Death of a Bookseller by Sconosciuto

Author:Sconosciuto [Sconosciuto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Penzler Publishers

ROACH

It was my day off, and I listened to a murder podcast about death row brides as I walked through the park. A fussy little spaniel in a pink jacket and a scrappy, bow-legged mutt darted after one another on the muddy grass, occasionally succeeding in their quest to insert their noses into each other’s rectums. Their owners chatted at a distance on the cracked, leaf-strewn path.

I’d always fancied myself as a death row bride. I’d rock up in black lace, a leather jacket, sunglasses. I liked the idea of writing to a serial killer in jail, striking up a friendship, finding out what made them tick. It was difficult to find cool serial killers to write to in the UK, though. They lacked the glamour of the Californian devils of the 1970s, the wry smiles and sarcastic waves to the press, the rock-star swagger, the achingly cool indifference to it all. There were loads of them in the ’70s. It was like the Satanic American dream: girls with bare shoulders hitchhiked and climbed happily into the cars of strangers, housewives left their back doors unlocked, slept with their windows wide open and welcoming. But that was then. The golden age of serial killing was over, and the chances of me finding one to marry were slim. Sam, with his nivelin echoes of Ramirez, would have to do.

Richard Ramirez got married on death row, had groupies. They turned up to court every day during the trial, and sent him letters, flashed their knickers and their bare breasts, sent erotic photographs of themselves, and detailed their most private, most morbid fantasies for his pleasure. He didn’t want any of that, though. His bride wasn’t like the other groupies. She was a normie, a Christian drawn to the idea of saving his soul. She wore white lace on her wedding day and divorced him when DNA evidence linked him to something that was too much even for her strong stomach to digest. I thought about that a lot. It was almost like having honour among thieves. We all had a line, I supposed.

Laura’s keys were cold and light in the palm of my hand. She had two standard door keys looped on to a rose quartz key ring, along with a tiny thumbnail-sized key. They were just ordinary keys, but the doors they could unlock! A doorway into Laura’s mind, her past, her present. Her inner self, her sanctuary, her history. The story of her mother. She was impenetrable, but I had found a way in. I felt excited as I walked to my destination. I was just going to go in, take a look around, and leave the keys somewhere stupid but plausible, like stuffed between the sofa cushions or kicked underneath the fridge. She’d never know I’d been there. A perfect, victimless crime.

When I reached Laura’s flat, I knocked on the door as a precautionary measure, but the living room window was dark and I knew she was working that

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.