But Billy had known it was coming. Had been ready for the day.
Janice had, against all odds, risen to consideration for the rank of Crow King.
She had to go away, had to prove herself in the great games played by their kind. She was a woman, and serial killers did not trust women, as a rule. As useful sidekicks, sure. As convenient patsies or decoys, absolutely.
But as a ruler…
As a leader…
Billy knew that Janice was different from the rest of the creatures—like Nadine, for example—who wandered the world calling themselves women. They were prospects, nothing more, lesser beings meant for the pleasure of their betters.
Janice was special. She had taught Billy much. She had taken the raw materials of his homicidal intellect and the depths of his human understanding, and she had turned him into a powerhouse of death, a remorseless murder engine. He would always love her for that.
He would love her as he’d loved no other woman. Love was that rarest of emotions, the sort that prospects thought they felt for one another. But Billy knew the truth. Prospects knew only the base, animalistic love of pets for their masters. The true, refined emotion of love was reserved for those such as him. And his Janice.
And his boy.
Nadine was, in fact, a natural redhead.
Nadine’s room, of course. That was predetermined. From the moment she’d sat down next to him at the bar, he’d known where the night would take them, and it would have to be her room. No way in hell he would let a prospect see his room, his private place, his property.
In terms of physical acts between a man and woman, Billy knew this: There was sex and there was satisfaction. One was a primal urge, as animalistic as the need to eat and drink. The other—more sophisticated—transcended to a higher plane.
Each sated, but to different degrees.
He was not so supreme or empyreal as to deny that he was made of flesh and blood, that he craved the pleasure and release of flesh and blood. He was and he did.
But it in no way fulfilled the way the other did.
He lay there and tried not to think of it, tried not to think of the blood and the bone and the gristle, the meat of humanity, the cut, the break, the spill.
Beside him, Nadine shifted and murmured, “Oh, my. Someone’s ready already.”
And he was, but not for that, for the other, though he could not, so they did it her way instead, and while it wasn’t perfect—it didn’t satisfy, no, not at all—it was good enough in its own way.
Finished, he lay beside her, planning his moment of escape, and he thought of Janice and Jasper—Jasper, who was his heart beating outside his body. Remembered the moment when Janice had told him she was pregnant. His fury. His rage.
Janice was a killer through and through, damn near bred for it. But she was still a woman, still weaker than Billy physically, and he could have killed her then and there. Her death shot through him like a blast of wind, a subzero moment of murder lighting him on cold fire everywhere he could feel. She knew it, too. Knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling in that instant. Her eyes glimmered with knowledge; her lips quirked in a too-aware grin.
She knew he wanted her dead, and yet she did nothing, took no action, simply stood before him, one hand clutching the pregnancy test as though it could defend her from his wrath, as though anything in the vast tracts of the universe could defend her from his wrath.
But it was Janice. And his wrath drained away almost as quickly as it had come upon him.
She knew that, too. Knew him so well. Watched the anger gush from him and spiral away.
Janice knew what he wanted or needed before he did. So maybe this baby wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Let me tell you the rest,” she said, and leaned in and whispered her plans.
Truth be told, Billy had never entirely been on board with the idea of killing the baby. Snuffing out the life of a child—especially one born with utmost trust in its killer—was no challenge, no hardship. There were no bragging rights to be had, no sense of self-satisfaction. It was a major leaguer hitting a home run at the local park on a Sunday at a town barbecue. Who would care?
But Janice wanted to do it, and Billy had difficulty denying Janice whatever she wanted. And besides—she was already knocked up, so why not?
He had suggested, though, early in her pregnancy, that perhaps the best way to kill their offspring was to avail themselves of the legal alternative.
Janice had exploded in indignation. “Are you kidding me? That’s a solution for scared teenage girls and Xanax-addled suburban mommies who can’t handle one more dirty diaper. That’s not a solution worthy of a Crow, Billy. I’m ashamed even to hear you say it.”
And then the child, Jasper, had been born, and Billy had felt something within him that he’d only ever felt toward Janice.
It was love.
He’d known in that moment, as his son squalled bloody and shivering on his wife’s chest, that he could not kill Jasper. No. Jasper was not to be consigned to the oblivion of the prospects.
Jasper was to be a Crow. Like his mother and his father.
Billy had leaned over and whispered in Janice’s ear, too soft for the doctor or the nurses to hear:
“He’s one of us.”
Janice, exhausted, had nodded in agreement and clutched his hand tight.
And Billy woke up, groaning, cursing himself. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in Nadine’s bed. Who knew lying on the beach—such a waste of time and energy—could be so tiring?
Nadine slept turned away from him, her breathing almost completely silent, the sheet spilling down off her creamy shoulder, revealing an expanse of unblemished back and the dimple just above her buttocks.
He felt himself stir, felt a lurch deep in his gut. He wanted to do things to her. Things that couldn’t be undone.
But, no. That was business. And he was on vacation.
According to the clock on the nightstand, it was a little past seven in the morning. With the curtains drawn, the room was twilight-dark. He felt around on the floor for his clothes, cursing mentally when he discovered that his pants pockets had disgorged their contents at some point between his body and the floor. His wallet lay a few feet away, his keycard nearby.
