The Last Surgeon

CHAPTER 17

Koller kept pace behind Jillian Coates, close enough to breathe in her apricot-scented perfume. His shadow, stretched long and thin by the midday sun, occasionally overlapped hers. He liked touching her that way. Sometimes he walked in perfect synchronized step. She of course had no idea that for blocks she was being followed. Wearing a different disguise, far more doughy Robert Greene than urbane, intelligent Paul Regis, Koller felt confident that even if she did make eye contact with him, he would be unrecognizable to her. At worst, she would think he was just a typical letch, testing how close he could get to her and thinking dirty thoughts.

How wrong she’d be.

The Landrew non-kill had been a masterpiece, flawlessly researched, planned, and executed. Now, Koller’s bank account reflected his reward for that effort. There was no way of knowing how much more work Jericho intended on sending his way, but Koller had been in this business long enough to develop a sense for when a client’s well was about to run dry. Jericho’s pockets were extradeep, though, and he believed the work was far from over.

He decided it would be a wasted trip to return to the Panama City estate, his condo in Taos, or back to California to resume his life as a sedate but colorful substitute chemistry teacher. More jobs were bound to come his way and probably soon. Meanwhile, he was content to use the downtime to get to know Jillian Coates and see for himself how motivated she was to further investigate the cause of the fire that had ravaged her condominium. He applied simple mathematical logic to his plan on how best to deal with her: the pushier she was in her efforts, the less time she had to live. Even the students at Woodrow Wilson High could handle that equation.

Jillian left the crowded sidewalk and headed toward Anne Marie Cosco Hall, a nursing school dorm according to the signpost Koller read. Perhaps she’s living there now, he mused. His mind flashed on the chaos and havoc he could wreak if left to his own devices on a floor full of student nurses. The images, more horrible than any circle of Dante’s inferno, aroused him.

Koller occupied himself with The Washington Post, which he read on a nearby park bench while waiting for his quarry to reappear. She did so twenty minutes later and proceeded to head off at a more accelerated pace. He liked her choice of clothes-not flashy or excessively tight, but not at all dowdy. Her breasts, beneath a cotton blouse, were totally enticing-a nice C cup, he guessed. But it was her behind, moving unself-consciously in her chino slacks, that he found most appealing. The way her hips swayed with each step was inspiring. Koller moved even closer to her than he had been before, wanting to take in another whiff of her intoxicating perfume. He decided then and there that he would have her, a willing sex partner or not, before he killed her. He considered it a bonus for a job well done.

The notion made him smile.

Jillian took a left onto Twentieth Street and walked a few blocks north, stopping underneath a green awning. Koller walked past her, but turned just in time to see her slip inside Madame Jessica’s Psychic Readings Studio.

“Communing with the departed, are we?” Koller muttered to himself.

He wished it had been a private investigator she was visiting and not some medium who would take her money and toy with her emotions. Perhaps she could use someone to comfort her-someone like Paul Regis.

He was rock hard from following her, and from the taste of his last non-kill still fresh in his mind.