Match Play by D. Michael Poppe Page B

for dinner. I called but she didn’t answer.”
    She is closing in on him, encroaching on his space; his mind is spinning.
    “We went to the Kia Classic today and she wasn’t feeling well so I brought her home. She’s resting,” he says.
    She is crowding him now. “Excuse me, I want to see her. Hey, Em, it’s me!” She is trying to get past him.
    His instincts take over and his confidence returns. “Come on in.” He backs into the living room. The intruder gets a brief glance of the room, stares up at him with a quizzical look and manages to take one more step. He grabs her from behind, reaches around her left shoulder and pulls it to the right, his left hand simultaneously on her chin as he jerks her head to the left.
    Her neck makes a sharp crack and he has a momentary vision of his grandfather killing cats. Her body goes limp in his arms and he lets it slide to the floor.
    He is disappointed at this turn of events and his back sags as he pushes the door shut. He’s clenching his jaw in anger and he can feel a sharp pain in his forearm. The intruder has scratched him deeply and his arm is oozing blood from two of the gouges.
    He must tend to his wounds before he gets blood on anything. He rushes to the kitchen and puts his arm under the cold water. The blood quickly washes away, but now he sees that the scratches are vivid and deep. She used her right hand and scratched from the top of his forearm down almost to his wrist.
    With this new agitation comes a moment of panic when he realizes she may not have been alone. He composes himself and dismisses the thought, knowing someone would have come to the door had she not come back to the car.
    The bleeding has stopped and he returns to the living room, not panicking but off balance. She has seen him, she can identify him…wait, that doesn’t matter now.
    Her presence in the living room spoils the entire hole . He must move the body; he wants her out of the scene. Damn! He hates interference! He carries her to the second bathroom and is about to drop her on the floor…too messy. He lowers the body into the bathtub, face up, feet near the drain. His arm stings and he sees he is bleeding again. Panic strikes another time, what about DNA from under her fingernails?
    “Dammit,” he shouts out loud.
    He returns to the front door for his briefcase and returning to the bathroom, flips the light on with his elbow, places the case on the toilet seat and opens it. He puts on a fresh pair of latex gloves and opens his knife sheath. He positions himself over the tub, kneeling on the bathmat and picks up her right arm. He manipulates her wrist until he finds the wrist joint, rests the arm on the stomach and with an artful deftness he chops off her hand with the cleaver.
    Her arm drops back to her side and blood begins oozing from the stump. The hand is well-manicured and delicate. He holds it in his left hand, wound upright, and moves to the sink. He rinses the hand, his own hands and the cleaver, leaving the hand lying in the sink with the water running.
    He dries his gloved hands and the cleaver, replaces the cleaver in the sheath and moves the case off the toilet.
    He drops the hand into the bowl and flushes. It is an old toilet, the hand sinks to the bottom, and as the water continues to swirl it finally disappears. He is waiting for the tank to fill, and is about to remove his gloves, when suddenly he stops. Why shouldn’t he take the nipples?
    He doesn’t have another jar so he goes to the kitchen and finds a re-sealable plastic bag.
    He flushes the toilet again and reaching into the sheath, removes the paring knife that was not used on the second hole. He stands over the tub. The paring knife glides through the breast tissue; he wipes away the blood that oozes as he peels and excises the nipple.
    He is fascinated by the unusually intricate pattern in blood left on the tub. He drops the trophies into the bag, seals it and carefully places it in a corner of his