Gathering everything together, he dressed quickly and without a sound, a skill honed over years of practice and necessity. Then he slipped out of Nadine’s room. Down the hall, a maid emerged from another guest room but didn’t so much as glance in his direction. She was a youngish black woman, and Billy was grateful she didn’t take note of him. Black women unnerved him. He didn’t know why and didn’t particularly care. He just avoided them, and they seemed quite happy to avoid him as well.
Billy retraced his steps back to the elevator and went to his room, composing rejection lines should his path cross Nadine’s again. I guess I’m not ready to love again. And It’s too soon. I thought it wasn’t, but I was wrong.
Things like that. There was every chance Nadine had just been looking for a one-night stand, a convenient vacation fuck-buddy, but he couldn’t let her get any closer than she’d already gotten. Lonely single dad taps hot young ass on vacation worked for Outside Billy, but Local bachelor scores new girlfriend would seriously crimp Inside Billy’s plans.
At his room, he jammed the keycard into the slot. Rather than being greeted by the click of the lock disengaging, instead he heard nothing. The little red light flickered on.
He sighed and tried again. Damn things. What was wrong with a good old-fashioned key, anyway? No one could trace you with a key, and it pretty much always worked.
Red light.
He tried a third time, slowly guiding the card into the slot.
Red light.
Son of a bitch. He tried a fourth time, swiping the card in and out quickly. Slow, fast, who the hell knew what the damn sensors wanted?
Red light.
Red fucking light.
He stared at the card in his hand.
/> There was no pizza logo. Instead, there was a thin-line drawing of a martini glass, with a loopy font reading, TRY THE ELEGANCE LOUNGE! and then tiny type spelling out an address.
Well, shit. Wrong damn card. He would have to go to the front desk and…
No. That wouldn’t do. Because then Nadine would have the key to his room. That was no good, no good at all.
Back down the hall. Down the elevator. The maid’s cart from before was closer to Nadine’s room, but the maid herself was nowhere to be seen.
Billy listened at the door for a moment and, hearing nothing, slid the card into the lock. Worked perfectly the first time, green light and all.
He slipped into the room, which was still dark. With effortless, practiced grace, he closed the door silently.
Nadine still lay in bed.
Billy glanced around for his keycard. Dropping to hands and knees, he crawled along the edge of the bed, feeling for the card. His fingers found it before his eyes did, half under the nightstand on the side of the bed where he’d slept. He put Nadine’s in its place and stood up and—
—banged his knee right on the edge of the goddamned nightstand! Rattling the lamp and sending a cheap hotel pen rolling. In the quiet of the room, it sounded like a trash can tumbling down a hill.
Billy put on Outside Billy’s sheepish grin and prepared to launch into one of his preplanned excuses, but Nadine didn’t stir.
That sound you hear is the bullet that just whizzed past your head, Billy. Get the hell out of here before she wakes up.
But something nagged at him. She should have woken up. She should have at least moved in her sleep.
He crept over to her side of the bed and stared down at her.
Billy suppressed something that could have been a gasp or a chuckle, which one he couldn’t be sure without actually hearing it.
Nadine was dead.
Billy’s first rule of murder was: Don’t panic.
Which was not the same thing as “don’t be afraid.” Fear and panic were cousins, maybe even of the kissing sort, but no further went the relationship. Fear was fine. Fear crystallized and condensed the world into easy categories, making judgments swift and sure. Fear was orderly and sensible. Panic, though…
Panic was uncontrolled. Chaotic. And Billy just couldn’t have that in his life.
She had been alive when he left, and now she was dead. The shortest path from the one to the other was murder. Someone had done this.
He took in the room quickly, not scanning for details, but just skimming for anything out of the ordinary, particularly any evidence that whoever had done this was still in the room. One good thing about hotel rooms—they weren’t usually designed with nooks and crannies and alcoves and niches. Little boxes for little people leading little lives. Everything open and obvious.
He poked his head into the bathroom, finding only his own reflection.
Nothing under the bed.
A small closet was next to the bathroom. Billy listened at the door with a water glass. Nothing. Just to be safe, he flattened himself against the wall and turned the knob from the side, then wrenched the door open, danced farther away, ready to smash the glass against the nightstand for a weapon if need be.
The closet was empty.
Whoever had killed Nadine was gone. Billy wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad news.
Hero father captures killer on vacation! would make Outside Billy a hero but would also conjure an unwelcome level of fame and public scrutiny that could make Billy’s future plans moot and his history a deadly weapon waiting to be surfaced by some enterprising reporter.
But Local dad’s one-night stand found dead! was no good, either. Billy could protest all the livelong day that he was innocent, but suspicion would evermore cling to him… making his future plans moot and et cetera, see above.
Well, damn.
He’d always figured that if his career ever shut down, it would be by some bastard cop getting lucky. Not from sampling some strange while on vacation.
His prints were everywhere. Of course they were. That was the whole point of this vacation: to appear “normal.” A man in his thirties, without female companionship on the regular, single daddy to a young boy, does the responsible thing and goes out of town for said piece of strange. Vacation helped Billy stay sharp, yes, but it also added another brick to the tall, thick wall of alibi Billy had been building his entire life. It made Outside Billy that much more impervious to suspicion.
