Richie Cordova wiped the blood from his shaking hands. His hands weren’t all that was shaking. His whole body was twitching. Like someone had shoved a live lamp cord up his ass.
Richie knew a few guys who might think that felt good, but he felt sick.
He turned toward the nun—or what was left of her—still tied in the chair, and quickly turned away. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t believe how he’d let himself get so out of control.
No…not out of control. In control. Complete control. Of her. It had thrown some sort of switch in him, made him do things he’d never dreamed he was capable of thinking up, let alone doing.
He’d planned to kill her. That was a sure thing. Ain’t no way she was leaving once he got her here. But he’d wanted to punish her some first, for ruining his game, and to get her to tell him all about it, sing the song he wanted to hear.
And she’d sung. Held out for an amazingly long time, but finally she’d started to sing. Oh, how she sang. Told him all about meeting a guy named Jack in a place called Julio’s and hiring him to get back the pictures of her and Metcalf, how Metcalf didn’t know nothing about it, how she’d called him and told him not to worry no more. She’d sung about how she hadn’t known Richie’s name. Only this guy Jack knew that and he wouldn’t tell her.
Richie should have stopped then and ended it. He had what he wanted, so the thing to do was slit her throat and call it a night. He’d had the razor all set. Unlike the .38s in his pistol, a razor couldn’t be traced.
But he hadn’t used it. Because he couldn’t stop—didn’t want to stop. He had control, he was in the driver’s seat and he didn’t want to use no brakes, didn’t want to let go of the steering wheel.
Only when the last of her life had leaked away did he come out of it. Then he’d stepped back and looked at what he’d done. And blew lunch.
He felt a little better now, but not much. It suddenly came to him that this was partly Neva’s fault. A lot of the time he spent working on the nun he’d been thinking of his ex-wife, seeing her face. Yeah. Her fault. If she hadn’t been such a…
Anyway, it was over. At least this part of it. He’d hide the body, try not to think about what he’d done, and move on to the next step.
And that was finding this Jack guy. That was real important, because this Jack knew who he was. Once he was out of the way, any connection between Richie Cordova and the missing Sister Margaret Mary would be gone.
But the nun couldn’t remember his phone number—oh, she’d wanted to remember, Richie made sure of that, but it wasn’t there.
Which left him with the name of an Upper West Side bar called Julio’s. Richie wasn’t sure how he was going to work this. He was at a disadvantage not knowing what this Jack looked like. The nun had given him a description but it sounded like any one of a zillion guys. He’d sleep on it and see if he came up with anything.
Sleep. Yeah, that would be good. He was dead on his feet.
But first he had to deal with the body.
Steeling himself, he turned and walked toward it…