Going as fast as he could, he went to the Blooms’ backyard, then up onto the small deck. From this position he was out of view from the house next door, and he didn’t think he’d been seen.
He rang the doorbell, and several seconds later he saw Dana looking out. Baby, he thought, as he smiled wildly and gave her a little wave. But she held up one finger, like she’d be back in a second, and before he had time to say anything she was gone.
Shit, this was a complication Johnny didn’t need. The dog was barking even louder, and although he was out of view of the house with the dog, he was in clear view of the backyard of the house of the Blooms’ other next- door neighbor. If someone in that house heard the fuss the dog was making and came out onto the back porch, the person would see Johnny standing there.
What the hell was taking Dana so long? He knew she was probably changing, putting on makeup or something. It seemed like she’d been gone for ten minutes, but it probably hadn’t been nearly that long.
He told her he was supposed to meet Marissa at the house. Of course she said Marissa wasn’t there, but he didn’t know if Marissa had told her mother about her plans to go into the city. If she had, Johnny was going to say they’d changed their plans, but Dana seemed totally clueless and invited Johnny in to wait.
He was glad to be inside the house, and the damn dog’s barking was finally dying down. He turned on the charm so she wouldn’t notice his gloves or that he looked like, well, like someone who was going to kill her. The way she was looking at him, acting all flirty, he knew she wanted him, and he could’ve seduced her. He would’ve loved to have added her to his long list of conquests. Man, would that have been a trip, to screw Adam Bloom’s wife before he killed her? But Johnny wasn’t an idiot. He knew that banging her would get him into all kinds of trouble with DNA, and he wanted to play this thing right.
Still, he wanted to have a little fun with this thing- if he couldn’t actually screw her, at least he could make her think he was going to. Meanwhile, when she went to get him some iced tea, he grabbed a chef ’s knife, one that had about an eight- inch blade, from the knife rack on the counter. This was part of his plan, as he’d seen the knives when he was in the kitchen the other night. When she asked him to sit down he didn’t, but she didn’t seem to notice that he had the knife there behind his back. Then, what the hell, he told her how attracted he was to her, and he could tell she wanted him so badly, even if she was acting like she didn’t. But he didn’t want her to flip out, start screaming, so he decided to just get it over with.
He’d never killed with a knife before, but he’d killed with a switchblade and once with a shank that time at Rikers. He knew that the key to killing with any type of blade was to not be half- assed about it. Anybody could stick a knife a few inches into a body- hell, a weak old lady could probably give you a nice little wound. But to do serious damage you had to go all the way with it. You had to fight through that next inch or two of muscle and maybe bone so you could cut up the major arteries and organs. So when Johnny stabbed her in the middle of the back, he made sure he did it hard enough to get most of the blade in; then he pushed even harder, feeling it cut through something, and it went in easier. When he’d gotten about five or six inches of the blade in and it wouldn’t go any farther, he let go of her.
He backed away, watching her squirm around in her blood on the kitchen floor. He hated watching her suffer. He would’ve loved to yank the knife out of her back and slit her throat or stab her right in the heart, get it over with, but he didn’t want blood to splatter everywhere, especially on him. From what he could tell, he only had a little blood on his gloves and on the edge of the right sleeve of his sweatshirt, and he wanted to keep it that way.
The important thing was that although Dana was still alive and moaning and trying to crawl away, she wasn’t actually screaming in pain, maybe because she was too weak and couldn’t get the air into her lungs. The knife had probably gone into one of her lungs- or maybe there was too much blood coming up out of her mouth. So Johnny just stood back, waiting for her to bleed out, trying to make her feel better by saying things like “Just let it go” and “Stop fighting it.”
It really sucked that it was taking her so long to die. Eventually she stopped moaning, but she was still squirming. The suffering was hard to watch, but there was something about the blood that Johnny found, well, beautiful. Maybe he was starting to take this art shit too seriously, but the, what was that word, contract? No, contrast. Yeah, he loved the contrast of the bright red blood on the white tiled floor. Also, he loved the way the blood was spreading away from the body, the puddles expanding very slowly but keeping their perfect rounded shape. When he got home later he was going to try to re- create this scene, try to get this same shade of red. He’d probably have to mix a little white into the red, and he’d use oils, not acrylics. Maybe he’d do a whole series of paintings, call them his Bloodworks. Oh, man, was he a genius or what? He could see his paintings hanging at the Met- or what was that one across the street, the Prick?- and all the uppity art lovers going on and on about what a genius he was. Yeah, they would all be talking in big words about the “message” of the paintings. He could hear them saying they were a comment on society, on “our times.” They’d probably invite him to all their parties, all the rich people tripping over themselves, wanting to talk to the man who’d painted the Bloodworks.
Finally she stopped moving. He went up to her, getting as close as he could without stepping in the blood puddle, and looked at her face and saw her wideopen eyes and thought, Yeah, she’s dead. Finally.
He left the knife right where it was, in her back, and then he took another knife from the rack. This one had a bigger blade- maybe closer to ten inches- and he stood back, waiting for Adam to show up.
It was 6:52 according to the clock on the stove. Hopefully Adam had left work at six after his last patient. If he came right home by subway he would be here any minute. When Johnny heard him coming in through the front door, he’d stay off to the side, in the nook between the table and the entrance to the dining room. Adam would see his wife on the floor and be distracted, and then Johnny would attack him. He would try to stab him as few times as possible, though he knew this would be harder with Adam because he’d fight back and it might be hard to get the blade deep enough into the heart or lungs. The key would be to kill him as fast as possible, before he had a chance to scream too much. If Johnny had to stab him three, four, five times or more to get this done, then so be it. The bottom line was he needed Dana and Adam to both be discovered dead, slashed to death, on their kitchen floor. Then police would look to the obvious suspect-“Tony from the gym.” Johnny felt sorry for fucking up the poor sucker’s life, but what could you do?
Although Johnny didn’t think he’d gotten any blood on his shoes, he didn’t want to risk walking around the house. He looked at the body for a while, still loving that shade of red; then he looked over toward the blackboard where someone- probably Adam- had written I want you to move out.
This was almost too perfect. It was like the Blooms were helping, not only to get themselves killed but to give Johnny the perfect alibi. Their marriage was such a mess that the cops would go right to that Tony guy and arrest his ass. Johnny wanted to stay cool and in control, but it was hard not to feel excited. He was so close to the big prize, to getting everything he’d ever wanted, that he didn’t feel like he was in the Blooms’ house anymore. It was his house, and he couldn’t wait to get rid of all the Blooms’ stuff and then go on a spending spree, spend fifty grand- hell, why not a hundred or two hundred?- and fill it up with everything he’d ever wanted.