Half an hour and two more beers later, Tyler stuffed Zoe’s keys into the pocket of his field jacket. Grabbed the duffel, walked to the door and peered out the peephole. The landing appeared empty, but from the peephole he couldn’t see the whole landing. Knowing from experience you could never be too careful, he wrapped his large right hand around his knife and opened the door. First just an inch. Then a little bit more. Okay. No one in the hall. He walked out and eased Zoe’s door closed behind him. He locked the door, pocketed the keys and pressed the button for the elevator.
He waited. He didn’t know why the people who’d renovated the place couldn’t have put in a faster elevator. The damned thing must be coming up from the sub-basement. Slightly more than ten seconds passed before he heard it approaching. Finally it stopped and the door slid open.
Tyler started to enter, then stopped short. Goddammit. Some round-faced Asian bitch was standing there looking back at him. Staring. Then frowning. Then reaching for the button to close the door.
Shit, thought Tyler, that’s all he needed now. Just when everything was going so well some stupid neighbor has to get in the way. The elevator door started sliding shut. Tyler’s hand slipped in just in time for the door to reopen. He held it open for her and smiled his friendliest smile.
“You must be the next-door neighbor,” he said pleasantly. “I’m with Zoe.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder back toward Zoe’s door. “Her new boyfriend.”
The woman visibly relaxed. “Oh. Hi,” she said, stepping out of the elevator. “I didn’t know she was dating again. I’m glad she is. I’m Annie Nakamura. Apartment 5R.”
She held out her hand. Tyler shook it. “Hi, Annie. Tyler Bradshaw.” Annie headed for her apartment. Tyler waited till she got to the door. Made his move just as she inserted the key. Sensing him approach, she turned. Her eyes widened. He pushed her against the wall. She opened her mouth to scream. But before she could get out a sound he punched her hard in the gut. She made an oof sound and doubled over. He kicked her legs out from under her and she fell to the floor, landing hard on her ass. But not hard enough to deactivate her. Still conscious, she reached for her bag. What did she have in there? Pepper spray? A stun gun? A firearm? Didn’t make much difference. At least not after he kicked the side of her head. Hard. Real hard. Like an NFL field goal kicker going for a fifty-yarder. Then, just because it felt so damned good, he kicked her again. This time his boot hit her temple and she lay still. The second kick turned out to be a major mistake because blood started leaking from Annie’s ear and onto the floor. Blood that would have to be cleaned up. Another fucking delay.
“Stupid bitch,” he snarled in sudden rage through gritted teeth. “You just hadda come home at exactly the wrong fucking time, didn’t you? No. You couldn’t just stay the fuck away another ten minutes so none of this would have happened.” He knelt down and felt her pulse. Still beating faintly. That was a surprise. He would have thought the kicks would have killed her. He put his hands around her neck and squeezed. Checked for a pulse. Finding one, he squeezed again, harder this time, until the beating finally stopped.
All right, next decision. What to do with the body. No way could he leave it in the hall. It would start to stink in a day or two and somebody, who knew who, a superintendent, a neighbor from the fourth floor, somebody would come up to have a look. Tyler tried to figure out the best way to keep the smell contained. If Nakamura didn’t have a roommate or a lover, he could probably just store her inside. Yeah. That’d be simplest. Way better than taking her with them. Her key was still in the lock. He opened the deadbolt and pushed the door open. Gave the place a quick look-see. Exactly the same undersized layout as Zoe’s apartment though not as nicely furnished. And a whole lot messier. All kinds of shit all over the place. On the upside, it looked like she lived here alone.
