'I've been fired.'
'Uh-huh,' she mumbled, cramming her stapler into a side pocket. 'Norton said he was looking for a reason to get rid of you.'
'Get rid of me?' Martin echoed. That couldn't be right. Norton Shaw had given him an 'adequate' on his yearly review. You didn't call someone adequate if you were trying to get rid of them.
'Whatchu doin' outta jail anyway?' she asked. 'I thought you'd be in the electric chair by now.'
'It's lethal injection,' Martin corrected. 'Are you stealing office supplies?'
'Getting out while the getting's good,' she told him, trying to jam a ream of paper into her bag. 'Unique can read the writing on the wall.'
Martin cringed. She only ever spoke of herself in the third person when she felt threatened. He could still remember the first time he'd heard her do it. Martin had suggested that it was only fair that she clean the women's room as he was expected to clean up after the men. 'Unique don't clean toilets!' she had screeched.
He tried, 'Unique—'
'I don't need no trouble with the po-lice,' she told him. 'No way is Unique sticking around with the po-lice asking questions.'
'What kinds of questions?'
'I might have bought some clothes at the mall that one time that I didn't exactly pay for.'
Martin was outraged. 'You stole?'
She indicated her bright purple silk pantsuit. 'You think I can dress like this on what y'all pay me?'
Actually, he did.
'I got a look to uphold,' she told him, pushing Martin out of the way as she walked around to his desk. 'You don't go messing with a lady's wardrobe.'
Perhaps it was because of his own recent brush with the law, but Martin felt his outrage quickly turn into fascination. He had worked with this woman for three years without knowing that she was an actual thief. 'Did you get caught?'
'There might be a warrant out there somewhere. You know how it is.'
Had she winked at him? Martin thought she had. 'Yes,' he said. 'Having spent some time in jail myself, I understand.'
She looked at him, her lips pursed. Was that respect in her eyes?
'I fought the fishes,' he told her, trying out his jail-house lingo.
She turned skeptical. 'Fought them on what?'
'Well, you know, jail is very divisive. I had to hook up with the whites, you see. Immediately, you have to choose a posse.'
'Posse?'
He leaned on the edge of her empty desk. 'Peeps, you might have heard it called.'
She dumped a box full of invoices on the floor and started filling it with Post-it notes from Martin's desk. 'Did you really kill Sandy?'
'Well, I . . .' he fumbled for words. 'She teased me quite harshly.'
Unique stopped filling the box. 'You was mad after the dildo, huh? I saw it in your eyes when that rubber melted into your thumb.' She chuckled. 'I knew there was something more to you, Martin.'
Martin. She had called him Martin. Not Fool. Not Doughboy. Martin.
'She pissed you off, didn't she?'
The only thing he could think to say was, 'Live by the dildo, die by the dildo.'
Unique's eyes widened in shock. 'Did you rape her?'
He shrugged again, thinking this was the most attention she had ever given him. She was actually talking to him like a human being!
'Tell me what happened,' she whispered, letting him know that it was just between the two of them. 'I promise I won't tell nobody. Just for my own sake, let me know.'
'Well, I—'
'It was all about the sex, wasn't it?'
Martin waved this away with his hand, slightly queasy by the thought of rape, especially having just spent nearly a full half-hour in a cage of savage men. 'I've got a girl who takes care of those needs.'
She gasped. 'You been paying for sex? Seeing prostitutes? Martin, that's what Ted Bundy did!'
Having read The Stranger Beside Me five times, Martin was certain her statement was untrue, but he could not find it in himself to burst her bubble, so he said, 'Yes, I'm just like Ted Bundy.'
'Where?' she asked. 'Do you go into Atlanta? Do you make them do nasty things?'
Martin shrugged again, hoping she couldn't see how red-faced he was becoming. 'There's a lady – name'a Glitter. I use her to satiate my needs.'
'To get your anger out, right?' She took a few steps toward him. 'You're a really angry man, ain't you, Pasty?'
'I've got a temper.'
'I heard about you stomping on that briefcase,' she said. 'Is that what you used to kill her?'
