Deranged

The lights were off when Morris unlocked the front door to his house, which made sense since it was three minutes before midnight. He was tired and hungry, and his stomach had been rumbling for hours. Earlier he had to snack on something if he was going to make it through the press conference without passing out from hunger, and he knew Natalie would’ve wanted him to have something healthy, like an apple, while he was craving potato chips, so he compromised and had both. But that was five hours ago, which meant all he’d had that day other than the apple and chips was a tuna-salad sandwich. Now as he opened up the refrigerator, he prayed silently that he’d find a take-out bag from the Banyan Tree Grill waiting for him. When he saw the bag with the restaurant’s logo, he silently whispered his thanks.

Inside the bag was an order of the pan-roasted chicken and a slice of chocolate espresso cake, and, as Natalie had threatened, a small spoonful of the cake had been dug out, really only a nibble. Of course, he wasn’t about to eat any dessert with espresso in it after midnight, he’d save that for breakfast tomorrow morning, but it would be something to look forward to. Morris again whispered his thanks as he moved the chicken into a pan so he could reheat it. He had just closed the oven door when he heard a soft padding behind him, and then the excited piglike grunts his bull terrier, Parker, made.

Parker wagged his tail furiously while his rear end wiggled like a crazed whirling dervish, all the while the dog making more of his piglike grunts. Morris got down on one knee so Parker could push his cement-hard head into Morris’s stomach while Morris scratched Parker behind his ears.

“You just woke up, huh?” Morris commented in a soft whisper as the dog stretched and nearly unhinged his jaw as he yawned. “Let me guess, you smelled the food and thought you could weasel a midnight snack out of me?”

Another of Parker’s piglike grunts.

“Yeah, well, not the Banyan Tree Grill chicken. Sorry pal, you’re out of luck there.”

“Who are you kidding?”

Morris looked back to see that Natalie had joined him in the kitchen. She had a tan cloth robe wrapped around her slender body and fuzzy pink slippers covering her small feet. At ninety-five pounds she wasn’t about to make a lot of noise moving about the house, but it was because of her slippers that Morris didn’t hear her enter the kitchen.

“Ha! If Parker thinks he’ll wear me down, he’ll soon find out who’s boss,” Morris said. “He’s not getting a morsel of that chicken.”

The dog let out another grunt over hearing his name. Natalie laughed. “We both know who’s boss, and we both know you’ll give in like you always do,” she said. “Although I can’t blame you. We’ve got a champion moocher on our hands.”

“We’ll see.” Morris gave Parker’s muzzle several rubs with his palm, then straightened up. “I’m reheating the chicken at three fifty for fifteen minutes. Sound good?”

“I’d add two ounces of water so it doesn’t dry out, and cover it with some foil.”

Morris embraced his wife and gave her a kiss. Parker, jealous of the attention, attempted to bull his way between them.

“I tried to be quiet,” he said. “I apologize if I woke you. And thanks for picking up the food.”

“You didn’t wake me. I couldn’t sleep. Hon, you better take care of the chicken, otherwise it might be too dry for Parker. We both know he’s getting at least half of it.”

There were two grunts this time: the piglike one from the dog, and a harrumph of protest from Morris. He left his wife so he could add the water and the foil to the pan he was reheating, then sat down at the kitchen table. Parker plopped down by his feet while his wife got behind him and kneaded her thin, delicate fingers into his neck muscles.

“Did Rachel accompany you?” Morris asked.

“She was busy studying so I took Claudia.”

Claudia Franzetti was an osteopath who had an office in the same building where Natalie had her therapist office. “A nice woman,” Morris said. “I hope you had an enjoyable dinner.”

“Delicious. The swordfish was excellent.”

Morris raised an eyebrow at that. “You didn’t order their famous pan-roasted chicken? Sacrilege!”

Natalie dug her fingers a bit deeper into Morris’s neck muscles. “I hate to break this to you, hon, but not everybody has to order their favorite dish every single time they dine out. You do, of course. You’re such a creature of habit. At Banyan Tree, it’s the pan-roasted chicken, at Bernie’s Deli, the corned beef on rye, at Seven Star, the kung pao chicken, at Masala Dhaba, the tandoori lamb, at Lucca’s, the lasagna.”

