Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,73
fantasy, and she received by far the most tips of any of the dancers. This was why Michael had picked her, although he also liked that with her diminutive size she’d be more easily intimidated by him and less likely to put up a fight.
Last Saturday after the club had closed, he had followed her, just as he had done two other times before. As she was cutting through a darkened alleyway from her car to the front door of her building, he was waiting with a knife to demand her money.
She should’ve just given it to him. When he’d robbed another strip club dancer four months earlier in Connecticut, she’d handed over her money and Michael had left her tied up but otherwise unhurt. The same would’ve happened Saturday, but this petite dark-haired beauty had tried to fight him, digging her claws into his wrist as she struggled for the knife. He’d reacted then without thinking, just flashing the knife out and somehow cutting her jugular. She’d stumbled backward onto the cement pathway, her life bleeding out very fast.
Michael panicked then. He hadn’t expected to kill her. All he’d wanted was her money. He hadn’t known if anyone had seen him or his car. After trying to brush any possible DNA evidence from under her fingernails, he’d taken her money and fled. It was only later that he’d realized she had bled over his coat, so he took it off and stashed it in the trunk of his car. He’d spent the rest of the night huddled in his car so Cheryl wouldn’t see him. Early the next morning, he’d surprised her with his impromptu trip to Atlantic City. She’d been groggy from sleep, and he explained away the night before by saying he had gotten too drunk to drive home after an end-of-semester party and had slept on a classmate’s sofa. This was an outrageous lie since he never spent any time socializing with any of his classmates. He still had his bloody coat stashed in the trunk, and planned to burn and bury it in the state forest before he left Sandwich.
One of the niceties that the inn provided was a complimentary copy of the Boston Globe each morning. When he’d killed her, Michael had only known the dancer’s stripper name, which was Brandi, but her murder was a big story in the paper, and he learned her real name then, and that she was a single mother to a three-year-old daughter and was going to community college to be an accountant. From what he could tell from the newspaper stories, the police had no leads, but they were following up on inquiries. Each evening he watched the local news, but they had nothing about the story then.
So now he was a murderer, holed up in a motel room as he waited to know whether the police had anything, all for twelve hundred dollars that he had planned to use for a gambling excursion, just like he did with the money he stole from that other dancer.
He tried not to think of any of this. Instead he finished off his six-pack, then turned on the TV and sat quietly as it droned over any thoughts buzzing in his mind.
The Globe the next morning had nothing new about the murder. This left Michael more unsettled than before. It would almost be a relief if the police were onto him. At least then his next step would be clear. This waiting around was killing him.
He thought it would be good to get some fresh air, and maybe this time make it all the way down the boardwalk to the beach, but as he started to push himself out of his chair, he felt too listless for that, as if he didn’t have the energy to move. Instead, he stayed holed up for another day. Around noon, he ate the roast beef sandwich Rachel had made him the night before, and then he just stared into space until six o’clock when he turned on the news. The top story was about breaking developments in the case of the dancer brutally murdered in East Boston four days before. Michael felt his insides freeze as he prepared to see his picture come up over the TV screen, but instead the police spokesman talked about how a former boyfriend had been arrested for the crime. When the camera showed a photo of this former boyfriend, Michael broke out laughing. The man was dark