Chapter 54

Woodland Hills, 1999

Travis Smalley accepted Joanne Krate’s offer for coffee, and while she busied herself, he sat at the kitchen table and munched on an oatmeal cookie she had offered him. She had already mentioned that she was divorced and living in the house with her teenage daughter. Smalley guessed she was in her forties. A plump, moonfaced woman with mousy brown hair who couldn’t shut her mouth if her life depended on it. Smalley smiled pleasantly as she rushed around the kitchen to get out her best china and add sugar to a bowl and two percent milk to a creamer, all the while blabbering away about all the hidden benefits of renting her guesthouse.

“It’s such a safe neighborhood, Mr. Smalley. Or can I call you Travis?”

His mind had wandered and he’d been imagining himself doing terrible things to this woman. He snapped back to attention. Somehow he played back in his mind what she had just asked.

He gave her a naughty smile and said, “Joanne, I’d be insulted if you called me anything else.”

She tittered. No exaggeration. She actually brought her hand to her mouth and tittered.

“Travis, I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a clean-cut, respectable man in my kitchen for a change. My ex, well, all I can say is good riddance. And I’m being charitable at that.” She laughed, but bitterness soured her expression. “What was I talking about before? Oh yes, I remember. About how convenient we are to almost anywhere. You can get onto the 101 in less than three minutes, and that will take you right to downtown LA. Really, Travis, I can’t think of a better value anywhere in the valley.”

She poured them both coffee and joined him at the table. She stopped talking long enough to take a bird-like sip, and then she was back at it, giving him the hard sell, breathlessly telling him how easily he’d be able to drive anywhere from the house. Goddamn, he’d enjoy shutting her up for good; well, after first having her scream for her life. But he had come here to rent a guesthouse that would give him the privacy he needed, and the pickings in his price range were slim. This one would do nicely. The cul-de-sac the house was situated on had little traffic, and the guesthouse provided a secluded entrance in the back—if you had the audacity to call the four-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot apartment added to the small ranch-style home a guesthouse. So as tempted as he might have been to unleash his hidden demon on this blathering woman, he had already decided he wouldn’t be killing anyone until the seventeen-year anniversary of when the Nightmare Man took his first victim. That was his own idea, not Blount’s. The symmetry seemed too perfect to do anything other than that. Besides, he had already waited this long, what was two more years? He accepted that for now he’d have to keep his desires tamped down, just as he’d been doing ever since Blount handed him this gift, and keep reminding himself that the anticipation would make the killings that much more delicious. The next two years were for planning only, even when he met someone like Joanne Krate who so badly needed to be tortured and killed.

She was still going on about what a great deal the guesthouse would be for someone like himself when she was interrupted by the kitchen door swinging open. An awkward-looking teenage girl walked in. This had to be Joanne Krate’s daughter. Smalley guessed she was thirteen. Skinny as a stick in her jeans and T-shirt, but she had her mom’s round, puffy face that was made even puffier thanks to a mouthful of braces. Also like her mom, she had a slightly upturned nose and mousy brown hair, except hers was pulled into pigtails. She stopped when she spotted Smalley and looked timid as opposed to shy as she glanced down at her feet as if she’d die of embarrassment if she didn’t. Smalley smiled seeing how self-consciously she pulled at her fingers, as if she had no idea what to do with her hands.

“Rosalyn, honey,” Mrs. Krate said. “This is Mr. Smalley. He’s thinking about renting our guesthouse. Wouldn’t that be swell?”

Smalley got up from the chair and extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Rosalyn,” he said, grinning like the cat who’d swallowed the canary.

Her blush deepened. When she took his hand, Smalley noticed that she had especially slender and delicate fingers. His smile broadened as he imagined using needle-nose pliers to rip out her nails. He could only imagine how small her toes would be. But this was only a nice fantasy. If he rented the guesthouse he wouldn’t be able to make her one of his victims, at least not in 2001. He could perhaps keep track of her and choose her when the Nightmare Man struck again in 2018. The anticipation of that would be quite something.

“I hope you rent our guesthouse, Mr. Smalley,” Rosalyn said softly. She peeked up at him, and he realized she wasn’t as timid as he had first thought.

“Please call me Travis.” He laughed. “All my friends do.”

This time when she peeked at him her lips were twisted into a secretive little smile. Yes, not so timid at all, are we?

“Okay, Travis,” she said.

“Travis is a security expert,” Mrs. Krate said, beaming.

“I don’t know if expert is the right word,” Smalley said with a modest, aw-shucks grin. “But I will be managing security for five apartment buildings here in the valley.”

“He used to be a prison guard!” Mrs. Krate said. “Imagine the stories Travis could tell us!”

Smalley said, “They’d curl your toes.”

Both mother and daughter gasped at that. He was exaggerating. He had stories of his own little cruelties that would sicken them, but he only had one story that would curl their toes, or at least curdle their blood, and he was keeping that one to himself.

Mrs. Krate put down her coffee cup. It was time to get serious, and so she put on her serious face. “Travis, dear, I’d feel so much safer having a man of your character and expertise staying here, enough so that I’m willing to drop the monthly rent to four hundred and twenty-five a month if that will help you make up your mind.”

“I’m sold,” Smalley said. He got careless and let his smile become something wolfish. He quickly corrected it. Mrs. Krate didn’t notice, and if Rosalyn did, she kept it to herself. He added, “How could I pass up the opportunity of living in the vicinity of two such lovely ladies?”

Mrs. Krate tittered again. Rosalyn smiled in a way that showed he had completely misjudged her earlier. She wasn’t timid at all. He also realized he had to be careful with her.

He decided then he would someday kill her. He would let the anticipation build into something nearly unbearable, but when the day finally came, it would be pure, unadulterated bliss.