The Boyfriend Read Free

apartment?”
    “I’d never move out for that,” he said. “I finally agreed to take that job in Phoenix. I’ll be back from time to time on weekends, and the job will end in the late spring.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Sounds fine.”
    “It gets a little hot for construction around then, and the jobs taper off.” He reached down, picked up a nearly empty two-quart plastic bottle of Pepsi, took a drink, and offered it to her.
    As she looked at him it was unbearable to imagine the Phoenix sun shining down on a construction site, ruining his unlined, beautiful complexion. She accepted the bottle, took a drink, and handed it back. “Ugh. That’s real. I thought it was diet.”
    He took another deep draft, emptying it; set it down; then went back to packing his gym bag.
    She walked into the bathroom and took off her new skirt, then the expensive silk blouse. “Will you send me your phone number and address?”
    “Of course. But you’ve already got my cell number and e-mail. Those will always be good.”
    While Catherine was in the bathroom he took a roll of duct tape out of his bag and tore off a long strip. He reached in again and pulled out a Beretta M92 pistol. He pushed the muzzle of the pistol into the neck of the big plastic bottle and taped it there. He said, loudly enough for her to hear, “I also plan to see you whenever I can get back for a visit.”
    “Make sure you call a couple of days ahead. I’d hate to have you come and be too busy to see you.” She regretted having said that. It had just been a way to sting him for leaving her.
    “I will.”
    She came out of the bathroom barefoot, dressed in a bra and a thong, passed by him, and stepped to her closet to hang up her lunch clothes.
    He stepped close behind her, raised the pistol and the plastic bottle, and pulled the trigger. There was a smothered pop sound, not much louder than their voices. The second shot was slightly louder because of the hole in the bottle, but still not enough to worry him. He watched her collapse onto the carpet, then touched her carotid artery. Dead.
    He went back to searching the apartment. In-call escorts didn’t have time to rush off to the bank every time they accumulated a lot of cash, and they couldn’t deposit big sums anyway. At least Catherine couldn’t. She had no way to explain to the IRS where she was getting more than two thousand dollars a day. He had found about thirty-five thousand in the apartment while she had been out with her friends today. Predictably, she had hidden it in her bedroom. He wished he could search the rest of the apartment thoroughly, but the moment he had pulled the trigger, he had given up that option. It was already late afternoon, and as he took her purse from the bed and pulled out the cash in her wallet, he could hear her cell phone buzzing.
    While he’d searched the apartment he had been cleaning it too. Now he stopped searching and turned to cleaning in earnest. Lately, he had become extremely careful about the way he left a woman. He made certain that there were no fingerprints, hairs, or fibers. There were people in this world who were too dumb to think of all the devices that were able to prove that a person had been somewhere. He always cleaned out the drains—even opening the traps where there were hairs in the pipes. He vacuumed the floors and the furniture, emptied the canister into a trash bag, and took the bag with him. He laundered the sheets, pillowcases, and blankets. None of the women he left had ever given her apartment a more thorough cleaning than he had.
    He knelt behind Catherine’s body; unclasped the gold chain around her delicate white neck, carefully freeing a couple of strawberry blond hairs from the clasp; then went to her right ankle and unclasped the matching anklet. He put them into his pocket.
    He picked up his gym bag, set it on the bed, unwrapped the duct tape from the gun, and removed the bottle. Then he put them into the bag, zipped it shut,