Death by Chocolate

Gary Hansen didn’t think of himself as a serial killer, but he was one.

He was also independently wealthy, as his parents had left him a fortune when they’d died in a car accident when he was twenty. He’d been working on their car earlier that same day, but the police never found that out.

So for as long as he could remember he hadn’t had to work, or to worry about money. He had more than enough of it for all of his hobbies, so he indulged them freely. Tennis, squash, opera, expensive whisky – and, of course, serial killing.

And he was a very patient man, a man who could wait for the right woman. And that woman was young, pretty, small enough to fit into a suitcase, and owned a dog.

Why the dog? Well, it was easy to meet a woman who was walking a dog. Dogs always liked him, so he cuddled them when they came near him, and this invariably led to a conversation with their female owner. Dog-owning women liked men who liked dogs. It was a fact of life.

On this particular day Gary was standing at the top of a ladder, painting the upper floor window frames at the front of his house. He turned and looked down when he heard a familiar “WOOF!” and saw a huge brown dog running towards him.

People often said that dog-owners resembled their dogs, but this was an exception. Laura Winton was as small and cute as her dog was big and ugly. It must have weighed at least two hundred pounds, and looked like a cross between a German Shepherd and a Great Dane.

Luckily for Gary, it was very affectionate, and seemed to really like him. As soon as it had seen him at the top of the ladder it had broken into a trot. Gary quickly climbed down. The last thing he wanted was to have that two hundred pound pooch rocking his ladder while he was on it!

He arrived at the bottom of the ladder just as the huge creature got there too, and it jumped up, planting its front paws on his shoulders and licking his face. Its tail was whipping from side to side so fiercely that it probably could have cut down a large tree!

“Help, Laura!” called out Gary. “Save me from being licked to death!”

Laura came running round the corner, and burst out laughing when she saw what was happening. “You see what it is to be loved, Gary?” she managed to splutter out between laughs.

“If this is love, then it’s too wet for me!” The great tongue wiped backwards and forwards across his face, and saliva was dripping down onto his shirt.

“Well, you won’t need to wash for at least a week now!” laughed Laura, grabbing hold of the huge dog’s collar and dragging it away from Gary with some difficulty. “Get down, baby dog!” she insisted, “leave him alone!”

“Phew,” said Gary, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “He’s affectionate!”

“Only to those people he likes,” said Laura, giving him a wink. “I think he has good taste!”

“Me too!” Gary replied. They both laughed. “Are you still coming round to my house for a piece of cake?” he asked, hopefully.

“Yes, of course,” she replied with a big grin across her face. “You’ve told me so much about your chocolate cake that I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

“It’s my mother’s recipe. She made the best cake ever, and taught me how to do the same before she…passed over.”

“I’m sorry,” said Laura, putting her hand on his arm. “You must miss her.”

“I do,” said Gary, pretending to be upset. “But I’ve got good friends now instead.”

Laura let go of his arm. “You certainly do,” she said. “Now let me take this baby dog for his walk, and when I’ve taken him home I’ll come round to your house for that cake.”

“Why don’t you call him by his name, whatever it is?” Gary asked her.

“Because I only use it when he’s in trouble. So if he hears it he thinks I’m cross with him, and he gets sad. So I call him baby dog most of the time instead.” Laura smiled and set off walking towards the woods. A brisk whistle brought the dog to its senses, and it gave Gary a huge playful bump with its head before running off after Laura.

Gary wiped his face again and went inside the house. The ladder could wait. He’d finish the painting later. He had a murder to prepare.

He calmly walked into the kitchen and took the chocolate cake out of the fridge. He’d made it himself, but it wasn’t his mother’s recipe. He’d got it out of a magazine. The women always fell for “his mother’s recipe.” It made them feel motherly themselves.

He slowly and carefully cut one piece and placed it on a small plate. He wasn’t going to cut another piece for himself, not yet. He couldn’t risk getting the two pieces mixed up. He placed the plate on the kitchen table, and then he carefully closed the window and locked the front door. No-one could see what came next.

