Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver

'I'm Barbara.'

'Hi, Barbara.'

She led him through the house to each of the cable boxes, sipping her drink as she went. She was drinking straight bourbon, it seemed.

'You have kids,' Joseph said, nodding at the picture of two young children on a table in the den. 'They're great, aren't they?'

'If you like pests,' she muttered.

He clicked buttons on the cable box and stood up. 'Any others?'

'Last box's in the bedroom. Upstairs. I'll show you. Wait…' She went off and refilled her glass. Then joined him again. Barbara led him up the stairs and paused at the top of the landing. Again, she looked him over.

'Where are your kids tonight?' he asked.

'The pests're at the bastard's,' she said, laughing sourly at her own joke. 'We're doing the joint custody thing, my ex and me.'

'So you're all alone here in this big house?'

'Yeah. Pity, huh?'

Joseph didn't know if it was or not. She definitely didn't seem pitiful.

'So,' he said, 'which room's the box in?' They'd stalled in the hallway.

'Yeah. Sure. Follow me,' she said, her voice low and seductive.

In the bedroom she sat on the unmade bed and sipped the drink. He found the cable box and pushed the 'on' button of the set.

It crackled to life. CNN was on.

'Could you try the remote?' he said, looking around the room.

'Sure,' Barbara said groggily. She turned away and, as soon as she did, Joseph came up behind her with the rope that he'd just taken from his pocket. He slipped it around her neck and twisted it tight, using a pencil for leverage. A brief scream was stifled as her throat closed up and she tried desperately to escape, to turn, to scratch him with her nails. The liquor soaked the bedspread as the glass fell to the carpet and rolled against the wall.

In a few minutes she was dead.

Joseph sat beside the body, catching his breath. Barbara had fought surprisingly hard. It had taken all his strength to keep her pinned down and let the garrote do its job.

He pulled on latex gloves and wiped away whatever prints he'd left in the room. Then he dragged Barbara's body off the bed and into the center of the room. He pulled her sweater off, undid the button of her jeans.

But then he paused. Wait. What was his name supposed to be?

Frowning, he thought back to his conversation last night.

What'd he call himself?

Then he nodded. That's right. He'd told Marissa Cooper his name was Dale O'Banion. A glance at the clock. Not even seven p.m. Plenty of time to finish up here and get to Green Harbor, where she was waiting and the bar had a decent Pinot Noir by the glass.

He unzipped Barbara's jeans then started tugging them down to her ankles.

* * *

Marissa Cooper sat on a bench in a small, deserted park, huddled against the cold wind that swept over the Green Harbor wharf. Through the evergreens swaying in the breeze she was watching the couple lounging in the enclosed stern of the large boat tied up to the dock nearby.

Like so many boat names this one was a pun: Maine Street.

She'd finished her shopping, buying some fun lingerie (wondering, a little discouraged, if anyone else would ever see her wearing it), and had been on her way to the restaurant when the lights of the harbor — and the gently rocking motion of this elegant boat — caught her attention.

Through the plastic windows on the rear deck of the Maine Street, she saw the couple sipping champagne and sitting close together, a handsome pair — he was tall and in very good shape, plenty of salt-and-pepper hair, and she, blonde and pretty. They were laughing and talking. Flirting like crazy. Then, finishing their champagne, they disappeared down into the cabin. The teak door slammed shut.

Thinking about the lingerie in the bag she carried, thinking about resuming dating, Marissa again pictured Dale O'Banion. Wondered how this evening would go. A chill hit her and she rose and went on to the restaurant.

Sipping a glass of fine Chardonnay (sitting boldly at the bar by herself — way to go, girl!), Marissa let her thoughts shift to what she might do for work. She wasn't in a huge hurry. There was the insurance money. The savings accounts too. The house was nearly paid for. But it wasn't that she needed to work. It was that she wanted to. Teaching. Or writing. Maybe she could get a job for one of the local newspapers.

Or she might even go to medical school. She remembered the times Jonathan would tell her about some of the things he was doing at the hospital and she'd understood them perfectly. Marissa had a very logical mind and had been a brilliant student. If she'd gone on to graduate school years ago, she could've gotten a full scholarship for her masters degree.

More wine.

Feeling sad then feeling exhilarated. Her moods bobbed like orange buoys marking the lobster traps sitting on the floor of the gray ocean.

The deadly ocean.

She thought again about the man she was waiting for in this romantic, candlelit restaurant.

A moment of panic. Should she call Dale and tell him that she just wasn't ready for this yet?

Go home, have another wine, put on some Mozart, light a fire. Be content with your own company.

She began to lift her hand to signal the bartender for the check.

But suddenly a memory came to her. A memory from life before Jonathan. She remembered being a little girl, riding a pony beside her grandfather, who sat on his tall Appaloosa. She recalled watching the lean old man calmly draw a revolver and sight down on a rattlesnake that was coiled to strike at Marissa's Shetland. The sudden shot blew the snake into a bloody mess on the sand.

He'd worried that the girl would be upset, having witnessed the death. Up the trail they'd dismounted. He'd crouched beside her and told her not to feel bad — that he'd had to shoot the snake. 'But it's all right, honey. His soul's on its way to heaven.'

She'd frowned.

'What's the matter?' her grandfather had asked.

'That's too bad. I want him to go to hell.'

Marissa missed that tough little girl. And she knew that if she called Dale to cancel, she would have failed at something important. It would be like letting the snake bite her pony.

No, Dale was the first step, an absolutely necessary step, to getting on with her life without Jonathan.

And then there he was — a good-looking, balding man. Great body too, she observed, in a dark suit. Beneath it he wore a black T-shirt, not a white polyester shirt and stodgy tie you saw so often in this area.

She waved and he responded with a charming smile.

He walked up to her. 'Marissa? I'm Dale.'

A firm grip. She gave him back one equally firm.

He sat next to her at the bar and ordered a glass of Pinot Noir. Sniffed it with pleasure then clinked his glass to hers.

They sipped.

'I wasn't sure if you'd be late,' she said. 'Sometimes it's hard to get off work when you want to.'

Another sniff of wine. 'I pretty much control my own hours,' he said.

They chatted for a few minutes and then went to the hostess's stand. The woman showed them to the table he'd reserved. A moment later they were seated next to the window. Spotlights on the outside of the restaurant shone down into the gray water; the sight troubled her at first, thinking about Jonathan in the deadly ocean, but she forced her thoughts away and concentrated on Dale.

They made small talk. He was divorced and had no children, though he'd always wanted them. She and Jonathan hadn't had children either, she explained. Talking about the weather in Maine, about politics.

'Been shopping?' he asked, smiling. Nodding at the pink-and-white-striped bag she'd set beside her