More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

Monday started out bad.

Charles Monroe was on the 8:11 out of Greenwich, his usual train. He was juggling his briefcase and coffee — today tepid and burnt tasting — as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to get a head start on his morning calls. It brayed loudly. The sound startled him and he spilled a large comma of coffee on his tan suit slacks.

“God damn,” he whispered, flipping open the phone. Monroe grumbled, “’Lo?”

“Honey.”

His wife. He’d told her never to call on the cell phone unless it was an emergency.

“What is it?” he asked, rubbing the stain furiously as if the anger alone would make it vanish.

“Thank God I got you, Charlie.”

Hell, did he have another pair of trousers at the office? No. But he knew where he could get one. The slacks slipped from his mind as he realized his wife had started crying.

“Hey, Cath, settle down. What is it?” She irritated him in a lot of ways — her incessant volunteering for charities and schools, her buying bargain-basement clothes for herself, her nagging about his coming home for dinner — but crying wasn’t one of her usual vices.

“They found another one,” Cathy said, sniffling.

She did, however, often start talking as if he were supposed to know exactly what she meant.

“Who found another what?”

“Another body.”

Oh, that. In the past several months, two local residents had been murdered. The South Shore Killer, as one of the local rags had dubbed him, stabbed his victims to death and then eviscerated them with hunting knives. They were murdered for virtually no reason. One, following what seemed to be a minor traffic dispute. The other was killed, police speculated, because his dog wouldn’t stop barking.

“So?” Monroe asked.

“Honey,” Cathy said, catching her breath, “it was in Loudon.”

“That’s miles from us.”

His voice was dismissing but Monroe in fact felt a faint chill. He drove through Loudon every morning on his way to the train station in Greenwich. Maybe he’d driven right past the corpse.

“But that makes three now!”

I can count too, he thought. But said calmly, “Cath, honey, the odds’re a million to one he’s going to come after you. Just forget about it. I don’t see what you’re worried about.”

“You don’t see what I’m worried about?” she asked.

Apparently he didn’t. When Monroe didn’t respond she continued, “You. What do you think?”

“Me?”

“The victims have all been men in their thirties. And they all lived near Greenwich.”

“I can take care of myself,” he said absently, gazing out the window at a line of schoolchildren waiting on a train platform. They were sullen. He wondered why they weren’t looking forward to their outing in the city.

“You’ve been getting home so late, honey. I worry about you walking from the station to the car. I—”

“Cath, I’m really busy. Look at it this way: He seems to pick a victim once a month, right?”

“What?…”

Monroe continued, “And he’s just killed somebody. So we can relax for a while.”

“Is that… Are you making a joke, Charlie?”

His voice rose. “Cathy, I really have to go. I don’t have time for this.”

A businesswoman in the seat in front of him turned and gave him an angry glance.

What’s her problem?

Then he heard a voice. “Excuse me, sir?”

The businessman sitting next to him — an accountant or lawyer, Monroe guessed — was smiling ruefully at him.

“Yes?” Monroe asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’re speaking pretty loud. Some of us are trying to read.”

Monroe glanced at several other commuters. Their irritated faces told him they felt the same.

He was in no mood for lectures. Everybody used cell phones on the train. When one would ring, a dozen hands went for their own phones.

“Yeah, well,” Monroe grumbled, “I was here first. You saw me on the phone and you sat down. Now, if you don’t mind…”

The man blinked in surprise. “Well, I didn’t mean anything. I was just wondering if you could speak a little more softly.”

Monroe exhaled a frustrated sigh and turned back to his conversation. “Cath, just don’t worry about it, okay? Now, listen, I need my monogrammed shirt for tomorrow.”

The man gave him a piqued glance, sighed and gathered up his newspaper and briefcase. He moved to the seat behind Monroe. Good riddance.

“Tomorrow?” Cathy asked.

Monroe didn’t actually need the shirt but he was irritated at Cathy for calling and he was irritated at the man next to him for being so rude. So he said, more loudly than he needed to, “I just said I have to have it for tomorrow.”

“It’s just kind of busy today. If you’d said something last night…”

Silence.

“Okay,” she continued, “I’ll do it. But, Charlie, promise you’ll be careful tonight coming home.”

“Yeah. Okay. Gotta go.”

“’Bye—”

He hit disconnect.

Great way to start the day, he thought. And punched in another number.

“Carmen Foret, please,” he told the young woman who answered.

More commuters were getting on the train. Monroe tossed his briefcase on the seat next to him to discourage anybody else’s sitting there.

A moment later the woman’s voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey, baby, it’s me.”

A moment of silence.

“You were going to call me last night,” the woman said coolly.

He’d known Carmen for eight months. She was, he’d heard, a talented real estate broker and was also, he supposed, a wonderful, generous woman in many ways. But what he knew about her — all he really cared to know — was that she had a soft, buoyant body and long, cinnamon-colored hair that spread out on pillows like warm satin.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, the meeting went a lot later than I thought.”

“Your secretary didn’t think it went all that late.”

Hell. She’d called his office. She hardly ever did. Why last night?

“We went out for drinks after we revised the deal letter. Then we ended up at the Four Seasons. You know.”

“I know,” she said sourly.

He asked, “What’re you doing at lunch today?”

“I’m doing a tuna salad sandwich, Charlie. What’re you doing?”

“Meet me at your place.”

“No, Charlie. Not today. I’m mad at you.”

“Mad at me? ’Cause I missed one phone call?”

“No, ’cause you’ve missed about three hundred phone calls since we’ve been dating.”

Dating? Where did she get that? She was his mistress. They slept together. They didn’t date, they didn’t go out, they didn’t court and spark.

“You know how much money I can make on this deal. I couldn’t mess up, honey.”