Vintage Fringe: Killing McGinty Safely
The television screen had gone blue. The final shades and echoes of Opus 59 had receded into silence. Downstairs he heard the freezer motor whirr to life. McGinty went to the library every Friday and came home alone around ten, so that would be the time to pay his call. If he himself walked into the neighborhood and arrived at the house about ten-thirty all would be well. He would wear his old dark-frame glasses and the parka with the hood just in case he passed anyone in the street. But no one would be out at that hour. When he got to the door, before McGinty opened it, he would take off the glasses and push the hood back so he would look normal. When the door opened, as soon as McGinty saw him, if he knew, he would know what the call was about. If he knew. Even then, he would hardly know what was coming. He could just say he needed to say something to him, a private word, anything to gain time and get inside. And there you were.
The video had finished rewinding. The blue LED light on the amp came on. He didn’t move. He’d be sorry to lose the tapes. Ah, the sweets of youth! Could anyone really know what it was who hadn’t tasted them? No. He knew there were others who had, many others, probably, who had tasted them. And no one could know who they were, obviously. Which made the idea even sweeter. It was such a private privilege, so much his own bliss. And surely the others, whoever they were, besides McGinty, felt exactly the same way.
The screen on his computer lit up. He had company. He felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. Not to forget the real purpose of the mission. McGinty’s computer. He would trash the files and hard drive. That would corroborate the homosexual killer angle. The killer trashes the computer because it has his address on it. Because it has the site where they had met, where he had first been picked up. Because his temporary internet folder was a virtual brokerage house of child pick-ups, pornography and pedophiles that had links to him as a trader. It was just plain bad luck that McGinty had stumbled on it. Poor man. It was quite possible, of course, that he still didn’t know that he knew. But if he didn’t, he would know soon enough wouldn’t he? It was only, as they said, a matter of time. He ambled over to the computer, good English teacher that he was, relishing his pronouns and tenses.
