Work Done for Hire

  The exposed beams under the part of the roof that was intact were strong enough to support his weight. He went back to the van and brought out the chains and hook and large cooler.

  When he returned for the woman, her eyes were open, unblinking. She didn’t resist when he handcuffed her wrists together, and then her ankles.

  Should he rape her? He had done that to the first two women, and one man, but there was no special joy in it, and it proved nothing; he already had total control over them, so sticking a protuberance into an opening was a trivial exercise. Besides, if he were interrupted and had to leave body parts behind, the fluid they found in her vagina would not be human in chemistry or biology.

  He hung her up by the heels and stooped to remove the duct tape. “Don’t scream. There’s no one around to hear you, and you’ll just annoy me.”

  She winced when he jerked the tape off, then worked her jaw and said, “This is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”

  “It’s not a dream, Cooper.” He’d looked in her wallet. “It’s not even a nightmare.”

  “I refuse to believe that. You’ll kill me, and then I’ll wake up.”

  He almost smiled. “That’s a new way of coping. None of the others have said that.” He unrolled her Lycra shorts and left them bunched around her knees. “Most girls your age shave around the pubic region. The bathing suit part, at least.”

  “I’m sure you’re an expert.” Her voice was conversational but quaking. “You can say ‘cunt.’ Under the circumstances.”

  “Heavens, no. I don’t know you well enough.” He sliced her T-shirt from neck to waist and then cut both sleeves to remove it. She was wearing a red sports bra. He snapped the elastic but left it alone.

  “How many . . . how many others?”

  “Twelve; you’ll be lucky thirteen. The newspapers call me Hunter. You haven’t heard of me?”

  “I—I never read the paper. Or watch the news.”

  “Oh. Is it too depressing?” He made small nicks over each kneecap and watched the blood trickle down. “If you read the newspapers, you might have thought twice before bicycling alone out in the woods.”

  “My boyfriend and parents know where—”

  “I’m sure they do. We’ll be in another state before they get around to calling the police. You’ll be in quite another state.” He wiped one stream of blood with his forefinger and tasted it. “Type O, I believe?”

  “Look. If this is a gag—”

  “There may be gagging.” He stuck out his tongue and licked the trickle of blood from the other leg in one slow sweep. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You are delicious.”

  He went outside and came back with a large plastic bucket with a lid. He pried off the lid and put the bucket on the floor underneath her head. Then he sat down cross-legged, facing her eye to eye.

  “Carolyn Cooper. You must bike a lot.”

  “No. Yes.” Tears were running down her forehead.

  “Your thighs and calves are very muscular. But not too lean. Do you go to school?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Church? Do you go to church?”

  “You . . . United Southern Baptist.”

  “Southern Baptist. So you’ll be in heaven soon.”

  She cried harder and tried to wipe her nose on her shoulder. He held up a Kleenex and said, “Blow.” She wouldn’t.

  “I bet you’re still a virgin. Are you?”

  She nodded slowly. “And yet you say ‘cunt.’ How people have changed since I was a boy.” He reached up and she cringed away, and so started to swing and bob, a complex pendulum.

  He waited until she stopped. “What if I promised to let you go if you let me make love to you? Have sex. Here on the floor?”

  She glared at him and shook her head, just an inch, back and forth.

  “If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

  “You will anyhow. You godless bastard.”

  He stared into her eyes, brow furrowed in thought. “It’s a complicated moral dilemma—for you, not for me—though you may be too upset to appreciate it right now.”

  He held up one finger. “You refuse to have sex with me and I kill you. You go to heaven. If you were headed there anyhow.”

  Two fingers. “You let me make love to you and I keep my word, and let you go. Technically, you sinned the sin of fucking—but is your God so petty he would send you to Hell over that? If so, I would posit that you don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting through life without doing something that will send you there.”

  Three fingers. “You let me make love to you and I kill you anyhow. As you have suggested. I would concede that that could be bad. Go directly to Hell, do not collect two hundred dollars.” He laughed. “You’re looking at me as if I were crazy. Haven’t you ever heard of Monopoly?”

  He shook his head at her crying. “There is a fourth, necrophilia. I could kill you first and then have sex with your remains. But that would be sick. I’ve never done that, not really. They were always alive when I started.”

  He stood, set the blade on her abdomen, and pressed slightly. “The last time, I cut his throat and then opened him like this.” With his finger, not the blade, he swept down from pubic bone to sternum. She screamed.

  He sat back down. It took all his strength to hold her head still while he replaced the duct tape.

  “Please try not to pee. That doesn’t help anything.” Instead of cutting her throat, he just opened a carotid artery, which resulted in a mess. He must have saved only half the blood, the rest of it spurting all around as she struggled. By the time there was a regular flow into the bucket, the floor of the musty room looked like a macabre Jackson Pollock painting.

  He wouldn’t do it that way again. It was nice to have the blood, but the out-of-control disorder was vulgar.

  When he made the long ventral incision, she was so close to being dead that she hardly reacted, just flinching. Before he cut her down, he severed the intestines at ileum and rectum, and laid them out in a neat circle around the locus where she was hanging, which remedied some of the randomness. He separated the edible parts from the steaming pile of offal and sealed them in plastic bags, which he set on the block of ice in the cooler.

