More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

counter. He looked over the heavyset girl and snapped, “So you’re not only a fat pig, you’re stupid too. I want to see the manager. Now!”

Celeste had tried to be stoic about the incident but as she related it to her father a single tear ran down her cheek. Ray was heartbroken at the sight. The next day he’d learned the identity of the customer from the manager and filed away the name Stephen York.

A single tear…

For some people, perhaps, not even worth a second thought. But because it was his daughter’s tear, Ray Trotter decided it was payback time.

He now heard the water stop running, then detected a fragrant smell of perfume wafting from the bathroom. Nancy came to bed, laying her head on his chest.

“You seem happy tonight,” she said.

“Do I?”

“When I walked past before and saw you staring at the ceiling you looked… what’s the word? Content.”

He thought about the word. “That describes it.” Ray shut the light out, and putting his arm around his wife, pulled her closer to him.

“I’m glad you’re in my life,” she whispered.

“Me too,” he replied.

Stretching out, Ray considered his next steps. He’d probably give York a month or two of peace. Then, just when the businessman was feeling comfortable, he’d start up again.

What would he do? Maybe an empty medicine vial next to York’s car, along with a bit of harmless Botox on the door handle. That had some appeal to it. He’d have to check if a trace of the cosmetic gave a positive reading for botulism bacteria.

Now that he’d convinced the police that he was innocent and York was paranoid, the businessman could cry wolf as often as he liked and the cops would tune him out completely.

The playing field was wide open…

Maybe he could enlist York’s wife. She’d be a willing ally, he believed. In his surveillance Ray had seen how badly the man treated her. He’d overheard York lose his temper at her once when she kept pressuring him to let her apply to a local college to finish her degree. He’d yelled as if she were a teenager. Carole was currently out of town — probably with that English professor she’d met at Arizona State when she was sneaking classes instead of taking tennis lessons. The man had transferred to UCLA but she was still seeing him; they’d meet in LA or Palm Springs. Ray had also followed her to a lawyer’s office several times in Scottsdale and assumed she was getting ready to divorce York.

Maybe after it was final she’d be willing to give him some inside information that he could use.

Another idea occurred to him. He could send York an anonymous letter, possibly with a cryptic message on it. The words wouldn’t be important. The point would be the smell; he’d sprinkle the paper with almond extract — which gave off the telltale aroma of cyanide. After all, nobody knew that he hadn’t made a batch of poison.

Oh, the possibilities were endless…

He rolled onto his side, whispered to his wife that he loved her and in sixty seconds was sound asleep.

COPYCAT

Detective Quentin Altman rocked back, his chair squealing with the telltale caw of aging government furniture, and eyed the narrow, jittery man sitting across from him. “Go on,” the cop said.

“So I check out this book from the library. Just for the fun of it. I never do that, just read a book for the fun of it. I mean, never. I don’t get much time off, you know.”

Altman hadn’t known this but he could certainly have deduced it. Wallace Gordon was the Greenville Tribune’s sole crime reporter and must’ve spent sixty, seventy hours a week banging out copy, to judge by the number of stories appearing under his byline every day.

“And I’m reading along and—”

“What is it you’re reading?”

“A novel — a murder mystery. I’ll get to that…. I’m reading along and I’m irritated,” the reporter continued, “because somebody’d circled some passages. In a library book.”

Altman grunted distractedly. He was head of Homicide in a burgh with a small-town name but big-city crime statistics. The fifty-something detective was busy and he didn’t have much time for reporters with crackpot theories. There were twenty-two folders of current cases on his desk and here Wallace was delivering some elliptical message about defaced books.

“I don’t pay much attention at first but I go back and reread one of the circled paragraphs. It jogs my memory. Anyway, I checked the morgue—”

“Morgue?” Altman frowned, rubbing his wiry red hair, which showed not a strand of gray.

“Our morgue, not yours. In the newspaper office. All the old stories.”

“Got it. How ’bout getting to the point?”

“I found the articles about the Kimberly Banning murder.”

Quentin Altman grew more attentive. Twenty-eight-year-old Kimberly had been strangled to death eight months ago. The murder occurred two weeks after a similar killing — of a young female grad student. The two deaths appeared to be the work of the same person but there were few forensic leads and no motive that anyone could determine. The cases prompted a task force investigation but eventually the suspects were cleared and the case grew cold.

Tall and gaunt, with tendons and veins rising from his pale skin, reporter Wallace tried — usually unsuccessfully — to tone down his intimidating physique and face with brown tweed jackets, corduroy slacks and pastel shirts. He asked the cop, “You remember how the whole town was paranoid after the first girl was killed? And how everybody was double locking their doors and never letting strangers into their houses?”

Altman nodded.

“Well, look at this.” The reporter pulled latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on.

“Why the gloves, Wallace?”

The man ignored the question and dug a book out of his battered briefcase. Altman got a look at the title. Two Deaths in a Small Town. He’d never heard of it.

“This was published six months before the first killing.” He opened the book to a yellow Post-it tab and pushed it forward. “Read those paragraphs.” The detective pulled on his CVS drugstore glasses and leaned forward.

The Hunter knew that now that he’d killed once, the town would be more alert than ever. Its soul would be edgier, its collective nerves would be as tense as an animal trap’s blue-steel spring. Women would not stroll the streets alone and those who did would be looking around constantly, alert for any risk. Only a fool would let a stranger into her house and the Hunter did not enjoy killing fools.

So on Tuesday night he waited until bedtime — 11:00 p.m. — and then slipped onto Maple Street. There, he doused a parked convertible’s roof with gasoline and ignited the pungent, amber liquid. A huge whoosh… He hid in the bushes and, hypnotized by the tornado of flames and ebony smoke swirling into the night sky above the dying car, he waited. In ten minutes behemoths of fire trucks roared up the street, their wailing sirens drawing people from their homes to find out what the excitement might be.

Among those on the sidewalk was a young, demure blonde with a heart-shaped face, Clara Steading. This was the woman the Hunter knew he had to possess — possess completely. She was love incarnate, Amore herself, she was Beauty, she was Passion…. And she was also completely ignorant of her role as the object of his demented desire. Clara shivered in her bathrobe, standing on the sidewalk, along with a clutch of chattery neighbors, as they watched the firemen extinguish the blaze and offered words of sympathy to the dismayed owner of the car, who lived a few doors away.

Finally the onlookers grew bored, or repulsed by the bitter smell of the burnt rubber and plastic, and they