Living With an Aardvark
and
The Cereal Killer
and
Diagnosis - Steatopygia!
. That would lead to people wanting to meet him ... and ask all those questions.
He took his privacy so seriously, in fact, that even his publisher did not know his real name. He received checks under his pseudonym, which was connected to his bank account. The bank didn't care a bit that he did business under one name, while the account was technically under another. People did that all the time.
His publisher, whose voracious appetite was for profits rather than personal information, was pushing him for another book. He'd been given a hefty advance and six months to produce that book. With the advance also came the requirement to provide progress reports once a month.
The outline was done. The characters had been roughed out. The plot was generally identified. About a third of the book was already written in what he called 'preliminary paragraphs'. He knew he was ready to write it. The story bulged inside him, demanding to be let loose. His muse was impatient. But the distraction of Lola was preventing him from letting his muse take over.
The answer was to find someplace to go where there would be no Lola ... no publisher ... no distractions.
Surfing the net, he found a vacation house on a lake shore in Connecticut. It was winter, the off season, and the rates were good. He made all the arrangements, using the new pseudonym of Larry Phillips. It was likely that during the six months he would be staying in Pembroke, people would find out what he was doing there. He didn't want anyone in that town to connect Kristoff Farmingham with the book that would be written there. He sent a money order and received a contract in the mail, with a key and directions on how to find the place.
He packed three bags. His landlord had almost had a stroke when he'd paid his rent ahead for the five months he'd be gone. The advance was severely depleted, but that was all right. He'd get the rest when he turned in the manuscript. Then he'd probably start the whole process all over again.
The car was packed. The manuscript, printed off in case something happened to his laptop, was in his briefcase. He agonized over whether to take his cell phone or not, then decided it could be turned off and would be handy for those monthly progress reports.
He started the car.
And
this
is where the story really begins.
Three men sat around a card table, finalizing plans to commit a heinous crime. They were vicious men, though seeing them on the street, patronizing a hotdog vendor perhaps, one wouldn't recognize that viciousness. They, too, had the capability to blend in with the crowds in New York City.
The crime they had planned was bold. It might turn out very badly for the victims. They didn't really care about that. All they cared about were the rewards that they imagined the crime would provide.
These men that fate would bring together with Kris and others in the unfolding series of events were as different from the others as it was possible to be. Their story had an inauspicious beginning.
Many years earlier, Wanda Higginbotham had found herself pregnant. It had been unplanned, and unwanted, but not unexpected. Wanda was a hooker.
She found that some men would pay more for her services if they didn't have to engage in safe sex and, after all, money was what it was all about. She took her pills religiously, but pills don't always work.
Completely by accident, therefore, she learned that there is a different class of customers who are very interested in ... and willing to pay more for ... sex with a pregnant woman. Such men would take her from behind, with their hands on her pregnant belly, and fantasize that the child within was theirs. They got all the thrill of believing, if just for a few moments, that their seed had taken root, but could then abandon the product of that seed, and avoid the complications of actually getting a woman with child.
It was by chance that she was watching reruns of The Three Stooges while she was in labor. She named her little boy Moe, both because she didn't have much of an imagination and because Moe was the smartest Stooge, in her opinion.
Because the pregnancy thing had been more lucrative than anything else she'd done, she promptly got pregnant again. And then again. Larry and Curly were the results.
Having three boys to take care of was a pain in the ass, and she'd found out that eager but infertile parents would pay a lot of money to get a newborn. She was already stuck with "the three stooges," but sold the next four babies. It was the best of all possible worlds, as far as Wanda was concerned.
Until she found out how ravaged a body could become as a result of having unprotected sex with strangers and what amounted to a litter of children.
She died when the boys were in their middle teens. They stuck together, living hand to mouth. They dropped out of school and lived by their wits. Which meant that they were lean and homeless, most of the time, because their wits had been inherited from their mother and, in a twist of humorous irony, resembled those of the men they were named after.
But, there was no humor in how they chose to survive.
Eventually, Larry got his hands on a gun, bought cheap, and which he thought was probably stolen. He didn't care, though. Petty theft, muggings, and the infrequent armed robbery had kept them alive from that point on. But they were looking for the score that would put them on easy street.
Their first attempt at kidnapping had gone very badly. They'd stolen a car, and snatched a little girl from in front of a private school. Instead of being cowed and subservient, though, the girl had fought bitterly and cried incessantly. They'd gagged her-too well, as it turned out, because she'd died when her allergies flared up and she'd become unable to breathe through her nose. They had already made the ransom call, though, so they'd simply waited. When Moe called to give the parents directions to the drop off point, he was told they hadn't been able to raise the money and would need more time. He'd been sure he'd heard clicks on the line. He had also been sure that meant the police were tapping the line, so he'd hung up. They'd dumped the body in a dumpster. The media, always eager to report a tragedy, had said that the girl was most likely killed because no ransom had been paid.
Their second attempt hadn't gone any better. A boy had been chosen as their second victim. When they'd called the boy's parents, they'd made two demands. One was money and the other was that the cops not be involved in any way.
"Remember that girl they found in the dumpster?" Moe had asked, trying to make his voice sound sinister. "That was us, and we mean business."
The parents had agreed. But when Moe had called back to arrange the trade, he'd been sure that he was talking to a different man and, again, sure that the police were involved.
