THE THINLY DRESSED BONES, TUMBLED ON the floor, issued no cry of surprise, no groan1, no même.
To be sure that Brittina was dead, Corky wanted to shoot her once more, this time in the back of the head. Unfortunately, his pistol had begun to bark.
Even the highest quality sound suppressor deteriorates2 with use. Regardless of the material used as baffling in the barrel extension, it compacts a little with each shot, diminishing in function.
Furthermore, Corky didn’t possess a suppressor of the quality employed by agents of the CIA. You could not expect materials and craftsmanship3 equal to those of a major firearms manufacturer when you purchased a silencer from anti-veal activists4.
He had popped Hokenberry six times and Brittina twice. In just eight shots, the pistol had begun to find its voice again.
Perhaps the most recent round had not been audible outside the narrow house, but the next report would be louder. He was a man who took calculated risks, but this one didn’t add up.
In the trunk of his car, in the tool kit5, he kept a fresh sound suppressor, as well as a pair of night-vision goggles6 and a kit of hypodermic syringes with vials of sedatives7 and poisons. And two live hand grenades.
[395] As always, however, he had parked a few blocks from Brittina’s house, on a street different from hers. Because Corky was a tenured professor and she was a student, they had been assiduously discreet8 about their romantic relationship.
Going to and from the BMW to secure a replacement9 suppressor seemed like an unnecessary complication. Instead, he crouched10 beside his riddled11 lover and felt her throat, trying to detect a pulse in her carotid artery12.
She was as dead as disco.
In the bathroom, Corky washed his genitals, hands, and face. To be in love with chaos13, one did not have to be scornful of good personal hygiene14.
From the medicine cabinet, he withdrew a large bottle of Scope mouthwash. With Brittina dead and quite incapable15 of being offended, Corky took a swig directly from the container, and gargled.
Her kisses left him with a bad taste.
As a result of Brittina’s habit of fasting more than not, she had frequently been in a state of ketosis, during which her body was forced to burn what meager16 stores of fat it might have been jealously guarding. Among the symptoms of ketosis are nausea17 and vomiting18, but a more pleasant symptom is sweet, fruity-smelling breath.
Corky enjoyed the fragrance19 of her breath, but after swapping20 a lot of spit, tongue to tongue, he was sometimes left with a sour aftertaste. Like all things in an imperfect world, lovemaking always comes with a price.
In this case, of course, the price had been greater for Brittina than for him.
He dressed quickly. In his stocking feet, he descended21 the narrow stairs to the cramped22 kitchen at the back of the house.
His yellow slicker and rain hat hung on a wall peg23 in the small screened porch off the kitchen. His black boots stood to one side of the slicker.
Rain crashed in such heavy cascades24 upon the porch roof that it [396] sounded like a downpour in the jungled tropics. He half expected to see grinning crocodiles in the backyard and pythons slithering in the trees.
He slipped the pistol into one of the capacious pockets of the slicker. From another pocket he withdrew a length of flexible rubber tubing and an object that resembled a snack-size container of yogurt, though it was black with a red lid and featured no illustrations of luscious25 fruit.
With no reason remaining to be respectful of Brittina’s clean floors, he pulled on his boots and returned to the house. The deep wet tread of his rubber soles squeaked26 on the vinyl tile in the kitchen.
His work was not yet completed. He had left behind evidence that would convict him of murder. Semen, hair, fingerprints—all must be eliminated.
From the day that he’d begun visiting this pinched place, months previously28, he had gone without the latex gloves that he customarily wore at the scenes of capital crimes. Even though Brittina Dowd was nothing if not an eccentric, she would surely have grown suspicious of a lover who at all times wore surgical29 gloves.
Steeper and narrower stairs than any others in the house led down from the kitchen to a garage in which three of the four walls were underground. Gloom gathered here as luxuriously30 as ever it had coiled in any catacomb or dungeon31.
Corky could almost hear a multitude of spiders plucking their silken harp32 strings33.
Four small windows in the garage door would have admitted some sun on a classic California day. Now the gray storm gloom could not penetrate34 the dusty glass.
He switched on a bare bulb overhead, providing hardly enough light by which to drain the god of Zoroastrianisin.
The god of Zoroastrianism is Ahura Mazda. Brittina’s car was a Mazda, without the Ahura, but Corky enjoyed his little joke anyway.
