Work Done for Hire (7 page)

Hunter liked the sound of rain drumming on his metal roof. The fact of the rain, though, was a little annoying. He had eaten one frozen meal and wanted a fresh one, but there wouldn't be many joggers out.

Not many potential witnesses, either.

No diversions left. He was tired of reading, and television was earnest documentaries and Saturday morning cartoons, which offered sufficient violence but no appetizing consequences.

With no particular destination in mind, he got in the van and headed north, playing a Jacksonville radio station on the radio but not hearing the music, listening for weather updates. He got gas in Georgia, filling up at a place that was too ramshackle and open to have surveillance cameras. He did have to go inside to pay, and considered the risk/benefit ratio of killing the dimwitted clerk and emptying the register.

The boy was skinny and sallow and smelled bad, which may have saved his life. And there could have been a hidden camera amidst the chaotic jumble of merchandise behind him. Hunter bought eight Super Red Hot sausages and, unseen back in the van, ate them like a sword-swallower, one after the another, while he studied the map.

The rain had let up when he stopped, but now it continued with redoubled force. He took a left turn and then angled down a county road that pointed into Alabama.

He came upon his prize only fifteen minutes down the road. A large woman on the gravel margin hunched against the force of the rain, working on an upside-down bicycle. He slowed down and waved at her, blinking his lights. She waved back and he pulled off the road in front of her, and backed up.

He rolled down the window as she came up, wiping the water from her long hair. She was big, not quite half his size, and he salivated at the thought of all that delicious fat.

“Golly, thanks, mister—” He flung the door open with such force that she sprawled almost to the middle of the road. But she was standing, staggering, by the time he heaved himself out of the van. He took two ponderous steps and dropped her with a punch to the solar plexus.

Faster, now. He grabbed her wrist and roughly dragged her to the back of the van. Locked. Stupid of him.

The driver's-side door was still open. He lumbered back to it and stretched to reach the keys in the ignition.

Sudden sharp pain in his back. He turned and she was standing there with a narrow-blade knife, a switchblade stiletto, staring at the color of his blood.

The wound was not serious. He backhanded her so hard her neck snapped.

She was limp but still alive as he tied her up and manacled her in the back. She managed some incoherent growls and moans, too soft to annoy him or attract attention, so he didn't bother with the duct tape.

“Be happy,” he called back. “You're out of the rain.”

Decisions. Maybe leave Georgia for this one, so as not to have the same group of state police studying his spoor. Drive on into Alabama, or maybe all the way through to Mississippi.

No. The need was growing in him. Alabama would do.

He was across the border in thirty minutes, and stopped at a McDonald's for a bag of small burgers and ten orders of fries. He gulped it all down, driving one-handed but with intense care, before he left the interstate. He had memorized the map and the Googlemaps screen that showed the nameless dead-end dirt road that was his tentative destination.

At the first small road he pulled over to the shoulder to check on his quarry. He was too big to crawl through the van, so he chanced opening the rear doors. Her eyes were closed, but when he forced her mouth open and poured in some water, she coughed and gagged.

“That's good. It won't be long now.”

“Please,” she croaked. “Do . . . do whatever you want. . . .”

“Don't worry. I will.” He eased the doors shut and went back toward the front of the van, but she started to scream. Annoying.

He went back to the rear doors, swung them open, and hit her head twice on the metal floor, just hard enough to stun her.

“Please. You only cause trouble for yourself.” He tore off a piece of duct tape and smoothed it over her mouth. Then he tore off a small piece and closed one nostril. “Wouldn't that be an awful way to die?”

Before getting back into the van, he stepped into the forest, studying the loam. The van would leave tracks when he went off the road. If it rained harder, they would be obliterated, but the forecast called for the rain to taper off and stop in a couple of hours.

He studied his memory of the Googlemaps images. The topographical map showed a ridge to the east, and a gravel road in a few miles that ran up it. He would drive up there and check the soil and underbrush.

In the small cooler between the seats he'd stashed alternating quarts of beer and Coke. Took a Coke to be on the safe side. Wouldn't do to be stopped in the middle of nowhere and forced to kill a state trooper. Two, probably.

