My Boss is a Serial Killer (26 page)

“
A car will be outside all night,” Gus
explained. “These two will be here until ten, then go off duty and
be replaced by two more. They’ll do perimeter checks. No one is
going to come near your house. But one of them can stay inside with
you, if you want.”

“
No, it’s fine.” I had no real concern
that Bill Nestor would come sneaking around my house.

Gus led me to my front door, but I shook my
head—I still was missing my keys and had to go through the garage
to get inside. In my kitchen, we sat on my newly painted apple
green and orange chairs and ate tacos. I ate ravenously, Gus more
reservedly, and we didn’t speak much. Aside from telling and
retelling my story to him that day, we hadn’t spoken much at all.
Not even in the car.

When he finished eating, Gus said, “I can’t
stay. Got a lot to do tonight. But I wanted to make sure you got
home safe and sound.”

“
Thanks.”

“
Is there anyone I can call to come and
stay with you?”

“
No, I don’t need anyone. I’m okay.
Just tired and worried.”

“
Think you can get some sleep? You look
exhausted.”

“
Eh, maybe I’ll watch some television.”
Probably not. I didn’t think I could concentrate that
much.

Gus made a move as if to stand but then
didn’t. He asked, “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday that you knew
about the women?”

That was a fair question. My answer sounded
lame, in retrospect. I just had to shrug and say, “Bill’s my
friend. I wanted to talk to him first. I want to think the best of
him.”

Gus sighed and cleaned up his trash as he
spoke, not exactly meeting my eyes.

I added, “He’s not a maniac, Gus. He’s not
violent. When you catch up with him, be calm and reasonable. He’ll
cooperate. He likes things neat and orderly. This running is just
not going to agree with him. He may come to you eventually, if you
don’t find him first, and…and just don’t hurt him.”

I saw Gus’s jaw tighten at that. Sure, I
thought. He’s not a violent maniac. He’s a
gentle
maniac. So
I tried to explain further, “He’s running because he is afraid of
disorder, and very bad at coping with stress. Bill can see what the
circumstantial evidence looks like as well as you and I can, and
what’s worse, he’s got this obsessive-compulsive disorder that
sometimes makes him believe his actions have these…I don’t know,
these far-reaching effects.”

“
So what are you saying?”

“
That, just because he’s running, isn’t
a confession.”

“
We’re all aware of that.”

“
Just please, stay aware of
it.”

Standing now, Gus peered at me with
puzzlement. “I could understand this kind of loyalty, if he were
your father or husband or something. But he’s just your boss,
Carol.”

“
Yeah, but he’s a really good
boss.”

“
I have to go.” Gus turned to do
that.

I figured things were already as awkward as
they could be, so I had little to lose. I asked, “Why are you angry
with me? Is it because I knew about suicide widows and didn’t say
anything?”

“
I’m not angry.” He put his hands in
the pockets of his slacks and looked down at my wildly painted
kitchen chairs. He rethought his words. “I guess I’m a little
angry.”

“
Because?”

“
I’m a little angry that you went to
his apartment without any thought of your own safety.”

“
Bill wouldn’t hurt me.”

“
Carol,” Gus said, turning a warning
glare to me, “if I had a dollar for everyone I’ve heard say those
words…I hear them before and I hear them after. I see a woman
beaten within an inch of her life, and she says, ‘Oh, he didn’t
mean to hurt me; he would never hurt me.’ You went to his apartment
fully aware that he was afraid of something, and when people get
afraid, they get unpredictable and desperate.”

“
But you said yourself that the
murderer was gentle, and so—”

“
Good God, Carol! I said the murderer
was gentle when I was trying to keep my girlfriend from crying over
the deaths of nine women. There is no such thing as a gentle
murder. It’s not just an oxymoron; it’s an offensive thing to say.
I’m sorry I said it.”

“
Am I really your
girlfriend?”

“
So help me, I’ll shake you until your
teeth rattle…”

“
Okay, fine, fine! So it wasn’t the
best idea for me to go to Bill alone.”

