Chapter 43
CHAPTER
Soneji waited until he heard the click-click of the real estate agent’s heels coming his way before lobbing one of the books at the door to the basement. It made a solid thud when it hit.
“What was that, Denny?” Brenda Miles said.
He said nothing, waited, heard her come closer. As he’d hoped she would, she stepped out of the hall and looked around for the source of the thud.
Soneji took a half a step forward and flipped the rope over her platinum-blond do, her pert nose, and her chin. When he felt the loop hit her chest and stop, he wrenched back, almost taking her off her feet.
Stunned by the assault, the woman did not fight back at first, but then she began to struggle and kick at him with her spiked heels.
“Whoa there, Ms. Brenda,” Soneji said as he hauled her around, breaking her necklace. He got her up on her toes, both of them facing the big mirror.
Albert DeSalvo had hated seeing himself in mirrors while he attacked his victims. In one case, the Boston Strangler confessed that he became so disgusted with the reflected image of himself choking a Danish girl, he released her and begged her not to tell the police.
But Soneji had no qualms about mirrors. He leered at the reflection of Brenda Miles and himself as he twisted the rope. The fake pearls slipped off her necklace one by one as the fight seeped out of her.
Her fingers let go of the rope. Her arms dropped to her sides. Her eyes glazed over, wide open like her mouth, and she sagged down.
Only then did Soneji realize he was panting and inflamed with something like lust from her smell, from the adrenaline of it all.
And he’d been able to watch his own fascination in the mirror as the light went out of her eyes. He didn’t understand why DeSalvo disliked mirrors, but he completely understood the man’s obsession with strangling. He lowered Brenda Miles gently to the floor. She’d been so close to him!
He slipped the rope from her neck and admired the abraded wound it had left. Strangulation, he decided, was a very beautiful thing before, during, and after.
Soneji put the rope back in the Ziploc, which he stashed inside the coverall.
He went into the kitchen and saw a crock filled with cooking utensils.
He chose a wooden spoon and returned to the dead woman.
He undid her pants and pulled them down around her knees with some difficulty, then rolled her over so she was facedown on the floor.
“Sorry about this, Ms. Brenda,” he said. He pushed her panties aside and jammed the spoon handle where it should not have been.
Then he retrieved the toolbox, flipped off the lights, walked onto the darkened porch in the dusk, and shut the door behind him.
He heard kids playing in adjoining yards and saw headlights coming in both directions.
He turned his collar up, tugged down the brim of his cap, and marched to the sidewalk.
He held the toolbox on his right shoulder and lifted his left arm to further shield his face as he hurried across the street between two sets of approaching headlights.
He reached the white van. The car to his right passed by a second before the car to his left.
Soneji opened the van door and climbed in. The drivers might have gotten a solid look at him, but they could not possibly identify him.