Absolute Instinct

ONE

Millbrook, Minnesota November 14, 2002

Louisa Anne Childe closed a dying fist around the blood-soaked charcoal drawing she'd so loved-the impeccable image of her sitting in the park across the street, doing what she loved, feeding the late winter birds. With a trapped breath in her throat, believing it her last, she knew- feared-gasped. Her only hold left on this life-her sketch. Perhaps in the next life, things would be as peaceful as in the black-and-white drawing. Still, birdlike breaths of air fluttered, perched, and then struggled past her lips and into her lungs; and when she felt the dagger rip into her spine, she wished desperately that it had been her last breath.

Cheated, she felt a wave of anger against God for allowing this murder-her murder. She'd always imagined herself dying peacefully in her sleep. Instead, she would die a fool, a victim of murder, by a cunning killer who had led her down a grim-rose lane with a mere bit of artistry, the sleight of hand of flattery playing no small part. He had been so good for her ego… until now. What would Papa say…? He'd say she was a fool woman, that's what, and that she'd be left with the now-worthless sketch and her own disgrace.

Disgrace at being found dead at the hand of a man she had invited past her threshold. How stupid was that? How disgraceful her body would present itself. She feared her spirit would hover, witness to the disgrace. The thought of it, the horror of a scene involving paramedics, policemen and women, detectives, coroners… it was simply horrid. She feared being manhandled by those strangers, certain none would look like Basil Rathbone, Clark Gable or George Clooney. She feared strangers seeing her nude form, her clothes ripped from her, her naked body bloated and ugly with the passage of time, as she had no one.

No one would come looking until the rent was long overdue. Even more painful, the truth: She had literally put herself into an early grave by a murdering con artist. Louisa felt this humiliation above all, even above the pain of the cold giant chasm now being opened down the length of her spine.

The last earthly words she heard, he whispered in her ear, “You will still sit for me, won't you, Louisa.” It wasn't a question, more a statement. Little wonder he had failed to sign her charcoal drawing.

Louisa Anne Childe had endured the flesh-separating blade, feeling it course from the nape of her neck and race to the bottom of her spine. When the second cut snaked from the bottom up and up, and finally returned to the nape, Louisa still clutched the drawing. Her killer had seduced her with the enticement of charcoal drawings of her in the park, sitting, feeding birds.

She now fell into unconsciousness, her fist frozen about her favorite of four sketches.

By the time the rectangle of flesh was removed from her back, Louisa had died from hemorrhagic shock. She didn't feel a thing when her murderer's gloved hands latched on to her spine with one hand and worked a rib cutter with the other. He cut the twelve thoracic vertebra of the rib cage from their hold on the spinal cord. This finished, twisted wirelike nerves snapped as he tugged and ripped the backbone, but it jammed and held.

“Godfuckingsonofamotherfuckingbitching bastard!” he erupted and immediately covered his mouth with his gloved hand to silence himself. “Like fighting with a metal snake,” he added as he continued to tug. Finally, the spinal octopus let go and came free, almost sending Giles tumbling over.

The sketch-artist killer liked the heft and weight and feel of the bone snake in his hands, freed of all its moorings.

Strangely supple and beautiful in its shape, the human spine had always fascinated Giles, even as a child. And now he had one in his possession, to have as his own, to do with as he wished, and he had a plan. In the waiting room of a chiropractor's office, in a collection of newspaper clippings favoring the laying-on-of-hands science over pills and surgeries, he had read that every person on the planet had slight individual differences in their spinal development- some quite subtle, others as remarkable and as lurid as those of the Elephant Man. Certainly no two racks were ever exactly alike. So he now held a unique backbone in his hands, Louisa's, dripping with bodily fluids and blood.

The blood splatters, pools and puddles amounting to a great deal of red, reflected in Giles's delighted eyes as he turned the spinal column in his hands, closely examining it. “A true work of art,” he muttered. “But I can't ever do this again… never.”

He saw the woman's cat, “Archer” she'd called the little creature. Archer stood on his paws as if they'd turned to arrowheads, prepared to dart or pounce or race off, but his marble-green eyes froze wide at the fear he swallowed in a growl. Staring from behind a doily-covered sofa, Archer's nose went busily atwitter with the odor of blood and what wafts up from an opened body.