From the trunk, he removed four hairspray-size aerosol35 cans with [397] any one of which a stranded36 motorist could inflate37 a flat tire and at the same time seal the puncture38 in it. He set these aside and then took from the trunk a pair of empty two-gallon gasoline cans.
He had purchased these items for Brittina, in addition to road flares39 and a yellow pennant40 emblazoned with EMERGENCY in bold black letters, and had insisted that she keep them in the trunk of her Zoroastrian god at all times.
She had been touched by his concern and had said that diamonds would not have proved his love as surely as did these humble41 gifts. They were, in fact, part of his preparations to dispose of her body when the day arrived to kill her.
Corky would never deny that he could be brilliantly romantic when required, but greater than his flair42 for romance was his talent for meticulous43 preparation. Whether he was roasting a Thanksgiving turkey or murdering an inconvenient44 lover, or scheming to kidnap the son of the biggest movie star in the world, he approached the task with considerable thought and patience, taking all the time necessary to develop a flawless strategy as well as tactics certain to ensure success.
She had never asked why two fuel cans, when one would have been all that she could easily carry. He had known that she would not ask or even wonder, for she had been a woman of images and mêmes and Utopian dreams, not one with an interest in math or logic46.
He set the empty two-gallon cans on the floor. He fed a shorter end of rubber tubing into the fuel port of the car. A suck on the longer end was required to prime the siphon.
Much practice at this sort of thing ensured that Corky drew as little fumes47 into his lungs as possible and that none of Shell Oil’s finest got in his mouth. The flow came quickly as he tucked the longer end into the first can.
When four gallons had been drawn48 and both cans filled, Corky carried the containers up to the ground floor. He left the trailing end of the siphon to spill a stream of gasoline on the garage floor.
[398] He returned for the four aerosol cans. In the kitchen, he placed two of these on the lowest rack of the bottom oven. He left the other two on the lowest rack of the top oven.
On his way upstairs with one of the two-gallon cans, he switched off the thermostat49 on the main floor, and then the thermostat on the upper floor. This would prevent the electric starter from striking a spark in the natural-gas furnace and possibly triggering an explosion of accumulated gasoline fumes before Corky had left the house.
Leaving the cap on the can, pouring from the spout50, he liberally splashed the pale naked body of Brittina Dowd. Her long hair offered tinder, but she didn’t have much fat to feed the fire.
After pouring no more than a quart of fuel in the bathroom, he distributed perhaps half a gallon over the rumpled51 bedclothes. He didn’t prime the two other small upstairs rooms because he’d never been in them and because he didn’t need to saturate52 every corner to achieve the effect he wanted.
From the bedroom he drizzled53 an uninterrupted gasoline trail into the narrow upstairs hallway and down the stairs to the ground floor. At the bottom of the steps, he cast aside the empty can and picked up the full one.
He continued in a looping fashion through the living room and the dining room, to the kitchen doorway54. There he set the can on the threshold. He unscrewed the cap and tossed it aside.
From a jacket pocket, he retrieved55 the black-and-red object that was about the size of a single-serving yogurt container: a chemical-action detonator.
The casing of the detonator was somewhat pliable56. He shaped it into the hole that had been covered by the screw-on cap, plugging the two-gallon can in which approximately half a gallon of gasoline remained.
He popped a ring tab off the red cap. This initiated57 a chemical process that would rapidly generate heat and, in four minutes, an [399] explosion fiery59 enough to ignite the remaining contents of the two-gallon can and the trail of fuel leading away from it to the bedroom on the second floor, to the corpse60.
This would be a bad time for the doorbell to ring.
No chimes sounded, of course, because in addition to his fine strategy, solid tactics, and meticulous preparation, he could count on Laputa luck. His guardian61 angel was chaos, and he was always at the safe calm eye of its world-destroying force.
He returned to the ovens and latched62 both doors as required to initiate58 the self-cleaning cycle. On each he pressed a button marked CLEAN.
Heat would rapidly expand the pressurized contents of the cans, which would explode. Because the doors were latched, the power of the explosions couldn’t easily be vented63. The resultant damage to the ovens might be severe enough to cause a natural-gas leak and a larger blast.
The utter destruction of the house didn’t require the oven trick to work. The four gallons of high-grade accelerant that he had poured throughout the small structure and the additional gallons pooling on the garage floor would feed the flames and obliterate64 every source of his DNA45, from semen to hairs, and every fingerprint27 that he’d left behind. Nonetheless, he believed in redundancy whenever possible.
