The Violet Hour
Authors: Richard Montanari
Table of Contents
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Epub ISBN: 9781407059549
Version 1.0
Reissued by Arrow Books 2010
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Richard Montanari, 1998
Richard Montanari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Material from
The Wasteland
and
Whispers of Immortality
by T.S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
The Wasteland
and
Whispers of Immortality
by T.S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Penguin Books Ltd
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About the Author
Richard Montanari is the Top Ten
Sunday Times
bestselling author of
Play Dead,
The Rosary Girls,
The
Skin Gods
and
Broken Angels
, as well as the internationally acclaimed thrillers
Kiss of Evil
and
Deviant Way
. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Sunday Times
bestselling author of
Play Dead,
The Rosary Girls,
The
Skin Gods
and
Broken Angels
, as well as the internationally acclaimed thrillers
Kiss of Evil
and
Deviant Way
. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Praise for Richard Montanari
‘A specialist in serial killer tales . . . a wonderfully evocative writer’
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
‘A no-holds-barred thriller that thrusts the reader into the black soul of the killer . . . those with a taste for Thomas Harris will look forward to the sure-to-follow sequel’
Library Journal
Library Journal
‘Montanari’s superior thriller . . . [is] a welcome change from the gore typical of the serial killer subgenre. Likewise, Byrne and Balzano possess a psychological depth all too rare in such fiction.’
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
‘One of the most terrifyingly evil stories I have read. Yet, with all its violence, it is balanced by much compassion and beauty. I just couldn’t put it down. This could be the book of the year.’
Norman Goldman, Barnes & Noble
Also available by Richard Montanari
Deviant Way
Kiss of Evil
The Rosary Girls
The Skin Gods
Broken Angels
Play Dead
For Meg Ruley and Peggy Gordijn
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting . . .
The Wasteland
– T.S. Eliot
– T.S. Eliot
One
Jaguar and Marmoset
1
The air in the closet was damp and oppressive, fat with female smells, smells that seemed to invade his skin, silently, deftly mingling with his own sharp odors, his own cloying musk of fear and excitement. Some of the dresses stank of cigarettes. Nighttime clothes, he thought, party-girl clothes. Others offered a thick mélange of deodorant, Dentyne, drugstore perfume. Good-girl clothes, these: school, work, church.
But there was another fragrance beneath this wash of career-girl respectability, one that whispered of fornication, of animal secretions in the dead of night. The casually deployed bloodred teddy, he imagined, hanging by an eight-penny nail in the blackness. The maddening sachet of female sex on expensive silk.
He singled out the aroma and breathed deeply.
It stirred him.
But even though it urged him in a way he knew was not unnatural, the feeling still unnerved him a little, still prodded a primal churning at the base of his belly that no amount of rational thought nor moral reckoning seemed to be able to soothe.
He knew that he had to stay focused, though, and that the path that had brought him to this place, this moment, this act – the long road that had led him to this woman’s closet, a gram of pure heroin in one hand, a scalpel in the other – had to be followed, had to continue forward, onward; a sleek ball of mercury inexorably seeking its final level.
For twenty years he had thought about these nights to come, enacting them over and over in his mind, his
How-do-you-dos
and
Let-me-help-you-with-thats
meticulously rehearsed, his workaday world a dull, perfunctory prelude to his nights; nights that had found him on their fire escapes and tree limbs and driveways and patios, observing them all from afar, waiting. He watched the suburbanites barbecue their steaks, mow their lawns, clean their gutters. Completely unaware. And the urban-dwellers, usually all too aware, had nonetheless done the most amazing things with the shades up. He had seen them eat and read and fuck and bathe and masturbate and cry, and he had even seen one of them kick a dog beneath its chin so hard that its yellowed teeth flew forth into the afternoon sunlight like wood chips from the blade of a circular saw. It was the cruelest thing he had ever seen in his life, the kicking of an old dog. Far more cruel, he believed, than anything he was about to undertake.
How-do-you-dos
and
Let-me-help-you-with-thats
meticulously rehearsed, his workaday world a dull, perfunctory prelude to his nights; nights that had found him on their fire escapes and tree limbs and driveways and patios, observing them all from afar, waiting. He watched the suburbanites barbecue their steaks, mow their lawns, clean their gutters. Completely unaware. And the urban-dwellers, usually all too aware, had nonetheless done the most amazing things with the shades up. He had seen them eat and read and fuck and bathe and masturbate and cry, and he had even seen one of them kick a dog beneath its chin so hard that its yellowed teeth flew forth into the afternoon sunlight like wood chips from the blade of a circular saw. It was the cruelest thing he had ever seen in his life, the kicking of an old dog. Far more cruel, he believed, than anything he was about to undertake.
In twenty years he had witnessed a thousand misdemeanors, heard a million lies. He knew where all of their skeletons dangled. And thus he knew which effluence, in the end, would compel them.
Five friends, twenty years. How quickly the time had passed, he thought. How agonizingly slow the erosion of his grief . . .
He regarded their adult lives not with envy, nor hatred, but rather with an overwhelming sense of sadness. Pity, at times. One of them had a pretty wife, a cute-as-a-button daughter. One, a retarded sister to whom none of this would mean a thing. So much to lose. They did not know it, but he had already integrated himself into their lives, had already staked a place on the outer rim of their daily routine. He might have been the man in the business suit, the man in the overalls, the man in the uniform. Who knew? He might even have been the man who stood at the altar, resplendent in white satin, holding the Holy Eucharist on high.
The young woman whose salt now toyed with his senses had probably been no more than a toddler on that Halloween night twenty years ago, off to bed at eight, her aromas then so sweet and innocent. Now she was a woman. Now she covered her odors with roll-ons, lotions, perfumes, hygiene sprays. Now she fucked men for great sums of money, and the job demanded that she smell like a harlot.
And from where he stood, she did.
The young woman’s name was Kathleen Holt, but her professional name, her
nom de boudoir
, was Kiki. He had met her at the bar at Lola Bistro about a year earlier, and considering her profession, she had been easy enough to approach, if not extremely expensive to entertain. That night he played the slightly rumpled Ivy League academic, right down to the tweed blazer and boyish cascade of hastily trimmed hair over his forehead. During their twenty minutes together at the bar he had used words like
egregious
; phrases like
mise-en-scène
. She had nodded, baffled, yet seemingly comfortable in her puzzlement. In this setting, Kathleen Holt looked to be just another young professional in her conservative navy blue dress and matching pumps.
nom de boudoir
, was Kiki. He had met her at the bar at Lola Bistro about a year earlier, and considering her profession, she had been easy enough to approach, if not extremely expensive to entertain. That night he played the slightly rumpled Ivy League academic, right down to the tweed blazer and boyish cascade of hastily trimmed hair over his forehead. During their twenty minutes together at the bar he had used words like
egregious
; phrases like
mise-en-scène
. She had nodded, baffled, yet seemingly comfortable in her puzzlement. In this setting, Kathleen Holt looked to be just another young professional in her conservative navy blue dress and matching pumps.
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