THREE TIMES A LADY (13 page)

Annabeth Preston had tutored him extensively in English and math; chemistry and engineering; history and philosophy.  In addition to that, they’d also learned about such famous
castrati
as Farinelli, the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, an Italian man who’d become one of the most popular singers of the 18
th
century despite – or rather
because of
– his unusual deformity.  Nicholas and his mother had also learned about how revered musical geniuses such as Handel, Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven had each composed masterpieces specifically designed for people like Farinelli and
him
: girls, for all intents and purposes, who’d been born as men.

Not that Nicholas had any plans of becoming a singer in order to achieve
his
fame, though.  Not even close.  Where in the hell would lay the challenge in that?  These days, any old fool who found themselves in the finals of
American Idol
or
The X-Factor
or any one of the other equally inane ‘talent’ shows out there had somehow been deemed a ‘great’ singer, no matter how truly awful they sounded. 

Besides,
that
method of achieving fame was much too pedestrian for people of the Prestons’ refined tastes, much too ordinary.  Instead, according to his mother’s carefully crafted plans,
Nicholas
’s future lay in
stripping
people of their undeserved fame.  People like Timmy who hadn’t possessed one iota of talent inside their worthless bodies yet got by in life simply because some cosmic force out there (or the fork-tongued Simon Cowell himself) had randomly decided they were somehow
better
than the rest of world.  More
deserving
.

But that shit was about to change.  In a big way.  And Nicholas considered himself just the girl to change it.

Exactly
how
he’d do it had been another subject that he and Annabeth Preston had discussed in great detail over their countless cups of tea – just a couple no-nonsense girls engaged in a bit of small talk while the rain beat down hard against their kitchen windowpanes on stormy Sunday mornings.  Afterward, they’d also discussed in great detail exactly how Nicholas would
get away
with his bloody crimes long enough for their plan to reach its natural conclusion, ensuring Nicholas’s name a place of honour in the roster of fame for which it had so obviously been destined.  Fame that would no doubt go down as unparalleled in the history of the recorded universe.

A complete sex change – complete with perfect silicone breasts featuring his own God-given nipples and the fashioning of a vagina out of the skin left over from his brutal castration – had completed Nicholas’s stunning transformation.  Thanks to Timmy and all the money he’d made in his stupid television commercials – commercials that to this day still brought in residual checks every six months or so – the cost of the operation up in Canada had been surprisingly affordable.   

Estrogen treatments had eventually replaced the testosterone shots, making Nicholas’s voice higher and more feminine-sounding in addition to the added bonus of softening his skin, a feature that he maintained by applying copious amounts of moisturising lotion all over his body each night, slathering himself in the stuff until his pores could take no more.  For more years than he cared to remember, Nicholas had needed to continue shaving his face and legs every day –
twice
a day – but the monthly visits to the clinic in downtown Chicago for electrolysis treatments had slowly removed
that
aggravating inconvenience from his life as well.

Now, all these years later, Nicholas was finally an honest-to-God, real-life
girl
.  And life was certainly
good
when you were a girl, wasn’t it? 

It sure as hell was.  As a matter of fact, life was
very
good when you were a girl.  Especially when you were a girl like Nicholas: a self-sufficient, take-no-prisoners sort of gal who could slip effortlessly back and forth between the genders without anyone becoming any the wiser. 

Stylish male wigs in a breathtaking variety of colours and Ace bandages wrapped tightly around his newfound bosom allowed Nicholas to appear as a man whenever he chose – not that it was a route he chose to travel very often, mind you.  Being a man was an inconvenience, after all, a pain in the ass, something to be done only when it was absolutely necessary to further his and Annabeth Preston’s wonderfully thought-out plans.  And now, twenty-five years later – at the relatively ripe old age of forty-eight – Nicholas finally had a
list
. 

Nicholas stared down at the tattered sheet of paper in his trembling hands and felt his heart sing with joy.  The first name on his list had already been checked off.  A warm-up act, really.  By closely following the script his mother had provided him with, he’d brought down the curtains on the insufferable woman and her glittering lifestyle of thoroughly undeserved fame once and for all. 

Now, four more names awaited his undivided attention:

1.
                    
Dinah Leach

2.
                   
Penelope Hargrave

3.
                   
Amber Knightly

4.
                  
Annabeth Preston

5.
                   
Dana Whitestone

Nicholas shuddered a full-body shudder as he read through the list again, a delicious quiver snaking down the length of his spine at the memory of his first kill.  A woman out in Atlanta, one of those ‘real’ housewives who wouldn’t have known the meaning of the word
reality
had it jumped up and bitten her directly in her big, fat ass.  After forcing his way into her opulent Buckhead home while the powerful hurricane had raged on outside, he’d struck down the undeserving whore in a manner exactly befitting the worthless pig she’d been.  And now that Dinah Leach’s name had been safely crossed off his list, Nicholas could now turn his attention to the spoiled heiress out in New York City who’d never worked a single day in her life yet somehow possessed a net worth larger than several third-world countries combined.  Hell, the world would
cheer
him for that one.   