  She was a little too large to fit into the cooler until he took out the ice block and jointed her. Then he split the ice into eight chunks and arranged them in various hollows, and propped the bucket upright inside her circled arms.

  Before moving the ice chest, he took the shotgun and went out the cabin’s back door, and silently reconnoitered. The rain had stopped and the forest was utterly quiet.

  He found the remains of a rabbit that had been torn apart, probably by a hawk, and smiled in empathy. He thought of what was inside the cooler and his stomach growled.

  5.

  The rain stopped abruptly just after 10:00. I finished the chapter I’d been working on, rolled up my gear, and punched the phone for automatic checkout. Figured I could cover half the distance to Des Moines before lunch if I poured on the coal.

  Perfect weather and road. Cool fresh-washed air and pebbly asphalt that hadn’t gone through too many Iowa winters.

  Sometimes the bicycle is a perfect place to think. Maybe the rhythm and slight exertion. But especially like this, with no distractions from weather or traffic—the mind roams and grazes. Not a mind-set for doing the taxes or solving scholarly problems, but good for free association and inspiration.

  So what would Hunter be if I were writing the story free of constraints from the script? Like this last chapter. That went easily and was pretty interesting. Pretty good writing.

  How close did the book really have to be to the movie?

  Well, the movie didn’t actually exist yet, as a movie. They were supposed to start shooting July first, two weeks before the book was due. They were going
to wrap the movie six weeks later, 15 August. That date was set in stone; another company would be moving into the studio the next day.

  My contract required me to rewrite the novelization if there were “fundamental” changes between the script and the movie. I hadn’t minded agreeing to that clause—hell, if I had to write the whole novel over, it was still a fortune compared to real fiction.

  But wait. Consider the obverse—what if I made fundamental changes to the story myself? And delivered before shooting started? If they liked it better, they might use that version, or some part of it.

  They wouldn’t pay me any more—talk about fantasy!—but it could enhance my reputation. And if they didn’t like it, how much work would it be to return it to Duquest’s original inspired version?

  Barb Goldman said I’d be lucky if the Great Man even saw the first page of the book. Most likely it would go to the “script girl” (of whatever gender) or some similar minion, who would write up a page or two about it, to be filed and forgotten.

  But what if the report said, “Hey, this is really good! Somebody should send it up to Duquest before he starts to shoot!”

  Doesn’t hurt to dream. With a free hand, what about the script would I change?

  The action really wouldn’t have to be that different. Maybe a little more believable. I was already taking some liberties with the characters, who were pretty cardboard in the script, and I had the studio’s blessing for that. When I talked to Duquest’s agent on the phone, what he said he wanted, in so many words, was “really good writing, just not too literary.” Sort of like really good soup, but without any seasoning.

  What does a Hollywood guy mean by “literary”? Big words? No problem. Complex characterization? Keep it subtle. Layers of meaning? They won’t worry about the cake if the icing looks pretty.

  As I’d told Kit, but of course hadn’t mentioned to the movie people, that was the most interesting aspect of the job; the most challenging: writing two books simultaneously, a literary one and a commercial one. The hat trick was that both novels were made up of the same sequence of words.

  Maybe that was kind of quantum-mechanical? Like a particle being in two places at the same time. Though I could never get my literal-minded brain around that one, quite.

  With writing it’s simple to do two things at once. The Marquis de Sade’s “novels” are masturbation adjuncts but also exquisitely detailed maps of a deranged mind examining itself. Ulysses is a microscopic deconstruction of one day in Dublin, but the same sequence of words adds up to a daring experiment in the limits of the novel form.

  So my job was simple wordsmithing in comparison: write a good novel that follows someone else’s story line—like Ulysses, both Homer’s and Joyce’s, to go from the ridiculous to the sublime.

  In theory, I could write two different versions, literary and commercial. But that way lies legal madness. The book will be a “work done for hire,” and is the sole property of Ronald Duquest. Once I cash the check, I’m out of the picture. If I tried to copyright a book with the same story and title, but better words, the people who owned the commercial version would not be amused. It’s probably a good life rule not to piss off people who keep lawyers on the payroll.

  The new bike was very pleasant for the first fifteen miles or so, but somewhere between twenty and thirty I started to wonder about the wisdom of my choice. The “commuter” bike was exactly that, and its cushiony ride would be perfect for going back and forth to and from work. The softness of the ride ultimately came from your own muscles, though, pushing against springs. A road bike’s ride might be harder on your butt, but all the energy you expended went to getting you from point A to point B.

  Maybe I could put that in the book. Our hero gets an oversprung commuter bike with the guy’s money, but goes back the next day for one that’s more practical for the long haul. Not in the script, but a nice bit of verisimilitude for bike-savvy readers.

  The author of the book, unlike the character, doesn’t have an employer with a fat wallet. Well, they do have billions, but not for the peons who humbly till the literary soil for them. Not for the comfort of their butts.

