Chapter 54

He had to kill them. He had a higher purpose. He didn’t want to do it. In fact, the first time he couldn’t look. Just held up the gun and pulled the trigger with his face turned away.

But he heard a whimper, right before.

After that, the killing was easy. Only the man had been harder. He had to give him quite a whack in the neck to subdue him. Before he did, he thought the man might actually overpower him.

The kids were never around. He made sure of that. Usually they were out of the house or asleep in another room. The Philadelphia woman had been different. But he liked a challenge. He planned on killing her in the car as soon as he saw how the father stormed into the building every time he arrived home with his family. But that left the boy in the car. He tried to steal a front door key from the old neighbor lady. Her giant purse contained everything except what he was after. Then he noticed the keypad. The mother said the numbers aloud to the little boy when they went in: four…two… six…four. Anyone on the block could hear if they were listening. Getting the kid into the building after he hit her on the head had taken less than a minute. The kid hadn’t made a sound. Just like he’d thought.

It took him no time to finish her off in the back of the car. She was petite and the car was a huge American model with a roomy back seat.

Still, it was better when he didn’t have to deal with the kids. He sometimes thought of the look on the little boy’s face. But he had to do it. It was for the best.

He had tried several different methods of killing. He did this from necessity, he told himself. Didn’t want things to look too similar. He thought about it a lot ahead of time, what to use, a gun, a machete, a scarf, a hammer. And he thought about the sounds he’d heard and might hear, a whimper, a plea, weeping, terror. This last woman had actually cursed him, not profanity but an actual curse.

“Your black soul will never find peace.”

She’d managed to get that out in a loud enough voice for him to hear after he’d already left the kitchen.

Her threat didn’t bother him. At least not during the day. Sometimes at night he thought of it. But not very often.