Giles reached a tentative hand out, calling, “Here, kitty, here kitty-kitty!”

But when he tried to pet Archer, the cat slipped below the sofa and disappeared in one fluid motion. “Don't want nothing to do with me. Smart animal,” Giles muttered. Then he near shouted, “I've yanked out a few cat spines in my day!”

Giles then turned his attention to the human spine in his left hand, Louisa's gruel-dripping backbone. He laid the spinal column across the dead woman's buttocks. As he busily collected her blood in small, empty honey jars he'd cleaned and brought with him-sample-size jars he'd pocketed from the hotel where he'd been staying the entire time he had staked out Louisa's place, having stalked her from her beloved park bench to her most private corner of the planet. He briefly flashed on Grendel, which he'd read as a child, and how touched he had been by the monster's cave. How cold and unhappy a place it was, and the creature's absolute aloneness-an Adam without an Eve. And so poorly misunderstood, the sad oversized hairy beast, and how very pathetic it all became, his story. How he had no choice but to attack and destroy those men who sat about the warm hearths chomping on their muttonchops and raising their ale glasses and whoring with their women. How he'd see the lights of men in the company of men, and how he must absolutely hate them for their happiness.

Giles shook off the remembrance with a strange psychic shiver he little understood. Time to finish up with the blood collection and pack up the spine for transport, but then his stomach churned with a clawing hunger, a reminder of the deserted corned beef on rye that Louisa had made for him, left unattended in the kitchenette.

From a kneeling position over the body, Giles pushed off the bloody carpet to stand over Louisa's remains. Her spine was as beautiful and intricate as he'd imagined all those days and weeks of stalking her. It reflected her beautiful soul, Giles thought before stepping over the mutilated body, going for the sandwich. Once in the kitchen area, he stood contemplating whether or not he had left behind any trace of himself when he saw the red footprints on the Italian marble tiles he'd just walked across.

A small oval mirror-a homey Midwestern message stamped onto the glass-stared across at him where he leaned against the counter, chomping down large bites of the corned beef. He thought it odd how his reflected eyes formed little blue bull's-eyes in the final two O's in the of and of in the familiar, apropos message: Today Is The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life.

Giles hadn't removed his hat or his tight-fitting gloves on entering her place, even when she offered to turn on the gas-driven fireplace. He'd argued it was unnecessary and that he'd only be a few minutes. So he had kept hat and gloves on, as they were now in the mirror. But he had also admitted that his fingers and toes remained numb from being outside, and that's when the mother in Louisa leapt out. She insisted he stay for a sandwich and a tumbler of whiskey “to warm his giblets,” as she'd put it.

With the gloves on, he needn't worry about fingerprint evidence. The hairnet he wore below his winter knit cap would keep hairs from falling, but there was always fiber evidence, and now his footprints in blood. He had to consider everything. As he did so, his cobalt-blue eyes surveyed the kitchenette, which in its heyday surely must have been top of the line, fabulous even. As he looked about the small space, he heard the crunch of glass.

“Damn me!” he cursed, lifting his shoe off the glass tumbler she'd earlier knocked from his hand in her panic at realizing that Giles had come for far more than money for the charcoal drawings he'd done of Louisa in the park. The broken glass underfoot lay shattered in countless pieces now, whereas it had been neatly shorn into three large, easy-to-dispose parts before he had clumsily stomped on it. Earlier her cheap whiskey had gone flying when she lashed out at him with a broomstick. Any minute amount of saliva on the shards of the glass would carry his DNA. He scooped all the larger pieces into his gloved hands and tossed them into the trash container. He then located broom and dustpan and swept up the residue of granular-sized glass, the sandy stuff mixing with hair, fiber, dust, all discarded into the plastic container lining the trash can.

He next stared at the counter, littered with the paraphernalia of apartment living: obligatory spice rack, bottles, jars, can opener, skillets, dirty dishes-she'd not been expecting him so soon-nickel-plated silverware, used-up E. coli-infested sponges and dish towels. Amid this, he had located his half-bitten corned beef on rye piled high with tomato, lettuce, mayo and mustard that Louisa had lovingly prepared for him, remarking on how cooking for a man was tantamount to a gesture of true love, blushing as she said it, the old dear.

