Page 113 of Return of the Spider
“Also terrible with navigation,” he said, though that was far from true.
“Didn’t help myself coming out here without better tires,” Owens said, almost to the gate with Soneji a few yards behind now. “But I’m one of those folks just likes to dive right in once I decide. Lainey said at Christmas she had a place rented in the Pine Barrens for New Year’s Eve, and I woke up early this morning, fed the cats, and thought,Why not go?Make it a surprise for my cousin that I actually showed up for once.”
She chuckled and shook her head. Soneji sniffed something familiar floating off her and tried not to scowl. He hated cats. He hated the smell of cat people.
She passed through the gate and she shook her right rainbow mitten. “Typical Cyn-Cyn Owens move. If I’d been born a hundred fifty years ago, I’d have just jumped on a wagon train and headed west. Oregon trail, you know?”
Soneji couldn’t believe it. He’d come in search of a little quiet time away from Missy, and here he’d traded one chatty Cathy for another.
Then he saw the practice rope there, looped over the gate post. He reached out and snagged the rope as he walked through the opening in the fence.
With all the newly fallen and still falling snow, it was almost too easy for him to move up quick and silent behind the woman as she jabbered on about people who were supposed to be at her sister-in-law’s party.
Soneji no longer cared. He was set on sating a sudden and overwhelming need.
For the second time, Soneji felt the rush, the adrenaline, as he flipped the rope over the woman’s foolish cap, nose, and chin. He felt it settle at her throat and yanked back viciously.
Owens made a gargling cry of alarm as her boots slid out from under her on the slippery drive. As she crashed down, her full weight came against the rope, choking her even more.
“Nnnnn-aaa!” she grunted. “Nnnnn-aaa!”
Soneji wrenched the rope tighter, smelling the feline stench all over her now.
“Nnnn-aa,” she grunted again, weaker this time.
“What’s that, Cyn-Cyn?” Soneji said. “Cat got your tongue?”
Her mittens flailed at her throat, and she made guttural noises in her windpipe for almost fifteen seconds. Then the sounds stopped. The mittens slowly sagged, followed by her shoulders, and finally her head.
Despite the cat smell, Soneji felt the thrill of strangulation, so close, so intimate, exploding through him as strong as it had when he’d throttled the real estate agent. He let loose his hold on the rope and allowed the cat lady’s corpse to collapse into the snow.
Soneji stood there, chest heaving, as happy as he’d ever been.
Then he caught the scent of something fouler than cat and realized the woman had shit herself dying. That completely destroyed the mood, the elation, the celebration.
He needed to get rid of the body and its… stenches. He thought about going to get the truck, then decided to just drag her carcass by the rope already around her neck. He’d leave drag marks, but the snow was intensifying. The drag marks would be gone within the hour.
Once he had her inside the shed, he’d get the truck and pull her car out of the ditch, bring it up, and put it under tarps untilhe could move her vehicle where it would never be linked to the house.
“Ground’s going to be tough to crack today, Cyn-Cyn,” Soneji said, pulling hard on the rope, squeezing her neck, causing her head to loll and her damn hat to fall off.
He cursed and grabbed the hat, which reeked of cat and made him want to dry-heave, and stuck it back on her head. He took up the rope once more and slid the body across the snow, up the drive. “I’m probably going to need to use a pickax first.”
That meant no progress on his secret room. Not today. He felt frustrated.
Then again, he had managed to get all the remaining building supplies for the room into the basement. That counted.
The cat woman walking into his life also counted. She had confirmed his love of strangulation. The feline and crap odors aside, he thought that choking her had almost felt better than the first time with the real estate agent.
As he dragged Owens’s body through the gate and up the slight rise toward the shed and the house, he told himself that these kinds of one-off events, crimes of opportunity, just might be enough to check his hunger, his need to kill, while he took his sweet time learning about Cheryl Lynn Wise and the heavy security around her so he could execute the perfect kidnapping.
After all, Soneji was his own monster now.
He would no longer study and role-play the homicidal greats of yore.
“Let them study me,” Soneji said and chortled. “Let them all study me now.”
EPILOGUE
