Mortal Lock Page 9

  I call her from work sporadically, so she can never know when to expect it. But she always answers when I call. She never even sounds out of breath. I guess she doesn’t know forwarding our home number to her cell phone shows up on the bill every time she pulls that trick. Or maybe she doesn’t care.

  I use my sick days to maintain surveillance, too. I tell her I’m going to work, but I spend the day watching the house. Or following her, when she goes out. I guess I could have paid a private detective to do all this, but it’s not the kind of thing I want to discuss with other people. Or even admit.

  Besides, I’m not sure I could trust someone I hired. I’m the kind of man who likes to do things himself—that’s the only way I can make certain it comes out properly.

  6

  “Sure, they’re good enough to catch some moron holding up a liquor store, or a wife who poisons her husband,” Roger said, one Saturday night. “But the police haven’t got a chance against a highly evolved killer.”

  Bobby Williams started to say, “There’s been plenty of murderers who thought they were geniuses until—”

  “No, no,” Roger interrupted. “I didn’t say ‘smart’; I said, ‘highly evolved.’ There’s a big difference.”

  “What?” Marcy Chilton asked. She’s the opposite of her husband, very parsimonious with her words.

  “The highly evolved killer is one who makes a statement,” Roger said. “Not some animal who guns down a shopkeeper in a holdup.”

  “You mean, like Ted Bundy, someone like him?” Tammi asked, breathlessly.

  “Exactly!” Roger replied.

  Tammi arched her back like a cat who had just been stroked.

  “Ted Bundy was a sex fiend,” Theresa Wright said, sharply. She’s married to Sam Wright, a church deacon. The two of them generally agree with Roger on everything, especially when he starts ranting about liberals, but the idea of seeing a rapist as highly evolved apparently was too much for her to swallow.

  “I’m not so sure that’s true,” Roger said, judiciously. “Certainly, there was a sexual … aura to his killings—there often is, I believe—but he was successful for a very long time before he was caught. And we still have no idea how many women he actually raped and killed.”

  “That’s your idea of highly evolved? A killer who gets away with more murders than the authorities find out about?” Mark said.

  “Well, isn’t it yours?” Roger challenged him. “Isn’t that the way we evaluate any activity: by whether you’re successful at it? Look at the most famous murderer in history, Jack the Ripper. Do you think, if he had ever been caught, he’d still be in the public eye centuries later? Do you think people would still be writing books about him? Making movies? Speculating about his identity?”

  “People are still speculating about who shot JFK, too,” Sam Wright retorted.

  I don’t like the Wrights very much—I can smell their disapproval of Tammi like heavy perfume in an elevator. But I do admire the way they’re always on the same side, backing each other up.

  “Conspiracy buffs,” Roger said, dismissively.

  “But you just said—”

  “The highly evolved killer is the one who kills at random,” Roger said emphatically, veins swelling in the muscle of his voice like those in his flexed biceps. “It doesn’t matter who he kills, it’s just his way of making a statement. Look at the Zodiac, another killer they never caught. Do you think the newspapers would have published his letters if he hadn’t proven himself?”

  “Proven himself?” I said.

  Tammi gave me one of those looks she specializes in.

  “Proven his expertise,” Roger said, not missing a beat. “Like providing your credentials. He killed when he wanted, where he wanted, who he wanted … and there was nothing the cops could ever do about it.”

  “The papers published the Unabomber’s manifesto, too,” Mark Chilton said, toady that he is.

  “And he got caught,” I rejoined, catching another look from Tammi.

  “He would never have been caught,” Roger said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “Not by all the law enforcement in America. It was his own family that turned him in.”

  “So he wasn’t as highly evolved as the Zodiac?” I said, keeping my voice neutral.

  “That’s right!” Roger said, pointing his finger at me. I was glad I wasn’t standing closer. Once he had made a point with that same finger, jabbing it into my chest. It felt like a piece of rebar—I had the bruise for days. “The ultimate killer never leaves himself vulnerable to the weakness of others.”