A gnat-sized banana fly flit into and out of his peripheral vision as if lift off had come from the center of his sandwich. Louisa's lithe little soul in the guise of an insect-a black Tinkerbell perhaps? Highly doubtful, but the possibility the thing had been crawling on his sandwich the entire time he'd been taking bites from it disturbed him enough to make him toss it into the trash bin with the broken glass.

Giles left the bag open to receive his bloody clothing and shoes. Naked now, he next lifted the broom from the floor. Firmly holding on to the broom, Giles painted his bloody shoe prints into swirls and eddies created by the nylon bristles. He stood back and studied the beauty of patterns he found unexpected. The patterns made the red circles look like giant fingerprints, but they'd be useless to authorities, these giant, mocking prints. The thought of it created a strange but welcome shiver along the length of his epidermis from scalp to toe.

This finished, he stepped back into the cramped living area. He stepped over Louisa's body and placed the bag alongside his other two bags near the door, readying to leave once dressed. But first, seeing additional red shoe marks stamped and drying against the carpet, he quickly swiped at these with the broom. His finished product here created a river-stream effect of red against the thick pile to blot out his footprints as he worked his way backward toward the door and the bags he'd placed there.

He looked down at his victim, the woman he thought an absolutely useless human being. Mousy brown hair just turning to gray, the first signs of old age beginning to crease her face, a woman tired of life, Giles imagined. Had never been with a man, he further imagined, never dared anything, never lived. The dash between the dates on her tombstone will stand for nothing, he told himself. Still, she had been sweet to him, kindly, motherly even. He hadn't expected the depth of her concern, and he'd felt ill at ease with it, though certainly he'd cultivated her trust. A double-edged sword; part of the game. While Louisa had, in effect, made things far easier for him as a result of her trusting kindness toward him, the end result was accompanied by a strange feeling in Giles, a twinge of remorse. Such regret surprised him.

In a way, Louisa had shared with Giles a handful of similar, if not identical, characteristics, just as he shared with the monster Grendel. She was trusting, wanting to believe the best in human nature, even good-hearted. In another time, another place, another upbringing, with other parentage, Giles believed he'd have been as kindly, as good of heart as Louisa any day of the week. His mind tumbled over the notion that it could not wrap around, trying to form thoughts, the thoughts trying to form words, to get a fix, a hold on the facts and keep them in order. She got what was coming to her in the long run, her damnable, milksop, cookie-baking, Millbrook kindness notwithstanding, something he'd encouraged sure, but he'd wanted it to be false, not true, a kind of Midwestern traditional mask, all bullshit, her mewing at him like a kindly mother, her treating him as she did her precious damned Archer as if she meant it, as if it meant anything, when all it managed to do was cloud his determination, blur his purpose, and make things more difficult. The bitch'd made things easy only up to a point; even after death, she somehow managed to make things hard. Certainly harder than doing dogs and cats. In fact, thanks to her damnable sandwich and whiskey and doting, she'd made it the hardest thing Giles had ever had to do. Still, he congratulated himself on having stood his ground and having done the deed.

Earlier he had visually scouted the walls and shelves, any surface for photographs but found no family pictures. After taking Louisa's spine, he'd searched drawers and boxes and beneath her mattress for any personal letters or envelopes lying about. Aside from bills, nothing. Apparently she had no ties, just as his intuition had led him to believe. No one to miss her passing.

Giles had watched her go in and out of the building. Louisa only came out to cash checks, visit the corner grocery for birdseed, food and liquor. Her only recreation or joy at all appeared to be in feeding the birds across the street at that run-down children's park he stared at now through her apartment window. His artist's eye-studying the patterns of snow-laden November leaves-saw the mosaic of color, texture and line created about the dry earth, rendering ocher and orange amid patches still green with life alongside the blight of dirty snowdrifts piled high, each a counterpoint to the other like the tug of war between seasons.

Giles had begun to frequent the park, and had begun to follow her to the grocery, carrying his art supplies on his back. At the grocery, he'd watched her pay with food stamps and guessed that she lived on disability checks. A miserable life, yet one she prized more highly than he'd imagined. For two weeks now, he'd watched and waited, approaching with great care and a foolproof plan to play on her vanity-what little she still possessed.

