Chapter Thirty-five
The driver made a face as she looked from Henry to her iPhone, and then back at Henry again. “This photo doesn’t look like you,” she said.
She was right. The photo didn’t look much like him because it wasn’t him. The picture Henry used when he registered last night for the ride-sharing service Pooled was of a man at least ten years younger than him, sixty pounds lighter, and with much thicker and longer hair. Of course, Henry used a fake name also. Still, if someone squinted hard enough at the photo, he might be able to imagine this man becoming Henry if he were to go completely to pot.
“A confession. That picture was taken before I got sick,” Henry said in a pleasant enough tone. “A thyroid disorder. I’ve gained some weight since then.”
“You really should update your photo. It’s a safety issue.”
Henry’s pleasant smile dampened with a touch of melancholy, showing that he’d been properly chastised. “You’re a hundred percent right,” he admitted. “My vanity on display.”
The driver stared at Henry for several more seconds before making up her mind. “Where are you heading?” she asked.
“East Hollywood.”
Henry brought his gym bag into the car with him. He started to give her the address, but she stopped him and demanded that he enter it into the app, which he did. Once the car pulled away from the curb, he commented that he didn’t blame her for being overly cautious. “The stories in the news about that maniac on the loose are frightening,” he said.
“They are,” she agreed, a noticeable shiver running through her.
“But I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. They say he’s going to be killing a blonde girl next. Unless you’re dying your hair?”
“Nope. I’m a natural brunette.” She laughed nervously. “Finally an advantage to not being a blonde in Los Angeles.”
“I can’t speak about that,” Henry said. “My wife’s a blonde, but we’re not from here.”
“I figured as much. New York, right?”
“Myself, Long Island originally. My wife’s from Florida. But we’ve been living in Portland, Oregon, for a number of years. If I knew you were going to be having this trouble down here, we’d have stayed there, especially since according to the news last night this maniac also likes to kill men my age who are somewhat overweight, which I am. Okay, maybe I’m more than somewhat overweight, but who knows whether this killer has a cut-off limit for what his male victims have to weigh? Or that the killer is even a he? Maybe the killer’s a she.” He smiled playfully and added, “Maybe I should be the one worried sitting back here.”
She laughed at that. “Oh sure, you’ve got a lot to worry about with me. And I guarantee you the killer’s a guy. No woman would be doing what he’s doing.”
“You might be right,” Henry said, smiling to himself at seeing how much more at ease she had become. She only saw him as a doddering, fat, middle-aged man, and certainly no threat to her. Yes, he was quite pleased with how this was going, especially given how the news last night made it so much harder for him to get his next victim.
Of course, finding a twenty-something year old full-figured blonde to kill wasn’t the problem. Los Angeles had a ridiculous number of those types of girls for Henry to grab, and picking one off a street corner would be as easy as picking an orange from an orange grove, at least if he didn’t have to worry about getting caught. With all the surveillance cameras out there, hidden and otherwise, and now every twenty-something blonde girl looking at guys like him as potential deranged killers, getting caught was a very real worry. Henry knew he had to be more cautious than earlier, and equally important, he had to be smarter about how he went about it. If it wasn’t for Sheila (well, if it wasn’t for Sheila, he wouldn’t be doing this in the first place, would he?), he wouldn’t much care if he went to prison or simply just died. But Sheila needed him, and because of that when he grabbed a girl he had to be a hundred percent sure it was safe doing so.
The idea he was now working on had come to him yesterday when he was stopped at a red light in Santa Monica. He had watched a car pull up to a twenty-something girl loaded with packages, and even though it wasn’t a taxi, and the driver and the girl didn’t seem to know each other, she had gotten into the car anyway. Henry had rolled down his window and heard enough of their conversation to realize that it was some sort of ride-sharing service; something that she had ordered with her iPhone. He had heard about these companies but never paid much attention to them. In Portland he walked everywhere, and in Los Angeles he drove everywhere. Besides, he was an old-fashioned guy, and if he needed to pay for a ride, he’d rather use a taxi. But when he saw that girl get into the car, it gave him an idea of how he could grab his next victim. Last night, he read up on one of these services called Pooled to understand how it worked, downloaded the app to his iPhone, and registered with a fake name and bogus photo. Earlier today he bought a blonde wig to make it even easier to find his next victim. After all, how would Sheila know that he’d put a blonde wig on the girl before cracking open her skull?
As Henry sat back, he was amazed at how easy this was working out. When he had pressed a button on the app signaling that he wanted a ride, he had no intention of making his driver his next victim since he expected it to be a guy. His only purpose for trying out the service was to observe in person how it worked since he expected to find his victim by pretending to be a driver. But when the app sent him a picture of his driver and he saw it was a girl the right age, he thought, why not? He had the blonde wig in his gym bag, and as long as her body was close enough to what Sheila needed, why not? As it turned out, her body was exactly what Sheila wanted. He might feel a little guilty draping the blonde wig over her head and pulling that type of deception on his wife, but he’d be able to live with that.
The address he had given her was to a shuttered nightclub on a dusty stretch of road that had nothing nearby. Henry had passed it when he had driven to see Madame Asteria, and after he left her psychic storefront he drove back to the empty building to give it a closer look. The back lot behind the building would be deserted enough for him to do what he needed to do, but it was also obvious that power had been cut to the building and that it had no active security system. He’d easily be able get inside of it and have more privacy if he desired.
As the car approached the shuttered nightclub, the driver asked him if he was sure of the address.
“The place looks out of business,” she said.
“It is. I’m thinking of buying the building and want to give the place a looksee. Pull up in back, okay?”
“Sure. Oh, do you want me to send you the picture I took of you?”
Henry wasn’t sure he heard that right. “Excuse me?”
“I always take photos of my fares and send them to my dispatcher. It’s a safety precaution. The picture I took of you is pretty good, and would make a good replacement for what you registered on Pooled.”
She reached back and handed him her iPhone, which showed the photo she’d taken. Henry hadn’t even realized she had done this. He felt a numbness spreading along his forehead as he handed the device back to her. He tried to decide whether she showed it to him because she was suspicious of him or was just being friendly. Whichever it was, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to be able to kill her. Just as well. He might as well look for a blonde victim so he wouldn’t have to lie to his wife later.
“No thanks,” he said. “I look like I’ve got three chins in that photo.”
“You really need to replace what you’ve got up there. I guarantee you that you’re going to find drivers who won’t pick you up because of it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Henry said curtly.
She parked behind the building. A perfect, isolated location, all for nothing. He wouldn’t even be able to use it with another victim since this woman would now make the connection.
“Do you want me to wait for you?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said.
Since it was expected, he got out of the car and made a show of inspecting the building as he walked around it. When he returned to her car, he asked her to take him back to the same spot where she had picked him up. He almost recommended that she buy herself some lottery tickets since it was clearly her lucky day, but he wisely bit his tongue instead.