  “Morality isn’t weakness,” Sam Wright said, his voice as strong as his convictions.

  “It’s a good thing the military doesn’t share your philosophy,” Roger delivered his knockout punch. “Or we’d all be having this conversation in German.”

  7

  “You don’t even try anymore,” Tammi said to me, later that night. She was wearing the black teddy she likes to pose in for her webcam.

  “Try what?”

  “Sex,” she said, almost spitting out the word.

  “You’re joking,” I said, disgusted. With her and myself, both. “What’s the point of asking for something when you know the answer’s going to be ‘no’?”

  “That’s your problem, Paul. Can you imagine Roger’s wife saying ‘no’ to him?”

  “Not with him holding her green card,” I said, not so mildly.

  “You’re disgusting,” Tammi said. She rolled over, her frozen back doing the rest of her talking for her.

  8

  That Monday, I called Roger’s house from work. His wife answered the phone. Her name is Kanya, something like that.

  “Hello,” she said. Her voice was like a child’s.

  “Good morning,” I said, speaking through the harmonizer that transformed my voice into an elderly man’s. “Is Mr. Kenworth at home?”

  “Oh, yes, sure. I get him, okay?”

  I hung up.

  That night, Tammi asked me if I wanted to watch a movie with her. I was a little surprised. Usually, she spends the whole evening on the computer. I asked her, what did she want me to go out and rent? But she already had a DVD loaded.

  It only took a minute before I realized what kind of movie it was.

  “I don’t want to watch that stuff,” I said, getting off the couch.

  “Oh, don’t be such a little wimp all the time,” Tammi snapped at me. “I thought, if we watched it together, maybe you’d get some ideas. Besides how to build bridges or whatever it is you do at work, I mean.”

  “I’ve got plenty of ideas,” I said, defensively.

  On the screen, a nurse was being raped by three men wearing stocking masks.

  “She really wants it,” Tammi said, making a little grunting sound of judgment. “You’ll see. Watch how it ends.”

  I couldn’t.

  9

  That Saturday, Roger gave a lecture on the NRA. He was thinking of canceling his membership, he said. The organization was getting too soft.

  “Catering to the lefties. That’s just pitiful. Just caving to the media. So a kid killed his little sister with a gun he found in the house. That wasn’t a registered weapon, not like mine are,” he said. He swept his arm in the direction of his den, a wood-and-leather room just down the hall. We had all been treated to a tour of Roger’s den: it was mostly glass-fronted display cases for his collection of guns.

  “Some liberal would walk back in there and start wailing about what an ‘arsenal’ I’m keeping. But if I want to own a hundred guns, that’s my right as an American, as long as I can pay for them. Besides,” he said, rotating his head on his thick neck like a tank turret, covering everyone in the room, “self-defense is the natural right of every species. What sets man apart from the animals is that we get to choose our weapons.”

  “What do you need them all for?” Mark Chilton asked, lobbing the softball question.

  “Anyone who enters my home without my permission wou
ld find out quick enough,” Roger promised. “That’s why I don’t have a lock on my gun case. What kind of idiot does that? By the time I find the key, unlock the cabinet, and reach for one of my guns, it’s too late.”

  “But you don’t need that many guns just to protect—”

  “Who says?” Roger interrupted him. “You? If you’d ever been in combat you’d know; two loaded weapons are a lot better than one that you have to reload.”

  “You keep them all loaded?” Tammi asked, clasping her hands under her breasts.

  “An unloaded gun’s about as useful as a limp … Well, you get the picture,” Roger said, smiling with his perfect teeth.

  10

  I was watching the next Thursday morning when Roger’s wife drove off in their ivory Land Rover. I was still watching when Tammi walked up to the side door of his house, wearing pink shorts and a black T-shirt. I saw the flash of his smile as he let her in.

  It was five more Saturdays before I was ready. Impatience always endangers the end product. Like building a bridge: you have to check and recheck every single component before you start to fit them together.

