Likes by Sarah Bynum (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

And the next morning, our guys, when they see the way her body is arranged”—he quickly contorts himself to illustrate—“they know this has gotta be one of theirs. The cervical fracture, the pattern of lacerations, it all matches the profile. But they’re confused, right? Because they have the benefit of hindsight. They know that the only thing Emmett Diggs was guilty of was being a black man who dared to love a white woman in 1961.” He takes a gulp of air. “So what they can’t figure out is: Who butchered the blonde lying next to the eighth hole? They spend the first two acts chasing down bad leads while Diggs stalks and seduces and kills one beautiful young victim after another—” The husband interrupts: “Lenny.” He tries to find the easy tone he uses when giving the kid workout advice. “This direction we’re going in—”

From inside the house, he thinks he hears movement, voices. A conversation. There’s someone in there besides the barking dog, and the thought obscurely comforts him. He isn’t alone, after all. He has somewhere to go now, someone to find. But he cannot summon up his whistling bravado from before; he is still hesitant and uneasy, and as he edges his way closer to the back steps he wishes he had a better idea of what he is supposed to do.

“It doesn’t make sense to me. If you were Emmett Diggs and you’d been rotting away in Attica, wrongly convicted for murdering the love of your life, tormented by the prison guards, and then after being thrown into solitary yet again for something you didn’t do, you suddenly find yourself free and at large and fifty years into the future—your first impulse is to go pick up women at the nearest country club?” That sounds more sarcastic than he wants it to. He needs to go slow. “I mean, wouldn’t Diggs want to exonerate himself? He’d want justice.” But who is he kidding; that’s not the kind of show he’s writing on. “Actually, vengeance. He wants to avenge her death. He’s hunting down the real killer, whoever it was who murdered his fiancée and framed him for it.” Lenny is nodding rapidly as if completely convinced but then asks politely, “Maybe that’s a more familiar take on it?” The co-executive producer agrees: “I feel like I’ve already seen that a million times.” The showrunner gives him an encouraging smile. “We’re trying to do something different here,” he explains. “Our mandate is to be edgy, to push the envelope.”

She doesn’t want to let go of the bag. Despite knowing what the contents are, and of how little value, despite being aware that there’s nothing inside the bag that she wants or needs or even really likes, she won’t let go. A treacherous thought occurs to her, unbidden: her husband must in some way be at fault. It all makes sense. He forgot to lock the door when he left for work that morning, which is why some guy, some stranger, was able to waltz into their house and have a look around and help himself to a bagful of their stuff. And now, like everything else concerning the house, she’s going to have to take care of it. How dare he! Just one more pushy person trying to take advantage of her: the contractors with their ridiculous bids, the Korean dad in the Lexus who has twice cut her off in the carpool lane at school. Don’t even get her started on Anne-Marie, the simpering but secretly ruthless head of HR, who managed to chisel away at her salary requirements until she was left with a comprehensive vision plan and three weeks’ vacation while basically working for free. Well, enough is enough. They’re not going to get away with it. She’s sick and she’s tired and she’s not going to take it anymore. Where has she heard that before? Somehow nothing in this moment feels entirely her own, from the words in her head to the sneakers braced on the floor to the hand that is holding so tightly to the bag strapped across the man’s body.

He’s running out of time. He’s only a few feet away from the front door. “Let go,” he tells her, in a voice he doesn’t quite recognize. Hopefully it sounds deep. And forceful? He’s not even sure she’s heard him. Her grip is still strong but her face has gone sort of blank.

The husband focuses on his breath, takes a second to regroup. He smiles back at the showrunner. “Okay,” he says, “okay”—he’s starting to sound like Lenny, for God’s sake—“I guess I understand why, for purposes of edginess, we want Emmett Diggs to be killing white women. But what’s still unanswered for me is how he becomes a killer in the first place. How does a man start out perfectly innocent and then turn into a person who’s capable of murdering someone?”

Just as he is wondering how he will get inside, Emmett discovers that the back door is already open for him. And not just open, in fact, but missing. The back door is lying on the pantry floor, wrenched from its hinges, and if he’s not careless he can walk right through the doorframe without getting splinters caught on the sleeve of his jacket.

She’s showing no sign of letting go. “I have a gun,” he tells her, no longer caring about his voice, and reaches behind his back to draw it from the waistband of his pants.

Ha! Does she look stupid? Not just nice but stupid? He makes a big show of going for his so-called gun and when he lifts up his arm to reach behind him she sees for the first time the tattoo running the length of his forearm, a long dark tattoo that looks as if it might be a blade or a sword, extending from the inside of his elbow to his wrist, a tribal-looking