provide electricity because this run down old ranch house didn’t have any.
Second, was a beat up old CD player that he’d had since high school. Or maybe it was Karen’s. It didn’t really matter — what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is mine. He reached a hand over and lovingly pressed the play button. The machine spun up the disc inside and the opening notes of track 1 started to play. He reached a finger over and pressed the repeat button, ensuring that only this track would play, over and over again. He didn’t want to hear any others.
As the eighties music began to fill the room he eyed the third item. This was more interesting. This was actually just a simple speaker, but it wasn’t used for playing music. No, this was connected to a listening device — a device he’d used to listen to the dumbfucks (and his darling, Karen) earlier.
Some people might wonder why he had a bug . But the answer was simple: He was a true romantic. The thing about being romantic though, is you have to do it right .
To really impress a girl (a woman, now, he supposed), you need to make a gesture that shows you understand her, but also surprises her at the same time. In the old days that kind of thing was hard, you had to be psychic or some bullshit.
But now, with the help of technology, you could avoid a lot of that crap. If you could listen to your love when you weren’t physically present you could find out what she really wanted, what she really needed , and surprise her.
This works a hell of a lot better if your love has dear friends she confides in, but even if she doesn’t you can still learn a lot by listening to how she interacts with other people. Or what she says to herself. Dewey had been pleased to learn that his love had taken up talking to herself quite extensively. She must have been lonely without him, he supposed.
Dewey grinned to himself, his white teeth flashing to no one in the dusty abandoned house. He was a genius, wasn’t he?
Three nights earlier he’d snuck into Karen’s house while she was sleeping, and slipped outside with her cell phone. He was delighted to find it was an old Nokia model, which was perfect for the small modification he had to make to turn it into his own secret window to Karen’s world.
Now he could listen to her whenever he wanted. Assuming he was in range of course. Which he wasn’t right now.
Next to that speaker were a couple of other toys he’d ordered from Stringtown , a company that specialized in products for hunters, preppers and secret-agent-wannabes. They sold everything from camouflage face-paints to audio bugs to rifle scopes to flares to bear traps to metal detectors to night vision binoculars. And ten thousand other fun items in-between.
Dewey paused his pacing and ran a hand through his neatly combed and parted blond hair. He had things to do.
He stopped the CD player which had just finished its fourth run-through of the song, grabbed the speaker which connected to the bug, and headed to the front door. After closing it behind him he went around the corner of the house to an old padlocked shed that sat nearby and let himself in.
“Come on Red, time to go.”
Dewey grinned to himself when Red didn’t respond. Of course he didn’t, he couldn’t speak at all.
Dewey went to grab the young biker. While Red wasn’t a small guy, he wasn’t massive either and Dewey was strong. He picked him up and slung him over his shoulder, a muffled groan emerging from a gagged mouth as he was winded in the process.
With Red safely back in his new regular spot in the trunk of the car it was time to get to work. Not only did he have to get Karen back, he had to get rid of this whole stupid motorcycle gang.
The door closed behind him with a solid thunk. “Soon it’ll just be you and me, my love,” he said, sighing because she couldn’t hear him. “Let’s see what the biker morons have planned.”
Dewey started the car and cranked up the air conditioning to
Learning to Kill: Stories