He almost missed the unmarked gravel road and reversed back up to it. He drove up the rise and pulled over, out of sight from the paved road, and stopped to listen for a couple of minutes. No traffic; no sound but the ticking of his engine and the patter of raindrops.

He drove on slowly for about a mile and a half. The road ended at the grey ruin of a clapboard shack with a collapsed roof. Saplings grew out of the interior. The front door was missing and there was no glass in the windows.

Still, some indigent might have sought shelter there. He quietly shucked a shell into the 12-gauge and eased heavily out of the van, alert.

His eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the cabin. Sound of a rat or squirrel scurrying away. No other signs of life except spiders and millipedes. Woodsy smell with a touch of mildew.

The exposed beams under the part of the roof that was intact were strong enough to support his weight. He went back to the van and brought out the chains and hook and large cooler.

When he returned for the woman, her eyes were open, unblinking. She didn't resist when he handcuffed her wrists together, and then her ankles.

Should he rape her? He had done that to the first two women, and one man, but there was no special joy in it, and it proved nothing; he already had total control over them, so sticking a protuberance into an opening was a trivial exercise. Besides, if he were interrupted and had to leave body parts behind, the fluid they found in her vagina would not be human in chemistry or biology.

He hung her up by the heels and stooped to remove the duct tape. “Don't scream. There's no one around to hear you, and you'll just annoy me.”

She winced when he jerked the tape off, then worked her jaw and said, “This is the weirdest dream I've ever had.”

“It's not a dream, Cooper.” He'd looked in her wallet. “It's not even a nightmare.”

“I refuse to believe that. You'll kill me, and then I'll wake up.”

He almost smiled. “That's a new way of coping. None of the others have said that.” He unrolled her Lycra shorts and left them bunched around her knees. “Most girls your age shave around the pubic region. The bathing suit part, at least.”

“I'm sure you're an expert.” Her voice was conversational but quaking. “You can say ‘cunt.' Under the circumstances.”

“Heavens, no. I don't know you well enough.” He sliced her T-shirt from neck to waist and then cut both sleeves to remove it. She was wearing a red sports bra. He snapped the elastic but left it alone.

“How many . . . how many others?”

“Twelve; you'll be lucky thirteen. The newspapers call me Hunter. You haven't heard of me?”

“I—I never read the paper. Or watch the news.”

“Oh. Is it too depressing?” He made small nicks over each kneecap and watched the blood trickle down. “If you read the newspapers, you might have thought twice before bicycling alone out in the woods.”

“My boyfriend and parents know where—”

“I'm sure they do. We'll be in another state before they get around to calling the police. You'll be in quite another state.” He wiped one stream of blood with his forefinger and tasted it. “Type O, I believe?”

“Look. If this is a gag—”

“There may be gagging.” He stuck out his tongue and licked the trickle of blood from the other leg in one slow sweep. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You are delicious.”

He went outside and came back with a large plastic bucket with a lid. He pried off the lid and put the bucket on the floor underneath her head. Then he sat down cross-legged, facing her eye to eye.

“Carolyn Cooper. You must bike a lot.”

“No. Yes.” Tears were running down her forehead.

“Your thighs and calves are very muscular. But not
too
lean. Do you go to school?”

She shook her head no.

“Church? Do you go to church?”

“You . . . United Southern Baptist.”

“Southern Baptist. So you'll be in heaven soon.”

She cried harder and tried to wipe her nose on her shoulder. He held up a Kleenex and said, “Blow.” She wouldn't.

“I bet you're still a virgin. Are you?”

She nodded slowly. “And yet you say ‘cunt.' How people have changed since I was a boy.” He reached up and she cringed away, and so started to swing and bob, a complex pendulum.

He waited until she stopped. “What if I promised to let you go if you let me make love to you? Have sex. Here on the floor?”

She glared at him and shook her head, just an inch, back and forth.

“If you don't, I'll kill you.”

“You will anyhow. You godless bastard.”

He stared into her eyes, brow furrowed in thought. “It's a complicated moral dilemma—for you, not for me—though you may be too upset to appreciate it right now.”

