It was dark. It might have been the middle of the day, but it was always dark here. The noise of the traffic outside had disappeared. The birds had stopped singing. Her chest had stopped heaving. His worries were gone.
He stood over her naked, quivering body as the last lights of consciousness began to ebb away from her battered shell. The odd low murmur escaped from her bruised and bloodied lips as the blood in her veins thickened and began to resist its final circuit. Her eyes rolled in her head, turning milky as he smirked, before jerking his head back and propelling a globule of spittle at her, watching it hit her eyeball and cascade down her lacerated cheek. Good shot.
She would be no bother any more. She was too close to the truth. Far too close. Her idle threats had pushed him over the line. There was no way she could have been allowed to live. Not with what she knew. He wouldn’t do second-best, and certainly not to her. She thought she held the cards, but she was wrong. Now, as her life slowly slipped away from her, he hoped that she knew it. He was sure she did. He felt joyous, powerful at the act that he had committed. He felt good.
The sirens that bellowed and swirled as they raced past on their way to another emergency, completely unaware of the scene they’d just driven past, served only to reinforce his feeling that he was above the law. He was the law. The law had won.
He stepped backwards over the concrete floor and felt for the wooden handle. Jerking his hand upwards, he lifted the sledgehammer from the floor with a deep scraping on the rough concrete below. With a wry smile, he lifted it up above his head and brought it crashing down on her skull.