  Roger’s den is past a pair of bathrooms off the hall. “Just like a nightclub,” Tammi had said when she first discovered there were two of them. “Especially the way he keeps the hallways so dark. But don’t worry, Paul, I won’t ask you to go in there with me.”

  Tammi knows I have weak kidneys. “You’re worse than a woman,” she complained once, when we had to stop driving. That was a few years ago, the last time we tried to take a vacation together.

  A bridge engineer has to be able to measure with his eyes and make rough calculations. First you visualize. Then you go back and double-check with instruments.

  One of the guns in Roger’s den is a Colt Python. That’s a revolver, with a ventilated rib over the barrel. His is chrome, with black rubberized grips. It holds six .357 magnum cartridges. A very common gun, I discovered.

  The glass case kept his guns dust-free. They all looked new. But when I opened one of the cases, I couldn’t smell any gun oil. It was as if he had a maid come in to polish them, instead of cleaning them himself.

  11

  The round-trip to Georgia took even less than the twelve hours I had expected; eleven hours and nineteen minutes, to be exact. I had plotted the route on a map by hand—I didn’t want anything on my computer.

  I rented a car using the credit card that had come in the mail to “Occupant” a couple of years ago. Usually, I would have shredded something like that, but it came on a day I had to go to New York on business, so I just stuffed it in my briefcase without looking at it.

  It was past midnight, and I couldn’t sleep. I opened my briefcase, figuring I might as well get some work done. That’s when I found the credit card.

  I don’t know why, but I filled out the application using the address of the mailbox rental place I had noticed on my way back from the meeting. There wasn’t any logical reason. I never “go with my gut,” like Tammi’s always saying. But it just felt right.

  The next morning, I went to that mailbox place and paid six months rental in advance. The next time I came back to New York, the credit card was waiting for me there. Apparently, the credit of the man I made up from scratch was good … at least up to the five thousand limit the papers that came with it said.

  I always test things to make certain they work properly. So I used the card to charge a few gadgets at different stores when I went on business trips. I always dropped them into different Dumpsters on my way back to the hotel.

  When I returned to the box the next month, a bill was waiting. I bought a money order with cash, and paid it.

  I kept up the rent on the box, but I hadn’t used the card for anything since. I told myself, if it didn’t work for what I wanted, I’d forget the whole thing. But, a couple of months later, the credit card company sent me a letter saying my limit had been raised to ten thousand dollars.

  12

  I drove my own car to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, and left it in the short-stay lot. Then I rented a car, putting down the credit card as security. They took it without blinking. The driver’s license I showed them was a complete fabrication, except for my photograph. Making one only takes a few minutes: all you need is a template, a computer, and a laminator.

  Then I drove straight to the first gun shop I saw in the little town I had already picked out. I made sure they had the twin to Roger’s Colt Python, brand-new, still in the box. Then I walked out.

  The man who walked in and bought the gun was a marginal human being. His nose was a mass of broken capillaries, his eyes were rheumy, and his whole body reeked of liquor and sweat. But the gun store took his cash. The fifty I paid him would probably hasten his imminent death—and he wouldn’t remember me.

  When I returned the rental car, I paid cash and they gave the credit card back to me. I used a pair of tin snips to turn it into cross-cut scraps of plastic. Then I did the same with the fake driver’s license. I dropped little pieces out the window as I drove back north—I was in North Carolina before they were all gone.

  13

  “Do you have to carry that bag around with you everywhere you go?” Tammi asked me the next Saturday.

  “It’s very useful,” I told her. “Ever since I bought it, I realize how much easier it is to walk around without a whole lot of stuff in my pockets.”

  “It looks like a handbag,” Tammi said, just short of a sneer. “Or maybe a purse.”

  “It’s a computer case,” I told her calmly, as I was putting my wallet and house keys in one of the side pockets. “It’s just the shoulder strap that you don’t like.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” she said, walking out of the bedroom.

