Born to Make the Kill

Amy Westerhill glanced across the classroom to where Alex Daniels sat a couple of rows over and two seats forward. He poured over the notebook on his desk and didn’t seem to suspect her fawning over the side of his face. She sketched the outline of his cheekbone and nose with her smoke-gray eyes while his busy pen scrawled lecture notes.

The last time she tuned in, their US History teacher yammered on about Nathan Hale and his heroic contribution to the Revolutionary War. At least she thought that was today’s subject. For now, the din from the front of the classroom might well have been the monotone drone from the living room television while the local anchor read the evening news—just a murmur in the background. What did she care about some guy who died over two hundred years ago when the rest of her life sat just across the room?

She tore her eyes away from Alex long enough for a time check. Her heart took a heavy leap and she caught a deep breath. This class period ended in minutes. The next bell signaled the end of the school day and launched the next stage of her life. And that couldn’t come soon enough.

Earlier that week, while she helped her mom snap string beans from the garden for canning, Amy had asked for the day off from her chores on Friday so she could spend the afternoon with a friend. Of course, since dating wasn’t allowed until she turned sixteen, she didn’t admit the friend was a boy. In fact, when her mom asked her friend’s name, Amy tried a skill she had been working on—misdirected facts. Her mom was not easily tricked but Amy forged ahead with nothing to lose but privilege for a week or so—such a small price for such a promising prize. Amy drew her eyes toward the green beans in her lap, snapped the stem off one, and tossed it in the pile destined for compost.

“Alex,” she said. At the top edge of her vision, as she felt for the other end of the bean, she watched for her mother’s reaction. As expected, she jerked her head up and glared at Amy. Amy rolled her eyes up with an innocent, dimpled smile.

Her mom snarled, “Alex?” The weathered creases of her face preached contempt and judgment.

Now the true test came, bare-faced eye contact while telling a full-on lie. Pull this one-off and a new world opened up for the fourteen-year-old. “Oh, not that Alex, Mom,” she said and stretched her smile a little broader. She shook her head side to side as if her mother’s assumption was without merit. “She’s a girl in my history class.”

Actually, it was that Alex. Amy had known him for three years but he had always ignored her. She thought it because she was scrawny, immature, and two years behind him in school. Her mother had said Amy was a late bloomer and seemed happy about it. If she could dress Amy and fix her hair so she imitated an elementary school-girl until the day she graduated high school, so much the better. Since Amy got her first period a few months ago and, saw in the mirror the rapid changes her body had undergone, she also noticed the same boys who used to strut past her in the hall like she didn’t exist, now turned when she walked by and undressed her with their leers. This didn’t qualify as a date anyway. It’s not like we’re going as a couple to Dairy Queen, the county fair, or a school dance, she had justified. They were just going to take a bike ride together.

After the bell rang ending class, she and Alex walked to the bike rack. Amy had thought about this moment all day—all week, really—and had a vision of him holding her hand or at least talking to me. Rather, Alex, a step ahead, went straight to his bike like he either had a fire to go to or maybe he was edgy. She understood the latter as nerves had taken her as well. She tried to keep them in check with a sweet smile she hoped appeared genuine. If he’d look at me anyway.

“Everything alright?” Amy asked when she caught up with him at the rack.

“Yeah,” he answered brusquely and then retrieved a key from his pocket. Once he unlocked the wheel, he grunted, “Follow me,” and tore out of the schoolyard.

Amy watched puzzled for a couple of seconds while she fumbled with her lock. When she got to the street, he was waiting, one foot on the pedal and the other on the pavement.

“Ready?” Alex asked. He gave her an odd grin she had never seen on his face before.

She ignored it and pulled the pins holding her hair in a tight roll. With a shake of her head and a shoulder shrug, she said, “Sure, let’s go.”

She sped off ahead of him down State Street, passed her church, Henry’s Hardware, and Two Brother’s Grocery. The wind tousled her shoulder-blade length blond hair as it flew behind her like golden angel wings. The afternoon’s dry heat blew across her freckled cheeks and chapped her lips. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

Once they reached the edge of town, Alex took the lead, and, for the next several miles they raced along country roads lined with cornfields. Ahead of Amy a couple of bike lengths, he made a sudden right turn she didn’t expect. She trusted him, so she kept in tight and followed him between two rows of young corn plants. She drew a breath of warm air expecting to smell the familiar fresh scent of the immature stalks but rather got a lung full of dust from the dirt kicked up by Alex’s bike-tires. She coughed and peddled faster, gaining on him.

