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This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine . . .
The familiar tune whispered through his brain as the Marksman yanked hard on the thin wire of Christmas lights that he’d wrapped around the handyman’s neck. The guy was struggling and fighting like a wildcat, but he was smaller and older than the Marksman, and his fight was futile. He flung one hand back, trying to claw at the Marksman’s already mutilated face, but he failed and soon was trying to force his fat little fingers between the wire and his windpipe.
It was no use.
The wire was digging into the guy’s skin, deeper and deeper, cutting off his air. Still he wrestled around, gasping until he couldn’t. The Marksman could visualize the man’s eyes already starting to bulge from their sockets.
He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip even further, pulling the man from his feet. His victim—an unlucky handyman for Kris Kringle’s Christmas Lights who had been hired to decorate Greta Emerson’s house—was losing the battle, his frantic attempts at freeing himself beginning to slow.
Hide it under a bushel? No!
Another twist of the wire, flesh splitting. His dangling victim went limp. Just in time. The Marksman’s leg was pounding in pain from the strain on his thighs as he’d hoisted the man from his feet.
Dead, probably. No reason to take a chance, though. He held the wire taut, despite the fact that the man wasn’t moving.
Hide it under a bushel?
No!
I’m gonna let it shine . . .
A last twist of the wire.
No fight. Zero response. Dead weight.
Still the Marksman waited. If he’d learned anything from the killing of Ned Crenshaw, it was to not take a death for granted. He had to remember he was not invincible and that a victim could sometimes respond with almost superhuman strength.
So he held the man off his feet as his own thigh pulsed in angry pain. Rain poured from the dark skies, and the wind blew harshly, rattling the branches of the shrubbery around the Emerson mansion. The Christmas lights winked brightly from the eaves and peak of the roof, but still the Marksman held fast until at last he was certain that the man, whose clothes and keys he was going to use, was surely, without a doubt, dead as the proverbial doornail.
Satisfied, he let his victim sink down to the soggy ground. His plan was to change into the handyman’s Kris Kringle jumpsuit, grab a string of lights, and use the man’s access to the basement garage and electrical panel. Then he would sneak into the house and up the interior, back staircase to the third-floor apartment.
First, though, he planned to st
uff the body into the back of the Kris Kringle Christmas Lights van and then, using the handyman’s ladders, peer into the windows of the house to orient himself with the layout. He should be able to pull it off. Even if he was seen, it was dark and gloomy. No one would suspect he wasn’t the regular guy.
Carefully, he rolled his dead victim onto a tarp he kept in his SUV.
He didn’t really have anything against Remmi other than that she was nosy and poking around where she didn’t belong, but she had to go. There was a chance she could challenge the authenticity of the book or start making noise about wanting to get paid for any royalties or movie deals or whatever.
So, good-bye, Remmi Storm.
He lifted the body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and then cautiously, quietly, sneaked within the curtain of rain to the empty street and stuffed the man into the back of his Kris Kringle van. There was enough room to climb inside. Just enough. So he followed after the body and around the spools of lights, small ladders, staple guns, and the like, stripped the worker of his jumpsuit, ripped off his own clothes, and in the cramped space, his leg screaming in pain, he zipped up the ill-fitting suit. It didn’t exactly fit like a glove, but it would have to do. Once outside, he quietly closed the back doors and locked the van, then returned to the house, where he repositioned the ladder and climbed up it, still checking every window as he passed, keeping himself oriented with the inside of Greta Emerson’s huge home.
He hadn’t counted on his leg aching so badly—pain was radiating from the wound in his thigh—but he’d deal with it.
Once he’d scoped out the place, he would leave in the guy’s van for a few hours, then return later. If anyone looked out, they’d see the same handyman’s vehicle that had been parked on the street, off and on, for several days. Once he was certain the neighborhood was asleep, he’d sneak inside and finish this job.
The plan wasn’t foolproof, but it should work.
It was long past time for Remmi Storm to join her mother in eternity.
CHAPTER 32
“Didi’s dead? For certain?” Vera Gibbs whispered, her hand over her mouth as she stood framed in the doorway, backlit by the interior lights, a screen separating her from the detectives.
She’d answered when Settler had rung the bell. She and Martinez had introduced themselves, shown their badges.
