Chapter Twenty-four
The day’s events had left Henry shaken, and he decided he could use a drink or two to settle his nerves. On the way back to Simi Valley, he got off the highway in North Hills and pulled into the parking lot for the first bar that he spotted. The place was mostly empty, and he took a booth.
“Hon, you look like you’ve been having a rough day.”
This came from the waitress. A cute blonde who couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five. Full-figured too. Henry flashed her his most charming smile. “You know the expression man plans God laughs?” he asked, chuckling softly over the futility of anyone ever believing that they could control anything. “It’s been one of those days. Do you serve food?”
“Sure do, hon. Want me to get you a menu?”
“No need if you serve steak. Bring me your best sirloin, medium rare, with mashed potatoes, and a pint of something local. A pilsner would be perfect. Surprise me.”
“I’ll make sure the cook gets the steak on the grill right away, and I’ll be back soon with a really nice pilsner that’s brewed in Calabasas.”
Henry watched her as she walked away, admiring her from the back. A very cute girl, and perfect for what he needed. Later he would leave a hefty tip. Not enough so she’d talk about it (or about him) to her coworkers, but enough so that she’d remember him. If it were at all possible, he would’ve liked to grab her tonight when she left work, except that would be far too dangerous. But that was okay. When he was leaving Santa Monica, he observed what had to be a very common occurrence these days, and that sparked an idea for how he’d be able to get his next victim. If that didn’t work out, he could focus on this waitress. He was sure with a little planning he’d be able to grab her in the next day or two if it came to that.
She brought over the beer as promised, and he engaged her in small talk about what a long day it had been, getting her to talk about her day also, and coaxing a few laughs out of her over some of his corny jokes. The same when she brought over his steak. He continued chatting her up and joking around when he ordered his second beer, and then a third. By this point she had volunteered quite a bit about herself, including what time she had to show up at work, and how much she hated driving home in the dark when her shift ended at one each night. Yeah, she wouldn’t be hard at all, Henry thought. If it came to that.
The three beers and the steak were helping him to relax, and he would’ve liked to have ordered a fourth beer. It was comfortable in the bar, very pleasant, actually, and he enjoyed chatting and joking around with Brenda, the blonde waitress, even if she might end up very soon being his next victim. She was certainly nice on the eyes, no denying that! But it was already past six, and once again he had left Sheila alone without arranging for anyone to look in on her since he didn’t want people to know that he’d been gone all day. Yet the idea of having another beer was tempting. He was dreading going home and finding Sheila sitting in her filth, and much worse, seeing her loathing and those unspoken accusations in her eyes. Or if she actually deigned to speak to him, hearing her utter disgust for him in her voice.
Sighing, he signaled Brenda over, and asked for the check. When she returned with it, he gave her sixty dollars on a thirty-nine-dollar bill, telling her to keep the change for putting up with all of his bad jokes. From the way she touched his arm and smiled at him when she thanked him, he had no doubt that if he approached her late tomorrow night in the parking lot, she might be surprised to see him but she wouldn’t be frightened by him. She also wouldn’t know what hit her, at least not until it was too late. If it came to that.
* * *
No surprise that Sheila was where he had left her. Where else was she going to be? And of course she had soiled herself. Henry could smell it the moment he stepped into the house. He switched the TV to a local news channel, and carried Sheila to the bathroom so he could undress and clean her, and she refused to look at him while he did this. Once he had her washed and into a freshly laundered pair of pajamas he brought her to the kitchen and sat her in her wheelchair.
“What’s it going to be for dinner, huh?” he asked. He waited for her to answer him, and when she didn’t, he said, “Okay, how about I switch things up and make us some breakfast for dinner? Scrambled eggs and sausage? French toast?” Again no answer, so he set about making enough scrambled eggs and sausage for the two of them. Even though he’d had a steak dinner only a little while ago, he was already feeling like he could eat again, probably because it had been such a stressful and hectic day. Besides, he didn’t want Sheila to have to dine alone.
The sausages were frying and he’d just cracked six eggs into a large bowl when he heard the words Skull Cracker from the TV. That drew him into the living room and he saw that the sort of funny-looking but tough guy from yesterday’s press conference was giving another one. Henry had forgotten his name, but they soon showed it on the bottom of the screen. Morris Brick. They next brought up on the screen pictures of Hawes and the apartment building where she had lived, with Brick asking for anyone who had seen her outside her building with a man today, most likely around twelve thirty, to call the hotline number on the screen. It surprised Henry when after that they showed a picture of Susan and again asked for calls from anyone who might’ve seen Susan accompanied by a man over the last few weeks, and also if they’d seen a man acting suspiciously today around one forty-five inside the Santa Monica parking garage where Susan was found dead.
“That was damn fast,” Henry muttered to himself. They’d switched back to Brick again, and Henry found himself staring intently at the man. You’re good, Brick, he thought, I’ll give you that, and I’ll be waiting with baited breath to see what you come up with next.
