KATHERINE WOKE UP AND WHEN SHE OPENED HER EYES THAT MORNING THEY WERE ILLER THAN THE OTHER TIMES. She could not see Tommy's sleepy face lying in front of her, relieving the backlight coming from the window, as it was every day.
He wasn't there...
She thought it was strange, she always got up before him to go to work. A heavy sleeper, he rarely woke up to the noises she made while getting ready. He rarely saw her leave, because he rarely woke up early. Every morning he would find the coffee table, lovingly set by her, before he left, which had become a common joke between them. Whenever she saw him get up, the few times that this happened, she would complain, although with a smile on her face: the only thing capable of waking you up is the smell of breakfast... Not even your wife, all hot and smelling good, lying next to you can do that!
Tommy knew it was his wife's provocation, but he replied:
— Oh! Stop being so dramatic! I spend the whole night by your side, and you still come to complain to me?
He wasn't there that morning. Katherine got up, went to the hallway and looked in the bathroom, then went to the kitchen and there was no sign of her husband. As she approached the living room, a noise started, very soft, it was the television. When she arrived, she saw him lying on the sofa with his feet up, watching the TV without paying much attention, not watching anything.
She noticed the gloomy expression in his eyes and asked:
— What's wrong, dear?
Leone just looked at her.
— You're not well. What happened yesterday? — she insisted. — I never see you wake up like that...
Leo showed no desire to answer her anything, he didn't want to talk, he didn't want her to say anything to him. He forced himself to give an evasive answer out of politeness:
— I'm just sleepy.
Katherine frowned, she didn't like receiving lame answers, even though she always used them in her moments of anger. She went back, silent, to the bedroom and got ready.
She also made coffee, with the traditional eggs and bacon, leaving them ready for him to eat.
She went back to the living room and said:
— I made it the way you like it, eat it, before it gets cold...
Since he didn't answer, she insisted:
— You're not fooling me, Leo! That way I'll be worried about you. Come on, tell me...
— Go to work — she answered dryly.
The way the answer came surprised Katherine. He never answered her harshly or as dryly as he was now. There was something very wrong going on.
All because of that damned job! If only she could get his doubts out of him...
Since she was already dressed and made up, she finished tying her hair, grabbed her purse and keys from the table with a certain stiffness and left, without saying goodbye, very upset. He just stood there, with a vacant look and a worried expression.
LEO HAD SPENT THE REST OF THE NIGHT awake. Although the adrenaline of what he had experienced at that moment was a strong impediment to sleep, the cause of his nocturnal awakening was moral. The image of old Smithson on the chair, open-mouthed, with a wide, enraged look that gave him a simian expression, given his thick eyebrows furrowed under his furrowed forehead, wet with sweat, kept repeating itself in his mind. He kept thinking about the blood that was running through the holes in his clothes and telling himself that it had been done by him.
Even though he had countless rational reasons up his sleeve to justify himself, he felt no peace at all for having been his executioner. He had become a murderer...
He was not like those evil psychopaths who look for victims in the city, he thought to himself, he had killed a criminal, but deep down, psychopaths and he could now be contained in the same word:
Murderer...