At home, Rick went to the dry bar, had two quick drinks of JB Scotch, and then decided to go back to Adam's room and look through the drawers. This time, he wouldn't let anything interrupt him.
But as he reached the hallway, he wondered if he should do it. No matter how hard he tried to leave things just as they were, he knew how angry Adam would be if he found out.
But no, dammit. He knew very little about Adam and now the man's background had begun to interest him a great deal. Who was Adam Morrow, anyway?
He walked to the bedroom door.
Clicked on the light.
Adam really was such a slob.
Rick went in.
Straight to the bureau.
But he couldn't help it. He felt guilty. A naughty little boy, that's what he felt like.
He bent down to the third drawer. That's where he'd left off, right? The third drawer.
He opened it and saw handkerchiefs and cufflinks and tie bars and mementos of weddings and mementos of birthday parties and mementos of New Year's Eves and so on. A junk drawer, that's what the third drawer was.
He sifted through everything but, as he'd suspected, the contents were of no interest, except for what they revealed about Adam. A pack rat, that was Adam. Not major league but minor league at least.
There was one more drawer.
He wasn't expecting much.
All these months, he'd thought of how neat it would be to sneak into Adam's room and go through his drawers and find
Engraved swizzle sticks? Paper accordion-fold party hats? Gag napkins with dirty jokes on them?
God, he hoped there was something worth looking at in the fourth drawer.
He opened it and pulled it right out. Except for one small white envelope tucked in the far corner, the drawer was empty. Wow. All this room and just this one teeny-tiny envelope.
Wonder what's in it?
Either it's so important that it deserves its own draweror it's so unimportant that Adam just tossed the envelope in here and forgot about it.
He lifted the envelope up.
Surprisingly heavy.
Rubber band around it.
Took off the rubber band.
Looked inside.
And foundphotographs.
All the photographs showed the same boy at various ages.
A handsome boy. Bright-looking.
Many of the pictures showed the boy playing in the grounds of a fantastic mansion.
Rick realized how little he knew of Adam's background.
He turned some of the photos over, to see if there was any kind of identification on them.
Peter Tappley.
This was written on six or seven of the photos.
A few of them were also dated.
And then, darknessa cold sweat breaking out across his face and under his arms. Blackout…
He groped frantically for the bureau. Supported himself while the darkness moved through him like a terrible disease.
Then, slowly, he was able to stand erect. Able to see clearly again. Able to stop shaking.
Slowly, he went back to examining the pictures. He went through each and every one of the photographs, occasionally checking for names and dates on the back.
Following the very last photo, he found a newspaper clipping.
He unfolded it.
HEIR TO TAPPLEY FORTUNE DIES IN ELECTRIC CHAIR
Peter Tappley, one of two heirs to one of America's greatest fortunes, was put to death in the electric chair last night, after both the Supreme Court and the Governor refused to grant any more stays of execution. Witnesses say that the execution went off without any problems. Coroner J. K. Whitsone pronounced Tappley dead at 12:14 a.m., CST.
There was more but Rick didn't read it.
He put the pictures back in the envelope and the envelope back in the drawer. The newspaper clipping the slipped into his pocket.
He left the room, turning off the light.
Rick took great pride in the way he had soundproofed the basement. He had brought his CD player down here and turned on a Sousa march until the speakers began to wobble from the fury of the music. Then he'd gone outside to see if he could hear it andnothing. Perfect.
The utility room he walked through was big and cold and pretty much empty; some appliances, the furnace, and a stack of cardboard boxes were its only furnishings. At the far end was a door leading to a storage room.
He looked at the door, then walked down to it.
He opened the door, groped around and found the light switch, and flipped it on.
Hard as he'd tried, he hadn't been able to clean all the blood from the concrete floor and walls. Lots of faint red splashes remained.
Fortunately, he had spent a lot of time fixing up the drainage system, altering the soil stack that emptied into the main drain beneath the house. In three years, he'd killed seven women in this basement room. While he'd carted most of the body parts away, pieces of meat and organs were inevitably carried down the drain to the main drainage system. He'd had some problems at first, but once the soil stack had been rigged differently, they were solved.
The axe stood in the corner. It was a thing of beauty, at least to Rickthe equivalent of Excalibur. Dried blood lovingly streaked the 36-inch-long handle as well as the 5-inch cutting face. At night, watching TV, he often filed the head of the axe then used a whetstone on it. It was always sharp, always ready for use.
He went over and picked it up, stroked the long silken handle with obscene pleasure. He had a pretty good idea of who he'd be using this on, and soon.
He angled the inside of his thumb against the edge of the blade, his own blood mixing now with the blood of his victims. That's what we all came down to in the end, anyway. Blood and bone and meat and shit and come, all sinking into the oblivion of the ground.
He was aroused, then, and unexpectedly, the way he used to get as a teenager.
His need overwhelmed him and he hurried upstairs.
He kept the small black box of videotape velcro'd to the bottom of his mattress. It would take somebody a long time to find it. A long, long time.
He went swiftly to the living room, put the tape into the VCR, switched on the TV and then turned off all the other lights.
He knelt in front of the TV, as the images and then the screams struggled to grainy life on the home video.
He'd done this many times before.
He filled his hand with his sex and began pleasing himself.
The video had been taken in the basement with this skinny red-haired waitress he'd dragged all the way back from Wisconsin in the trunk of his car. He'd sedated her for the trip.
But he revived her when they got back here because he wanted to get it all on video. And her fear was a big part of the pleasure.
He'd mounted the camera on the tripod and then set to work.
She lay in the middle of the floor, right by the drain, naked and all trussed up. She had spunk, he had to give her that, the way she rolled left then right and then tried to kick her feet out. She had to know she didn't have a chance.
The camera got some good sexy angles of her as she rolled around naked like that. They were so good he always thought he was going to faint from pure pleasure when he saw them. She had a great little rump.
Then this guy came in. All in black. Right down to a black executioner's mask. Very dramatic. Freaky.
But what you really noticed about the guy was not his clothes but the axe.
Long, curved handle; blood-splashed head.
Rick and his axe.
She screamed so much the video microphone started woofing: it couldn't handle all that shrillness. She knew just what was about to happen…
He knelt in front of his TV now, pleasing himself more and more, faster and faster, as the axe descended and took her head off.
He watched it roll down the slanting floor toward the drain…
And then the man in the black executioner's maskthat's how he thought of it, like the guy in black wasn't really him but an actor, like, say, Warren Beatty or somebodywent to work on the rest of her…
And now, as the late-October wind tore at trees and shrieked into attic windows… now Rick knelt before his TV, his breath coming in gasps, as he watched the executioner finish the job.
The darkened living room was filled with shifting beams of light as the screen bloomed with various colors… and as Rick Corday cried out in ecstasy.