CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
He sat in his car outside the little church that backed onto the school, far enough that the cameras couldn’t see him or his license plate. Some of the teachers parked their cars around here too, maybe because the school parking lot was full, or because they didn’t want that overlap of personal and professional life.
And one person always parked here. That was who he was waiting for. He’d parked right next to her silver Prius, alarmingly close in fact. Too close for her to comfortably open her door.
And that was the point.
The past three kills had been much easier than he’d anticipated, so easy that he was concerned that he’d soon be a victim of diminishing returns. That was why he was going to up the ante with this one. He’d done his research, of course, so he knew everything there was to know about her. She wasn’t some lowly nobody or a cheap sex worker like the others. She was a woman of prestige and status – just one of the reasons she needed to be exterminated.
A gaggle of students passed by his car. By his watch, the last of the stragglers would be weeding themselves out about now. The delinquents who stayed behind with their friends, smoking cigarettes and throwing rocks because these little acts of defiance gave them a sense of power they didn’t get at home. He knew all about that, for just a few years ago, he was one of these delinquents. Causing trouble was preferable to the alternative, and that was facing the cause of your trauma.
He ducked down in case any of the students spotted him, but none of them even glanced his way. Something he’d noticed about getting older was that the younger generation deemed you non-threatening, invisible. It was the same with women, too.
Half past four now. He glued his eyes to his wing mirror in preparation for her arrival and ran through the scene in his head. It was going to be much riskier than the others because he didn’t have the cover of darkness or the comfort of locked doors. This one was out in the open, but that would just make the whole thing sweeter when it was all said and done.
The minutes ticked by, not a soul coming or going since the group of students. Then in his wing mirror, a flicker of life manifested in the distance, about fifty feet away.
No, two flickers of life. One middle-aged woman with oversized glasses, the other a young blonde woman with a laptop bag underneath her arm.
Relish it, he thought, because it will be the last conversation you ever have.
How stunning she looked, even from this distance. Leggy, glamorous, glowing beauty in that gorgeous black dress. Not too revealing. Just the right amount of sexual suggestion upon a sea of elegance. She was the quintessential young teacher, probably a hundred boys’ fantasies.
He gauged the remainder of their conversation through their body language. His target was stepping back, looking around, putting distance between herself and the older woman. She was clearly eager to get away but the woman wouldn’t stop yapping.
The anticipation began to hurt. Come on, he said to himself. This was the worst part. The waiting. He clenched his fists to try and stop the shaking, then once he’d composed himself, he started up the engine and reversed his car out of his parking spot.
All part of the illusion. It was the little things that betrayed his true intentions. The small talk, the midnight messages, the little pieces of information he revealed about himself, as false as they might have been.
Then she broke away from the older woman, coming towards him, an unwilling victim walking into her own personal hell. He straightened his car up as he re-parked, as though he’d just arrived in the same spot. People were less suspicious of a newcomer than someone who’d been waiting in the same place.
His wing mirror filled up with the image of this exquisite blonde beauty, and just as she was a cat’s hair away from her trunk, he thrust open his car door and lightly scratched her paintwork.
“Oh my God!” he shouted. “I’m so sorry!”
The woman placed her laptop bag down on her trunk. She looked unfazed.
“Not a problem. It’s just a scratch.” She tapped the hood. “This old banger’s seen a lot worse.”
Not the expected response, but he could work with it.
“No, please, that was foolish of me. My hands shake sometimes. I didn’t mean it.” He got out of the car and squeezed himself through the small gap between the vehicles. He blocked off her entry to the driver’s side.
The woman smiled as she loaded her belongings in the back. “Seriously. Don’t sweat it. It’s just a car, and a crappy one at that.”
He turned on the act. The sympathetic caregiver. Anything to help a woman in need.
“You must be a teacher,” he said. “You need to keep up appearances.”
The woman jangled her keys, making it clear she wanted this stranger to get out of the way.
“Ha. Yes I’m a teacher. People would get suspicious if I had a nice car. But yeah, when you deal with know-it-alls every day, it puts car scratches into perspective. They don’t matter, so don’t worry about it. All the more motivation to buy a new one.”
He waved his hands around, quickly becoming concerned that his act wasn’t living up to how he imagined it. He became conscious of the noise, the length of their interaction. It wasn’t supposed to take this long.
“Alright, fair enough. Can I give you my insurance details just in case?”
The woman checked her Apple Watch, then her phone. He made a mental note to destroy both of them once he was done with her.