Page 70 of Deadly Confessions
I lay him on his back. His eyes are open. Moving. His diaphragm is compromised but not fully paralyzed at this dose. He can breathe. Barely. Shallow, ragged pulls of air through a throat that works at maybe thirty percent capacity.
He can see me.
I crouch beside him. Take off my glasses. Put them in my jacket pocket. He doesn't need to remember my face accurately. He won't be remembering anything.
"Sai perché sono qui?"I say. (Do you know why I'm here?)
His eyes move. Left, right, searching my face. His mouth opens. A sound comes out. Not a word. Air pushed through vocal cords that barely function. A wheeze with consonants in it.
"Le bambine,"I say. (The girls.)
His eyes change. The confusion drains. Something else replaces it. Not fear yet. Recognition. The specific recognition of a man who has been carrying a secret he believed was perfectly hidden, hearing that secret spoken aloud by a stranger crouching over him in a dark alley.
Now the fear.
I can see it in his eyes like a sunrise. Gradual, then bam. His pupils dilate. The whites expand. His breathing accelerates, the shallow pulls becoming faster, more desperate, his paralyzed chest straining against the chemical restraints holding it still.
I reach for the knife.
The bone handle is warm from my thigh. The blade is thin, sharp, the edge honed that morning on the whetstone I keep under my bathroom sink. I hold it where he can see it. His eyes lock onto the metal. His panic is evident.
I unbutton his trousers. Pull them down to his knees. His underwear. Down. He is exposed on the cobblestones of a Naples vicolo, his body paralyzed, his eyes wild, his mouth producing sounds that no one will hear because the vicolo isempty. The restaurant closed an hour ago and the dumpster beside us absorbs noises.
I take his tiny dick in my left hand. He makes a sound. The worst sound I've heard from a human throat. Not a scream. He can't scream. A high, thin keen that comes from somewhere below the larynx, an involuntary protest from the deepest layer of the nervous system, the layer that understands what's about to happen before the conscious mind can form the thought.
I cut.
The blade is sharp enough that the resistance is minimal. Skin, then the spongy tissue beneath, then the urethra, then the tissue on the other side. A single lateral motion, left to right, the same motion I used on the businessman's throat on the yacht. The dick and balls separate from the body. Blood flows immediately, heavy, dark, the pudendal artery pumping freely.
He keens louder. His eyes are rolling. His hands twitch at his sides, the paralysis incomplete at the extremities, his fingers clawing at the cobblestones in a movement that is reflex, not intention.
I hold the severed flesh in my gloved hand. Warm. The weight of it is nothing. An ounce, maybe two. An insignificant amount of tissue that this man used to destroy five childhoods.
I grip his jaw with my right hand. Squeeze. His mouth opens because the jaw muscles are partially paralyzed and partially responding to the pressure. I shove it in. Past his teeth. Into the back of his throat. Deep enough that his gag reflex activates, the one involuntary system the succinylcholine doesn't fully suppress. He chokes. His eyes bulge.
I hold his jaw shut.
His body convulses. Not from the drug. From the obstruction. His airway, already compromised by the paralysis, now blocked by the tissue lodged in his throat. He is drowning on dry land, suffocating on the instrument of his own crimes.
I watch him die.
It takes longer than the businessman on the yacht. Longer than the politician in the parking garage. The body fights harder when the death is slow, when the brain has time to process what is happening, when the animal imperative to survive has minutes rather than seconds to throw every remaining resource at the problem.
His eyes stay on me. Fixed. Wide. I don't look away. I owe him that. Not mercy. Witness. I am the last thing he will see, the way those girls will see his face in their nightmares for the rest of their lives.
Three minutes. His body goes still. The convulsions stop. His eyes stay open but the life behind them drains, a light dimming behind frosted glass.
I check his pulse. Nothing.
I stand. My knees ache from crouching. The cobblestones have pressed patterns into my shins through my pants. The blood pool beneath him is spreading, black in the dim vicolo light, moving between the cobblestones in channels carved by centuries of rainfall.
I pick up his phone. His keys. Wipe both. Set the keys on his chest. Drop the phone in the dumpster. It will be compacted with the fish scraps and the oil in two days.
I remove my gloves. Bag them. Check my clothes. Blood on both hands, on my right forearm, on the front of my jacket. More than the parking garage. Less than the yacht.
I strip the jacket. Reverse it. The inside is clean, black nylon, a reversible layer I chose for tonight. I zip it. Different jacket now. Different silhouette.
I walk out of the vicolo. Turn right. Walk six blocks to the metro station. Board the train with eleven other passengers, none of whom look at me. A girl on the metro. Wednesday night. Ordinary.
