# Chapter 48

I connected with Bella through her machine. She hadn’t returned any of the messages I’d left since she took 28 FPS away from me, but I recorded a few lines about wanting to discuss something Ryan had told me the last time I saw him alive and she was on the line before midday.

We sat in her video suite, the obvious place. Bella had her hair tied back and was wearing a robe with nothing on underneath. As she shifted position in her chair the silky material slipped open to show her cunt. She didn’t bother to cover herself and I caught the scent of fish.

I played my cassette and explained how there should have been stitches on Karen’s belly. Bella spent more time watching me than the screen and the satisfied look on her face gave me a bad feeling that things weren’t going to go quite as well as I’d hoped. For an absurd moment the whole purpose of the meeting seemed to have been reversed; that rather than accusing her of murder, I was there to admit my guilt at being in possession of something dangerous to her. I did my best to fight it down, but I knew my voice sounded weak.

“Ryan had it figured the night you killed him, it took me a little longer. What did you think, we weren’t going to see it?”

“Oh, I thought you’d see it all right. But I was quite sure you’d be reluctant to recognize it.”

“Because of your money?”

“You and Ryan were very similar. You see money as life’s ultimate validation. It makes you easy to predict.”

“Powell didn’t kill Karen.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“You made this tape. You knew he’d take a copy and that sooner or later we’d find it. And you knew how we’d read it.”

“I knew how you’d want to read it.”

“How long had you been planning it?”

“Killing Karen? I didn’t really plan it at all.”

“But the tape was made before you took her kidney out.”

“The tape was just one I had, it wasn’t part of any plan, at least not until later. I shot it in Powell’s apartment to hurt him, to rub salt in the wound, so to speak. That’s all. The planning only came after I realized what it could be used for. Erase my copy, make up a story about the bracelet.... Almost too easy.”

“Why did you kill her?”

“Do you care?”

I didn’t say anything. Bella shrugged, rewound the tape and started it playing again, this time in slow motion. She watched it as she spoke.

“Karen came back much sooner than I’d expected. We hadn’t planned to meet again until a couple of weeks after she’d recovered from her operation, but she had some trouble at home. The man she was living with threw her out and she had nowhere to go. I let her stay, of course. But knowing she was accessible, that she was a woman who had no real prohibitions against selling parts of herself, was a constant temptation. The door had already been opened, you see, and I wanted to go back. After a week I offered to buy her appendix and she agreed.”

“Only you didn’t stop with her appendix.”

“No. It’s a much simpler operation to perform, so I was working without Powell. I hadn’t planned to do anything other than what I’d paid for. But being there alone, with her laid out on the table so...available, it seemed cowardly to limit myself once I’d started. I took out almost everything she had.”

“But why?”

“I’ve told you before the operations are a test, even with outcasts they require an effort of will. With Karen, when I took her kidney, I moved to another level. She wasn’t anonymous. She was