He wasn’t finished with me yet. “No, it was
not. And you knew about all this on Friday night, didn’t you? It
wasn’t just last night, when I told you I’d been assigned to a
case, but last week, too. And you’ve been suspicious of these
deaths almost since we met, haven’t you?”

I nodded, chastised.

“
But didn’t feel it was anything you
needed to tell me about.”

“
I haven’t handled this very well,” I
admitted. With my hands folded in my lap and my head bowed so that
I looked up at him through my eyelashes, I’m sure I appeared to be
the penitent. The truth is, I was very tired and strung out, and
being scolded like this was making me pretty horny. It was like
last week, when he came over and rousted me and did a full body
search. His roughness was a turn-on then, and he’d only been
pretending. This time it was in earnest—and rooted, I thought, in
concern for my well-being. I felt so wriggly inside I could barely
sit still.

With self-deprecation Gus announced, “So this
great case that I thought I’d discovered all by myself turns out to
just be suggestions fed to me by the secretary of my main
suspect.”

“
No!” Now I stood, too. I didn’t like
him underestimating himself. “I asked you a couple of questions,
that’s all, and you figured out all the rest by
yourself.”

“
God, I feel like Doug used to get when
I’d let him win chess games. It pissed the kid off. It pisses me
off.”

“
You’re not just a little angry. You’re
really mad at me.” The idea of this gave me pleasure, though,
because you have to care about something to get good and
mad.

“
And another thing,” said Gus, stepping
back from me once he noticed how close I was, “is that this can’t
happen anymore.”

“
This?”

He looked at the empty space between us,
seeing the embrace we would have shared if he hadn’t started
backing away. “This. Our thing we’ve been doing. Now we have a big
fat conflict of interests, and I’m not even supposed to be
here.”

“
Really?” I asked in dismay. “Somebody
actually told you to break it off?”

Gus’s face went firm and unemotional. “No one
had to say it, Carol. It’s just common sense.”

I sagged unhappily away from him. I hadn’t
reached far enough into his affections to warrant anything more
than this brush-off, I guessed. I wasn’t some femme fatale beauty
who could inspire men to throw it all away. I was just a brash
secretary, when all was said and done. Gus Haglund had too much
riding on this—his job, his reputation, his responsibilities to his
son—to risk anything stupid for my sake. What else could I have
expected? We’d almost done the relationship thing backwards; we’d
jumped into a physical tangle way too soon and not taken time to
actually get to know each other or form any sort of solid emotional
bond.

There was no point in being a baby about it.
I couldn’t help but sigh, but I tried to add an oh-well laugh at
the end of it and say, “Guess I should have seen that coming.”

I put on my brave smile for him. But Gus
wasn’t smiling back. He glowered until my brave smile faltered, and
then he closed the distance between us in two strides and jerked me
into his arms.

Gus had already gotten me worked up by being
grouchy and concerned; what I hadn’t realized was that he was
worked up, too. I was a shadow of myself, worn out with worry,
disappointment, and confusion, so I clung to my big police
detective like he could put the strength back into me by force of
will, and he seemed to know it instinctively. He kissed me so hard
I felt welded to him. He kissed me a long time. His lips were salty
from nacho chips, and the salt stung delectably.

“
Come on, quick,” I said, pulling him
unsteadily toward my bedroom. I added the “quick” because I did not
want to give him time to change his mind. Perhaps I shouldn’t have
worried. Gus was as eager as I was, frustrated in a way I had not
known from him before. Oh my God, was this good-bye sex? I refused
to believe it wholly—and yet some part of me had already given
itself over to the idea that I had devour him like a glutton
because I might not get another chance.

