gently set Margaret’s head in there, but brought it down with force, spearing it on the jagged uprights that were meant to hold heavy plates and serving dishes in place.
The head was heavy.
The face was gray-white, spattered with dried blood that almost looked black. The eyes were open, glazed and staring. Gore had run from the contorted mouth and was smeared over the chin.
Letting out an involuntary, almost savage-sounding cry, Tara yanked on the head with one hand while she gripped the drying rack with the other, twisting it violently side to side and nearly vomiting again when she saw that puddle of sticky blood in the sink and heard the fleshy, moist sounds the drying rack uprights made as they were pulled from the stump of the neck.
She nearly threw it aside with a twitch of revulsion.
But she held on and dropped it in a Hefty bag and tied it shut.
Then the torso.
12:39 AM
Tara got an old rug from the garage that was bound for the dump and spread it out. The torso was heavy. The only way to get it on the rug was to roll it. She shoved and it flipped over, making a sticky, smacking sound as it came away from the slick congealed blood gluing it to the floor. It rolled over with a splatting/thudding/slapping sound. She got it on the rug and something black and fetid-smelling evacuated from its ass. Shit. The stink filled the kitchen and Tara nearly blacked out as it filled her nostrils, gassy and revolting.
Quickly, she rolled up the body and tied the rug tight with twine.
Trying not to think or feel, everything inside her tangled in loose knots, she threw the gloves into the garbage. Then she backed her car into the garage and spread plastic over the floor of the trunk. It took her about twenty minutes to load everything.
1:15 AM
Buckets and hot water, mop and Pine-Sol.
She scrubbed and mopped, her buckets filled with a dirty pink water that soon became darker, clots of blood floating on the surface. Sobbing, whimpering, she went about it with whatever strength she still had left. She washed and washed and washed. She went over everything at least four times in her cleaning frenzy. Then she got rid of the water and rinsed out the mops and buckets in the stationary tub downstairs. All of this went into the car, too, because there was no way in hell she could have any of it lying around after what she’d used it for.
You know what you’ve just done, don’t you? You’ve not only concealed a crime, you’ve covered his tracks. You’ve removed the physical evidence that the cops could have used to nail that animal. The DNA, everything… gone.
You’ve been manipulated.
She refused to think about such things.
Though the kitchen smelled like a sharp, ammonia-laced pine forest, there was still a ghastly under-stink of meat and body fluids. She lit candles. Burned incense. Smoked cigarette after cigarette.
Then she went in the bathroom and cleaned herself up.
She did not look at herself in the mirror and mainly because she was afraid of what might be looking back. Because Tara knew one thing. One thing that was incontrovertible: she was not the same person now. She would never be the same person again. You could not go through a nightmare like this and remain unchanged. She had been… defiled, desecrated. Like something good and pure and warm and very human in her had been torn out by the roots, handled by dirty fingers, soiled and violated and rolled in shit, then stuffed back inside her. And she was feeling it, feeling the foulness of what was inside her now… the rancid filth that she could never, ever wash clean.
I’ll get Lisa back, she thought. I’ll get my sister back and God help that sick sonofabitch who put her through this, put me through this.
He’ll suffer.
The pain he will know.
And right then and right there, Tara knew this wasn’t some frustrated knee-jerk reaction, some half-baked vengeance fantasy that would never, ever happen. It was the real thing. The man who had
The head was heavy.
The face was gray-white, spattered with dried blood that almost looked black. The eyes were open, glazed and staring. Gore had run from the contorted mouth and was smeared over the chin.
Letting out an involuntary, almost savage-sounding cry, Tara yanked on the head with one hand while she gripped the drying rack with the other, twisting it violently side to side and nearly vomiting again when she saw that puddle of sticky blood in the sink and heard the fleshy, moist sounds the drying rack uprights made as they were pulled from the stump of the neck.
She nearly threw it aside with a twitch of revulsion.
But she held on and dropped it in a Hefty bag and tied it shut.
Then the torso.
12:39 AM
Tara got an old rug from the garage that was bound for the dump and spread it out. The torso was heavy. The only way to get it on the rug was to roll it. She shoved and it flipped over, making a sticky, smacking sound as it came away from the slick congealed blood gluing it to the floor. It rolled over with a splatting/thudding/slapping sound. She got it on the rug and something black and fetid-smelling evacuated from its ass. Shit. The stink filled the kitchen and Tara nearly blacked out as it filled her nostrils, gassy and revolting.
Quickly, she rolled up the body and tied the rug tight with twine.
Trying not to think or feel, everything inside her tangled in loose knots, she threw the gloves into the garbage. Then she backed her car into the garage and spread plastic over the floor of the trunk. It took her about twenty minutes to load everything.
1:15 AM
Buckets and hot water, mop and Pine-Sol.
She scrubbed and mopped, her buckets filled with a dirty pink water that soon became darker, clots of blood floating on the surface. Sobbing, whimpering, she went about it with whatever strength she still had left. She washed and washed and washed. She went over everything at least four times in her cleaning frenzy. Then she got rid of the water and rinsed out the mops and buckets in the stationary tub downstairs. All of this went into the car, too, because there was no way in hell she could have any of it lying around after what she’d used it for.
You know what you’ve just done, don’t you? You’ve not only concealed a crime, you’ve covered his tracks. You’ve removed the physical evidence that the cops could have used to nail that animal. The DNA, everything… gone.
You’ve been manipulated.
She refused to think about such things.
Though the kitchen smelled like a sharp, ammonia-laced pine forest, there was still a ghastly under-stink of meat and body fluids. She lit candles. Burned incense. Smoked cigarette after cigarette.
Then she went in the bathroom and cleaned herself up.
She did not look at herself in the mirror and mainly because she was afraid of what might be looking back. Because Tara knew one thing. One thing that was incontrovertible: she was not the same person now. She would never be the same person again. You could not go through a nightmare like this and remain unchanged. She had been… defiled, desecrated. Like something good and pure and warm and very human in her had been torn out by the roots, handled by dirty fingers, soiled and violated and rolled in shit, then stuffed back inside her. And she was feeling it, feeling the foulness of what was inside her now… the rancid filth that she could never, ever wash clean.
I’ll get Lisa back, she thought. I’ll get my sister back and God help that sick sonofabitch who put her through this, put me through this.
He’ll suffer.
The pain he will know.
And right then and right there, Tara knew this wasn’t some frustrated knee-jerk reaction, some half-baked vengeance fantasy that would never, ever happen. It was the real thing. The man who had
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