They had ridden several hundred yards into the field and, about the time her front wheel came even with his back tire, Alex slammed on his brakes. His bike skidded broadside to a stop. She braked, too, and the dust following her billowed over them. When the air cleared, she could see they were in a small clearing in the midst of the corn. She glanced out over the top of the three-foot-high plants. The same soft breeze tossing her hair rolled the stalks like an endless sea of green waves.

He dropped his bicycle to the ground, caught her eye again with that peculiar smile, and said, “Well, here we are.”

Her dad was an Iowa corn farmer, so she grew up between the rows. This didn’t look like anything special, just a patch where the corn hadn’t sprouted. “Why here?”

He stepped toward her. “You know,” he said and twitched his eyebrows. His hands slipped over the chrome handlebars of her bike.

A tentacle of panic cinched her throat, but she checked the threatening tremor behind her voice and commanded, “Let go of my bike!”

With a sudden twist, he pushed her bicycle over throwing her to the ground. Her knee slammed first into the bike’s frame and then the dirt.

“Ow,” she yelped as she rolled from under it. She stopped on her back and grabbed her knee. “What’s the matter with you?”

Before she could sit up or roll away, he jumped, straddled her with his legs, and pinned her upper arms to the ground with his hands. She read the intentions in his face and the reason he chose this isolated spot came clear. A scream rose from the center of panic but out here her protests would be pointless. Not to give him the satisfaction, she choked the cry back. She squirmed but, since he outweighed her by at least twenty pounds and played varsity football, she couldn’t throw him off. She watched his eyes. They danced with anticipation.

He slid his hands across her forearms until he grasped hold of her hands and then brought them together over her head. She tried to resist but he was too strong. He ground them into the dirt and snatched both her wrists in his left hand. With his right, he released the snap on her blue jeans and lowered the zipper.

“I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me lately,” he said as he grabbed for the waistband of her jeans. “I know you want this as much as I do.”

“Did you have to attack me, Alex?” she asked and forced a demure smile. “It didn’t have to be like this. You could have asked.”

Alex's mouth dropped open and he cocked his head with a “you’re kidding me” expression slithering behind his eyes.

“You think I don’t want it?” Amy continued. “Don’t you think I’m curious?”

He rolled back onto his knees and slowly released her hands.

“You’ll need to take your pants off, don’t you think?” she asked and brought her hands to rest on his thighs.

Alex continued a wary glare but reached for his belt buckle.

“You can’t take them off if you’re on your knees.”

Alex stayed where he was, finished unbuckling the belt, and asked, “What about you? You need to take yours off, too.”

“You’re sitting on me, Alex.” She shook her head like “really.”

His eyes, she read, wavered between “I can’t believe my luck” and “If I move, she’ll run away.” When he rose to his feet, his hands hovered over her as if prepared to restrain her again. Amy stayed on the ground. Once he slipped off his shoes and jeans, dropping them to the dirt, she stood and took a step toward him.

“Can I help you with those?” she asked and reached for the waistband of his underwear.

He stood motionless and looked to his hips where she placed her hands. As she slipped her thumbs beneath the elastic band, he closed his eyes and rolled his head back.

With a swift jerk, she thrust the full force of her right knee into his groin.

“Ah,” he shrieked. As limp as boiled spaghetti, he doubled over and collapsed to his knees in the dirt. He moaned and rocked and massaged the pulsating agony. After a few seconds, he drew his eyes up to hers, his cheeks wet with tears, and fixed a desperate glare on her.

Amy scowled back. She thought Alex was her friend but now to see his true nature filled her with disillusionment. His morals weren’t a step above others as he pretended. He was just as exploitive as the other boys who had so recently begun to objectify her.

“I don’t believe this, Alex,” she said as she snapped and zipped her pants. “You! Of all people.”

Alex struggled to speak. “Don’t . . . tell . . . my dad . . . mother.”

