K Is for Killer

kept her eyes straight ahead, gazing intently at the flesh on my hip, possibly with an eye toward a late evening snack.
    "Beauty," he murmured with scarcely any change of tone.
    She sank to the floor, but I could tell she was still thinking about a jaw full of gluteus maximus.
    "Next time I'll bring her a bone," I said. Preferably not mine.
    I headed home through the business district, following a trail of stoplights that winked from red to green. The storefronts had been secured, plate-glass windows ablaze with fluorescent lighting. The streets were bleached white with the spill of illumination. I passed a lone man on a bike, dressed in black. It was almost 1:30 a.m., traffic minimal, intersections wide and deserted. Most of the bars in town were still open, and in another half hour or so, all the drunks would emerge, heading for the various downtown parking structures. Many buildings were dark. The homeless, bundled in sleep, blocked the doorways like toppled statues. For them, the night is like a vast hotel where there's always a room available. The only price they pay, sometimes, is their lives.
    At 1:45 I finally stripped off my jeans, brushed my teeth, and doused the lights, crawling into bed without bothering to remove my T-shirt, underpants, and socks. These February nights were too cold to sleep naked. As I eased toward unconsciousness, I found myself mentally replaying select portions of Lorna's tape. Ah, the life of the single woman in a world ruled by sexually transmitted diseases. I lay there, trying to think back to when I'd last had sex. I couldn't even remember, which was really worrisome. I fell asleep wondering if there was a cause-and-effect relationship between memory loss and abstinence. Apparently so, as that was the last thing I was aware of for the next four hours.
    When the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., I rolled out of bed before my resistance came up. I pulled on my sweats and my running shoes, then headed into the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth, avoiding the sight of myself in the mirror. One ill-advised glance had revealed a face fat with sleep and hair as stiff and matted as a derelict's. I'd snipped it off six months before with a trusty little pair of nail scissors, but I hadn't done much to it since. Now the sections that weren't sticking straight up were either flat or adrift. I was really going to have to do something about it one of these days.
    Given the four hours of sleep, my run was a bit on the perfunctory side. Often I tune in to the look of the beach, letting sea birds and kelp scent carry me along. Jogging becomes a meditation, shifting time into high gear. This was one of those days when exercise simply failed to uplift. In lieu of euphoria, I had to make my peace with three hundred calories' worth of sweat, screaming thighs, and burning lungs. I tacked on an extra half mile to atone for my indifference and then did a fast walk back to my place as a way of cooling down. I showered and slipped into fresh jeans and a black turtleneck, over which I pulled a heavy gray cotton sweater.
    I perched on a wooden stool at the kitchen table and ate a bowl of cereal. I scanned the local paper in haste. No surprises there. While floods threatened the Midwest, the Santa Teresa rainfall averages were down and there was already speculation of another drought in the making. January and February were usually rainy, but the weather had been capricious. Storms approached the coast and then hovered, as if flirting, refusing us the wet kiss of precipitation. High-pressure systems held all the rains at bay. The skies clouded over, brooding, but yielded nothing in the end. It was frustrating stuff.
    Turning to happier items, I read that one of the big oil companies was talking about building a new refinery somewhere on the south coast. That would be a handsome addition to the local landscape. A bank robbery, a conflict between land developers and opposing members of the county board of supervisors. I scanned the funnies while I sucked down my coffee and then headed into the office, where I spent the next several hours assembling the balance of my tax receipts. Obnoxious. Having finished, I pulled out a standard boilerplate contract and typed in the details of my agreement with the Keplers. I spent the bulk of the day finishing the final report on a case I'd just done. The closing bill, with expenses, was something over two thousand bucks. It wasn't much, but it kept the rent paid and my