He shrugged for maybe the sixtieth time. Was it just him, or was Unique standing closer? He could have reached out and touched her. So he did.
'Oh, baby,' she breathed, as if his touch brought a tingle to her skin. 'Do it again.'
He touched her bare arm, his creamy fingers a stark contrast to her black coffee. Suddenly, both her hands clamped around his head. She yanked him off the desk and crammed his face into her voluminous breasts. Martin couldn't breathe. His feet slid on the tiled floor as he tried to back away from her.
'Come'ere,' she grunted, her long, red fingernails scraping against his belly as she yanked down his pants. Martin didn't plunge so much as fall into her. She gripped his ass cheeks so hard between her fists that he felt like his butt was being molded into a handle. She certainly used it that way, pushing, pulling, pushing, pulling so that Martin was jackhammering in and out.
He couldn't stop her, and after a few hundred thrusts, he didn't want to stop her. His knees started to go weak. 'Oh-oh-oh!'
'Say it, baby!' she yelled back. 'Say my name!'
'You-knee-kay! You-nee-kay!'
'Say it, Doughboy! Say it louder!'
'You! Nee! Kay! You! Nee! Kay!'
'That's it!' she cried. 'Come on, baby! Fuck Unique! Fuck that baby!' She tugged and yanked and slammed him against her. Martin held on to her shoulders as she jerked his body back and forth.
'Oh! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!' he cried.
'No, you don't!' she warned him, her hands stopping the motion.
It was too late. He came in torrents, great mighty plumes that would rival Old Faithful in pounds per square inch. His body shook with manly release, his muscles tensing as wave after wave shot through him.
'Nuh-uh,' Unique mumbled. 'No way you're finishing without me, Pillsbury.'
Her hand gripped the back of his head again, pushing his face down between her legs and into the cavernous cleavage of her cleft. Unique was stronger than she looked. Her fingernails dug into the back of his head, pressing Martin's nose against her wetness. He struggled to pull back even as she forced him closer. She started to grind against his face, his nose sliding up and down. Martin fought the urge to sneeze, to choke, to scream for air. He started to hyperventilate again, his brain spinning in his head, and still she pressed his face into her mound like an orange in a juicer, then like cheese in a grater. She was working on pork in a meat grinder when he started to see stars, and not the good kind. His eyelids flickered. Just before he passed out, she finished, or at least he thought she did. Either way, Unique pushed him away from her like he was a dog trying to eat off her plate. Martin fell back, his hands slipping on the tiled floor. His face was so wet that he must have been gleaming. She looked down at him with renewed disgust.
'You ain't all that,' she noted, tugging up her underwear. Her stomach rolled over the top like a muffin over its paper wrapper.
'I was—'
'Shut up, Fool.' She reached into her purse, checking something. 'All right, then,' she mumbled.
Martin had managed to stand but he was so dizzy that he didn't trust himself to reach down and pull up his pants. He put his hand on the desk to steady himself. He should do the gentlemanly thing now, like offer to take her to dinner or maybe suggest a drink. 'Unique, perhaps I could—'
'Pull up your pants, Fool. That weenie of yours ain't nothin' to look at.'
'Oh, sorry.' Martin scrambled to do as he was told.
'Carry that box out to my car,' she ordered. 'And stop looking at me like that. Just 'cause you got a taste of the honey don't mean you can keep buzzing the hive.'
Martin's Unique Problem, or
An's Mary Ever-After
An blew her nose with a tissue even as tears streamed down her face. She should have known better than to start watching The House of Mirth while she was on her period. Or maybe An was just sensitive in general. For the life of her, she could not get Martin Reed out of her mind. The way he had compared her to Tempe Brennan . . . the way he had vomited when he'd seen the crime-scene photos (An had always had a soft spot for men with weak stomachs. Her father had suffered from ulcers his entire life). And then there was that look he gave her when she released him from the holding cells – part confused child, part sadistic monster. Would she ever know the real Martin?
