Thicker Than Blood

"Mmm. What?"

"You have to guess, silly."

"Is it round and crinkly?"

"Actually, it’s hard."

"Mmm." She shuddered in a good way. I could hear the alcohol thickening up her voice.

"And very sharp."

"Huh?"

"You told any of your friends about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Does anyone know we’ve been seeing each other?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Just tell me." I caught a grain of anger in his voice, which I’m sure she didn’t register.

"Only the girls at work."

Orson sighed.

"I asked you not to tell anyone. You tell them my name?"

"Why?"

"Arlene, did you tell them my name?"

"I don’t remember." Her voice mellowed. "What do you think about this, sweetie?" A zipper started to descend.

There was sudden movement in the dark. "Don’t you touch me," he hissed.

The bed squeaked, and I wondered if she’d sat up.

"Turn on the light," she said. "Turn it on!" The light did not come on.

"Did you tell your girlfriends my name?"

"Why are you acting so weird?"

"Tell me, so I can show you what’s in my pocket."

"Yes, I told them your —"

"Goddamnit."

"What?"

"You can go now."

"Why?"

"Leave."

"What is wrong with you? I thought — I mean…I like you, and I thought —"

"I had something extraordinarily special pla

"To what?"

"Get out of my house."

The bed moved again, the floor creaked, and it sounded as though clothes were being smoothed.

"I can’t believe I — you need help, David."

"Perhaps."

"You can go to —"

"I’d advise you to leave while you’re still able."

She stormed from his bedroom into the hallway, screamed "Fucking freak!" and was sobbing by the time she reached the front door.

25

ORSON sat for a while in the dark after Arlene left. For some reason, I expected him to cry, to come apart in pathetic flinders when no one was around. But this didn’t happen. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I began to make out the shapes in his room — the painting on the wall, the bookshelves, his legs stretched out on the bed. I could see barbs of light through the dormer window, on the black slopes across the valley.

After thirty minutes, I thought he’d fallen asleep, and I began to psych myself up to crawl out of the closet and do what I’d come here to do. But when I started to move, he sat up abruptly. Stiffening, I watched his arms reach down under the bed and lift what appeared to be a shoe box up onto the mattress. Orson slipped out of his loafers and kicked them in opposite directions across the room. One hurtled into the closet and nearly struck me in the head.

I heard a mechanical clicking. He settled back onto the mattress and began speaking in a low, monotonous voice: "It is…seven forty-three P.M. on Friday, November eighth. Arlene came over this evening. I told you about her. That legal assistant from Bristol. It was going to happen tonight. I thought about it all day. All week. But she’d mentioned me — my name, I mean — to some of her coworkers, so that’s the end of that. It was an exercise in self-control. I’d never used a box cutter before, so I’m more than a little disappointed that tonight didn’t work out. If I go much longer without any play, I may resort to doing something careless, like that time in Burlington. But you made the rule never to do that in this town, and it’s an intelligent rule, so don’t fuck things up." He stopped the Dictaphone, but then pushed the record button again.

"Last thing. I was on-line today, and I saw that James Keiller’s second appeal was denied. Guess that means they’ll be setting an execution date in the near term. That’s a beautiful thing, what I did there. It really is. I may have to make the trip out to Nebraska when they juice him. And I do believe they juice ’em in the Cornhusker State."

He returned the Dictaphone to the shoe box and took out something else. Climbing out of bed, he walked toward his dresser, upon which sat a TV/VCR combo. He inserted a videotape and turned on the TV. As it started to play, he lay down on his stomach, his head at the edge of the mattress, propped up on his elbows, chin cupped in his hands.

It was in color. Oh God. The shed. I resisted a surge of nausea.

"This is Cindy, and she just failed the test. Say hi, Cindy."

The woman was tied to the pole, with that leather collar around her neck. Orson turned the camera on himself, sweaty-faced, eyes twinkling, beaming, bridelike.

"Cindy has chosen the six-inch boning knife."

"Stop it!" she shrieked.

I plugged my ears and shut my eyes. The fear in her voice sickened me. Even with the volume muffled, I could still hear the most piercing of screams. On the bed, Orson was making noise, too. I squinted and saw that he’d turned over on his back and was watching the screen upside down, jerking off.

The footage of Orson killing her wasn’t terribly long, so he watched it over and over. If I hyperfocused on my heartbeat, I found that I could block out the television and Orson’s groans almost completely. Counting the beats, I worked my way up to 704.

When my eyes opened, the room was silent. I’d nodded off, and it horrified me to think I might’ve been snoring or lost precious hours asleep in his closet. Checking my watch, I saw that 9:30 had just passed, and I felt relief knowing that Walter and I still had the majority of the night to kill my brother.

From the bed — deep breathing. I recognized the pattern of Orson’s long exhalations. Almost certain he was asleep, I withdrew a syringe and a vial of Versed. Flicking off the plastic cap, I stuck the hollow needle through the rubber seal and pulled the plunger back until the bottle was empty. I then aspirated the contents of two more vials. With fifteen milligrams of Versed in the syringe, I secured the caps and placed the three empty vials back into my fa

As I came to my feet on the hardwood floor of the walk-in closet, it occurred to me that he might not be asleep. Perhaps he was merely resting, breathing patiently in a yogic trance. After three steps, I stood at the threshold of the closet, staring down at Orson on the bed.

His chest rose and fell in an unhurried rhythm indicative of sleep. I went down on my knees, held the plastic syringe with my teeth, and crawled across the dusty floor. At the edge of his bed, I stopped and spurned another wave of nausea and hyperventilation. Sweat trickled down my forehead and smarted in my eyes. Under the latex skin, my hands were wet.

Squatting down on the floor, I took the syringe from my mouth, then, holding it up before my face, squirted a brief stream through the shaft of the needle to remove air bubbles. Orson shifted on the bed. His back had been to me, but he turned over, so that we faced each other. All he has to do is open his eyes.

His left arm was beautifully exposed. Withdrawing a penlight and holding it between my teeth, I spotlighted his forearm and could see numerous periwinkle veins under the surface of his skin. With great patience and concentration, I lowered the eye of the needle until it hovered just an inch above his skin. There was a chance this would kill him. Because I was attempting to inject intravenously, the substantial dose of Versed would be tearing through his bloodstream, and when it slammed into his central nervous system, he might stop breathing. Steady hands.