Tales of the City

'You want to hear the scariest story I know?' 'Sure.' 'Is it scarier than the last two? If it is then I don't want to hear it. In fact, I think I'll head home. I'm sure I've had enough to drink already.' 'Don't mind him. The rest of want to hear.' 'Wait, is this going to be about more ghosts or vampires or whatever? Because I'm not buying into all this.' 'It's not like those other stories. I don't believe in all of that bullshit. But there was something about it that reminds me of those ones...well, just let me tell you how it happened. This all went down only a few blocks from here, actually...' *** She was a cutter. She was the only surgeon in the city who didn't have to worry about keeping her patients alive. By the time they came to her, they were already dead. Her job was just to find out why. She was good at it. Every fresh cadaver had secrets; by cutting, she discovered them. And she knew as much about the human body as any other doctor. She knew hearts, for example; how they fit together, how they worked, and most importantly, how they could be hurt. The cutter would say that she understood the heart. In a certain sense, she was right. She knew about brains too, and about circulation, and the metabolism. She knew enough to be sure that the man tied up on the motel room bed had not had enough flunitrazepam to kill him, and that if she waited for long enough he would wake up, though he'd probably feel fatigued, have a headache, and suffer some short-term memory loss. Flunitrazepam, also known as Narcozep, Rohypnol, and Primum, was illegal in the United States, a class of psychoactive drugs commonly referred to as 'roofies,' or simply 'the date rape drug,' and she had employed it in the most common way, by slipping it into the man's drink at a bar. She disliked the association with sexual assault, but it was simply the quickest and most convenient way to render a person unconscious. The man on the bed was also a doctor, a psychiatrist. His name was Walter Graham. He was fifty three, twice divorced, and had no children on account of a vasectomy his first wife encouraged him to get. He was very respected in his field, widely referenced in medical journals for one remarkable case he'd treated. He lived in a condo on Vallejo Street with a beautiful view. He abused prescription painkillers, watched rugby on the weekends, and liked cats. These were the things the cutter knew about him. In a way, they were alone together. Anyone else who walked in would see only two people in the room. But the cutter saw a third, another woman, a woman who stood in the corner and watched. This other woman (who was not, the cutter knew, really there in any tangible sense but who seemed no less real despite that certainty) would sometimes respond to the cutter's questions by nodding or shaking her head. Other than that, she did not do much besides watch. The motel room, which the cutter had paid for in cash four hours earlier, was on the third floor of a dangerous-looking rattrap squeezed alongside nicer buildings between Mission and Valencia Streets. The carpets were filthy, the walls dotted with graffiti, and the rooms had no windows. The black and white television in each room played only two local affiliates, pornographic films, and static. It was a good place to stay if you liked the idea of being murdered without anyone noticing. She'd picked it because it was the kind of place where no one asked questions, even if you came in out of a cab with an unconscious middle-aged man slung over your shoulders in the middle of the night. All they cared about here was taking the money and minding their own business. Dr. Graham was secured to the bed frame by four pairs of novelty handcuffs that she'd bought in a sex shop on Folsom Street, where she went so that she'd run the lowest odds of running into anyone she knew. She waited for him to wake up. It took a long time. Flunitrazepam, she knew, could last up to twelve hours, but she was the patient type. Patience was a good quality in a cutter. When Graham took the first unsteady steps back into