Bad Girl (3 page)

And she was crying, invisible again.

She pushed her way back through the crowd into the lobby, moving quickly toward the elevators at the other end and telling herself there was still tomorrow. Andrew’s book signing. Anything could happen.

When she walked into her hotel room, she stopped, lingering for a moment in the doorway, wondering if by some chance her room service food could have spoiled so quickly. No. It wasn’t that. Of course.

She opened the bathroom and the waft hit her. Mark did not smell so pretty anymore.

She grabbed a towel off the rack and closed the door and tucked it against the crack between the door and the carpet. Lucy walked to the bed, kicked off her Chuck T’s, and crawled under the covers. She hit the light. Closed her eyes. Opened them. The stink was still there. Potent and getting stronger every second. She turned on the light and sat up against the headboard. This was bad. First of all, because she couldn’t sleep with the smell, and it would only get worse. But more importantly, when she brought Andrew Thomas up here tomorrow, the smell would totally gross him out, make a bad impression.

She hopped out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Opened one of the mini-bottles of shampoo and squirted the entire thing over Mark, who now looked purple and swollen. She cranked up the shower. As the hot water beat down on the corpse, she saw that it was leaking, and the heat only made the smell more intense.

She turned off the shower, grabbed the trashbag out of the waste basket beside the sink, and headed for the door.

Her bare feet tracked down the carpet toward the alcove where the vending machines hummed. Down in the lobby, a hundred and fifty feet below, she could hear Irish drinking songs lilting up out of the bar.

She held the plastic bag open while cubes of ice rattled down out of the ice machine. Carried it back to 1428 and into the bathroom, where she plugged the shower drain and dumped the ice over Mark Darling. Her heart sank. The bag of ice had barely covered him. She was going to need a lot more.

After five trips, the ice was beginning to look substantial piled on top of the dead writer’s chest.

After ten, she stepped into the shower and spread them around, felt a glimmer of relief as they nearly covered him. One more trip, maybe two, and she’d be done.

Lucy reached down and grabbed the bag off the floor.

As she started toward the bathroom door, it swung open.

She froze.

A man stood in the threshold, and for a fleeting second, she thought it was Andrew Thomas, but he was wearing different clothes—a white tee-shirt and blue jeans. And his hair was messy, eyes still squinting like he’d just woken up.

He was staring at the blood spatters on the bathroom floor, and at the trash bag in Lucy’s hand, and now at Lucy.

It seemed like an entire minute passed without either of them speaking, Lucy thinking about the straight razor in the bedside table drawer. Useless now. Her eyes moved around the bathroom, looking for something with heft, or with an edge.

It surprised her when the man smiled. He said, “Who you got in there?”

She didn’t answer. She made fists to stop her hands from shaking but all it did was give her shaking fists.

“Quite a mess,” he said. “You’ve been a naughty little girl, haven’t you?”

He took a step forward, glanced in the shower.

Lucy’s eyes welled up. A sob escaped.

“No,” the man said. “No, no, no. Don’t cry.”

He knelt down in front of Lucy.

The eyes. She was going to have to blind him. Jam her thumbs in as far as they would go and run like hell.

“You don’t have to be afraid. What’s your name?”

“Lucy.”

Her hands had been at her sides. Now, she slowly raised them.

“Lucy, did that man in the shower hurt you?”

She nodded.

“What did he do?”

“He tried to rape me.”

She shot her thumbs at his eyes, but he parried right and jumped back, laughing. Lucy ran for the open door. The man grabbed her and pulled her into his chest.

“Shhh,” he whispered as she struggled. “Don’t scream, Lucy.”

She kicked her legs and tried to head-butt him as he carried her out of the bathroom into the hotel room and threw her onto the bed.

“Relax!” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to get you in trouble.”

Lucy glared at him.

“You should be more careful, you know. Ten trips with an ice bucket in the middle of the night is bound to get somebody’s attention. Particularly if their room is next to the ice machine.”

“Mark was starting to smell.”

“Yeah, I noticed. But a few cubes of ice isn’t going to fix it. You here by yourself?”

She nodded.

“He didn’t try to rape you, did he?”

She just watched him, said nothing.

“That’s a nice piece of work in there,” he said. “That man must be double your weight, at least. How’d you pull it off?”

“I want you to leave.”

“Why?”

“Go!”