He went back to the landing, grabbed Annie Nakamura under the arms and dragged her inside. Not so easy. She had to weigh at least two hundred pounds and for reasons he could never figure out, people always felt heavier dead than alive. Once inside he locked the door. Okay. Where in the apartment was the best place to contain the smell of rotting female flesh? The fridge would be best. Female flesh frosting in the frigging fridge. Sort of alliteration. Good but not great. He tried to think of an F word to take the place of in. Filling. That would do it. Female flesh frosting fast filling up the frigging fridge. Still not great. Fuck it. He opened the fridge and looked inside. Tilted his head one way. Tilted it the other. Shit. No way was that ever going to work. Nakamura was not a small woman and her body would more than fill the fridge. Even if he took out all the food and all the shelves, he wouldn’t be able to stuff her in there. Zoe he probably could have been squeezed in, but not this one. He thought about it a minute. The kitchen seemed well equipped. He could always stick her in the bathtub and cut her up into smaller pieces. Wrap the pieces in individual baggies. Stick as much of her as he could in the freezer. The rest in the fridge. He was sure that’d work. But doing it would be a really yucky job. And it would also take time and create a hell of a mess. He tried to think of an alternate option. The bedroom closet seemed like the second-best choice. Maybe the only other choice if he wanted to seal in the smell. He walked into the bedroom and opened the closet door. Bigger than the fridge but still pretty small. Was it too small to hold Nakamura? Hard to tell since the space was filled to the brim with all kinds of shit. Not just clothes but boxes and other stuff. He stood there staring at the interior. Some quick mental calculations told him if he pulled out all the crap there ought to be just about enough room to cram her body into the empty space without having to cut off arms, legs or other appendages, which he didn’t want to do. Aside from anything else there would be more blood to clean up. Probably a hell of a lot more.
Decision made, Tyler grabbed handfuls of clothes, piles of shoes, assorted boxes and bags, and tossed them all on the bed. When the space was empty he went back to the living room, grabbed Annie by the feet, dragged her into the bedroom and stuffed her into the closet in a vertical position. No go. He took out the bar where she hung clothes. Did a quick calculation. Still not enough vertical space. He banged hard with his hand against the bottom of the shelf above the rod. Managed to loosen it enough to pull it up and out. He tossed the shelf on top of the other stuff on the bed. He pushed her in again. This time she fit. Just barely, but she did fit. Even so, he had to push hard against the door with his shoulder to get it to latch. That done, he debated the pros and cons of taking the time to cover the cracks around the door with duct tape. The pros were that the smell of rotting flesh would be better contained. The cons? More time spent not getting the hell out of the building and out of the city. Not really a tough decision. No real need to hurry. Zoe was out for a good three hours and if she woke up while they were driving north, well, nobody was gonna hear her inside the rug inside the car.
And if her noise got too annoying he could always give her another shot. Tyler pulled the tape from his backpack and double taped all the cracks around the closet door. Sides, top and bottom, hoping to make the space as airtight as possible and keep most of the smell of decomposition inside. Maybe all of it.
Nobody would look until she was reported missing. And he and Zoe would be long gone before that happened. Before anybody checked out the apartment, smelled the smell and found the body.
Next job: clean up the blood. Tyler found a bunch of towels in the bathroom, ran them under hot water, wrung them out, grabbed a bottle of Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner, went out onto the landing and washed up all the blood spatters he could find. At least he hoped it was all of them. He looked down critically. He couldn’t see any more blood anywhere. Not even in the cracks along the wall. He just hoped he got it all. Or at least enough so it wouldn’t be easily noticed. But that didn’t matter. If cops came and took the trouble to use luminol, they’d see the blood glowing blue in the dark, go into the apartment and find the body in a nanosecond anyway.
He then went back inside. He rinsed all the blood out of the towels. Wrung them out as best he could and then washed the entryway, the kitchen and the bedroom floors. Then he tossed the blood-soaked towels in the sink. Added liquid detergent and washed the towels till no more red came out. He wrung them out again and watched the bloody water swirl in a circular motion as it went down the drain. Mused about the fact that if he’d killed Annie Nakamura in the Southern Hemisphere, the water would have swirled the other way down the drain. He’d always found that particular fact kind of interesting. Never understood why it’d do that. If and when he had the time, Tyler told himself he ought to look it up. Anyway, he had too much to do to worry about that now. He found a big black trash bag under the bathroom sink and stuffed the wet towels into the bag along with his bloody latex gloves. Pulled a fresh pair from his backpack and put them on. He knew without looking it was 2:26 in the morning. He’d wasted forty-seven minutes screwing around with Annie Nakamura and, to be honest about it, he was kind of exhausted. He needed a break. And given what he had to put up with, what with killing Annie and stuffing her in the closet, he figured he owed himself one. Besides, he’d seen a bottle of Jim Beam sitting on a chest in the living room. Zoe didn’t know enough to keep bourbon in the house for guests but Nakamura did. Weird. He thought Japs only drank beer and sake. Goes to show.
