Fear the Dark by Chris Mooney Read Free Book Online Page B

the bar and refilling his glass with cheap Scotch is the purpose of my visit: Tricia Lamont, a leggy marvel with a prominent nose and jawline, her dark brown hair with its expensive blonde highlights spilling across her shoulders and falling in tangles against the V-neck scoop of a black T-shirt embossed with the bar’s name and slogan – KELLY’S. WHEN YOU’RE HERE, YOU’RE FAMILY . The tee barely fits her. Whoever owns this place makes his ladies (he employs only women, each one no older than thirty) wear a tee one size too small so it hugs their firm and perky breasts. Every time one of them bends over or leans forward to pour a drink, as Tricia is doing right now, the bottom of the tee rides up just a wee bit to show a tantalizing flash of belly, every one of their stomachs as flat as a board.
    I pull out a corner stool. I’m hanging my coat over the back when Tricia walks up to me, smiling brightly. Shedoesn’t know my name, and she has seen me only once – last month, the week before Christmas. The Connelly family – John, Lisa and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Stacey, who were, at that time, the Red Hill Ripper’s latest victims – had been laid to rest that afternoon, and I decided to stop by here for a drink. The family and whatever mistakes that might possibly have been made at the crime scene weighed heavily on my mind.
    ‘What can I get’cha?’ Tricia asks, her eyes seemingly alight with genuine pleasure.
    ‘You have Knob Creek bourbon?’
    ‘Sure do.’ She smiles. ‘You have great taste.’
    ‘Make it a double, neat.’
    As she moves to the bottles, I watch her, lustfully conjuring up all sorts of wonderful scenarios of her lying naked in my bed, the soft moan that escapes her lips and caresses my ear as I enter her. The feel of her thighs sliding up against the sides of my chest and the moment when she presses the balls of her feet against the small of my back and pushes, begging me to go deeper …
    Is Tricia a fighter? Or will she act like the others, mewing and crying and begging for it to stop?
    Sarah never fights or cries. Even in the beginning when she first saw the rope, she did what I asked with a smile on her face.
    Tricia comes back with my drink and places it on a napkin. She tucks her hair behind an ear, playful and sexy. I suspect – correctly, I think – that Tricia, with her beautiful looks and hard yoga body, belongs to that class of women who view men as walking wallets. A woman who wants tosquirt out a kid or two, then hire a nanny so she can drive her new BMW to her Pilates class and then spend the afternoon inside a hotel screwing some young stud.
    ‘Want to start a tab?’
    Absolutely. I want to stay here and drink and watch you and feed my growing hate and think about that moment when I slip the noose around your neck.
    The phone behind the bar rings. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, and as she walks away I think about what an odd choice she is for me. The four other candidates I have in mind are nowhere near as attractive or as physically fit, but at least I’ve meticulously researched their backgrounds. Their routines, habits and schedules. I’ve been inside their homes and on their computers. I’ve slept in their beds.
    That’s not the case with Tricia Lamont. I know she’s twenty-two, a graduate from the University of Denver with a degree in business communications. Like the good majority of recent college graduates trying to enter the workforce in this monstrous economy, she’s had a difficult time landing a job, which is why she’s most likely living back home with her parents, Rick and Jennifer, who own three dry-cleaning stores. Tricia works at one and supplements her income by bartending here. I don’t know if she has a serious boyfriend or if she’s playing the field or whatever these young whores call it these days. I haven’t read her texts or been on her computer yet.
    My thoughts shift to the tools sitting inside my trunk. Everything I need to break