She shook her head, grabbed his jeans, and righted her bicycle. When she pressed her foot hard on the pedal, the back wheel spun and threw dirt and pebbles into a rooster tail showering Alex.

“I won’t need to,” she shouted over her shoulder as she tore toward the street through the cornrow. “I think your dad will have lots of questions when he hears you’ve been riding around town in your underpants.” Through the dust she could see he probably didn’t hear—he still clutched his crotch, now rolling in the dirt—but it didn’t matter. She had made her point.

Twenty minutes later, as she passed through town on her way home, she stopped just long enough to toss his denim pants on the steps of State Street Church.

Four Years Later The nameless victim lay motionless. Blood had surged from the severed carotid artery and pooled on the linens. A thick moist scab formed dark red edges around the fatal laceration.

Detective Malcort stepped through the doorway where he had stopped and continued his scan of the modest hotel business suite. Investigators busied themselves snapping photographs, dusting for fingerprints, and searching for DNA donations. It appeared no one had yet disturbed the body. The white rope tying the hands to the headboard indicated the night may have started with a sex game. The whisper of terror still etched into the smoky eyes staring deep into eternity showed that this partner didn’t know the sport required human sacrifice. In contrast to the carnage of the scene, with an unspoiled white sheet draped over one leg of the otherwise nude body, it appeared she had slipped undisturbed into a peaceful slumber.

Detective Malcort sauntered across the room toward the remains as if strolling through the park on a fall day. He folded his arms across his chest and turned his attention to the woman who kneeled at the bedside examining one of several chest wounds.

“Poor thing, doesn’t look like she put up much of a struggle,” he said. “What can you tell me, Doc?”

*

Natalie Beaumont listened again to the dialog. She had it memorized. This was the fifth take this afternoon. Someone missed a mark, forgot a line or they just wanted another angle to show someone’s better side.

As she held her breath and continued a vacant stare into the hot lights a few feet away, a recurring question confronted her. Is the road to stardom really paved by girls playing dead?

Over the last few months, she had been stymied over her floundering career. She had newspaper clippings proving her talent and she was a young, vibrant eighteen-year-old—almost nineteen—but it frustrated her that while she still waited to be discovered, others showed up in town, appeared on the set, and became an overnight success.

Since she hated every minute of the social economics of high school and the strict rules at home, she had enrolled in extra classes at the community college and took summer school so she could graduate a year early. Between school, studies, and chores, to scrape enough money into savings for her emancipation, she took orders and bussed tables at McDonald's. When she boarded the westbound Greyhound, her mom, with the same condemning tone she always used, said, “You’re just a child.” Mom and Dad approved of very few of her decisions—but this is my life, she had thought. Her choices were hers and she knew just what she wanted.

“Cut!” shouted Salvador Sliman, the director. “Miss, don’t move, we need to reset the camera. It’ll only be a moment.” He turned toward a grip and yelled, “There’s a shadow over here. You, fix it!”

Natalie exhaled. At the edge of her vision, someone moved toward the lights. The squeak of rubber-soled shoes scuffed against the cement floor.

When her agent had called and she realized she had been hired to do a scene with Ansell Parker, the actor playing Detective Malcort, she hoped this might put her career on a more aspiring actress tack. One of the most influential actors in Hollywood, he had a reputation for discovering beautiful women and promoting their careers.

She caught Ancell’s back as he walked off the set. Her spirit waned disappointed he hadn’t spoken to her except in character. The day’s not over. Who knows, maybe his people will call my person. Amused at her silly joke, a smile dimpled her cheeks.

With the powerful lights in her eyes, she continued to watch the stage lamp as it seemed to move to the right position propelled only by a pair of dingy athletic shoes. Now, with the lighting set, the camera picked up a shiny spot on her forehead.

“Makeup,” Salvador shouted.

A young woman appeared out of the darkness from behind the bright lights with a brush and powder.

After she finished, Salvador said, “Places everyone.”

The actors moved back to the set and found their marks. Natalie took in a breath, held it, and fixed her dead stare on an object just at the edge of her view.

“Action!”