Giles recalled how surreptitiously-how like old Archer still hidden somewhere nearby-he had encroached on Louisa's tree-lined territory there in the park to gain her attention. His sketchbook in hand, he set up at her favorite bench, where he busily replicated her birds. Giles suspected that her birds must be the only thing in life more prized than her drink. Certainly, she interacted far more with her birds than with anyone in the neighborhood.

“You're drawing the birds,” she had said to him only this morning.

“I find them fascinating.”

“Really? Someone of your generation?”

“My generation? I've read Conrad Deueval's books on bird behavior, how very much they are like-”

“-like us,” she finished for him. “Deueval is marvelous. God what insight he has into people as well as birds.”

Giles had read in the man's introduction that he had never known how to interact with his parents, was alienated all his school life, failed miserably at every endeavor, and could not stand working or living in the same environment with people. Giles easily empathized. But his interest here was in catching and dissecting Louisa Anne Childe for her spinal column with its sweet meats and juices. Still he got caught up in Deueval's musings. When the man came into money, he built a four-story house off Bird Cove Key on an island bird sanctuary in an apparent deal too good for the state of Florida to turn down. He had the house built with no doors and no glass in the hundreds of window frames, allowing free access to the bird population-video cameras everywhere, running twenty-four hours, seven days a week. The biggest birdhouse on the planet.

Giles learned all he could, to intersperse his knowledge into the conversations he hoped to have with Louisa in order to wrangle an invitation to cross her threshold. Once inside, he knew he could proceed with his own fanaticism which did not include birds.

“Conrad Deueval earned his doctorate in the natural sciences and with his Ph.D. and his books chronicling bird activity and behavior, he proved there is little difference in the working brain of a bird and that of people, especially promiscuous men!” she said and laughed, blushing red. Giles recognized the little girl in the aging face, amid the pudgy cheeks and crease of her smile from nose to chin.

“Have you… did you read his last book?” Giles asked.

“The Frightening Truth About Ourselves? I have it on order at the local bookstore.”

“I could get it far more quickly for you.”

“How?”

“I know the author,” lied Giles.

“No! You don't! How?”

“My uncle's roommate in college knew him.”

“But Conrad Deueval's never finished college. He bought his degree sometime later. He could not be confined and chained down by academic bureaucracy and ballyhoo. A great man, a brilliant mind.”

“Do you want the book tomorrow?”

“You have that kind of access to the man?”

“Well, two days. Give me two days.”

“All right, you're on, but I insist on paying for your troubles.”

“Only one kind of payment I would accept from you,” Giles replied, knowing he had her in his grasp.

“What… what exactly did you… that is… do you have… in mind, young man?”

“Oh, oh, please, nothing like that, ma'am, no! No way.”

She flushed, embarrassed. She pointed and spoke to cover her blushing cheeks in the frosty air. “Look at them.”

He followed her finger to the begging birds.

She added, “Watch how they play and fight among themselves.”

“Just like people. Just as Deueval says.” He went back to his sketching of the birds as if he'd forgotten something he had to either touch up quickly or lose to memory. This invited her to come near, to stare over his shoulder at the sketch book, curious.

In his ear, she made a sound with her teeth. “Is it for a book? A magazine?”

“What? This, the picture? No, I'm really not that good. It's just practice. I'm taking classes, you see.”

She examined the charcoal sketch he'd crafted.

“How much?” she then asked.

“Oh, I don't sell them. I'm not that good. Besides it's unfinished.”

She pursued him. “Name your price. I want at least four.”

“Four? One for each wall?” he'd asked, joking.

“Yes as a matter of fact.”

“Okay… Okay… I'll give you the bird sketches if you'll sit for me.”

“Sit for you? You mean as… some sort of-”

“As centerpiece to my homework, as an integral part of my getting a decent grade without having to hire some fake actor. I draw you, now, right here amid the-your birds.”

“Oh, they're not my birds. They're free. No one owns these footloose feathers.”

At that moment, she seemed to him more lonely than reclusive. “I've seen you out here before, feeding them.” He allowed her a closer look at the work. “It calls for you to be in it,” he added and smiled. “The final drawing… perhaps a painting to follow… you should be in it alongside the birds, really.”

