Page 43 of The Perfect Accomplice

Even now, as she ordered her drink at the coffeehouse on Franklin Avenue at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, she was snippy with the barista for no apparent reason. As she waited off to the side, the man moved behind a tall plant so she couldn’t see him. He doubted that if she did, Margot Howell would want to come over and chat, but he didn’t want to risk it.

“Excuse me, can I get by?” a guy asked.

The man realized that he was blocking the entrance to the coffeehouse.

“Oh, sorry,” he apologized, smiling warmly. “I didn’t realize I was blocking the door.”

“No worries,” the guy said, smiling back.

The man had that effect on people. He could make them smile, feel comfortable. That was his gift. At least it had been until recently. Until two weeks ago to be exact. That was when Helena left him.

They'd been married for four years, and he thought they'd been mostly happy. They found love later in life. For him, it was a surprise, as he didn't think that he was capable of maintaining any kind of long-term relationship. And even though it was an embarrassing cliché, he knew the source of that doubt: his mom.

For most of his childhood, his single mother, resentful of the man who abandoned her with a toddler, had taken her anger out on him. Sometimes that meant yelling. Other times it came via hissed reminders that he was worthless and that, if not for him, she’d be leading a life filled with fun and adventure.

On more than a few occasions, her rage manifested via the hair curler she would hold against his belly or the sewing pins she would jab into his thighs. When she was at her wit’s end, it meant locking him in the coat closet without food for entire weekends.

When he got older, the physical abuse waned. But the verbal assaults never abated. When he was sixteen, he left home and moved west to Los Angeles, where he started a new life. He was mostly able to shove the pain of his youth off to the side and start to trust people again.

He made friends easily, which he suspected was a result of years of trying to stay on his mother’s good side when he was a boy. That ugly time had trained him and instilled in him the ability to make people feel comfortable so that they wouldn’t lose their temper and take it out on him.

He had dates, and eventually girlfriends. But he could never fully commit himself to them. He understood that his reticence came from his fear that they’d eventually turn on him and call him all the things his mother did. None of them ever did, but that didn’t stop him from holding them all at arm’s length. After a while, every girlfriend inevitably gave up trying to get him to let his guard down. He got older and accepted that this was his lot in life—to be alone. Until Helena.

The woman was a breath of fresh air. She had sharp edges, just as his mother had, but while her comments were occasionally biting, they were never hateful. He always felt that her barbs were playful rather than genuinely mean-spirited. He was used to far worse.

Because Helena was more open with her tartness, he wasn’t always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It dropped all the time. And with that lack of anxiety, he was finally able to relax and get close. It worked. After a year of dating, they got married. He didn’t invite his mother to the wedding.

Things were wonderful. She made more money than he did but didn’t seem to care. She knew he got satisfaction out of what he did, helping make people’s lives a little better than they would otherwise be.

And then, two weeks ago, she dropped the bomb. She had filed for divorce and was moving out. She said that her needs had changed, and he couldn’t provide for them. She was tired of him always being at the beck and call of the people he worked for, of how they could never go on vacation because his work prevented it, of how his chances for real advancement beyond his current status and of a comfortable retirement seemed impossible. Then she handed him the papers and walked out.

He’d been stunned, and after a few hours, skeptical. She had always known about how committed he was to the work he did and said that she respected it. And now that was a problem for her?

So he followed her from work that day. Sure enough, she didn’t stay at a hotel or at a friend’s house. She stayed at the apartment of a male co-worker she’d always been especially chummy with. The man snuck into the building and scurried over to the co-worker’s front door. He thought he could hear intimate sounds coming from inside, but he wasn’t positive.

He’d gone home that night, forlorn. It wasn’t until the next morning that he saw their shared bank account was cleared out of all her funds. Soon after, he realized he wouldn’t have enough money to pay for December’s rent. He ended up having to move into a studio apartment in a sketchy part of Hollywood so he could stay close to work.

He found out just how sketchy the neighborhood was last weekend when he was mugged and hit in the head with the butt of the guy's gun. Then, just this Monday, he got an e-mail from Helena, admitting that she had been having an affair. She said that she'd always felt like she'd settled for him, that her life with him had become a source of endless disappointment, and that she needed to start living for herself while she still had the time.

Even though she never used the word “worthless” or held a hot hair curler near his belly button, the man felt all the pain and helplessness of his childhood wash over him. Only this was somehow immeasurably worse. He’d opened himself up to her, and she’d used his vulnerability against him, squashed him like a bug on her dashboard.

Just like his mother, she viewed him as a burden and wanted a life with a man who could provide everything that he couldn't. He felt a rising tide of fury in his chest. He wanted her to feel the pain he was experiencing. He wanted her to suffer.

But he couldn’t do that. He still loved her. Just like, in some pathetic way, he couldn’t make his mother experience his pain because, despite everything, he loved her too.

With those thoughts circling in his head, he went to work arriving at the Ashe home right on time and prepared to get started. But from the bedroom balcony above, Sydney Ashe had yelled down to him that he’d gotten the date wrong, that he wasn’t needed today, and that he should “work on being more professional.”

In the middle of her snide putdown, he had an epiphany: Sydney Ashe, entitled wife of a Hollywood producer, was just like his mother, just like his soon to be ex-wife. She treated others like crap while she enjoyed the spoils of a life she didn’t deserve. In fact, she didn’t deserve life at all.

It was that realization that had made him enter the house that morning, go up the stairs to the bedroom, walk out onto the balcony where she was lounging, and choke the life out of her. It had seemed almost like a frenzied dream at first, an out-of-body experience, as if he was watching another version of himself do this thing. But when she started to struggle, the dream became a reality, and his mind snapped back into his body. He knew he had to fully commit and redoubled his efforts.

As he did the deed, it was almost as if he was standing outside himself, watching another man squeeze her neck until she went limp. But it wasn’t another man who got the thrill from it. This feeling—of being powerful, of finally making the decisions—was all his. The satisfaction he felt bordered on the sexual, though he pushed that down.

Once he was done, he left quickly. There was no one else in the house. The housekeeper was at the store and the nanny had taken the kids to the park. But for the rest of the day, the man couldn't stop thinking about the pleasure he'd derived from killing her. That's when he realized he needed to do it again to get that feeling back. But he had to take precautions, so this time he chose someone that wouldn't lead directly to him.

He felt a little bad about it because Erin Podemski had never been directly cruel to him. She was pleasant, if distant. But like Sydney Ashe, she had come into her wealth by luck rather than skill. True, she'd written a bestselling book, but she was already awash in family money well before that.

Accessing her hadn’t been difficult. He knew how to do it. And when he found her idling on that chaise by the pool, looking out at hills and away from where he crept up behind her, it was like she was inviting him to do this. Because she was looking away, he didn’t have to face her, make eye contact with her, or feel any guilt that might result if he saw her expression.

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