Prodigal Son

CHAPTER 54

Roy Pribeaux had guns.

He retrieved them from the closet where they were stored in custom cases. He examined them lovingly, one by one, cleaned and lubricated them as necessary, preparing them for use.

Throughout his adolescence and twenties, he had adored guns. Revolvers, pistols, shotguns, rifles-he had a core collection of each type of weapon.

Shortly after his twentieth birthday, when he had come into his inheritance, he bought a Ford Explorer, loaded it with his favorite firearms, and toured the South and Southwest.

Until that time, he had only killed animals.

He hadn't been a hunter. He'd never acquired a hunting license. Tramping around in the woods and fields didn't appeal to him. His prey were domestic and farm animals.

On the road at twenty, he targeted people for the first time. For several years he was carefree and happy.

As are many people in their twenties, Roy had been idealistic. He believed that he could make this a better society, a better world.

Even then, he'd realized that life was made tolerable only by the existence of beauty. Beauty in nature. Beauty in architecture and art and in objects of human manufacture. Beauty among human beings.

From childhood, he himself had been strikingly attractive, and he had been aware how the sight of him lifted people's spirits and how his company improved their moods.

He intended to make the world a happier place by eliminating ugly people wherever he found them. And he found them everywhere.

In eighteen states as far east as Alabama, as far north as Colorado, as far west as Arizona, and as far south as Texas, Roy traveled to kill. He destroyed ugly humanity where circumstances assured that he could strike without risk of apprehension.

He employed such a variety of fine weapons over such an enormous geographical area that his many scores were never linked as the work of one perpetrator. He killed at a distance with rifles, at forty yards or less with 12-gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot, and close-up with revolvers or pistols as the mood took him.

Generally he preferred the intimacy of handguns. They virtually always allowed him to get close enough to explain that he held no personal animosity toward the target.

"It's an aesthetic issue," he might say Or "I'm sure you'll agree, dead is better than ugly" Or "I'm just doing Darwin's work to advance the beauty of the species."

Shotguns were thrilling when he had the leisure to reload and to use with increasing proximity a total of four or six Federal three-inch, 000 shells, which had tremendous penetration. He could not only remove the ugly person from the gene pool but also, with the Federal rounds, obliterate their ugliness and leave a corpse so ravaged that there would have to be a closed-casket funeral.

During those years of travel and accomplishment, Roy had known the satisfaction of noble purpose and worthwhile labor. He assumed that this would be his life's work, with no need ever to learn new job skills or to retire.

Over time, however, he reluctantly came to the conclusion that so many ugly people inhabited the world that his efforts alone could not ensure prettier future generations. In fact, the more people he killed, the uglier the world seemed to become.

Ugliness has the momentum of a tsunami. It is the handmaiden to entropy. One man's resistance, while admirable, cannot turn back the most titanic forces of nature.

Eventually he returned to New Orleans, to rest and to reconsider his mission. He purchased this building and rebuilt the loft into an apartment.

He began to suspect that he had too long associated with too many ugly people. Although he had killed them all, sparing humanity the further sight of them, perhaps their ugliness had somehow tainted Roy himself.

For the first time, his reflection in a mirror disquieted him. Being brutally honest, he had to admit that he was still beautiful, certainly in the top one tenth of one percent of the most beautiful people in the world, but perhaps not as beautiful as he had been before he had set out in his Explorer to save humanity from ugliness.

Being a forward-looking and determined person, he had not fallen into despair. He developed a program of diet, exercise, nutritional supplementation, and meditation to regain fully his former splendor. As any mirror now revealed, he succeeded. He was breathtaking.

Nevertheless, he often thought of those years of rehabilitation as the Wasted Years, because while he restored himself, he had no time to kill anyone. And no reason to kill them.

Roy was a goal-driven person with a deep desire to contribute to society He didn't kill just to kill. He needed a purpose.

When he had struck upon the idea of harvesting and preserving the ideal parts of a perfect woman, he rejoiced that his life had meaning once more.

Eventually he might anonymously donate the collection to a great museum. The academics and critics who championed modern art would at once recognize the value and brilliance of his assembled woman.

First he must find that elusive living female who was perfect in every detail and who was destined to be his mate. Until then he would need the collection in order to lay it out and, item by item, compare his beloved to all those pieces of perfection, to be certain that in every way she measured up to his highest standard.

No doubt his longed-for Venus would soon cross his path-another reason why he couldn't tolerate the intrusion of the copycat killer into his life. That poor fool's use of tacky, low-quality Tupperware imitations provided proof enough that his appreciation for beauty in all things was so inadequate that no friendship could ever flower between him and Roy.

Now, in preparation for the copycat's next visit, Roy loaded various pistols and revolvers. He secreted a weapon in each area of his expansive apartment.

In the bathroom, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm in the drawer where he kept his colognes.

Under a pillow on his bed, a Smith & Wesson Chief's Special, one of the best small-frame.38 Special revolvers ever made.

Under a living-room sofa cushion, a Glock Model 23 loaded with.40 Smith & Wesson ammo. Concealed at two points among the array of exercise machines were a pair of SIG P245s.

In the kitchen, Roy placed a Springfield Trophy Match 1911-A1 in the bread box, next to a loaf of low-fat seven-grain with raisins.

When Roy closed the drop door on the bread box and turned, a sizable stranger stood in the kitchen with him, a red-faced, boiled-looking guy with mean blue eyes.

How the intruder had gotten in and moved so quietly, Roy didn't know, but this must be the copycat. The guy wasn't aggressively ugly, but he wasn't half pretty, either, just homely, so there could be no chance whatsoever of a friendship between him and Roy.

The fierce expression on the copycat's face suggested he had no interest in friendship, either. Maybe Roy had been mistaken to assume the copycat had come here, in the first place, out of admiration.

He noticed the intruder wore latex surgical gloves. Not a good sign.

Realizing that he wouldn't be able to turn to the bread box and retrieve the pistol quickly enough to use it, Roy struck out at his adversary with confidence, employing what he had learned during four years of instruction in Tae Kwon Do.

Although he didn't appear to be as fit as Roy, the copycat proved to be fast and strong. He not only blocked the blows but seized Roy's right hand, bent it backward, and snapped his wrist as if it were a dry branch.

The pain rocked Roy Pribeaux. He didn't handle pain well. His life had been mercifully free of it. The shock of the broken wrist robbed him of breath so completely that an attempt at a scream produced only a wheeze.

Incredibly, the copycat grabbed him by his shirt and by the crotch of his slacks, lifted him overhead as if he weighed no more than a child, and slammed him down on the edge of a kitchen counter.

Louder than the wheeze of his scream came the sound of his spine snapping.

The copycat released him. Roy slid off the counter, onto the floor.

The pain had stopped. This seemed like a good thing, until he realized that he had no feeling whatsoever below his neck.

He tried to move his left hand. He could not. Paralyzed.

Glaring down at him, the copycat said, "I don't need to cut you open and see inside. You don't have what I'm looking for. You're all dark inside, and I need the other thing."

Darkness wanted Roy, and he gave himself to it.