“It’s not so much that I’m a creature of habit, it’s more that I know what I like,” Morris argued. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. “That feels really good. You’ve got magic fingers, Nat.”

“The reason you married me.”

“One of the reasons. The fact you’re a knockout didn’t hurt.”

Natalie moved her hands down to Morris’s shoulders. “You’re so tense,” she said. “A little less so after working on your neck, but still it’s almost like I’m trying to massage stone.” Her voice grew softer as she said, “I’m surprised you took on this investigation. I thought you were done with serial killers. Especially after that Vincent Rubosto monster. That case took so much out of you.”

Vincent Rubosto was the Hillside Cannibal, and was a particularly noxious and aberrant personality who’d murdered and ate the internal organs of all eleven of his victims. Morris shrugged. “The name of my company is Morris Brick Investigations. We handle investigation,” he said.

“Don’t be smart with me. What you’ve just signed up for is a far cry from the movie and TV consultations and the handful of background checks and burglary cases you’ve been working on.”

“I know. I certainly didn’t expect to be offered something like this, and if you’d asked me yesterday if I’d willingly take on another serial-killer case, I would’ve said no. But when this was presented to me, I couldn’t turn it down.”

“Why not?”

“The idea of stopping this psycho seemed too important.”

“Hmm,” Natalie murmured as she considered this. “I could see how you’d especially feel that way after spending a day watching them film that idiotic movie. Is the rest of your team onboard with taking on another serial killer?”

“I called them, and yeah, they all want to do this.”

Natalie continued to rub Morris’s shoulder for several more minutes before announcing that her hands were getting tired. She joined Morris at the table, and looked preoccupied as she sat across from him.

“Don’t worry,” Morris said. “I won’t let the investigation wear me down.”

“You did those other times.”

“Yeah, I did.” He winked at his wife. “But I’d like to think I’ve learned something over the years about taking these cases too personally. I’ll make sure to keep more distance this time, I promise. Besides, I’ve got a feeling that we’ll be catching this psycho soon.”

Natalie looked at Morris as if she didn’t fully believe him on either count, but whether she was too tired or thought it would be pointless, she kept her arguments to herself. After several minutes of silence, Morris asked whether she had warned Rachel not to dye her hair blonde.

“She’s not going to dye her hair.”

Morris knew his wife too well to know what she was really saying, and he felt a jumpiness in his stomach. “You didn’t warn her,” he complained.

“No, I didn’t, and for good reason. All I told Rachel was that MBI was hired to investigate today’s murder in Venice, and that you’d be taking part in the press conference the police department was giving.” Natalie showed Morris a weary smile, and added, “If I had told Rachel anything else, she would’ve cross-examined me until she had ferreted out the truth. And if I had told her anything about this Skull Cracker Killer targeting blonde girls, and she knew the city wasn’t warning other girls about that, she would’ve dyed her hair blonde in protest. As it was, our daughter demonstrated her future prosecutorial skills by giving me the fifth degree over why the city would hire a private firm to investigate a murder. You should be amazed that I didn’t crack.”

Morris knew his wife was right. If Rachel had gotten even the slightest hint that blonde girls in their early twenties were more at risk of being targeted by this killer, she would be dying her hair out of solidarity. There was no reason for him to feel the uneasiness he was feeling. They didn’t even know yet that this was SCK, which was why they had decided only to warn the public about taking necessary safety precautions, instead of panicking every woman in her forties and every blonde girl in her twenties. Besides, there was no reason Rachel would dye her hair, even though she had done it twice when she was an undergraduate student at Stanford—once dying her hair green, another time a shocking pink. And even if she were a blonde and this was SCK, the chances of her being picked by him given the thousands of other blonde girls in Los Angeles were minuscule. Still, as tiny as the possibility was, the idea of either Natalie or Rachel being targeted by SCK freaked him out. Even if he accepted that he was only being paranoid and that his wife and daughter were going to be safe, knowing that women like them were potential victims of this psycho angered him, and that was also partly why he took the job.

As Morris sat momentarily lost in his thoughts, he looked up and saw that Natalie now understood why he wanted to hunt down SCK. He was going to explain himself, but he was saved by the bell when the oven timer went off. He got up from the table so he could get the reheated pan-roasted chicken that he’d been dreaming of all day. Parker rolled to his feet and let out one of his pig grunts, knowing he was going to be getting his midnight snack.