He sat in his chair, uploading the pictures of Mary. He scrolled slowly through the whole sequence, savoring them: the first shots when he brought her to the camp, tousled and glaring. The poses of her beckoning him with her helpless, waiting beauty. The shot of her sprawled on the rocks, the ripple of brown floodwaters inches away. Then, the final one-her body caught in the swollen current, only the top of her shiny black head visible. “You shouldn’t have pissed me off like that, or I might have let you live,” he said aloud.
He made a new folder, titled it Blood Orchid and stashed it in a folder with just the date he’d dumped her. Done saving, he unplugged the hard drive and pulled up the rug, stashing it in the floorboard cache he’d built.
Savoring the moment, he took the key ring with the black and blonde hair on it out of the drawer. He knew he should hide it with the photos, but he needed it close. He took the hank of Mary’s hair out of the Ziploc bag and secured it to the ring on the other side of Kelly’s hair. There was a symmetry there that was pleasing to his eye.
He got his phone out and slowly scrolled with his thumb through the photos he’d saved there, trailing the key ring’s hair back and forth across his chest, down his arms, a feeling like the tenderest of touches. Faces of young women filled the small screen.
He paused at the one he was looking for.
He studied Leilani Texeira’s face caught in a rare smile, her warm brown eyes alight. “You’re next. I was right-you do photograph well.”
He put the key ring away and got up, going out to the garage. He went to a large wooden cabinet, opened the combination lock, reached inside to a concealed back panel, opened it. He took out his kit, setting it on the work table nearby.
It was a black backpack with everything tidy and in its place: the ski mask, a couple of shiny new pairs of handcuffs, the Taser, a clear glass bottle of the drug, a sealed plastic pack of hypodermics, a roll of duct tape, a couple of freshly laundered handkerchiefs, the tie out cable, the pillowcase and neatly folded top sheet. He mentally rehearsed the capture as he touched each item.
He wasn’t planning to be gentle with this one.