  It was worth a few miles of daydreaming. I’d only spent $500 on this bike, leaving $49,500 for other stuff like rent. Minus Barb’s 15 percent. A decent road bike would run about $1,500, and they’d probably give me $400 trade-in. Call it a thousand-dollar investment, finally, out of the fifty I was getting for the book.

  I almost had myself convinced, but a reality check came creeping in. How often, in real life, would I do even ten miles in a day, let alone fifty or a hundred? Going to the 7-Eleven for a six-pack, I’d rather have this comfy blue Cambridge than a sexy hard-riding racer. And it would be really stupid to buy both—where would I put them? I wouldn’t even leave my Salvation Army junker locked up overnight outside my apartment. Even if nobody was desperate enough to steal it, kids liked to demonstrate their budding manliness by stomping on spokes—and frames, if they were big kids.

  Even the one bike dominated my so-called living room. Two would make it look like a bike shop.

  I did have a get-thee-behind-me-Satan moment as I pedaled wearily into the suburbs of Des Moines. Two Guys Bike Shoppe had a signboard out front saying THIS WEEKEND ONLY ALL CAMPYS 25% OFF LIST!!! A Campagnolo would be just the right level of wretched excess—a Caddy, but not a Rolls.

  I went past it a couple of blocks to a motel that was conveniently just behind a liquor store. A six-pack and a miniature of dark rum would take the kinks out fine. A burger and a couple of cookies for dinner, from the 7-Eleven beside it. It wasn’t dinner on the French Riviera with Duquest and his bevy of bimbos. But that might come in time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  He roasted a whole leg slowly, sawed in two to accommodate the oven, sealed up in heavy foil with herbs and spices and wine. After a few hours, timing by smell and touch, he used a long filleting knife to extract the bones for stock. He chunked the meat and browned it carefully under the broiler.

  He wolfed a quarter of it down and then rested for a day. He checked his garbage-disposal map and dug a new hole for the cooked-out bones and burned her clothing on top of them, then relieved himself there before replacing the dirt and mat of humus and undergrowth. Three drops of butyric acid to keep away curious dogs and other digging animals.

  Prudence dictated that he ought to change his location soon. This little patch of Alabama was perfect, but that perfection was a danger. People looking for him would eventually close in and be on his doorstep, by a process of elimination.

  Where next? The challenge of living in a city had a perverse appeal. The probability of detection would be high, though; almost certain. He was prepared to face, and escape from, a squad car or two of country-bumpkin state troopers, but a city SWAT team would be formidable, and if he bested them there would be a small army after him, federal as well as state. He couldn’t afford to be tightly surrounded and observed in action. If they realized he wasn’t human, they would want to capture him alive and find out what he was. His masters would not like that.

  He opened a third quart of Pabst Blue Ribbon and thought. Moving the trailer would be conspicuous and difficult. Burning it in place would be simple, but would draw investigators. If they found all the buried bones there would be trouble. He was too physically conspicuous to hide among humans, but he could find another place like this.

  Maybe he should consider moving the trailer. It would be conspicuous on the road, but more conspicuous as a burned-out ruin. Fire inspectors might wonder why a hermit needed a big meat locker. If they checked it for DNA they would find out.

  He considered burning on a monumental scale, a forest fire that incidentally consumed the trailer. That might not call attention to him if he planned it properly.

  It would be unthinkable to abandon this place before he had a destination. Not very difficult to find, with time and resources. The p
ast two homes, he’d arranged through the same Atlanta firm, a rural acreage broker who only worked online. Hunter’s Atlanta bank account was administered by computer and fueled by nighttime cash deposits.

  Cooper’s purse had yielded an unexpected treasure: a roll of fifty hundred-dollar bills sewn into the lining. He had handled them only while wearing gloves. There was no pattern to the serial numbers; they were an assortment of five bills that looked and smelled brand new, with forty-five that had been in circulation. He crumpled them all up and soaked them in water with a little dirt, and dried them between sheets of newspaper.

  It was interesting. Perhaps he should have talked to her longer. There was no way that money came from a regular paycheck, and details mattered. The more he knew about humans, the better his chance of eluding capture.

  How long had he been doing this? He remembered recent events in microscopic detail, but only back to his first Alabama victim, six years ago. He had evidently not been programmed to “remember” anything before that. In a plastic envelope he had a birth certificate and a high-school diploma, along with drivers’ licenses from four states, with the same picture but different names.

  He didn’t remember acquiring those documents, though he knew how he might buy replacements. They must have been with him when his masters brought him to Earth, probably just before his detailed memories began.

  That had been in a run-down log cabin in a scrub pine swamp in Georgia. He had this old van and a cooler full of meat and a collection of fading memories, along with carefully sealed boxes of books and magazines.

  He knew the meat was human but wasn’t sure how he had come by it. A memory of a lot of blood, and screams that stopped abruptly. From his aches he could tell he had been driving a long time. That was all.

  He knew he wasn’t human; every human he’d seen was small and weak. He could deduce something of his heritage from the books and magazines, full of encoded references to his origin. The nature of his destiny unclear, ambiguous. He probably would have to die to fulfill it.