For the first time in our brief history, we
made it to the bed on the first try. We left the light off for the
sense of solitude the darkness gave us, a shield from the knowledge
of my protectors waiting outside. His big hands undressed me by
sense of touch alone. It was like being in a hazy dream with a
trusted seducer. For once all the messy bedclothes seemed like
luxury instead of clutter as we became tangled in them. I twisted a
wandering bedsheet around my wrist and then twisted it around his
so Gus was tied to me and I could pull his hand wherever I wanted
it to go. I pulled it to my face and welcomed his weight onto me,
welcomed being held down to earth by him as he came at me with a
carefully measured, gratifying violence. All wrapped up in his tree
tree-trunk shoulders and thighs, I was no more than a little slip
of fever, with my teeth in his neck, my feet locked at the small of
his back.

We didn’t say a word until we were finished
with each other, and though that only took about eight minutes,
according to my bedroom clock, they were an extremely good eight
minutes. Poor Gus, I was always rushing him, but when I was with
him, I simply could not wait. I urged him to go faster and harder
so I could fall headlong into the eruption. Gus made love like he
flashed that wicked smile—he was all sweetie-pie cuteness until I
had him in a corner, and then bam, he was all grizzly-bear teeth
and claws.

Now he said we had to stop this? The thought
was almost as distressing as the idea of sending my beloved boss to
prison. My amateur detective playacting had possibly cost me both
Bill and Gus, and I had yet to see what it had gained me except for
some interesting stories to tell at work.

But I felt too sated and sleepy to be
completely maudlin. In the wake of our plundering, I felt as if I
might need a bulldozer to dig me out of the bundle of my bedsheets
and our various articles of shed clothing.

“
My legs are shaking,” muttered
Gus.

“
You did, in fact, shake me until my
teeth rattled.” I felt him smile. “It does add a little spice when
there’s a couple of great big cops waiting outside, and they’re
perfectly aware that you’ve had plenty of time to tuck me in with
my tacos. Not that we needed much more spice.”

Gus’s head lay on my chest, dropping his
heavy dark blonde curls in a tickling halo all over my breasts, and
I felt the vibrations of his words through my body. He sighed, “Why
can’t you be difficult about anything?”

I stroked his hair for a moment, not
understanding. “I thought I was a total screw-up.”

“
Sure,” he agreed. “Put your life in
danger; put my investigation on the fritz. True enough. I meant,
why can’t you be difficult about something that would let me walk
out on you? It would help if you’d ever be demanding or suspicious
or selfish or vain. Instead of being so easy.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle again, and it
made his hair shift and tickle me more. “Are you saying I’m
slutty?”

Gus growled low in his throat and bit me
lightly on the stomach.

“
Because I’m only slutty for you,” I
reminded him.

“
I have to go,” he said, making no move
to do so.

“
I know. I believed you the first time
you said it.”

“
Quit giggling. It’s not funny.” But I
had him starting, too. When your head is on a woman’s naked chest,
she can tell if you’re laughing. Still he insisted, “I’m not the
kind of guy who does this, you know, grabs a little action and
leaves the lady alone afterward.”

“
If only I were a lady.” Amusing as I
thought I was, I saw that my teasing was keeping him pinned. He was
afraid of hurting my feelings, because he’d announced that we
shouldn’t be dating (the polite code word for what we were really
doing) about a minute before he grabbed me in my kitchen, and as a
kind-hearted man he did not want me to think myself used. So I got
serious and said, “God I’m so tired. I’m glad you have to go,
because I won’t be very good company.”

For a few seconds in the gloom he was silent,
motionless. Then he eased himself off me, planting a kiss on my
forehead as he went in darkness. He said, “You’re doing it
again.”

Falling asleep that night, I remembered
something. Rather, I had never actually forgotten it, but I relived
the experience in my pre-dream twilight.

I’d been working for Bill nearly a year when
I mixed up two documents and filed the wrong one, irretrievably,
through the Federal Court’s electronic filing system on the night
of the deadline on an important case, when we were working for a
client that was not in the mood to hear bad news. It was a
brain-dead oversight on my part, so big and bad a mistake that it
did not occur to me that such a stupid thing even could happen. I
never checked for it, because it was so unlikely. Bam, just like
that, it was done, and it was irrevocably wrong.