He took a glass from the kitchen cupboard and poured himself three fingers’ worth of the Beam. Not the best bourbon in the world but hey . . . beggars can’t be choosers. He added some ice cubes and sat down cross-legged on the living room floor and leaned his back against the wall. He took one long slug. And then another. The burn of the whiskey felt good tracing its way down his throat. Within seconds he could feel some of the tension easing its way out of his body. Truth be told, he wouldn’t have minded just sitting there and finishing the whole damned bottle. Sadly, there was no way he could do that. He could feel the buzz of the bourbon now, and the last thing he needed was to be picked up for drunk driving. He poured the last half inch of bourbon down his throat and tossed the glass into the garbage bag. DNA and all that. Okay, now what? First check on Zoe. Make sure she was still totally out, which it turned out she was. Okay. It was now 2:47. The whole bullshit episode with neighbor Annie had cost him too goddamned much time. Not counting the twenty-one minutes he’d semi-wasted drinking the bourbon, though he could excuse that because the booze had been majorly therapeutic. He grabbed the garbage bag and took it with him as he left the apartment. He used Nakamura’s key to double lock the door and then threw the key in the garbage bag and tied it up tight.
Then, taking Zoe’s duffel bag and the garbage bag with him, he left the building and headed toward his car. He passed the same homeless guy Zoe had given the five bucks to. He was still lying on the sidewalk next to the steps. Guy didn’t look up. Probably dead to the world. Probably no one to worry about. Still, you never knew. He’d check the guy when Zoe was safely stashed in the car. He clicked his clicker, unlocking the car doors from twenty feet away. Opened the rear driver’s side door. He’d already lowered the rear seats and he stuffed the two bags inside, making sure to leave enough room for the Navajo rug with his dark-haired Desdemona inside. He looked around for any prying eyes or CCTV cameras. Seeing none, he got in the car and drove the short distance to Zoe’s building. Of course, there was still no available parking place right in front. Which was expected. Finding the perfect parking place in Manhattan was like winning the fucking lottery. Never happen. He double-parked the 4Runner directly in front of the building, put the blinkers on, which would hopefully signal to any passing cop that the car would be there for only a minute.
He went back in the building and took the elevator to five. Sniffed to see if he could smell anything from 5R. He couldn’t. Took a quick look around for blood. Couldn’t see any of that either. He unlocked the door to 5F. Went in and lifted Zoe’s rug-encased body over his shoulder fireman-style and left. He locked the door and, figuring he couldn’t squeeze the two of them into the elevator with Zoe in that position, carried her down the five flights of stairs.
He hoped nobody would notice him carrying her out. The last thing he needed was to have to kill another possible witness and waste time getting rid of yet another goddamned body.
As far as he could tell, nobody was on the street except the homeless guy. Of course this was New York, the city that never sleeps, so you couldn’t tell for sure. Any of the windows on the street could have a pair of prying eyes behind them. Still, as far as any watchers or cameras could tell, he was just a big guy in an Aussie bush hat carrying a rug. Weird time of night to be carrying one, but what the fuck? He opened the Toyota’s back hatch, wedged the rug in as best he could so it wouldn’t slide around. Closed the hatch.
Looked around. Took out his knife, opened it. He went back to where the homeless guy was lying. He could cut his throat and leave him to bleed to death in three seconds flat. Kicked him in the side. No reaction. Knelt down. Slid the edge of the knife blade against the guy’s throat. Looked into his face to see if he was feigning it. The guy stunk. Tyler felt bile rising in his gorge and spat it out in disgust right on the guy’s chest. Then finally with the knife against his neck the guy opened a pair of terrified eyes. Tyler stared at him for a moment.
Should he put the poor bastard out of his misery? Screw it. No need to leave a bleeding body in the middle of the sidewalk. Just get blood and stink on his hands and clothes and no doubt alert the cops that much sooner. He started back to the car. Stopped. Turned around. Looked at the old man staring at him with round, bloodshot eyes. Took a-dollar bill from his pocket and slipped it under the blanket just where Zoe had put the five. This guy needed it more than he did.
Ten minutes later Tyler and the woman he loved were heading north on the FDR Drive. This time, he told himself, things would be different. This time. With this woman. Zoe would love him back. She wasn’t like the others he’d loved. With her it wouldn’t be just pretend. He was sure of it. And no one would ever take her away from him. One way or another, she was his. To have and to hold. To love and to cherish. In sickness and in health. Till death do them part. Which could be tonight, tomorrow or next week if she started giving him too hard a time. But he sure as hell hoped it wouldn’t be. He’d much prefer it if they could spend a happy lifetime together. That’s what he really wanted. But he supposed that was up to her. He’d killed before and knew that if she forced the issue, he could and would kill again.