On the back porch, Corky shrugged65 into his voluminous yellow slicker. He jammed the droopy rain hat on his head.
He pushed through the screen door and went down the steps. At the end of the backyard, he passed through a gate into an alleyway and never glanced again at the narrow house.
He thrived in the rain.
Cataracts66 gushed67 from the sky. The racing68 torrents69 in the gutters70 overflowed72 the curbs73.
This downpour would not quench74 the fire that he had engineered. The gasoline-fed flames would thoroughly75 gut71 the wooden structure before the walls collapsed76 and offered admission to the rain.
[400] Indeed, the storm was his ally. Badly flooded intersections77 and snarled78 traffic would delay the fire engines.
He had just turned a corner and come within sight of his BMW when he heard the first explosion in the distance. The sound was low, flat, muffled79, but ugly.
Soon he would have erased80 everyone and every clue that might have led the police to him after the assault on Palazzo Rospo.
收听单词发音 |
1
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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deteriorates
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| 恶化，变坏( deteriorate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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craftsmanship
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| n.手艺 | |
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activists
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| n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 ) | |
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kit
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| n.用具包，成套工具；随身携带物 | |
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goggles
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| n.护目镜 | |
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sedatives
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| n.镇静药，镇静剂( sedative的名词复数 ) | |
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discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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hygiene
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| n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic） | |
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15
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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meager
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| adj.缺乏的，不足的，瘦的 | |
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nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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swapping
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| 交换，交换技术 | |
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21
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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23
peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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cascades
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| 倾泻( cascade的名词复数 )； 小瀑布（尤指一连串瀑布中的一支）； 瀑布状物； 倾泻（或涌出）的东西 | |
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25
luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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26
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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27
fingerprint
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| n.指纹；vt.取...的指纹 | |
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28
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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luxuriously
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| adv.奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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dungeon
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| n.地牢，土牢 | |
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harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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35
aerosol
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| n.悬浮尘粒，气溶胶，烟雾剂，喷雾器 | |
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stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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37
inflate
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| vt.使膨胀，使骄傲，抬高（物价） | |
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38
puncture
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| n.刺孔，穿孔；v.刺穿，刺破 | |
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39
flares
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| n.喇叭裤v.（使）闪耀( flare的第三人称单数 )；（使）（船舷）外倾；（使）鼻孔张大；（使）（衣裙、酒杯等）呈喇叭形展开 | |
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40
pennant
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| n.三角旗；锦标旗 | |
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41
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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42
flair
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| n.天赋，本领，才华；洞察力 | |
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43
meticulous
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| adj.极其仔细的，一丝不苟的 | |
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44
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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45
DNA
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| (缩)deoxyribonucleic acid 脱氧核糖核酸 | |
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46
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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47
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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48
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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49
thermostat
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| n.恒温器 | |
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50
spout
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| v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱 | |
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51
rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
saturate
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| vt.使湿透，浸透；使充满，使饱和 | |
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53
drizzled
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| 下蒙蒙细雨，下毛毛雨( drizzle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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55
retrieved
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| v.取回( retrieve的过去式和过去分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息） | |
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56
pliable
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| adj.易受影响的；易弯的；柔顺的，易驾驭的 | |
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57
initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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58
initiate
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| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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59
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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60
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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61
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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62
latched
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| v.理解( latch的过去式和过去分词 )；纠缠；用碰锁锁上（门等）；附着（在某物上） | |
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63
vented
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| 表达，发泄（感情，尤指愤怒）( vent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
obliterate
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| v.擦去，涂抹，去掉...痕迹，消失，除去 | |
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65
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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66
cataracts
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| n.大瀑布( cataract的名词复数 )；白内障 | |
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67
gushed
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| v.喷，涌( gush的过去式和过去分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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68
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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69
torrents
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| n.倾注；奔流( torrent的名词复数 )；急流；爆发；连续不断 | |
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70
gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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71
gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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72
overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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73
curbs
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| v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的第三人称单数 ) | |
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74
quench
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| vt.熄灭，扑灭；压制 | |
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75
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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76
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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77
intersections
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| n.横断( intersection的名词复数 )；交叉；交叉点；交集 | |
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78
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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79
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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80
erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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