Free The Killing Type by Wayne Jones Page A

the
effects on this poor man, and do not want to, but in the course of
my research I have seen close-up photographs of the same brutality
inflicted on others. One stands out, partly for the white-trash
context. A woman asks her current boyfriend to kill her former
boyfriend, and he agrees. The man is beaten to death, his face is
trampled, and later the head is cut off, a cigarette is inserted in
the mouth, and the whole disgusting installation is put on a
pillow.
    I wonder how people can be so insanely
violent. Taking some pride in not being a naive gawker, I accept
the hardships of life, the twists and turns of fate, and I do not
expect glorious light to shine from all the actions of humans who
are sullied and imperfect as I am. Still, dare I say that I am
shocked that a fellow human’s head could be dealt the same
practical injustice that most of us reserve for pesky insects? I
spoke somewhat sarcastically about journalists copying the sterile
lingo of the police, but perhaps the practice derives more from
self-preservation than from laziness. The euphemism of technical
terminology can sometimes convey the facts accurately without
conjuring up images of the cruel mess.
    This is not a day to spend alone, and
certainly not with my nose or any other part of me buried in dusty,
bloody tomes. I realize in a flash that this is a good sliver of
time when my landlady, poor dear, is not napping or watching one of
her shows. During my first visit with her, when I first moved to
Knosting, she and I spent a lovely hour or two in her place
discussing not only the practicalities of my renting arrangement,
but also the details of her daily schedule. She is a charming woman
really, though with a distressing tendency to overestimate her own
physical abilities. Generally speaking, she should not be walking
around much at all, but I have seen her returning from a “stroll in
the park,” as she called it, as if her very life were not in danger
from a simple fall to the ground, or worse, from not quite making
it across the street before the yellow roadster with the
inattentive driver barrels over her.
    I shake off these thoughts as I
descend the stairs and head for her door. The rug in the foyer is
looking a little shabby, even in this generously muted light, and I
can see as I am knocking that dust bunnies are scurrying into the
hardwood corners.
    “Well, hello , Andrew,” she says with genuine
enthusiasm. “Is everything all right? Is there something that I
could do for you?” (Another thing: she frets too much over her
tenant. The old girl is going to worry herself into an early
grave.)
    “Oh, yes,” I say. “Everything’s fine.
I was just wondering if you could do with a little
company?”
    Her face brightens noticeably—she
spends a lot of time alone—and a smile forms and stays there for a
batch of awkward seconds before she steps out of the way and makes
room for me to enter. I’d forgotten about the utter elegance of her
apartment. When I was there the first time, admittedly I was
focussed on making conversation and a good first impression, and on
getting the messy logistics of the renting out of the way (cheques,
no lease but a bit of an arduous and dubious “signing agreement,”
as she styled it). In a medium-sized space, or at least in the
living room to which I have access, she has managed to accommodate
a lot of furniture without the place seeming cluttered or tacky.
She seats me in an extraordinarily comfortable old armchair of a
deep maroon colour. The fabric is a soft, rich velour with a
pattern of flowers in bas relief.
    “Could I get you something to drink,
Andrew? Some tea, perhaps—I was just about to put on a
pot.”
    “That would be lovely,” I say. As she
smiles and turns to go toward the kitchen, I ask, “May I help you
with anything?” but she declines with a vigorous shake of her head
and a waving finger, the latter of which I am at a loss to
interpret. Perhaps she misunderstood?
    I sit back in the