SERIAL UNCUT (4 page)

"
I just wanted to tell you something."
She was beginning to tremble.

"
What, honey? What?"

Lucy shouted into the phone,
"
He loved me, you stupid bitch! He loved me! I wish
you had died! He's the only thing I ever fucking
loved
!"

She slammed the phone down on the hook and
screamed inside the booth until her throat burned.

She'd left her mother's car in the only
parking space she could find--a three-hour meter four blocks from
the hotel that had long since expired. There were five orange
envelopes under the windshield wipers, and the right front tire had
been booted.

She unlocked the car and dragged the guitar
case out of the backseat, started back to the hotel.

The keycard worked on the second try, and
she slipped into her room and locked the door after her. Stowed
Mark's suitcase, his shoes, his wallet, and his sports jacket in
the closet.

She'd left home in a hurry, jamming her
favorite books, clothes, and a few toiletries into the first thing
to cross her path--her brother's guitar case. Now she flipped open
the clasps, opened it on the bed, and dumped everything out. Set to
work choosing outfits for the convention and smoothing out the
wrinkles.

Before bed, she went back into the bathroom,
sat on the toilet seat just watching Mark lying motionless in the
shower. She got down on her knees and stroked his hair, caressed
her finger through the gash in his throat.

By four a.m., she was in bed in her
nightgown, and already dreaming of what tomorrow might bring.

The hotel was crawling with people in the
morning and Lucy had to wait five minutes to catch an elevator down
to the lobby. She picked up her name badge and book bag from
registration, bought a latte, and headed off to the first panel of
the morning.

"
Walking on the Dark Side: What Makes
a Bad Guy Bad?" featured five mystery writers, only one of whom
she'd heard of. But they were all entertaining. After the panel and
with Mark's money, she bought each of their books from a cranky
Milwaukee bookseller named Katz.

Walking through the book room, where vendors
had many of the participating writers' books for sale, she couldn't
get over the thrill of being around so many people who loved to
read. She never saw anyone reading in school. At least not for fun.
And the few times she'd sat in the common area by herself with a
book, she'd been bullied and mocked. The downside was that most of
the people here were as old as her grandfather and many of them
looked just as mean.

She took a table in a cafe downstairs and
studied the schedule of events once more, looking for two panels to
attend in the afternoon, though nothing caught her interest. Things
didn't really get interesting until the star of the whole show
arrived: the thriller/horror writer, Andrew Z. Thomas, was going to
be interviewed in the main ballroom tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., with a
signing to follow. She'd brought every one of his books with her to
be autographed.

She sat in the lobby all afternoon, her
attention divided between Mark's book, which she was really
enjoying, and wanting to be with Mark in the shower again, and
watching for Andrew Thomas, figuring if he was here, he'd have to
walk past her at some point.

After the last panel of the day let out, the
hotel emptied for an hour, and then slowly refilled again, everyone
dressed to the nines now, lots of sports jackets and evening
dresses, the book bags exchanged for stylish handbags.

She'd been sitting in the same chair for
almost four hours, and her legs felt wobbly and faint when she
finally stood.

The hotel bar was packed. All the writers
seemed to be there.

She strolled over and wandered through the
bar which was becoming more crowded by the minute, searching the
faces for Andrew Thomas, but he wasn't there.

Back upstairs, she ordered room service.
Stayed in watching television and eating a lavish meal on Darling's
tab. A few minutes past midnight, she climbed out of bed and
dressed and wandered down to the lobby.

The bar was even more crowded than before,
and she scanned the faces in the smoky lowlight, eyes passing over
countless groups that constantly shifted and changed, the
occasional loner who spoke to no one, the softer, restrained groups
huddled on the perimeter.

At the furthest corner of the bar, she
finally spotted the man she'd come to meet, and her stomach
fluttered.

He sat on a stool, surrounded by a dozen
attentive, smiling faces, all listening as he told some story whose
words she couldn't begin to pick out from the impressive noise of
all those conversations.

She stumbled forward into the outskirts of
the crowd, then elbowed and squeezed her way through the heart of
it, until she stood just outside the group of people orbiting
Andrew Thomas.

His face was fuller than the author
photograph on his latest book jacket, and he had a few days'
stubble shadowing his face, but he was undeniably...Andrew.

She'd never heard his voice, and it didn't
sound anything like she imagined. He was more soft-spoken, and he
had an accent. A southern accent. He was talking to a man seated to
the right of him, but there were countless people
eavesdropping.

"...
so they show me the mock-up for the
book cover, and I say, 'Guys, I know you've been really working on
this thing, and I appreciate that, but you've just put a penis on
the cover of my book."

The hovering crowd broke into laughter.

"
They said, 'It's not a penis, Andy,
it's a minaret.' I said, 'It's flesh colored, it has a shaft, and a
bulbous head that appears to be ejaculating the title of my book!
Could I please have a new fucking cover without a cock on
it?"

While everyone laughed, Andrew tossed back a
shot of something.

The man standing behind him said, "Another
shot, Andrew?"

"
I buy you shots, Billy. Everyone in
for a shot of tequila? Bartender! We need..." Andy counted the people
around him. "...thirteen shots of Patron Silver."

Lucy stood watching him, mesmerized, trying
to wrap her brain around the idea that the man whose words and
stories she'd fallen in love with at twelve was sitting ten feet
away from her, under the same roof, breathing the same air. She'd
suspected it before, but last night with Mark Darling confirmed it:
Andrew could read her thoughts. She knew he must have killed before
because the way he described what it felt like for the killers in
his books had been her experience exactly. She wanted to be closer
to him, but his crowd had effectively cloistered him off from the
rest of the bar.

Something was coming apart inside of her,
this dark, mad need to connect with him, and for a moment the sound
of the crowd dropped away. She stared at him, willing his eyes to
meet hers, willing them to give her just a single slash of
attention as the bartender lined up thirteen shotglasses and began
to fill them from two bottles of Patron.

Andrew never looked at her. She watched the
bartender bring the tray of shots, watched Andrew pass them around,
heard the shotglasses clinking, heard the "cheers."

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."