She had been anxious about this scene—just her, face to face with Ansell. Her pulse escalated as he stepped into her peripheral vision. He was too old for her, at least that’s what her mother would say—probably mid to late twenties. When he first hit the screen as a teenager, his squared jawbone and rugged smile set girl’s hearts pattering all over the globe. Natalie’s was no exception. The difference now was, while the other girls only saw him on the movie screen, Natalie lay a few feet away and he was live in vibrant color.

Ansell walked to where her head rested and knelt beside the bed.

“May I,” he said to the ME and looked toward the actress who now kneeled on the bed.

“You can have the body,” she said and slipped out of the camera shot.

Ansell turned his eyes to Natalie. She felt them run the full length of her exposed flesh and, without humiliation, submitted to their heat.

“It’s such a shame,” he said and brushed a lock of blond hair from her cheek. He took her face in his bare hand. “You’re such a beautiful girl, well, woman, obviously. Why’d you end up here? Who did this to you?”

With the warmth of his hand on her cheek, she fought to stop a shudder from skipping down her spine.

“Tell me who did this,” he said and looked into her eyes, “so he doesn’t have a chance to take someone else as lovely as you away from us.”

Natalie continued her blank stare, not blinking, not breathing. He tilted her head, leaned forward, and brought his face to hers. She sensed something not written in the script about to happen and then his soft lips pressed and lingered on her mouth. Every instinct Natalie possessed demanded she return the kiss but she held character and, with great effort, controlled every facial muscle.

“I promise you,” he said as he pulled back, “I’ll find your killer and bring him to justice.”

“Cut!” Salvador shouted.

Natalie’s eyes flicked in the direction of the voice as Salvador leaned forward and shot himself out of his chair on a collision course with Ansell. His arms waved in front of him like two frantic tentacles grasping for the next meal.

“What the hell was that?”

“Inspiration,” Ansell replied. “It’s such an intimate moment, the victim and her . . . vindicator.”

“Inspiration? A detective kisses a dead girl?”

Natalie’s head swirled. The tender kiss felt so personal, like the beginning of a long-desired, one-sided romance. His lips had remained on hers for several seconds. Even now, not only the pressure of his mouth lingered on her lips, but his scent and taste hung near. She longed for more and dared hope they’d need another take. She held her position.

“And why not, it’s a kiss of . . . promise.”

“Promise?” Salvador shouted and Natalie could see the veins in his neck begin to swell.

“Yes, promise,” Ansell continued in his familiar slow manner with a hint of Aussie slipping through. “I’m making a promise to her. I’ll find and punish the bastard who did this.”

Salvador’s glare had such intensity, had his eyes been able to fire targeted heat-seeking missiles, Ansell’s eye sockets would have been reduced to black smoldering craters. Rather, Ansell smiled while everyone on the crew, except Natalie, held their breath and waited for the tempest of Salvador’s rage to subside.

After a minute of graveyard silence, Salvador said with a deep acquiescent sigh, “Okay, it stays.” As the enraged purple on his face faded to its usual pallor, he continued with sarcasm biting each word, “A promise kiss, huh? Okay, print! That’s it for today.”

Like someone had fired a starting pistol, Natalie watched the set become a sudden flurry of activity. Voices shouted orders; hot stage lights went dark and were pulled away; cameras disappeared. The voice of a baseball announcer came over the soundstage speakers calling the second inning of the fourth game of the World Series. The Red Sox, Natalie remembered, were playing the St. Louis Cardinals, her dad’s favorite team, and the broadcaster said the Sox were ahead.

A man carrying an off-white robe appeared and untied her hands from the headboard. After he finished, she sat up on the bed and slipped the dressing gown over her shoulders.

“Nice work today, Natalie.” Ansell’s Australian accent came out clear.

Surprised, Natalie shot her face up and looked into his deep aqua eyes. He stood just a few feet away and passed her a smile with a wink.

“I’m sure these scenes are difficult for you but thanks for your patience.” He turned away.

“Th . . . thank you,” she said to his back. Ansell took a cell phone from his assistant and gave her an over-the-shoulder wave.

She stood and made her way to the makeup table. The same woman, Steph, who had created the magic of the macabre death mask for Natalie’s scene and who, a few minutes before, took care of the shiny spot on her forehead sat ready to remove the wounds from her body.