“But if I sit for you, and you give me your work free of charge… what's in it for you?”

“I learn my craft. It's a… you know… a challenge.”

They exchanged first names.

Wasting no time, Giles had then speed-sketched her into the work in progress, having earlier left a space for her likeness. She fit perfectly, looking like St. Francis amid the birds. Louisa loved it, taking it to her breast and asking for three more pictures just of the park and the birds.

“When and where can I bring the other sketches to you?”

She pointed to her building. “One-oh-six is the number.”

He had watched her walk off, the November wind tugging at her coattails.

“She's the perfect choice, isn't she?” he asked the birds.

HE had choked on the stuffy air in her hallway. When he'd knocked, she was careful to call through the door, asking who it might be-as if she had frequent visitors-a pretense born of pride and embarrassment, Giles imagined.

“It's Giles… I have your finished drawings.”

She cracked the door, and seeing him, she threw it open. “You can't possibly be finished already!”

“But I am. They were easy.” He held out the charcoal sketches. “They weren't hard, really.”

She looked at each one, praising each in turn. “Let me pay you something for these. They're beautiful.” She saw that he stared at her. “Oh, where are my manners? Come in… come in! It's become too cold out, hasn't it? I'll get you something that will warm your giblet. You must be hungry, too. It's so wonderful to be able to create like you do. It must be so fulfilling and rewarding. Such a gift. Such talent. Were you born with it? Of course, you were, but you must have had to cultivate it as well. Like the seed into the flower, to see it flourish, you must see it nourished, as they say. I once tried my hand at watercolors… once… once was enough.” She twittered instead of laughing. “Everyone in the class was so good, and my stuff… it was… well, pitiful.”

Giles gave the appearance of caring to listen to her non stop chatter. It'd been as if a floodgate were opened. Once inside, with the door closed, Giles heard a man's voice through the thin wall say, “Plumber, ma'am! You called for a plumber?”

It registered with Giles that he mustn't give Louisa a chance to scream out.

Giles had grown somewhat fond of the bird lady. While not decrepit or elderly, Louisa seemed far older than Giles's twenty-two years-perhaps by some fifteen or twenty years-he thought. She was neither pretty nor ugly, only plain-like her choice of clothes, her face a featureless sky, no life in her eyes until and unless she were speaking of or to her birds.

She had turned her back to him and gone straight into the kitchen. Once there, she poured him a drink-Jack Daniel's, softening it with water from an Ice Mountain bottle. She immediately began building him the sandwich, and offered him breadsticks while he waited. In between she said, “Take your hat and gloves off. Stay awhile.”

He patiently waited, biding his time, alert to the right moment when it came. The creation of the sandwich finished, and it handed to him, Giles took a couple of bites and swallowed down some whiskey.

She went back to the sketches she'd laid on the kitchen table, glancing at them with admiration. “The sketches… I'm going to frame each and place each one up on the walls. Now you must take something for your troubles, Giles. I insist.”

She gazed to her purse on the table, placed the sketches down and lifted the purse. Rifling through for cash, she turned toward him.

“I don't want your money, Louisa.” His tone made her look up from the purse and into his eyes. From a darkened corner, her cat growled and hissed at him, and she said, “Now, Archer, bad cat! You stop that now. This is our guest-Giles. You remember, I told you all about Giles, and that he might be coming by to visit with us.”

“If you really want to help me, you'll sit for me,” he said. “But please, I won't take your money.”

“I can do that, sit. In fact, it's one of the best things I do, indeed.” Lightly laughing at her own little joke, Louisa again lifted the sketches, studying them. Then she said, “Giles, you didn't sign the sketches.”

“Forget about the sketches for the moment and concentrate on me,” he said, staring into her eyes. She saw something she could not read flash across those cobalt-blue eyes. He still hadn't taken off his gloves or his hat, only the overcoat.

“Giles, why don't you take off your hat and those gloves?”

“I'm still cold,” he repeated.

“Jack Daniel's'll help with that.” She poured him a second tumbler full and went to the fridge for the water.

“I want you to sit for me now, Louisa,” he told her as she placed the glass in his hands.

“Why didn't you sign the sketches, Giles? They're beautiful. You must see that. You, young man, are an artist of extraordinary talent.”