After the heiress, Number Three would come in the form of the requisite pop singer – Amber Knightly, who’d gotten her big break on The Disney Channel when she’d been just eight years old.  And why not? 
Nobody
liked those packaged, plastic entertainers, did they?  Not anybody who enjoyed
real
music, at least.  Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez,
One Direction
, the entire cast of
High School Musical
: untalented hacks, each and every last one of them.  The world would be a far better place if they were all simply erased.  And with the upcoming murder of Amber Knightly, that’s
exactly
what Nicholas planned to do.  Symbolically, at least.

Nicholas paused when he came to the fourth name on his list, a name that, for obvious reasons, he’d secretly added without his mother’s knowledge or consent: 

Annabeth Preston.
 

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and stretched his long neck, fiddling nervously with the silver Tiffany necklace hanging around his throat. 
Could he really do it?
he wondered.  Really take the life of the woman who’d given him his own? 
Twice?
  Strike her down in the same manner she’d struck down Timmy?  Cross off her name from his wonderful list once and for all?

Nicholas sat up straighter in his seat and pulled back his shoulders. 
Of course
he could do it. 
Needed
to it, as a matter of fact.  There was no other option.  No room for mercy here.  After all, it was only fair after what she’d done to poor Timmy.  What’s more, he’d
enjoy
it. 

At least, that’s what he told himself now.

Nicholas shook his head again and returned his attention to his list.  At least there was no ambiguity about the fifth name there.  Dana Whitestone would mark a worthy foil for him – no debating that simple fact – so he’d need to be
extremely
careful with her.  The woman’s unofficial label as ‘America’s top cop’ would no doubt prove the stiffest test of his
own
greatness.  Because killing vapid reality stars and other undeserving fame whores of their ilk was once thing, but besting a woman like Dana Whitestone at her own game was quite another.  If he could pull it off, though, Nicholas knew that his name would go down in history as one of the finest killers of all time.  John Wayne Gacy.  Andrei Chikatilo.  Ted Bundy.  Gary Ridgway.  David Berkowitz.  Jeffrey Dahmer.  Richard Ramirez. 
Nicholas Preston.
  And any way you cut the mustard, that wasn’t a bad goal for which to shoot.

Nope, wasn’t a bad goal for which to shoot, at all. 

Nicholas’s bright green eyes burned in their sockets as he read through the names on his list once again.  Surely there were no four women on the face of the Earth more deserving of death than these four.  And these four would mark just the
start
of things.  It didn’t even
count
the collateral damage he planned to cause along the way.

Pushing back his chair with the loud scrape of wood against tile, Nicholas took a moment or two to smooth his red Armani dress around his long legs before he made his way into the guest bathroom of their house at 969 Turning Oaks Drive while his mother slept peacefully in the master bedroom a hundred feet away, completely oblivious to the fact that her
own
name had been added to his special little list.  Closing the door behind him, Nicholas peered into his beautiful reflection in the vanity mirror above the sink and nodded approvingly at the pleasant image that stared back at him.  Flipping over his long brown hair to one side, he smiled at himself.  Right on cue, his reflection smiled back. 

Nicholas widened his smile even further, studying his high cheekbones, his piercing eyes, his perfectly straight white teeth.  No two ways about it – he was absolutely
gorgeous
.  Stunning beyond his wildest dreams.  Just like Annabeth Preston had assured him he would be all those years ago.  And where was the great surprise in that?  After all, apples – even the rotten ones – never fell too far from the tree.

Nicholas leaned in even closer to the mirror and blotted at his lipstick with the tip of his right pinkie, sighing contentedly and drifting back in time to his first kill.  After all, no matter how much time had passed, you never forgot your first time, now did you?

Of course you didn’t.

  The first time was always the sweetest.

LADIES FIRST

‘Naming hurricanes is a tradition that dates back hundreds of years.  Natives of the West Indies named storms after the particular saint’s day on which they occurred.  In 1953, the National Weather Service began using female first names for hurricanes, but it wasn’t until 1978 that men’s names were included too.’ – Laura Wiener,
Hurricane History: Fascinating Facts

Two hours after her hasty negotiations with Dr Spinks concerning her discharge from the hospital, Dana almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all.  She just couldn’t help herself.  Still, she had to admit that it was kind of fun, too.  Playing cat-and-mouse really could be a thrilling game when you were the one trying to
avoid
detection rather than the sick feeling you got deep inside the pit of your stomach while you were in the process of hunting down a deranged serial killer, knowing that any one of your many mistakes could cost innocent people their lives.  Would
probably
cost innocent people their lives. 

That said, Dana felt a lot like Chevy Chase in
Fletch
right about now, dressed up as a doctor in a white lab coat and holding a medical chart in front of her nose while a group of orderlies crowded around her to escort her past the press that had set up camp out in the hospital’s parking lot. 

The reporters barely glanced up at them as they strolled by.  Not a single Dan Rather in the entire group, and thank God for that.  Not a single Nathan Stiedowe in the entire group, either – and thank God
twice
for that. 

Dana shuddered, sending a painful wave of goose flesh rippling across her skin beneath her lab coat.  Her half-brother had been a reporter once upon a time too; had even had the audacity to write about the murders of her parents under the same name he’d been given by their mother at birth – murders that he
himself
had committed.  And Nathan Stiedowe hadn’t been the kind of reporter who would’ve been fooled
this
easily.  Not even close.  He would have sensed Dana’s fear from a mile away, would’ve
smelled
it.