He held up one finger. “You refuse to have sex with me and I kill you. You go to heaven. If you were headed there anyhow.”

Two fingers. “You let me make love to you and I keep my word, and let you go. Technically, you sinned the sin of fucking—but is your God so petty he would send you to Hell over that? If so, I would posit that you don't have a snowball's chance of getting through life without doing something that will send you there.”

Three fingers. “You let me make love to you and I kill you anyhow. As you have suggested. I would concede that that could be bad. Go directly to Hell, do not collect two hundred dollars.” He laughed. “You're looking at me as if I were crazy. Haven't you ever heard of Monopoly?”

He shook his head at her crying. “There is a fourth, necrophilia. I could kill you first and then have sex with your remains. But that would be sick. I've never done that, not really. They were always alive when I started.”

He stood, set the blade on her abdomen, and pressed slightly. “The last time, I cut his throat and then opened him like
this
.” With his finger, not the blade, he swept down from pubic bone to sternum. She screamed.

He sat back down. It took all his strength to hold her head still while he replaced the duct tape.

“Please try not to pee. That doesn't help anything.” Instead of cutting her throat, he just opened a carotid artery, which resulted in a mess. He must have saved only half the blood, the rest of it spurting all around as she struggled. By the time there was a regular flow into the bucket, the floor of the musty room looked like a macabre Jackson Pollock painting.

He wouldn't do it that way again. It was nice to have the blood, but the out-of-control disorder was vulgar.

When he made the long ventral incision, she was so close to being dead that she hardly reacted, just flinching. Before he cut her down, he severed the intestines at ileum and rectum, and laid them out in a neat circle around the locus where she was hanging, which remedied some of the randomness. He separated the edible parts from the steaming pile of offal and sealed them in plastic bags, which he set on the block of ice in the cooler.

She was a little too large to fit into the cooler until he took out the ice block and jointed her. Then he split the ice into eight chunks and arranged them in various hollows, and propped the bucket upright inside her circled arms.

Before moving the ice chest, he took the shotgun and went out the cabin's back door, and silently reconnoitered. The rain had stopped and the forest was utterly quiet.

He found the remains of a rabbit that had been torn apart, probably by a hawk, and smiled in empathy. He thought of what was inside the cooler and his stomach growled.

T
he rain stopped abruptly just after 10:00. I finished the chapter I'd been working on, rolled up my gear, and punched the phone for automatic checkout. Figured I could cover half the distance to Des Moines before lunch if I poured on the coal.

Perfect weather and road. Cool fresh-washed air and pebbly asphalt that hadn't gone through too many Iowa winters.

Sometimes the bicycle is a perfect place to think. Maybe the rhythm and slight exertion. But especially like this, with no distractions from weather or traffic—the mind roams and grazes. Not a mind-set for doing the taxes or solving scholarly problems, but good for free association and inspiration.

So what would Hunter be if I were writing the story free of constraints from the script? Like this last chapter. That went easily and was pretty interesting. Pretty good writing.

How close did the book really have to be to the movie?

Well, the movie didn't actually exist yet, as a movie. They were supposed to start shooting July first, two weeks before the book was due. They were going to wrap the movie six weeks later, 15 August. That date was set in stone; another company would be moving into the studio the next day.

My contract required me to rewrite the novelization if there were “fundamental” changes between the script and the movie. I hadn't minded agreeing to that clause—hell, if I had to write the whole novel over, it was still a fortune compared to real fiction.

But wait. Consider the obverse—what if
I
made fundamental changes to the story myself? And delivered before shooting started? If they liked it better, they might use that version, or some part of it.

They wouldn't pay me any more—talk about fantasy!—but it could enhance my reputation. And if they
didn't
like it, how much work would it be to return it to Duquest's original inspired version?

Barb Goldman said I'd be lucky if the Great Man even saw the first page of the book. Most likely it would go to the “script girl” (of whatever gender) or some similar minion, who would write up a page or two about it, to be filed and forgotten.

But what if the report said, “Hey, this is really good! Somebody should send it up to Duquest before he starts to shoot!”