An tried to turn her attention back to the movie, mindful that thinking about Martin Reed would never lead her to a good place. The truth was that after Charlie had died, one of the main reasons An had never been able to make a connection with another man was because there was always a little part of her that was scared of being beaten. She hated to admit it (it was the kind of revelation she would only have shared with Jill) but she had decided a long time ago that the perfect man for her would probably be one who could never touch her or get close enough to harm her in any way.
In short, her ideal mate was Jill, but with a penis.
'Ugh,' she groaned. She was too old to change back, and she was pretty certain that she wouldn't be able to scrape the gay flag bumper sticker off her car without removing a chunk of paint in the process.
An tried to concentrate on the movie, holding the box of tissues in her lap. Gillian Anderson's Lily Bart was lying in bed, taking that last fatal dose of laudanum, when An's phone rang.
'Hello?' she sniffed.
'Aw, shit,' Bruce said. 'I knew I shouldn't have let you go home alone. Not with this being Jill's anniversary and all.'
An looked at the paused image of Gillian Anderson lying in bed. Even close to death, she was still beautiful. An couldn't help but think that that's exactly how Jill would have looked if she had really lived and then really died. Wasn't laudanum a derivative of opium? Surely they would have given Jill something for the pain.
'An?'
'I'm okay,' she told him, sniffing again. 'What's up?'
'The security guard from Southern Toilet Supply just called. He found a dead body in the bathroom.'
'What?' An gasped, shock making her heart feel as if it had stopped in her chest. Bruce explained to her what had happened, but An's brain could not process his words into anything that made sense. Even as she got dressed, got into her car, drove to Southern, flashed her badge at the police blockade and went into the bathroom, she still could not quite grasp what Bruce had told her.
And then she had seen the prone body of Unique Jones and finally understood.
The woman was lying face down on the floor, her dress hiked up, legs spread. There was a mop handle sticking out from between her legs. Blood pooled around her head. Incongruously, the whole bathroom smelled like flowers.
An asked, 'What happened?'
The coroner supplied his theory. 'I'd say she was hit with this,' he said, holding up a clear plastic evidence bag. An saw a wall-mounted bathroom air sanitizer with blood and hair stuck to the crushed tip.
'Came from over there,' Bruce said, pointing to the empty mounting bracket bolted to the wall. 'Lavender scent.'
That explained the smell.
'The blow was fatal,' the coroner explained.
'Was she raped?'
He got down on his knees and craned his neck to look up between the legs. 'Unless he's got a penis the size of a mop handle, I'd say he couldn't perform,' the man noted. 'Typical with sexual offenders. They can't penetrate, so they punish the victim, and then they get their sexual release. There's enough jizz here to paint the Capitol dome.'
An shook her head, trying to clear the image that had brought. 'Who found the body?'
'Security guard,' Bruce told her. 'He fell asleep in the booth.' Bruce pinched his thumb and forefinger together, brought them to his mouth and made a sucking sound. 'Guy likes his weed.' He shrugged; half the cops on the force did, too. 'Anyway, he woke up, saw that Jones' car was still here, went inside and found her like this.'
'Were any other cars in the lot?'
'He pulled the security tape for us,' Bruce said. 'The only other car that came in and out was a powder blue Cadillac.' He paused for effect. 'We ran the plates. The car's registered to Evelyn Reed.'
'Fuck,' An whispered. Martin had promised he would stay out of trouble.
'He seemed agitated that day when he came to work,' Daryl Matheson testified in front of the judge. 'I asked him about the blood on the bumper, and he got really defensive.'
'He was pounding on the briefcase,' Darla Gantry stated, after swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 'I asked him what he was doing and he told me to mind my own damn' business.'
'Well,' Norton Shaw began, clearly reluctant to be telling this to the jury. 'Martin was always complaining about Unique. I didn't pay much attention to it. He usually complained about a lot of people.'
'He scared me,' Gloria 'Madam Glitter' Koslowski admitted. 'I told him to leave. I didn't want to be alone with him.'
'Unique was always scared of Pasty. He stared at her all the time, looking at her breasts and things.' Renique, Unique's sister, was steely yet composed (she had trouble of her own – it seems the church where she worked had found some accounting irregularities).
