The Guilty - Jason Pinter [70]
face. It got into my eyes and I tried to blink it away.
Then I heard a sucking sound, looked over and saw a man
I'd never seen before sitting at the living room table, smoking
a cigarette like he didn't have a care in the world. He was
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flicking ashes into a neat little pile on the floor. There was an
empty glass in front of him, water beading down its sides. I
recognized it as a piece Amanda bought from a mail order
catalog a few months back. She'd said my glassware looked
so worn it was ready to turn back into sand.
The stranger cocked his head and smiled at me, like he'd
just noticed I was there.
"You're a heavy sleeper, Parker. I thought I'd have to bring
a marching band in here to get those eyes open."
I blinked the spots from my eyes. The man in my living
room was young. Mid-twenties. His face had no lines from age,
but looked slightly weather-beaten, like he'd grown up in the
sun and hadn't yet learned the dangers of UV rays. He was
wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. A blue bandanna was
wrapped around his head. His eyebrows and sideburns were
dirty blond, but the bandanna hid his hair's length and style.
He wasn't from the city. Nobody got natural tans living here.
Immediately I knew this man, like me, had come to New York
from far away. He'd come for a reason. He'd killed four people
without mercy or remorse. And now he was in my home.
The skin around his face was taut but smooth, like an older
man squeezed into a younger man's body. His hands were
veiny and strong, his expression one of both deep thought and
intense malice, like he'd take a long hard thought before slitting
your throat. This was the man who had ended four lives.
Mixed with fear, I felt a strange dose of excitement. The
man sitting in my living room presented a fascinating story,
one that I'd been dying to uncover. A spool that unraveled
here--leaving me beaten and vulnerable, at a murderer's
mercy.
He peered at me through a smoky haze as he took another
drag and exhaled. I couldn't see any weapons on him, didn't
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know what he'd hit me with, only that it was heavy and
knocked me out with one blow. I had a burning urge to write
a very strongly worded letter to the landlord about the shitty
security in this apartment building, but there were more
pressing issues.
"How did you..." I said. My mouth felt like it was filled
with cotton, my words slurred and slow.
"Please," he said. "Your building is easier to get into than
my jeans. And it costs a whole lot less, too."
He stood up. Moved closer until he was hovering over me.
My heart was pounding. I tried futilely to struggle with my
bonds. I could smell the stink of sweat. He was breathing hard,
but not enough to keep a sick smile from spreading over his
face.
"Part of me just wants to kill you right now," he said.
"Lord knows you deserve it."
"Like Athena deserved it," I spat. "And Joe Mauser, and
Jeffrey Lourdes and David Loverne."
"Damn straight," he said. "Fact is, you belong right in
with the whole lot of 'em. I could fucking kill you right now
and nobody would know until some shitty two-line statement
in your newspaper told 'em."
I had nothing to say. I tugged against my bonds, felt pain
in my shoulder. It was useless. My legs were asleep, and I had
no leverage. The boy watched me with odd fascination, like
watching a fly struggle to free itself from a web.
Finally I stopped struggling.
"If you wanted to kill me--" I started to say.
"I would have done it right after I knocked your ass out,"
he finished. "No, I don't aim to kill you just yet, Henry.
You've been useful so far. I'm sure you were flattered I left
one of your writings behind."
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"You're demented."
He eyed me with disappointment. "Killing you is still a
possibility, you don't get a lot smarter."
"Smarter?" I said, rather stupidly.
"I've read your paper," he said. "I've read all those stories
about the guns and the bullets and the blah blah blah. Fact
is your stories