It was only while knotting the red thread that he realised the woman he’d slaughtered was still breathing. She made a small sound, a slight release of air, and across the room he watched as her eyelids flickered. She was dying. He knew it and so, surely, did she. She was without any hope of help – even her dog had high-tailed it into the night. That had been his first mistake. Nowhere in her online presence had there been evidence of a pet. People who spent their days posting on social media usually couldn’t resist a photo of their animal, but this woman, for reasons he couldn’t guess at, had chosen to keep the little French Bulldog a secret. The focus of her Instagram account had been her house and garden. That had been her mistake.
She lived in a single-level duplex built in the 1930s before real estate boomed and developers crammed three-storey townhouses into postage-stamp-sized plots. He’d been able to sketch a rough floor plan of her home based on her Instagram posts. There was a corner that he hadn’t been able to identify until last week when she’d revealed a photo of her revamped bathroom. Once he’d completed his sketch, he turned his focus to her garden. One shot in particular of rhododendrons in bloom had revealed the insubstantial latch she used to secure her yard gate. Only a quick drive-by was needed to ensure what was in his head matched reality. Then, it had been a case of checking calculations and biding his time.
The waiting had been the hardest. Once you’ve killed, he was discovering, you wanted very quickly to do it again. He forced himself to remember that there was an order of things and he had to be careful his baser senses didn’t threaten to undo all his meticulous plans.
In the distance, he could hear the damn dog yapping. It was only a matter of time until a neighbour woke and recognised it as belonging to this house. He had to get a move on. The fact the woman was alive wasn’t a problem. It was his second error of the evening but easily rectified. The key was to ensure the significance of the carefully chosen items remained unnoticed by the police when they finally got here. The woman had been a drinker. Nothing wrong in that, he supposed. Many of her ‘look at me I’m relaxing in the evening’ photos had featured a glass of red wine. The goblet didn’t interest him, but the bottle did. It was perfect and he didn’t even need to touch it. It sat open on the table with the cork next to it and would serve its purpose.
The woman was also a quiltmaker and had been keen to show her creations in her photos. Patchworks of colours – she’d liked cornflower blue set against crimson with splashes of green. Very New England, but it was what was in the background he’d been interested in. The spools of thread and a hedgehog pincushion. Cute. He sat with her sewing box on his lap as he tightened the knot.
When he was ready, he checked everything was in place and finished the task he’d failed to complete earlier. Then, going to the kitchen window, he pulled out the etching knife he’d bought in a hardware store two weeks earlier. He’d made sure it was an item among innocuous purchases. A couple of lightbulbs and a new garden hose. He’d also paid by cash and was pretty sure no one would remember him. It was one of those old-fashioned places without security cameras. He also didn’t think for a minute anyone would notice what he was now sketching against the glass in the bottom right corner, hidden by the fold in the drapes. The dog was silent, which worried him more than the barking. It suggested someone was comforting the animal. He sped up the task and, when it was finished, slipped out of the side door, the one this householder had helpfully photographed with the locks in full view.
The night was silent except for a muted thud from the neighbouring property. A light was on in the hall; he was certain the house had been in darkness when he arrived. He hurried on, his sneakers squeaking on the frosty pavement. He allowed himself to relax when he saw his car down the alley. It was only as he was driving away that he realised his third mistake. But that was okay. He was certain no one, absolutely no one, would see that mark until he was ready.