Victor closed the box, turned off the light, and lay down in the dark.
Victor was their reckoning.
The silk cord was the color of dried rust. Victor Han loved that about it. Not the garish red of fresh blood, but the deep, arterial brown-red of a thing that had lived, pulsed, and been silenced. He called it his “little necktie,” and he kept it coiled in a velvet-lined box beside his bed, next to a photograph of his mother. Red Garrote Strangler
At two minutes and eleven seconds, Leonard Croft stopped moving. Victor held for another thirty seconds, just to be sure. Then he released the cord, coiled it carefully, and tucked it into his pocket. Victor closed the box, turned off the light,