That last thought was with a forced bravado, because he couldn’t be sure whether he’d been seen at either the parking garage or with Susan, although he thought it unlikely. If he had been, so what? How could they track him from a police sketch to his home in Simi Valley? Certainly not if anyone’d spotted his license plates today since he had waited until he returned home and had pulled his car into the garage before replacing the stolen plates with the real ones. If the police did come up with a sketch that looked anything like him, he’d pack himself and Sheila up and they’d move somewhere else. Still, though, this Brick character was proving himself dangerous, and these new developments made Henry nervous enough that he only half paid attention as Brick warned that blonde women in their early twenties needed to be especially vigilant in the coming days, and to call the police if they notice anything out of the ordinary, especially if a stranger tries to get them alone. When his nerves calmed down enough so that he was able to make sense of what Brick had said, he snorted loudly.
“Fat chance. You’re wasting your breath with that warning, Brick,” he whispered to himself. “Plenty of young blonde girls out there for me to grab no matter what you have to say.”
He started smelling smoke then, and it took him a few seconds to realize where it was coming from. “Ah jeeze,” he swore as he rushed back into the kitchen and saw that the sausages had burnt to a crisp and were smoking up the room. He used a potholder to grab the frying pan and had to scrape the ruined sausage patties out of the pan with a spatula. “Why didn’t you give me a shout that these were burning?”
Sheila didn’t bother answering him as she sat bug-eyed, her savaged face twisted into a deathlike rictus.
Henry had had enough. “It’s not my fault!” he shouted. “None of this is my fault, so quit acting like it is!”
He took several deep breaths as his anger subsided into guilt. “I’m sorry, okay?”
Still not a word from Sheila. Not even a blink from her, which Henry found amazing given all the smoke in the room. He opened up several windows, and then set about frying up a new batch of sausages, and once he had those underway, he prepared the scrambled eggs the way Sheila liked them. After he had the food spooned out onto two plates and her sausages cut up into tiny pieces, he rolled Sheila over to the kitchen table, placed a fork in her somewhat useable hand, and was relieved that she at least consented to eat. It took her over forty minutes to finish up what he had given her since she needed to chew her food into a fine paste before she could swallow, but once she was done he rolled her out into the living room and placed her in front of the TV. Then he hooked up his iPhone to the television’s video feed and played the recording of what he had done to Gail Hawes. When it was over, he could see that Sheila’s deathlike rictus had become more rigid.
“What is wrong with you?” she cried.
While Henry preferred Sheila talking to staying silent, it was always a weird effect when she did talk due to her paralysis on her right side, and after over five years Henry still hadn’t gotten used to it. With only the left side of her mouth moving, it left her voice both hollow and heavy, and it left her speaking as slowly as she ate, like it was a great effort on her part to push out each word.
Henry felt his cheeks reddening as he looked at his wife. “I’m doing the best I can,” he stated stubbornly.
“That is not who we agreed on!”
“I had to improvise,” Henry explained. “That one saw me with Susan, so I had to switch things up. What’s the big deal?”
“It’s not the one I wanted! You are botching everything up!”
Sheila was furious with him. He could see that with the way the left part of her mouth twisted into a pinched, spiteful grimace. It always made him feel awful when she was furious with him.
“I had no choice so you’ll just have to be satisfied with her,” he said.
“What about that girl? Why didn’t you record killing that girl?”
He wasn’t about to tell her about the reality show. If he did, Sheila would find a way to blame that on him! “She was too old,” he said. “At least forty, maybe older.”
“You can’t do anything right! You’re useless!”
Henry could’ve argued that she had approved of Madame Asteria when he had showed her the psychic’s website, and later the pictures he had taken of her, but he knew he couldn’t argue with his wife when she got like this. He showed her on his iPhone a picture he had taken of the blonde waitress from earlier.
“I can grab her tomorrow night,” he said.
“Before then.”
“I can’t do it before then. It’s impossible.”
“I said before then!”
“I’ll find someone else tomorrow morning, okay? Someone who looks like her. They’re a dime a dozen here in LA. Okay?”
Henry found himself holding his breath as he waited for Sheila to say something. She could be so damn unreasonable when she wanted to be.
“Kill that Susan first! Like you were supposed to!”
If he told her how he had snuck up on Susan and broke her neck in a quick attack, it would infuriate her. She would never forgive him for not breaking open Susan’s skull with a chisel and hammer right there in the parking lot and digging out her brains.
“I’m not doing that. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the one I killed for you.”
“If you don’t, I won’t eat again! You will have to watch me die. Then you will be all alone!”
Henry crossed his arms over his chest. “Unless you accept the one I killed, I won’t kill a girl for you tomorrow.”
He was playing a game of chicken with his wife, but it was one that he knew he had the upper hand in, and he could see in her eyes the exact moment when she gave in.
“We have a deal?” he asked.
She gave him that angry pinched look again that made him feel so small, but she reluctantly agreed that they had a deal as long as he didn’t screw this next one up also.