Doesn't hurt to dream. With a free hand, what about the script would I change?

The action really wouldn't have to be that different. Maybe a little more believable. I was already taking some liberties with the characters, who were pretty cardboard in the script, and I had the studio's blessing for that. When I talked to Duquest's agent on the phone, what he said he wanted, in so many words, was “really good writing, just not too literary.” Sort of like really good soup, but without any seasoning.

What does a Hollywood guy mean by “literary”? Big words? No problem. Complex characterization? Keep it subtle. Layers of meaning? They won't worry about the cake if the icing looks pretty.

As I'd told Kit, but of course hadn't mentioned to the movie people, that was the most interesting aspect of the job; the most challenging: writing two books simultaneously, a literary one and a commercial one. The hat trick was that both novels were made up of the same sequence of words.

Maybe that was kind of quantum-mechanical? Like a particle being in two places at the same time. Though I could never get my literal-minded brain around that one, quite.

With writing it's simple to do two things at once. The Marquis de Sade's “novels” are masturbation adjuncts but also exquisitely detailed maps of a deranged mind examining itself.
Ulysses
is a microscopic deconstruction of one day in Dublin, but the same sequence of words adds up to a daring experiment in the limits of the novel form.

So my job was simple wordsmithing in comparison: write a good novel that follows someone else's story line—like
Ulysses
, both Homer's and Joyce's, to go from the ridiculous to the sublime.

In theory, I could write two different versions, literary and commercial. But that way lies legal madness. The book will be a “work done for hire,” and is the sole property of Ronald Duquest. Once I cash the check, I'm out of the picture. If I tried to copyright a book with the same story and title, but better words, the people who owned the commercial version would not be amused. It's probably a good life rule not to piss off people who keep lawyers on the payroll.

The new bike was very pleasant for the first fifteen miles or so, but somewhere between twenty and thirty I started to wonder about the wisdom of my choice. The “commuter” bike was exactly that, and its cushiony ride would be perfect for going back and forth to and from work. The softness of the ride ultimately came from your own muscles, though, pushing against springs. A road bike's ride might be harder on your butt, but all the energy you expended went to getting you from point A to point B.

Maybe I could put that in the book. Our hero gets an oversprung commuter bike with the guy's money, but goes back the next day for one that's more practical for the long haul. Not in the script, but a nice bit of verisimilitude for bike-savvy readers.

The author of the book, unlike the character, doesn't have an employer with a fat wallet. Well, they
do
have billions, but not for the peons who humbly till the literary soil for them. Not for the comfort of their butts.

It was worth a few miles of daydreaming. I'd only spent $500 on this bike, leaving $49,500 for other stuff like rent. Minus Barb's 15 percent. A decent road bike would run about $1,500, and they'd probably give me $400 trade-in. Call it a thousand-dollar investment, finally, out of the fifty I was getting for the book.

I almost had myself convinced, but a reality check came creeping in. How often, in real life, would I do even ten miles in a day, let alone fifty or a hundred? Going to the 7-Eleven for a six-pack, I'd rather have this comfy blue Cambridge than a sexy hard-riding racer. And it would be really stupid to buy both—where would I put them? I wouldn't even leave my Salvation Army junker locked up overnight outside my apartment. Even if nobody was desperate enough to steal it, kids liked to demonstrate their budding manliness by stomping on spokes—and frames, if they were big kids.

Even the one bike dominated my so-called living room. Two would make it look like a bike shop.

I did have a get-thee-behind-me-Satan moment as I pedaled wearily into the suburbs of Des Moines. Two Guys Bike Shoppe had a signboard out front saying THIS WEEKEND ONLY ALL CAMPYS 25% OFF LIST!!! A Campagnolo would be just the right level of wretched excess—a Caddy, but not a Rolls.

I went past it a couple of blocks to a motel that was conveniently just behind a liquor store. A six-pack and a miniature of dark rum would take the kinks out fine. A burger and a couple of cookies for dinner, from the 7-Eleven beside it. It wasn't dinner on the French Riviera with Duquest and his bevy of bimbos. But that might come in time.