He expected to be recognized and questioned. He spent the days after the tragic death, as the news was calling it, thinking that every phonecall was going to be the police. Every knock at the door was nearly enough to give him a heart attack.
But nothing happened. He watched the news, read the website and heard about it on Twitter and Facebook, but none of it involved him. There was some talk of the mystery man that was with her right before she died, but the pictures people at the club had taken were vague at best. Johnny’s generically handsome looks were enough to keep him safe.
After a couple of weeks, this worked on his nerves. He didn’t think that there was any chance of him being arrested for it. There was nobody up there except them, no cameras, no witnesses, and it really had been an accident. But nobody knew but him, and that started to work on him.
Part of it was the constant attention on the girl. She had died a terrible stupid death, which was appropriate for a terrible, stupid girl, but from the media coverage of the “tragedy” you would have thought it was the second death of Mother Theresa. There were wall to wall interview with friends and castmates and in death, she was more popular and famous than she had been in life. Probably by a factor of magnitude. Whereas Johnny, who’d been the one who actually killed her was still no one.
Which was why he decided to do it again. He wasn’t sure, exactly, when he decided. There was no sudden moment of malevolent inspiration, no devil on his shoulder. He was simply watching the news, months after the first killing, where they were covering the last fuck up by a starlet who was more famous for her drug use and her constant trips in and out of jail than she was for any of the movies she’d done.
If anything, she actually pissed Johnny off more than the reality television show star. The starlet actually had talent, and she’d probably should and could be famous for something other than being a mess. She’d had every opportunity in the world and she pissed them all down the drain.
Actually, as Johnny thought about it, it was worse than that. She had just squandered her talent. That would probably be bad enough. But this one, she’d had chance after chance to get her shit together. She was still out hitting the clubs, driving around in cars that would cost more than Johnny would make in five years doing shit work. Instead, she got more and more famous for things that would leave most people in the gutters. Every time Johnny thought about it, he got angrier and angrier.
So, clearly, she had to die.
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