Natalie took a seat next to her in a canvas chair. As she watched the injuries disappear one-by-one in the lighted mirror, she wondered if she would make her unwelcomed appearance. The only refection, though, was her high cheekbones and natural twin dimples just above the few freckles sprinkled across her small celestial nose.

She turned her mind to Steph’s voice.

“I remember seeing you in a movie not long ago. You played a victim then, too.”

“Let’s see,” Natalie responded thick with derision, “was I’m jogging in the woods and before I have a chance to scream an attacker slashes my throat or where I’m thrown naked off the balcony of a high rise loft in the opening scene?”

“Neither.” Steph tipped her head and gave Natalie a sideways wink. “I’m remembering you in a shower surprised by a slasher.”

“Yeah, that one. Maybe dead is what I do best.”

As a girl, she thought her destiny lay in breaking into major film. She believed in her talent and had moved to LA because of it. In her sophomore year of high school, she had tried out for a minor role in “Annie Get Your Gun” and had been surprised when she landed the part of Annie Oakley. At first, intimidated by the responsibility the lead carried, she soon found she loved everything about it: memorizing and delivering lines, rehearsals, wardrobe, makeup, and, of course, curtain calls. Her drama teacher had told her she was a natural, so, over the next year, she continued to perform in school plays. In the summer after graduation, she won the lead role in an original play directed by the writer at a small Iowa City community theater. Not well written and directed even worse, it closed on opening night, but the local newspaper’s review gave her credit for salvaging the performance.

“Well, we’re done here,” Steph’s cheerful voice chirped back into Natalie’s ears. “Great shoot.”

Natalie looked into the mirror again and saw her gashes had healed without a scar. Why can’t my career be mended so easily?

“Thanks,” Natalie said. She stood and cinched the robe around her waist.

As she navigated toward a small corridor leading to the cramped changing area she had been assigned, she wove her way through the maze of lighting, speakers, booms, props, and myriad other film-making equipment she couldn’t name. She longed for the day when her dressing room was a trailer on the back lot or maybe on location at some exotic foreign setting.

With her eyes not yet adjusted from staring into the lighted mirror, she thought she saw movement in the shadows a few feet away. She turned back to the security of the set but found the place devoid of human activity. Even Steph had vanished along with the ballgame repartee. With the figure in the shadows—if someone had been there—and her only covering a thin bathrobe, she felt vulnerable and even more exposed than naked on the set.

Her heart clenched in her chest and, apprehensive, she spun back to face the darkness.

“Is someone there?” she asked. Her voice quavered like the squeal of a rat scurrying at an unexpected burst of light.

When no answer came and no further movement caught her eye, she took a deep breath, pulled the robe tight around her body with both hands, and entered the hallway. She set a brisk determined pace toward the room.

As she approached the door, a dim light overhead illuminated a plain silver handle. She reached for the knob. Out of the shadows, a man’s hand brushed over hers and took hold of it first. Her heart already about to burst on the brink of panic, she gasped, drew her hand away, and took a startled step backward.

As the door opened, the light poured out from the room inside and revealed the face of a teenage boy about her age. He wore his hair chopped at the neck and draped over his ears like the hobbit Frodo Baggins of the Lord of the Rings movie series. The light brown hair framed a face she recognized. Despite her inability to recall his name, the tension began to lift like sun-blanched fog.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, happy her voice had returned to normal. “Still working as a grip?”

“Yeah,” he said and passed her a timid smile, “I belong behind the camera.”

His eyes dropped toward the floor and, after a moment, he rolled them up again. She met them a second time. An expression scurried across his eyes and caught her by surprise, and then dissolved back into a shy smile. With it, the sudden twist like a battlefield tourniquet returned to her chest. She wanted to throw the door between them—now. Rather, she stepped through the opening and took the inside knob in her hand.

“Sorry if I frightened you. Great scene, by the way,” he said and turned to walk away.

“Thank you,” she called after him as he disappeared into the shadows.

When the sound of his athletic shoes shrieked against the concrete, confident he’d left, she shut the door and threw the lock. As she started toward the shower, the taut sensation in her chest relaxed. Even distracted by adjusting the water temperature and hanging her robe on a hook, though, she couldn’t quite shake the darkness emanating from the ephemeral look in the boy’s eyes when it transformed in that flash from disarming to deceiving.