Cold Black Hearts by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

Author:Jeffrey J. Mariotte [Mariotte, Jeff J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: WordFire Press

He knew the instant she died.

He wasn’t sure precisely how the original got into the women’s houses, although he was pretty sure his method wasn’t far off. But he had read the medical examiner’s reports, so he did know precisely what had been done to them after that, and he followed it to the letter.

He duplicated the original’s method: dozens of stabs and slices, no single wound severe enough to kill. He watched the delicious agony registering on Lauren’s face throughout the four hours he spent with her. She was naked the entire time, bound with thin nylon rope and gagged, lying on her kitchen floor. Twice, she passed out and he had to bring her around with the smelling salts he carried. As he cut, he touched her, explored her body, latex gloves protecting his hands. The original killer no doubt did more, but Lauren Heller wasn’t the Impressionist’s fetish object, and he only did enough to make investigators believe the same person was responsible for her murder. He was sure they would, because he mimicked the wounds so carefully, matching the ones he’d seen in file photos.

That was what he did. That’s why he was the Impressionist, if only to himself.

But the moment of her death—that was his moment, his own personal goal. That was where he went to school.

That moment was of special import in this case, because he thought it would be his last lesson before his ultimate transformation. All of this had been in the service of one goal—learning what he could about death so that when he reached the stage at which death would be his to control, to give and take at will, it would no longer be a mystery to him.

One second, Lauren’s eyes were wide and bright with fear, red-rimmed and bloodshot from crying and trying to scream around her gag. The next, her eyelids fluttered as her body was wracked by a heaving paroxysm. Her hands and feet batted the floor, like a dreaming dog trying to run. An instant later, she was still, eyes open and staring but somehow vacant, that spark of life having fled at last.

After it was done he washed his gloves off in the kitchen sink. His clothes were covered in her blood, and he left tacky footprints with every step. He roamed around her small, quiet house with its furnishings from Ikea and Target. She bought photographs already in frames, rather than framing anything that had special meaning to her. It was only in her bedroom that he got a taste of the contradictory urges that drove her. Inside her walk-in closet she kept a collection of toys and accessories worthy of a porn producer’s props department—vibrators of various descriptions, strap-ons, leather bustiers and mini-skirts, clamps, cuffs, rope, a ball gag. If he had known she had all this, he wouldn’t have bothered improvising with his own ropes, rags, and duct tape.

But on the dresser facing her bed, she kept candles devoted to various saints, and on the wall behind it hung a crucifix carved from white stone.

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