In the bottom of one of the kitchen cupboards was a small safe, screwed to the wall. Gary punched a combination into the keypad, and opened the door. Inside were some vials of a clear liquid, some needles and some syringes. He took out three vials, one syringe and one needle, and took them over to the single piece of cake on the table. There he assembled the needle and syringe, cracked open a vial, and immersed the needle in the liquid inside. He drew up the whole volume, and immediately began to inject it into the cake. He pushed the needle in just a bit, pulled it out, inserted it elsewhere, and repeated the operation. He carried on until the vial was empty, and then did the same with the other two vials. Over the years he had learned that women ate cake selectively. Some would eat a whole piece, while others would only take one bite. However much they ate, the result needed to be the same – unconsciousness. He needed the piece of cake to be so saturated with poison that even one mouthful would put them to sleep. It wouldn’t kill them, but he could take care of that himself when they woke up.

He put the injected piece of cake on the table in the living room, with the rest of the uncut cake beside it. He would cut himself a piece after Laura had begun to eat hers.

He looked at his watch. She should be back from her walk in about fifteen minutes, so he wanted to finish checking his preparations. He switched on the coffee percolator and went upstairs to the bedroom at the back of the house. He’d soundproofed this room himself, so that no-one could hear the screams. It was a large room, big enough for a double bed and a drum kit. If the police ever came to investigate he would tell them that this was his guest bedroom, and that it was soundproofed so that he wouldn’t disturb the neighbours when he practiced his drums. It had worked perfectly well in previous towns.

The only other item in the room was the suitcase. It was empty but for a few bricks inside which were intended to weigh it down, and he was sure that Laura was small enough to fit into it. She was smaller than some of his previous victims, and he always bought the same size of suitcase.

Once he’d finished with her, he’d take her keys, go round to her house and poison the dog. It wouldn’t do to have something that big making a fuss because she hadn’t come home.

He ran down the stairs and out into the back garden. He always bought a house with a garden that backed onto a river, and regularly went out fishing at night in his rowing boat. Then the neighbours wouldn’t think anything of it when he rowed out one dark night and, unknown to them, gently lowered a suitcase into the deepest part of the river.

Yes, the boat was there, with the oars, tethered to the bank at the back of the garden.

Gary allowed himself a moment to stand still and reflect on his preparations. Everything was ready. He went back out to the front of the house so as to greet Laura when she went past. He picked up the paint pot and brush and climbed up the ladder. The window frame was finished, but he wanted to look busy when she returned so it didn’t look as though he’d been waiting for her.

He’d just reached the top of the ladder when he heard the first unmistakeable “WOOF!”

“Hello, pooch,” he called and looked down from the top of the ladder. The huge dog was at the bottom of it, its big brown eyes looking up at Gary in adoration, its tail wagging and its tongue hanging out.

“Come on, baby dog! Leave Gary alone. He has to work.” It was Laura, catching up with her dog and overtaking him. “See you soon, Gary,” she called. “I’ll put the hound dog to bed, and be back before you know it. Come on, pooch.”

“Sure, Laura,” Gary replied, running the paint brush around the window frame. “The cake will be waiting!”

Laura disappeared around the corner, and before Gary could start to descend it the ladder it began to shake.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on?” he cried, and looked down once more to see what was happening. And there he saw the huge brown dog attempting to climb the ladder! Or, at least, it was putting its front paws on the middle rungs, just as if it was putting them on Gary’s shoulders. “WOOF!” it called up the ladder, which continued to shake.

“Laura!” Gary called out, but she was too far away. “Laura! Come and collect your dog! He’s being silly!”

“WOOF!” called out the huge creature once more, and this time it really did try to climb the ladder. Pulling itself upwards with its front paws, it put one of its rear paws on the third rung, and this, combined with its huge weight, de-stabilised the ladder so that it began to slide sideways along the wall of the house. Gary dropped the paint pot and brush, making a colourful splash on the pavement, and he tried to grab hold of the window frame. The fresh paint was still wet so there was nothing to grip onto, and the slow sideways slide accelerated.

“WOOF!” barked the dog, who now jumped off the ladder, but it was too late. Gary’s own weight provided the force needed to continue the downward slide, which went faster and faster. He saw the concrete slabs of the pavement rushing up at him with a frightening speed, and as his feet were entangled with the ladder all he could do to protect himself was put his hands in front of his face.

It made no difference. He hit the pavement with enough force to fracture his skull in several places. He didn’t live long enough to feel the pain, or to hear the name of the dog which was responsible for his death.

“Baby dog, where are you?” called Laura, as she came back round the corner. There she saw Gary lying on the pavement, covered in blood and with the ladder on top of him. Her dog was licking the back of his head. “Oh no, you naughty, naughty creature,” she cried. “What have you done now, Chocolate?”