“Careful of that word. Talent usually means the end result of years of preparation.” He put aside his barely tasted sandwich. “In the living room, on the floor, Louisa. I want to sketch you lying on the floor.”

“Lying on the floor? Really? Now?”

“In the supine position.”

“You mean lounging on pillows?”

“Yes, with your clothes off.”

“Nude! I hardly know you, Giles.”

“I only want to draw you, Louisa. I have no intention of taking advantage of you or to lose the mutual respect and admiration we have. Besides, our age difference alone is… is…“Is what?” she sounded scolding.

“Ahhh… incompatible.”

She shook her head, almost laughed but frowned instead. “Incompatible, indeed.”

“I mean it could only lead to no good, and I wouldn't dare jeopardize our newfound friendship.”

In the back of his head, a voice told him to get on with it, to drop all pretense and take what he wanted and swiftly.

She smiled. “You're right, of course, but you have a lot to learn about how to flatter a girl… ahhh… woman.” She blushed at the underlying suggestiveness, and that they were dancing around such a subject at all. “I suggest you read Men Are from-”

“Mars… Women… from Venus. I have, but it hasn't helped.” He laughed on cue.

Having made him laugh struck her as amazing, and he saw that, for a millisecond, she appeared to fight back a heart-wrenching tear. A quiet coyness filtered into her voice. “I'm not sure if I should be pleased about this age difference thing, or if I should take offense.”

“Calmly now, Louisa, go into the other room, get comfortable with the idea and the pillows and the floor and the nudity. You will be beautiful when I am done with you, I promise. I promise.”

Louisa only stared in response. “I–I-I couldn't… not without weeks of workouts… you know, the cellulite, flab!”

“What?”

“I just couldn't… really, Giles. Not in a million years.” She shivered from within. “We hardly… I hardly know you. It's out of the question, and I think…”

“How much more do we need to know about one another? This is just false modesty, Louisa.”

“No… no… nothing false about it. I have plenty to be modest about.”

“But you're beautiful.”

She dropped her gaze and shook her head. “I know better. All life has taught me different.”

“Just do it… like the ads say, just do it, Louisa.” His impatience filtered through.

“I really can't see myself doing that, Giles.”

“But that's precisely how you do it. You psych up for it, mentally, picturing yourself there”-he pointed to her living room floor-”lying nude there for me to paint. Look, I've gone to the trouble to bring all my tools and supplies for the job. You really must, and I insist.”

“With a lady, you don't insist on anything, not in my house, Giles, and if I'm uncomfortable with the idea, why then-”

“What's a little moment's awkwardness and discomfort if it serves a larger purpose and-”

“I–I-I would like you to leave now, Giles.”

He didn't move. “Leave?”

“Now. Now, Giles. I want you to leave, yes… please.”

Still he did not budge.

A slow quaking fear slithered along her spine like a warning, an instinctual bell tolling inside her frame. “Out! Out this minute, Giles. I want you out!” She went to the table and lifted the charcoal drawings and said, “Our arrangement is over! You can have these back!”

She held out the drawings, and he reluctantly took them. His eyes downcast, he looked like a petulant boy.

But instead of leaving, he laid aside three of the sketches and held one out to her. “You must keep this one, Louisa.”

She had instinctively clutched on to the broom to use as a weapon, should she need it.

“Take the sketch and don't be foolish. I'm leaving, Louisa, and I'm so sorry. The last thing I wanted was that you should feel a moment's distress around me, really,” Giles assured her. Indicating the broom, he added, “You can put that down. It's totally unnecessary, Louisa. We don't need shit like this between us. We're still friends, right?”

She eased her grip on the broom but stood her ground. She stared at the single drawing, her favorite of the four, extended to her.

“Of course, you're right.”

“I mean, who couldn't use another friend. No such thing as too many friends, right?”

She nodded, saying nothing, as if embarrassed, and she further loosed her grip on the broom. The moment she took hold of the charcoal drawing of herself surrounded by birds, Giles grabbed for the broom, frightening her. With the sketch clutched against the handle, she brought the broom up and knocked the glass from his hand. It rained across the floor in miniature thunder. The broken pieces winked up at the odd pair-recluse and would-be killer.