“Lucy, please. I know you don’t know me, but you can trust me.”

She stuck her chin out and fought back the tremor in her bottom lip.

“How’d you overpower that man?” he asked again.

“Straight razor.” She said it proudly.

“He flailed around a bunch, didn’t he?”

Lucy couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah. It was funny. But loud and messy, too.”

The man eased down onto the edge of the bed. “Why’d you kill him?”

“They wouldn’t give me a room. I drove six hundred miles to come to this conference, and then they wouldn’t even give me a room.”

“’Cause of your age.”

“Yeah.”

“You ever done anything like this before, Lucy?”

She shook her head. “But I thought about it a lot.”

“Wait. This was your first time?” She nodded. The man got a big grin on his face. “Well, how was it for you?”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah?”

“The blood was beautiful. So warm. I took my clothes off and rolled around in it.”

The man’s eyes sparkled. “I remember mine like it was yesterday. I’d give anything to go back and do it again for the first time.” He reached his hand out. “I’m Orson.”

She shook it.

He looked around the room. “So our friend in the shower. Who is he?”

“A writer.”

“Oh, shit. What’s his name?”

“Mark Darling.”

“Never heard of him.”

She pointed to the box of books. “Those are his books over there.”

Orson went over to the box and lifted a book, flipped through it, glanced at the back. “This is his first novel. That’s good.”

“Why?”

“No one here probably knows who he is, so he won’t be missed. Come on, where’s your stuff?”

“Over there. Why?”

“Pack it up. You’re coming with me.”

“No.”

“You can’t stay in here, Lucy.”

“I’m not leaving with you.”

“Listen. Did you have fun cutting Mark’s throat, rolling around in his blood?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to have the opportunity to do it again?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you better listen to me. If you get caught in this hotel room with that dead man, they’re going to lock you up.”

“But I’m not even eighteen.”

Orson walked over to the side of the bed and sat down next to Lucy. “Look at me.” She stared up at him. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. If you were smart, you’d do what I say, maybe even learn a little something.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Enough to know we need to get out of this room right now.”

She followed Orson down the hallway to the first room past the ice machine.

“It’s a two-room suite,” he said as he opened the door and let her in. “My friend’s next door sleeping, so let’s not disturb him. I think this sofa folds out into a bed.”

She dropped her guitar case on the floor and helped Orson unfold the sofa sleeper. Orson swiped a blanket from his bed and tossed it to Lucy.

“Now I have to be honest,” he said. “I’m a little worried you might want to cut my throat while I’m sleeping.”

“I won’t,” she said.

“Why don’t you give me your straight razor just to be on the safe side.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t know you, Lucy.”

She lay awake for a long time thinking how tomorrow was the last day of the conference, and in some ways, the first day of the rest of her life. She wasn’t going home. She knew that. After Darling, how could she go back to geometry and biology and being a teenage girl in a suburban home? She could feel this stunning blackness flooding into her. It was filling her up so fast she could barely sleep, barely keep her eyes closed. She needed to see more blood. And soon.

She never slept. When the light began to push through the curtains, she sat up on the sofa and looked over at Orson on the bed, watching the man’s chest rise and fall, thinking how he’d been smart to take the razor from her. Nothing would’ve made her happier than to slide the blade across his neck, maybe even taste his blood, let it run down her throat. She should’ve tasted Darling’s. She imagined it would be so rich and even better than the wine her mother sometimes let her sip. Oh, well. Next time.

She rode down in the elevator with Orson and his friend, Luther, a tall, pale-faced man with long, black hair who was seriously creeping her out. He kept watching her with his big black eyes that held such an intensity she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see them alone.

They ate breakfast downstairs, the three of them sitting at a table in a corner, and the fourth time she caught him staring at her, Lucy couldn’t help herself.

“Take a picture, dude. It’ll last longer.”

Orson looked up from his bacon and eggs. “What’s wrong?”

“Why does your friend keep staring at me like that? It’s weird.”

Orson grinned and glanced at Luther, then back at Lucy. He leaned toward her and whispered. “He wants to kill you, Lucy.”

She felt a coldness spill inside her gut.

“Why?”

“It’s what he does. He can’t help himself. He’s sitting there imagining draining you in our bathtub. But don’t worry. I’ve told him you’re off-limits. Told him you might even be one of us.”