looked ahead enough to tuck what she could into her handbag. Not all she’d have liked to take, the bag was really no more than an overgrown purse, but enough to hold her until she had a chance to buy something new.

More to the point, nothing she’d left in Rita’s spare bedroom could be traced back to her. Sooner or later she’d call Rita, and by then she’d have a story ready to explain her abrupt departure. But for now all she could do was disappear.

A pity she couldn’t return the bike. Park it someplace, tell Rita where to find it? No, keep it simple.

She left it unlocked a block from the bus station, propped it against a lamp post and walked away from it. Someone was sure to adopt it — before her bus left, and before anyone could begin to wonder who stuck a knife into Graham Weider.

FOURTEEN