Melting ice cubes chinked in the glass tumbler Vera half filled with straight vodka.
Vera’s mood hung darker than the stark and dreary foggy night outside her apartment window.
She hated Benny. She hated him with a passion. That hatred grew more each time she thought about…it.
It was all about the beatings. Benny beat her, each and every time, a worse thrashing than the time before.
Sipping her drink, Vera examined her image in the wall mirror, knowing that those awful beatings would soon take a toll on her looks.
She sipped again.
Some people had said that Vera’s looks were all she had going for her. She had asked herself over and over again, how long would the beauty of youth last? She would live well on the proceeds of her late father’s estate, but she realized that the bloom of youth was ever so fleeting.
With another sip, Vera tried to pass it off. As in anything else in life, it always seemed to be about the hand she was dealt. All about the luck of the draw, as they say.
She stiffened and decided, no, that at long last, Benny had to be stopped. These awful beatings of his must end.
As she continued to sip her drink, the final pieces of the plan came together in her mind.
She set the drink down on the stand, and lifted the telephone receiver, checking for a dial tone. Vera heard the familiar buzz and a few faint static clicks on the line.
There was no need to check the listings for his telephone number. His number was engraved in her memory. She put her index finger in the hole of the first letter of his exchange and rotated the dial clockwise to the dial stop, and rode the dial back the rest. She did the same for the second exchange letter and the remaining four numbers.
His phone rang twice before Benny answered with a cheerful greeting. Vera inquired if he was up for company this evening. He responded by promptly asking her over. She pleasantly accepted. With that done, the plot was set in motion.
Vera went to the bedroom to change her outfit. She picked out the dark green long satin dress, low cut in the front and backless. She knew that this dress never failed to distract him, but it was never enough of a diversion to keep him from finding another reason to beat her again. After checking her hair and make-up, she put on a pair of long white silk gloves.
There was one last item necessary to her plan. Vera went to the kitchen refrigerator for the wooden box containing a tightly capped scent bottle of clear liquid. She had secretly transferred the contents from the glass container of 100% pure liquid caustic lye used by her family’s estate handyman to clear the plumbing drains. She put the box securely in her purse.
She exited her place by the back way into the dark foggy alley, following a path from one dark street to another dark street until she reached his apartment building. Vera used a key Benny had given her to access the rear first floor stairwell.
He answered her knock on his apartment door warmly and showed her in. Vera glanced at the framed newspaper clipping Benny kept, written in honor of the metals he won during the war in fighting against the Nazi Germans in France. She often wondered if that was the time when he learned the skills he used to beat her so well. He must have learned so many things during his tour over there.
Benny asked if she would like a drink. She offered to fix him one, while he relaxed. When he accepted the offer, Vera went to the kitchen and closed the door. She took his favorite double jigger glass from the cupboard, and she verified that he had an opened nearly full bottle of his favorite vodka on hand. Vera poured a nearly full jigger for him, instead, from the scent bottle in her purse. She kept the gloves on, knowing that the lye water was very corrosive.
She took the drink out, and offered him the glass. Following his habit of downing the first drink in one swallow and asking for a refill, Benny scuttled it down and with a big smile.
Then he lunged and collapsed to the floor.
Amid his gasps and convolutions, Vera went to the kitchen to tidy up any tale tell clues, and to place the scent bottle back in her purse. Returning to the front room, she bent down to find Benny still and not breathing. She had heard that ingestion of lye causes severe corrosive injury that leads to perforation of the gastrointestinal tract and fatal shock. There was no antidote for lye.
Vera let herself out of his apartment. Fleeing down the back stairwell and disappearing into the dark fog, she knew that Benny would never beat her again…never beat her again at cards.
A jaded cold case investigator finds himself trying to solve a thirty year old mystery when the skeletal remains of two missing teenagers are found in a national park.
Serial killer Ted Bundy's murders recounted from the perspective of thirty years after his execution in a Florida prison.
Brutal, compelling, with new updated facts about the case, his victims and the compulsions that drove Ted Bundy to mass murder.
A jaded cold case investigator finds himself trying to solve a thirty year old mystery when the skeletal remains of two missing teenagers are found in a national park.
