J.T. Ellison - So Close the Hand of Death (Taylor Jackson)

By three methods may we learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.

Confucius

Imitation is suicide.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two Weeks Later
November 22

Boston, Massachusetts
8:12 p.m.
To: troy14@ncr.tr.com
From: bostonboy@ncr.bb.com
Subject: Boston

Dear Troy,
All is well.
BB

Q uiet, except for the pounding of his heart.

She was home now, the week of late nights at the office finally over. Hed been starting to wonder if shed ever make it back and was amused at the relief he felt when he saw her trundling down the street, her heavy wool coat dragging her steps. He had been more concerned than he expected, considering the stakes. This was just a game for him, after all. A lovely game.

Shed walked right past the truck without giving him a second glance. A few feet more and she was at her building. The wrought-iron kissing gate was broken, listing slightly, ajar. She pushed it open with her left hand and plodded up the steps. He watched with his head bent, eyes slid to the side as she unlocked the door and slipped inside. She never turned her head, never thought for a moment that she wasnt safe. Her millionth mistake this week.

Hed give it just one more minute, let her get upstairs. He busied himself with the package, the hard, plastic electronic-signature tablet, the straps on the box, all the while counting.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

Once he hit sixty, he followed her path to the door. He pushed his finger into the white button, heard the shrill bell ringing. A womans voice, tinny and thin, said, Yes?

Delivery for June Earhart.

She buzzed him in without saying anything else. The door unlocked with a snap and he pulled it wide, allowing enough room for the handcart to fit in, adjusting his cap lower on his head. He didnt want his face to be seen. There were cameras in the foyer, he knew from earlier reconnaissance.

He thought about his target. He loved the way June looked. Brown hair, brown eyes, five foot six, somewhat lumpy, but that was just because she enjoyed her food and didnt exercise. Not lazy, never lazy. Justpadded.

Hed watched her take lunch all this week: Monday was McDonalds, Tuesday Subway, Wednesday a couple of iced crullers and a sugary juice smoothie from Dunkin Donuts. Thursday shed stayed in, but this afternoon shed gone for a grinder, thick with salami and ham and cheese, with a side of potato chips. He wondered if she would smell like onions or if shed been considerate enough to chew some gum, or suck on a Tic-Tac. Hed wager the latter; June was a self-conscious woman.

Granted, shed walked from her office to each of these places, but shed passed the pita joint and the all natural juice-and-salad bar on the way. She chose the fattening food, and he knew it was because she was afraid to be alone but needed a defense mechanism to justify her single status to herself. He knew she sat in her dingy apartment, night after night, reading fitness and yoga magazines, dreaming about what it would be like to have a hard, lithe body, knowing that if she did, if she put in the effort, then she would be irresistible. And irresistible meant the paralegal from the office next door would notice her.

But she was afraid, and so dreamed only, her traitorous actions affording her a little more time. He knew she planned to join a gym at the beginning of the new yearit had been scribbled in purple ink on a list of possible New Years resolutions discarded in her kitchen trashcan. He bet she made that resolution every year. June was the type of woman who made New Years resolutions in November and never, ever saw them through. A woman who dreamed. A woman who would buzz a total stranger into her building because she never expected to be a victim.

His kind of woman.

The handcart made the trip awkward, bumping, bumping, bumping along the risers as he climbed. It would have helped if June hadnt ordered winehe could have carried a normal box up the stairs. But this fit the image he had of a delivery man. Safe and unassuming, too busy with his work to be a threat.

He was at the door of Junes second-story walk-up now. He straightened his cap, arranged the handcart in front of him, the heavy wooden box tied tightly to the metal. He felt in his pocketyes, everything was there. He arranged his features into something close to a smile and knocked.

June opened the door, still a little out of breath from her climb up the stairs. Shed taken off the heavy coat but her scarf was still wound around her neck in a breathtaking knot. Face-to-face with her, he didnt realize that hed frozen until she said, Kind of late for a delivery, isnt it?

Moving his lips even wider over his teeth, he said, Yes, maam. Apologies, maam. Got behind today.

I never thought the damn stuff would get here. Put it over there, June said, pointing to an uncluttered alcove just before the kitchen. The same alcove hed been in last night, watching June watch television. Shed never known he was there, and hed slipped out after she fell asleep.

He wrestled the handcart into the foyer and made for the alcove, reached into his pocket and depressed the call button on his disposable phone. Junes phone began to ring. He saw a brief flicker of debate in her eyes, then she shrugged and let the door close behind him as she started toward the living room to attend to the call. The moment her back was turned, he attacked. He whipped her scarf up into her mouth so she couldnt scream, then picked her up and moved toward the bedroom. Might as well be comfortable about it.

She was struggling, so he clouted her over the ear, just enough to daze her. That did the trick. Junes eyes got woozy and the panic in them dulled. He stripped her down and tossed her on the bed, but took care in removing his own clothing piece by piece, folding the brown pants with the seams in, the shirt with sleeves together, then in half. Hed need to reclothe the driver, he didnt want anything getting on the uniform. June was groggy but cognizant, and when he rolled on the condom and took her, she tried to scream and get away. But he was much bigger, much stronger, and she had no chance. All her wriggling made it go quicker than hed prefer, but at the end, he wrapped the trailing ends of the scarf around her throat and pulled them tightand felt another kind of release flow through his veins.