This time, they killed the victim intentionally and left a note with the body that said next time, people had better follow instructions.
The media loved it, as they always love heinous acts of the worst sort. Moe, Larry and Curly loved it too, because now they had a reputation.
They were sure the next caper would make them all rich.
And it was the next attempt that they were planning as they sat around the card table. The victim would be one who could not be ignored-could not be allowed to die-whose husband had tons of money. Jean Chantal Custer would provide the millions that would put them on a Caribbean island somewhere, where they would have anything they wanted.
The proposed victim of the crime was well known; the talk of New York, both the city and the state. She was married to Randall Custer, who was currently in his third year as the governor of the great state of New York. His messy divorce, barely six months into his governorship, had caused a scandal. Taking up with a supermodel half his age, then marrying her, had cemented his fame. He was a lackluster governor, but the tabloids loved him and a preponderance of the unwashed, which represented a preponderance of the population, in his opinion, loved him too. He had it all. He had money from his parents and he had Jean Chantal. He was an important man, who people wanted to please. What more could any man want?
Jean, who used her middle name professionally, had made her mark as a swimsuit model. That had led to runway work in which her body had most likely been more important than what she was actually wearing. Few people could afford the clothes she modeled. But everyone could enjoy looking at her and did. She had even made a lot of panties damp.
Along the way, she'd gone from being a shy, tall, well built girl from New Orleans, who'd graduated high school squarely in the lower third of her class to a woman who could get anything she asked for, simply by asking for it. Men had always pursued her, but the intelligence she DID have had led her to believe that the one real gift she had to give a man needed to be parlayed to the RIGHT man.
She'd decided that Randall Custer was that man.
They'd met at a party. He had been almost embarrassingly taken with her. When, the third time he took her to dinner, she confessed, through lowered eyelashes, that she was still a virgin, he took the bait hook, line and sinker. If he'd been embarrassing before, he was pathetic now. He promised her the world and she thought he might just be able to deliver it.
The fact that she was obviously telling the truth about her virginity was borne out on their wedding night, on a yacht, on the way to Bermuda, where her screams of pain were heard by the captain and crew. It was a rocky start, but at forty-eight, he didn't regenerate all that quickly, so she'd had time to heal up a bit before the next session. And things since then had been fine. Too much booze and poorly controlled blood pressure had hardened blood vessels that needed to be flexible for things to work well in the erection department, but Viagra got him laid and he was ever so cute when he was horny. A year into the marriage she actually liked her husband; now that another year had passed she was quite sure that real love was in the offing.
And he doted on her. She went shopping at the drop of a hat. After all, one could no longer wear a hat once it had been dropped ... now could one?
There were only two burrs under her saddle, as her husband would have put it. He styled himself a Western man, hinting that General George Custer was in his bloodline, though never actually claiming it. Flirting with a relation to the famous man was one thing. Actually admitting to have inherited genes from a complete idiot was another.
The first burr under her saddle was her inability to do anything privately anymore. Her husband took great glee in telling the world where she was going and what she'd be doing. That was because he wanted the world to know that his young and beautiful wife was more than just a young and beautiful woman. In her role as the governor's wife, she went here and there, doing this and that. Shopping was always included, but only after she took care of business. He also took great pride in the fact that she drove herself everywhere. No wasting of taxpayer dollars could be alluded to, because she always took her own sports car. The paparazzi, always knowing where she'd be, were a constant pain in the butt. And, wherever there was a bevy of cameras, there were curious onlookers too-and they sometimes wanted some time with her as well.
The second was that Randall was pathetically eager for his wife to do something else she'd never done with any other man-have babies. She shuddered at the mere thought of having to live with a distended, disfiguring, ugly belly. It would ruin her career.
On this particular day, Chantal was going to visit a daycare center on Long Island, where other women's babies could be cuddled and kissed. She liked to stress childcare in the state. Everybody needed it. It was good press. And then, of course, shopping on 5th Avenue.
It had, as usual, been announced in the papers.
The Higginbotham boys knew where Chantal would be, because they'd read the paper, which they stole every day from one of a number of hotel lobbies. Curly had established a route for this purpose, so that he didn't become too well known in any one hotel. They knew what time she would be at the childcare center and, roughly, where she'd go shopping later.
They'd decided to take her as she left the childcare center, since there would likely be fewer cops around then. There would be photographers, but they were pansies, so who cared. Besides, there was a plan to keep the photographers' heads down and the cameras from getting the kind of pictures that would be a problem.
The crowd of photographers actually helped their plan, since it gave Curly a reason to be close to where she'd walk. Those photographers were currently lounging around, hoping that something would happen. What did happen not only exceeded their expectations ... it exceeded their wildest dreams.
Moe was driving the van. It had been stolen only hours before-chosen because it was plain white. It belonged to a company that was not open on Saturdays and wouldn't miss it until Monday. Twelve cans of Krylon paint, purchased with money taken under the pretense of acquiring it for a teenage tagger-whom Larry had then told he was an undercover cop and pretended to chase for half a block-had made the upper half blue, just in case-including parts of the windshield where Larry hadn't taped the newspapers on quite correctly. Magnetic signs had been applied to the sides and back, indicating that it belonged to a fictitious delivery company and giving them an excuse for double parking on the street.