Free Bubblegum Smoothie by Ryan Casey Page A

raise his automatic garage door. It lifts, he pulls in, then he gets out of the car whistling along to “Move On Up,” used penknife in hand.
    He closes the garage door, watches the light slip away.
    And then he opens the manhole in the middle of his garage and he climbs down.
    When the smell of sweat and blood hits, he is excited again. He listens for her mumbles. Listens for her wails of pain. He needs to have more fun with this one. Needs to have more fun with her because what happened with fatso was unplanned. Unplanned, reckless, but necessary.
    What happened with fatso will put him even more in the spotlight. The moment the numb-headed police saw fatso putting the second victim’s body atop the squad car, the game changed.
    But it’s okay. He’ll be finished way before they can stop him. He is one step ahead.
    Or two and a half.
    He climbs down into the darkness. Hears her mumbling behind her gag. Smells piss and shit, and fuzzes inside at the thought of cleaning up after her.
    He clenches his Killswitch knife in hand. Walks over to her. He can hear her shaking in the darkness. He wonders if she thought that maybe he’d gone forever. That maybe, someone would come to help her while he was gone.
    He hopes so.
    He leans right into her face. Listens to her heavy, shaky breathing. Smells her sweat.
    “Hello, lovely,” he says. “Time to work on the other fingers.”
    He clutches her finger and she screams out beneath the gag as he presses against her bony hands.
    All the time, the sound of “Move On Up” dances around his head.
    And all the time, as he cuts and as the screams get louder, the irritating-as-hell face of that grey-haired, checkered-shirt nosey bastard scratches at his mind like a cat’s claws.
    He knows what he has to do.
    Careful but ruthless.

FOURTEEN
    I’d barely been working this case a day and already I was wishing I hadn’t been working it at all.
    I sat with Martha in the Olive Press in town. Italian food, decent prices. To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy restaurants. I found the atmosphere forced, the appreciation of average food overwhelmingly annoying.
    But hey. Normal people ate in restaurants. I had to blend into the crowd every now and then.
    “Just funny,” Martha said. She was crunching on a slice of crispy margherita pizza.
    “What is?” I asked. I stuck my fork into my bowl of rubbery fettucine au saumon and slurped at the over-savoury sauce. The sound of glasses clinking together, the sight of waiters buzzing around camply… it was all getting too much. I was looking forward to a good kip.
    “How caught up in other people’s business we can get. I mean… that guy, Gus. He was kind of sweet.”
    Sweet wasn’t the word I’d use for fat-bellied Gus. But I got Martha’s point. Gus’ death had been a real blow. Just when we’d figured out he was being bribed by the killer in some way… poof, out his life goes like a dodgy bulb.
    I chewed at my pasta. Craved a Domino’s pizza. “So we’ve got a killer who picks on random girls, pays other people to do his dirty work, and somehow knew we were onto Gus.”
    “And don’t forget the squad car,” Martha added.
    I swallowed down the congealed lump of food. “Which direction are we going in here?”
    Martha sipped back some water, obviously struggling with the bone-dry pizza. “I’m just saying. The police have no ID on the girls yet, which suggests the killer knows what they’re doing. We have a mystery squad car turn up out of nowhere. And we have Gus suspiciously dropping dead the second after we tell Lenny he might know something.”
    “I’ve got it—Lenny’s the killer.”
    Martha laughed. “I’m not sure that guy could catch a fly with spray, let alone kill one. What d’you think?”
    “About Lenny? Oh, he’s definitely a killer. A killer of my faith in the police’s logic. But I… I dunno. I mean, sure, there’s the car, but Lenny already said a car went missing a while back and, naturally, they