“I can’t. I’ve got a family obligation: dinner at my parents’. Kiss and Kill Cupid only strikes on Valentine’s Day. I’m safe until then. I’ll see you tomorrow at the office. You can tell me what the others thought of my articles. And we can talk more.”
She felt the urge to kiss him good-bye and pushed past it. They weren’t there yet. They had a lot of things to sort out. But one thing she knew for sure: she would kiss him again.
Kristy didn’t return to her apartment until eleven that night. Surprisingly, her roommate was home, shut in her bedroom with the television blaring. The place smelled like tofu and curry. Kristy wrinkled her nose. The kitchen was sparkling clean, and Berta had left a sticky note for her:
Found coffee grounds on the counter! Clean, clean, clean!
Berta described herself as “lovably chunky.” In her early twenties, she had pretty brown eyes nearly hidden by a fringe of black bangs and thick eyebrows. She’d taken one look at Kristy and proclaimed that she didn’t want a buddy, especially not a skinny blonde one—just a roommate. And that had been that. Whenever they did cross paths, Berta would invariably look her up and down and sniff. Whatever that meant. Her only clue was that once Berta had rolled her eyes, and uttered, “Pink.” This from a woman who wore black all the time.
Kristy wasn’t particularly fond of Berta, but the apartment was nice, close to the subway, a small park, and the best sushi restaurant in the city, at least in her opinion. She poured herself a half glass of white wine and closed herself in her room.
Immediately her body stiffened. The bed was mussed. Now, she wasn’t a make-the-bed-so-a-quarter-can-bounce-on-it kind of person. But her small room was neat, all her clothes hung up and organized by color, shoes in racks beneath them. She’d made her bed that morning, pulling the vibrant blue comforter covered with pink flowers over her pillows and tossing the shams over them.
Both shams were askew, and there was a big wrinkle at the foot of her bed. Fortifying herself with a sip of wine, she walked over to the second bedroom door and knocked. She could hear laughter and a comedienne, Margaret Cho, she thought, talking about a disastrous date.
Berta yanked open the door. “Yeah?”
“I was just wondering if you’d had some reason to go into my room today. Not that I’m accusing, mind you. In fact, I hope you did go in there.”
“I don’t have no business in your bedroom. I told you that from the outset, you don’t go in my room, I don’t go in yours. For no reason.”
“Okay, just checking. Good—”
The door had already closed.
I really need to find a new place. She went back to her room, looking around. Nothing was missing as far as she could tell. Most of her jewelry was costume, only valuable to her. Her clothes weren’t valuable to anyone but a clotheshorse who wore a size seven. That definitely excluded Berta.
She closed the curtain on her one window and got undressed. She wore frilly panties and a matching bra. Not for anyone but her. Until that day, she hadn’t thought anyone else would ever see her underthings.
She tossed her panties in a special basket for her lingerie and slid into silky pajamas. Dinner at her parents was nice, as always. She’d given them an extralong hug before she’d left. Not that she was worried.
Okay, she was a little worried. But with Adrian promising to watch over her, she could breathe a little sigh of relief. The hard part, though, was still to come.
He laid the pink, lacy thong underwear on his dresser, like a gift to the god of death. Next to that was Kristy’s picture, smiling, so beautiful. After her death, he would burn it and anything else he’d taken from her apartment. He knew the errors other serial killers had made. He wouldn’t make those dumb mistakes.
It had started when he was twelve, this desire to create a sensation by murder. He’d been walking home from school and seen a group of people gathered in front of an empty lot. Sirens wailed in the distance. He’d run over, nudging his way to the front of the crowd.
One woman had tried to stop him. “Oh, honey, you’re too young to see such a terrible thing.”
Of course, that had made him more determined. When he finally pushed through, he’d seen the most amazing sight: a woman’s body, sprawled naked on the weed-grown lot, her skin gray, her legs spread apart. Someone had done that to her, and he’d left her in a grotesque position to garner the most reaction.
He’d followed the news. It was all everyone talked about, every tidbit, every clue, who the woman was, her last day alive, even her last meal. Then, two months later, another woman turned up dead in the same way. People were whispering about a serial killer. He didn’t even know what that was, but he looked it up: someone who got off by killing people. He’d become fascinated by serial killers. Kill a couple of people, especially decent, beautiful women, and you were a freaking star. People were scared of you. They talked about you. The news reported on you, gave you a cool nickname. Sometimes they showed sketches. He devoured books and articles on Son of Sam, the Zodiac killer, and Danny Rollins.