Murder For Love

But instead there was "Starr Bright" stealthily examining Cobb's clothes flung across a chair. The "Navajo" leather belt with the brass buckle. The monogrammed shirt, polyester trousers. By the dim-flickering pink glow from the window she could see just well enough to go rapidly through the trouser pockets, remove a wallet, car keys. Her hand shook but was unerring. And there, on a table close by, the near-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's, and somehow she had it in her hand and drank impulsively, regretted it at once as she began to cough and Billy Ray Cobb's snoring stopped and he woke muttering, "Eh? What? Who's that?"

There followed then a space of time distended as in a dream never to be recalled precisely by "Starr Bright" except in quick-jumping flashes, images.

She told the angry suspicious man it was just her, "Starr Bright," but already he was fully awake though groggy, swinging his legs out of bed, demanding to know, "Why're you up? It's fucking night." And she tried to hide the wallet and the car keys inside her clothes, turned away from Cobb, saying she needed to use the bathroom. And by now Cobb was on his feet. Swaying but belligerent. He was no more than an inch or so taller than "Starr Bright" at five feet eight but he outweighed her by a hundred pounds. "Yeah?" he said, advancing upon her, "-the bathroom's in this direction, babe. Or were you go

"Starr Bright" fell to her knees. Cobb cursed her and released the hammerlock but slapped and punched her, furious, shamed, "Telling me all that shit last night, and I fell for it. What a sucker! Shoulda known you whores are all alike, don't deserve to live! Going into my wallet! Can't wait till morning to be paid?" and with a grunt picked up his wallet where it lay on the floor, extracted a handful of bills tossing them into the air and pushing "Starr Bright" down on hands and knees amid them where they fell, telling her to crawl for it, pick them up, pick them up with her cunt, and when "Starr Bright" did not he straddled her, his heavy sweating naked body on her back, "Hey, you like it, babe! You know you like it! 'Starr Bright'!-phony name! phony bitch! all of you phony bitches!-whores! Don't deserve to live, you contaminate the world for decent women." He took up his belt with the brass buckle and began to strike her buttocks, laughing, "Giddyup horsey! Giddyup horsey! You like it, eh?-cunt? Sure you do!" and when "Starr Bright" collapsed onto the floor Cobb ground himself into her, penis like a steel rod, until at last he cried out, hooting, and laughing, and collapsed onto her, and lay unmoving, heavily panting, for a beat. When he rose from her, "Starr Bright" lay limp.

"Now get out of here, you. Fast. Before I get serious and do something can't be undone." Prodding her with his foot, seizing her by the hair. "Don't play no more games with me, cunt. This room I'm paying for, get out."

Cobb forced "Starr Bright" to crawl on hands and knees through the scattered bills, in the direction of the door, fingers gripping the back of her neck. How triumphant he was, how an angry satisfied joy irradiated from his body, waves of animal-heat! Saying she was real lucky he hadn't broken her jaw, he'd been known to break the jaws of whores, filthy things not deserving to live among decent women, and when "Starr Bright" fumbled for her sequined purse which lay on the floor he said, "Yeah! Take your trash with you! Stinking up the place!" He marched to the door, unbolted and opened it as "Starr Bright" rose shakily to her feet, clothes torn, nose bloodied, Cobb sighted her cork-heeled shoes on the floor and snatched them up and tossed them out the door, "Trash! Stinking! Get out!" and when "Starr Bright" did not move quickly enough to suit him he gripped her again by the nape of the neck set to fling her through the doorway after her shoes but in that instant suddenly no longer dazed and fumbling as if God gave me the strength: guided my hand "Starr Bright" had the knife out of her purse, held it tightly and drew its razor-sharp blade across Cobb's throat and he cried out in astonishment and horror begi

"Starr Bright" watched Billy Ray Cobb die. Amid a pool of blood dark as oil staining the carpet in the dim-flickering pink-fluorescent glow from the window.

"Now you see! Now you see! All of you!"

In the light of early morning, not yet dawn, an eerie calm prevailed. It was the silence of the western desert, the vast western sky. Below, in the courtyard of the Paradise Motel, the kidney-shaped swimming pool was deserted of course, smaller than it had appeared the previous evening. And there was the air-mattress floating at the deep end, not striped like the American flag as "Starr Bright" had believed but only red and blue-inflated plastic, a bit worn. A toy for adults, something sad about it. Almost imperceptibly it floated atop the rippleless turquoise water that was like a skin stretched over something living, invisible, inviolable, unknowable.

It was not yet 6:00 A.M. In no haste, "Starr Bright" left room 22 of the motel, quietly crossed the empty courtyard to the parking lot at the rear; unlocked the steel-gray Infiniti sedan with the rental license plates; placed her scarred Gucci case on the passenger's seat, and her midnight-blue sequined purse atop the case. An observer, had there been one, would have noted a tall, poised, coolly attractive blond woman in white linen trousers, a pale blue silk shirt, flat-heeled shoes. Her ashy-blond hair, still damp from the shower, was brushed back neatly from her face. Her eyes were hidden behind tinted glasses so dark they might have been black. Her flawless cosmetic mask betrayed no sign of alarm, nor even of especial concern. As if I'd been here before. In His sign. And all yet to come, in His terrible mercy.

In the eastern sky, beyond the imitation-Spanish facade of a neighboring Holiday I