Now his fingerprints, his DNA, and his hair were all over a murder scene. A murder he truthfully hadn’t committed.
For a change.
Under normal circumstances—those times when Billy wanted to leave someone dead—he could clean up easily. But that was because he had plotted and planned the blissful murder moments for months in advance. He came prepared, with his murder kit. He knew exactly what he would touch and when, exactly where hair or DNA would linger. Cleaning up his own crime scenes had become almost second nature to him, but that second nature depended on the sizable investment of preplanning. Right now, he had nothing to go on.
Burn it down. Burn the whole place down.
Tempting. But evidence could survive a fire. A good coroner could determine that Nadine’s death had preceded the blaze, making what had been suspicious before now doubly so. And besides, Billy was no arsonist. He had a passing understanding of the craft, of course, but he wasn’t confident enough in his skills to take on the sprawling monstrosity that was Castle by the Sea, nor to risk an arson investigator deducing that the fire had been set deliberately.
How would that look for his “normal” image? To be identified as a visitor to a hotel that just happened to be burned to the ground on the same day that a woman died in one of its rooms?
Billy sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. He couldn’t purge the crime scene. He couldn’t destroy the building. And he couldn’t dispose of the body.
Well, that last one wasn’t true. Billy was a bona fide expert in disposing of bodies. Had earned his PhD in the subject, really. Just using what was in the room—never mind a quick trip into town for some innocent-seeming hardware—he could get the body out of here and disappear it fairly easily.
But that would only solve the immediate problem, to wit: Dead bitch in bed. The bigger, long-term problem—Dead bitch knew me, was seen with me by fifty people in the hotel bar—still lingered.
There was only one way to solve the problem, Billy realized. Without intending to, he chuckled at the very thought.
He was going to have to solve this murder.
It was the only way. He would need to figure out who’d killed her and then, somehow, point the police to the guilty party without implicating himself. Hopefully, the queries would end there. There was a chance the bastard cops would press further, discover his prints and DNA. But with a killer in custody, they would likely ignore it. If questioned, he could—and would—admit to a one-night stand. He would be dismissed, and his name would be in some detective’s notes in a file somewhere.
Not ideal, but he could live with it. After all, he had no other options.
First rule of murder was don’t panic, but the first rule of solving a murder, Billy figured, was most likely to figure out how the deceased had shuffled off this mortal coil.
He had pretended to be many things in his illustrious, ongoing career. He had feigned a near infinite variety of deliverymen, a plumber, a general contractor, a door-to-door salesman, and even—one particularly memorable time—a Jehovah’s Witness.
Now he would pretend to be a cop.
He flicked on the lamp and searched the room quickly and efficiently. A lifetime of stalking—including breaking and entering when the situation demanded it, and oh, the situation almost always did—had prepared him well for executing swift searches of people’s private things. Nadine’s room was small and impersonal, but she’d unpacked her suitcase and put her things in the tiny hotel dresser. Billy riffled through her clothes, not l
ingering on her thongs and nearly invisible bras. She was dead. There was no more pleasure to be had from her, not when his own freedom was in jeopardy.
Nothing suspicious among her belongings. He checked the drawers in the nightstand, rummaged around in the bathroom. Razor in the shower, along with jumbo-sized bottles of her personal shampoo, conditioner, and body moisturizer. The vanity of women could be measured by the weight of their suitcases.
Last, he examined the body. Not that he was squeamish. God, no. Not Billy Dent. Perversely, he’d been saving the best for last.
There was no obvious reason for her to be dead. No evident trauma. No entry wounds or cuts.
Maybe he was all wrong about this. Maybe no one was at fault. Could this just be natural causes? He grinned. She wouldn’t be the first woman he’d killed, but she’d be the first to die from exposure to his cock.
Rigor mortis had yet to set in, but Nadine’s cheeks had already taken on a grayish sheen. He resisted the urge to poke at them like taffy or rubber cement.
With slow care, he lifted her limbs, examining them for deviations or disturbances. They were as supple and as smooth as they’d been wrapped around him the night before.
It was a risk to tilt the body—her blood might shift too much and pool to one side, revealing to some smart-ass medical examiner that she’d been moved postmortem—but he had to chance it, for the sake of thoroughness. He lifted her as little as he could, craning his neck to look under her. That fine ass—upturned toward him and thrusting just hours ago—was unblemished. Nothing along her back or the backs of her legs, either, other than a mole that possibly presaged skin cancer.
“I diagnose that as not a big deal for you in your present situation, darlin’,” Billy told her.
He gently lowered her back onto the bed, supine.
Natural causes. Natural causes. Billy didn’t believe in God (such things were for those who needed to believe in the intercession of the divine to make sense of their sad lives), but he knew for a fact that the whole of the universe understood him, approved of him, and protected him when necessary. Maybe this had been natural causes. That meant a new plan—he would have to make certain that he was here when she was found by housekeeping, then offer an appropriately shocked and bland statement to the authorities.