RainStorm

back to the
    closet, where I retrieved Crawley's shorts and tee-shirt. I threw
    them into the machine. Then I grabbed a couple of washcloths
    from the bathroom, which I used to clean him up. These, too, went
    into the wash, along with the contents of a plastic laundry basket
    that was sitting on top of the dryer. A small detail, but you don't
    want to leave loose ends, such as, Why did the dead guy wash just his
    boxers, a tee-shirt, and two washcloths? Why didn't he throw in the rest of
    the dirty laundry, too? I also took a moment to hang his coat, suit,
    shirt, and tie in the clothes closet.
    I pulled off the deerskin gloves I'd been wearing, went to the
    storage closet, and pulled on the surgical pair. I grabbed the KY
    jelly and headed to the bathroom, where I squeezed out half the
    tube's contents into the sink, washing it all down with hot water.
    Then back to the closet, where I put Crawley's hands on the tube
    to ensure that it would be personalized with his fingerprints.
    I set the tube on the ground and fashioned the clothesline into
    a slipknot. I pulled the knot over his head and ran the other end of
    the line over the hanging dowel, close to the angle brace where it
    would be strongest. Then I used the rope to haul him up onto his
    knees. He listed forward a few degrees, but the rope restrained him.
    I tied off the end on the dowel, cut off all but about three feet of
    the excess, and stepped back.
    Diminished oxygen supply to the brain, called cerebral anoxia,
    can intensify sensations, making it, for some people, a good accompaniment
    to masturbation. The practice is known as autoerotic
    asphyxiation and usually remains a secret until the enthusiast dies
    accidentally in the midst of the proceedings. The statistics make extreme
    sports look safe by comparison: somewhere from five hundred to a thousand fatalities every year in the United States alone.
    I looked at Crawley for a moment. Make that a thousand and one.
    I applied a measure of K-Y jelly to his right hand and his genitals,
    then stepped back and observed. Yeah, that looked about right.
    The private life of a "State Department" bureaucrat. The quintessence
    of buttoned-down Washington Beltway seriousness by day;
    periodic bouts of autoerotic asphyxiation games by night. Really,
    you just never know what goes on behind closed doors. Especially
    closed closet doors.
    A sudden thought nagged me: Was he right-handed? Or left?
    Hmm, should have thought to find a way to check on that earlier.
    Sloppy. But the hell with it, no harm done. Maybe he enjoyed
    himself in private ambidextrously. Who could say one way or the
    other? The main thing was, the CIA wouldn't want this getting
    out. They'd want it dealt with quickly, quietly, and cleanly. They'd
    call it an embolism, a weak heart wall, something like that, and,
    wanting to believe this was the case, they'd repeat it until they did.
    Even if they had some suspicions, they would be reluctant to do
    anything that might cause this to leak. All of which would mean
    less pressure for me.
    I pulled off the surgical gloves, dropped them inside out into
    the briefcase, and slipped once again into the deerskin pair. I eased
    into the overcoat. I rolled up the plastic, picked up the rest of the
    items, and put them in the briefcase, too, which I carried back into
    the living room. I looked around.
    Take it backwards, starting with the bathroom. I double-checked
    everything, then triple-checked. Nothing was out of place. No
    telltale signs. The washing machine was cycling through rinse.
    Crawley's things would be clean soon.
    One last check of the closet. Everything was in order, Crawley
    included. He was canted forward, the rope preventing him from
    tipping onto his face, his knuckles resting alongside him against the
    carpeting. Well, there are worse ways to go, I thought. And I've seen
    plenty of them.
    Ordinarily, I work under substantial time constraints, and don't
    have the opportunity for triple-checks, and certainly not for reflection,
    when the job is done. But this time, it seemed, I did.
    I watched Crawley's lifeless form, thinking of all the death I had
    seen, of the deaths I had caused, starting with that unlucky Viet
    Cong near the Xe Kong river so many years before. I wondered
    what that poor bastard would be doing today if our paths had never
    crossed.
    Probably he'd be dead anyway, I thought. An accident or a disease or
    someone else would have killed him.
    Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he would