Will turns a knob on the wall, turns up the surround sound until the movie is blaring, and then she’s sitting up, and then she’s screaming, and he can barely hear her screams over the movie as he leans close to her, puts a sandy finger to her lips, shaking his head, slowly, to hush her. He refills her glass with vodka, hands it to her, and nods for her to drink. He sets the tackle box, flashlight, and camera on the rug and sits next to her on the couch and looks deeply into her bleary, bloodshot, panicky eyes. She has no eyelashes, has pulled all of them out. She doesn’t try to get up and run. He nods for her to drink, and she does. Already she’s accepting what must happen. She will thank him.

The movie vibrates the house and her lips say, “Please don’t hurt me.”

She was pretty once.

“Shhhhh.” He shakes his head, hushing her again with his sandy finger, touching her lips, pressing them hard against her teeth. His sandy fingers open the tackle box. Inside are more bottles of glue and glue remover, and the bag of sand, and a black-handled six-inch double-edged wallboard saw and reciprocating saw blade, and various hobby knives.

Then the voice in his head. Roger crying, screaming, bloody froth bubbling from his mouth. Only it isn’t Roger crying out, it’s the woman begging with bloody lips, “Please don’t hurt me!”

As Glenn Close tells Michael Douglas to fuck off, and the volume vibrates the great room.

She panics and sobs, shaking like someone having a seizure. He pulls his legs up on the couch, sits cross-legged. She stares at his sandpaper hands and sandpaper bottoms of mangled bare feet and the tackle box, the camera on the floor, and the realization of the inevitable seizes her blotchy, puffy face. He notices how unkempt her nails are and is overwhelmed by that same feeling he gets when he spiritually embraces people who are suffering unbearably and he releases them from their pain.

He can feel the subwoofer in his bones.

Her raw, bloody lips move. “Please don’t hurt me, please, please don’t,” and she cries and her nose runs and she wets her bloody lips with her tongue. “What do you want? Money? Please don’t hurt me.” Her bloody lips move.

He takes off his shirt and khaki pants, neatly folds them, places them on the coffee table. He takes off his underwear, places it on top of his other clothes. He feels the power. It spikes through his brain like an electric shock, and he grabs her hard around the wrists.

Chapter 11

Kay Scarpetta 15 - Book of the Dead

Chapter 11

D awn. It looks like it might rain.