"Heusler, Marianna - A Second Look" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heusler Marianna)

= A Second Look
by Marianna Heusler


He watched her walking towards him, cocky and self-assured, her skirt hitched up way above her hefty thighs, her scarlet sweater outlining her ample curves as well as her flabby rolls, her makeup caked on her face, her lips slippery with colored Vaseline, her hair sprayed and gelled in some elaborate do.

She barely glanced at him and why would she? Girls like that never gave him a second look. The truth was that no one ever gave him a second look, which really worked out well. Because later when the police would ask passersby for a description of people who were in the area at the time of the murder, they never thought of him.

He knew exactly where she lived. He had been following her for weeks. He had a plan, and he'd written it all down in his marble composition book, neat and clean on those blank black lines.

Of course, she would not understand. In the final moments of her life she was bound to wonder--why her? And he would not bother to tell it that it really was quite simple.

She reminded him of someone.

She did her laundry on Thursdays. He had watched her dragging her cart across the yard, always at the same time, three-thirty in the afternoon. She strutted over the pavement, with her Walkman on, blissfully unaware, never dreaming for one moment that she was being stalked.

He planned it for March first. On that rainy spring afternoon he sneaked into the laundry room at precisely two o'clock. He carried an enormous laundry bag.

He had scouted out a hiding place under the stairwell, deep in the bowels of the basement. So he sat and waited as the warm steam jutted through the narrow space.

He had thought about bringing a book, but he wasn't much of a reader, and he'd decided against his own Walkman because it might possibly distract him. If someone else came down those stairs to do the laundry, it was important that he hear. So instead he sat still and worried about everything that could go wrong and wondered how he could make absolutely certain that nothing would.

He had been lucky the first two times--or maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe he was just good at what he did. And God knows he wasn't much good at anything else, which is what she kept telling him.

The slut was late, fifteen minutes after her usual time, and at first he thought that might be a really bad sign. What if she wasn't alone? What if she brought a friend? What if someone else decided to do the laundry at the same time?

He was taking a chance, but chances were what excited him.

Then he heard the sound of those ridiculous high-heeled boots she wore, and he smelled her--a musky, sexy odor that invited "Come get me." Today she was alone. She wasn't speaking to anyone, as she dragged her duffel bag down the long steps, so he guessed it would be all right. She had earphones on, attached to a CD player and she was mimicking the words to some stupid rap song, swaying to the beat, totally unaware that she had minutes to live.

She walked straight down the long, narrow corridor to the machines. He followed her silently from behind.

When she finally arrived in the laundry room, she whirled around. Seeing his friendly grin, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, it's you," she said, and then he knew that she had seen him in the neighborhood and the stupid bitch thought it was going to be all right.

He threw his laundry bag on top of the washer.

"How many machines you gonna use?" she asked, sounding slightly annoyed when she saw the size of his sack.

"Only one."

"Good, because I need three."

She opened her duffel bag and dumped her laundry on the cold hard cement floor, while he removed a single towel and a long, skinny piece of wire from his. She barely glanced at him--instead she was studying a pale blue shirt, probably debating whether to put it with the whites or the colors.

A pale blue baby's shirt. He was not wrong about her then. She had gone and got herself knocked up. She was just like all the other whores.

She bent down, gathered the white clothes, and dragged them over to the washer. If she suspected that he was studying her, it didn't faze her in the least. Girls like that, they liked being watched.