  I had to use the bathroom a lot that night, but that didn’t attract attention—people were used to me doing that. When I finally had the corridor to myself, I slipped into Roger’s den and made the switch. My computer case had plenty of room for the latex gloves I wore to do it.

  14

  The Saturday after that, I was so nervous I almost spilled my first drink. When I went to use the bathroom, I peeked into Roger’s den. I could see the pistol—my pistol—was still in his gun case. It looked untouched, but there was no way to tell for sure.

  The party was over at around one-thirty in the morning. Or, at least, that’s when we left. Tammi walked around our house nude when we got back. She’d been doing that for the last few weeks. She said it made her feel free.

  She finally curled up on the couch to watch one of her DVDs. I waited for her to call my name, then I mixed her the vodka-and-tonic she told me to get for her before I went to bed.

  With what I put in her drink, she wouldn’t wake up until the middle of the next day. That gave me approximately two hours to get it done. I needed darkness, and it starts to get light pretty early in this part of the country, especially in the summertime.

  15

  Another Saturday night. It was mid-fall, but still warm. Roger was telling us that the stupid cops don’t have a clue about three murders. “Three! Right on the street. Within a ten-mile radius of where we’re standing right now. And … nothing! Mark my words, whoever did those killings knew exactly what he was doing. And there’ll be more.”

  Tammi was looking at him like he was a god … and she couldn’t wait to get down on her knees and pray.

  I had to use the bathroom.

  16

  It was Tammi who told me all about it. “I was standing right there when the cops knocked on the door. Detectives, I guess—they were wearing suits. Anyway, they told Roger they got an anonymous tip, and they had to follow up. They were kind of laughing when they said it, like it was some kind of nut who called, but their chief told them they had to go out anyway.

  “Roger invited them in, and they all sat down. I even made them a drink, like I was the hostess in a gentleman’s club. Everybody got a kick out of that.

  “But then one of them, an older fa
t guy, he asked if they could take a look at Roger’s gun collection. See, they knew what kind of gun had been used in all those murders, and …

  “Roger took them right back to his den. They didn’t mind me going along, too. The fat cop tapped on the glass and asked Roger if he could look at the gun he was pointing at. Roger told him to help himself—the cabinet wasn’t locked.

  “The cop took out this big pistol. Roger told him that it hadn’t been fired for years. The cop asked if they could take the pistol with them. ‘Just to rule it out,’ is what he said.

  “Roger winked at him, like they had a secret joke. The cops hung around for a while. After they left, Roger was his usual self. I mean, when I heard he’d been arrested, I swear I almost fainted!”

  17

  Even the top-shelf lawyer Roger hired couldn’t explain how the murder weapon the serial killer had used was sitting right in Roger’s own gun case. He tried to get the judge to suppress the evidence, but the cops both testified that Roger had invited them to look at the gun, and even to take it with them. They’d given him a receipt for it, with the serial number and all.

  The lawyer called Roger’s wife as an alibi witness, but she wasn’t any use to him—she said Roger sends her to her room at ten every night, because she has to get up so early every morning.

  When the prosecutor started asking her questions, Roger’s lawyer objected to just about every one.

  But none of that really mattered. Everyone remembered Roger’s speeches about highly evolved killers, and how only humans could qualify … because we had a choice of weapons.

  18

  I never asked Tammi what she had been doing in Roger’s house when the cops had come over that day.

  I never asked her why being terrified all the time had made her so excited, either.

  for Big Wayne

  THEY’RE ALL ALIKE

  1

  The sleek, dark coupe slipped confidently through the tight grid of narrow streets, weaving an intricate tapestry with the after-image of its taillights. Even past midnight, harsh heat still hovered over the asphalt. The humidity was so thick that a faint mist settled over the coupe’s tinted windows. Through that soft filter, the man watched the brightly dressed women posture and pose as he glided past. They made him think of the lush flowers he had once seen in a jungle, long ago. All that sweet fruit, ripe on the vine.