Evelyn Reed sobbed, 'I didn't know what to do with him! He was just out of control!'
It must be said that the final nail in Martin Reed's coffin came from his own words. An had found a tape recorder in Unique's purse alongside various purloined office supplies. Cellphone records had shown she'd made several phone calls to the local television stations, offering to sell her story. And what a story it would have been.
On the tape, Unique's voice sounds hurried, almost excited. 'You been paying for sex? Seeing prostitutes? Martin, that's what Ted Bundy did!'
'Yes,' Martin replies, sounding cool, confident. 'I'm just like Ted Bundy.'
Even Max Jergens had looked convinced when An had played the tape in open court. 'No way,' he'd said when the judge had asked if he wanted to cross-examine the witness. 'Dude, did you hear what he said?'
Through it all, Martin sat passively by his lawyer. Or, at least, he seemed to be passive – how could you tell what was going on in Martin Reed's twisted, sick mind?
To her credit, An had tried to find even the slightest bit of evidence in Martin's favor. Each inquiry she made only seemed to dig him deeper into the hole: His fellow employees seemed to think he was a cross between Baby Huey and Charles Manson. Add to that the forensic evidence – Martin's sperm inside Unique, his saliva and sperm on the floor in the office and in his shoe – and there was not much An could do but sit back and wait for the judge's gavel to fall. And fall it did.
'Martin Harrison Reed Junior, I hereby sentence you to death by lethal injection.'
Death! It seemed a bit harsh, but then maybe An had developed a soft spot for Martin over the months of interviewing him. They had spent so many hours together, yet she still felt that she hardly knew him at all. He had even tried to learn Dutch (she hadn't the heart to tell him that her family was actually from Friesland – Dutch was hard enough; Frisian would have probably driven him to suicide). Really, if you didn't look at him or talk to him for very long, he was actually a rather nice guy.
Of course, people had started to notice at work that An was acting differently. Bruce had picked up on it first, noting that she had ironed a shirt or brushed her hair. Working with a bunch of detectives, you'd think one of them would have put together the fact that An only took care of her appearance on the days that she talked with Martin Reed. Then again, the thought o
f her actually falling for someone who was soon to be a convicted murderer (the case was a slam dunk) was fairly preposterous.
Had she fallen for him? Well – maybe. An tested the waters first, trying to see how it would feel. She sent herself flowers at work (boy, had that caused a stir) and took off early one Friday to get ready for a 'dinner date'. There was teasing and smiles and pats on the back. Part of her was a bit hurt that they seemed to have so easily forgotten Jill, but then Doug, her boss, had called her into his office one day and said, 'You know, I'm glad to see you moving on. Jill would've wanted you to be happy.'
An had felt tears well into her eyes.
'So,' Doug said, a teasing lilt to his voice, 'what's the lucky lady's name?'
'Mary,' she told him, stroking her neck the way that she imagined Jill used to. 'Her name is Mary.'
Martin's Lethal Injection,
or Be Steel My Heart
Martin sat at a plastic table in the visitors' lounge, watching his mother get searched for contraband. She kept up a constant stream of chatter as hands patted her down and the wand waved over her body. Apparently, she said something funny, because all the guards laughed. Evelyn Reed was one of the most popular visitors at the prison. Nay, one of the most popular mothers in the country. She had been on every talk show and appeared above the fold on just about every newspaper printed. She was a celebrity of her own making, a star of stage and screen. Even the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary had begged her to come back.
There was a hush in the nearly packed visitors' lounge as Evie made her way toward Martin. Some women raised their fists in the air to show their solidarity. Others stared in wonderment while still others took advantage of the distraction to pass drugs they had secreted in various cavities.
'Martin,' Evie called, waving her hand as if he couldn't see her. She certainly had a spring in her step these days. She'd started working out with a personal trainer after seeing herself on Oprah ('Why didn't you tell me I'd put on weight?'), and between the new exercise regime and her personal chef, she had managed to lose thirty pounds. Add to that the face-lift and the Botox, and you could understand how the 63-year-oldwoman before him looked closer to Martin's age than her own.