“Please, Louisa, you're beautiful… a beautiful person resides deep within you. In your soul, and I want to get at it. That's all, that's all.”

She softened in both body language and tone. “That's all?”

“Yes, that's all I want is to sketch you. After that, I want to do you in oils, that is to paint you. You see, I sketch first, paint last.”

She hesitated. She tightened her grip on the sketch in her hands.

Giles quietly said, “All I really want for Christmas is your spine, Louisa. You can keep the rest.”

“What?” she said, confused. “What did you say?”

But even as she asked this, he pulled a small, hefty hammer from the loose overalls he wore, and the ugly tool came crashing down, bloodying her scalp. She stumbled to the floor and crawled into the living room, dazed, disorientated, still clutching the sketch, wondering where she was and what had happened to her. Even dazed, she felt him standing over her. Something instinctive told her to face him, but she could not stand. Doing the next best thing, she turned onto her back to face up. “Come close, closer…” she croaked out a whisper.

He leaned in over her. “You have some final words?” he asked.

She whispered so low that he could not hear. When he came within reach, she tore at his face with her nails, shouting, “Bastard!”

Her fighting back had surprised Giles; he wondered why she wanted to live. To hang pictures of birds on her walls? To feed her cat? To clean her sink of dishes? Some other mundane chore in her dull existence?

She'd passed out, and needing to get at her entire backside, he ripped her clothes from her. The entry through the back must be completely unfettered. He next located the sketches and began to stuff them into the bag. But he was stopped when he saw the blood stained sketch she clung to. He decided to place the last three he'd done on the walls as she had planned. He hunted down her tape-and-scissors drawer and got it done.

Backing up, studying and admiring his hung Collection of Birds in the Park, he imagined what she had had in mind. With the right frames and in this context, it might have been lovely. Too bad he could not take credit, a bow for the work. It was good.

He next returned to his tools and pulled out his scalpel and rib cutter.

The actual killing had taken less than a minute; the working up to it all these months, was a different story altogether.

Still, getting in and out of Louisa's apartment had taken far too much time. Giles now felt an urgency to vacate without being seen. He lifted the hand she had scratched his face with; she had left him with a scar from chin to Adam's apple. Using the rib cutter, he snapped off each fingertip at the joint, dropping each into the trash bag alongside the broken glass and his partial sandwich. One of the round-nailed fin-gertips missed the bag, seemingly leaping to freedom, rolling away toward the sofa chair, when in the same instant Archer the cat darted and snatched it up and was gone again.

“Damn you, cat!” he bellowed. He coaxed but failed to lure the cat from its hiding place; kneeling low, looking up under the sofa chair, he learned the damn thing had simply vanished, along with Louisa's fingertip. “Fucking cat!”

Giving up on the cat, Giles turned back to Louisa's body and stopped momentarily to stare at how beautiful the geometry of her form lay there, splayed open, limbs forming a kind of human swastika, each aligned in a spontaneous akimbo, but what struck him most remained that damnable charcoal drawing clutched in her dying hand. The sight caused him to give up cutting off any more fingertips. He reasoned it out: She had to've torn at him with her only free hand, and since he resided somewhere under the police radar here in Millbrook, Minnesota, he had acted accordingly to remain that way, removing any possible DNA he may've left in the apartment or on the body-all save the DNA the cat would hopefully consume.

“Isn't likely they'll cut open a cat for evidence they don't know is there,” he muttered to the empty room and corpse.

For some minutes, he stood clear of the blood while regarding her in death, moving round the body with care in his bare feet, considering every angle. He made mental notes for later. He'd want to depict her exactly as she lay here, only in the abstract-caught like a butterfly on a pin within the context of his art.

No, he needn't bother with her right hand. She'd only scratched him with her left, and only the once before falling back.

“Got to get out of here,” he told Archer from whom he caught snatches of contented birdlike murmurs coming from the gut and throat, somewhere below the sofa, happy with his prize. Out Louisa's window, he saw a man walking a poodle past a service truck of some sort. He ruminated how people foolishly attributed warm, cozy feelings to their animals so as to feel better about themselves, as if they had some kind of reciprocal even symbiotic relationship with their pets, as if the pet cared. And people did this so routinely and without the slightest sense or dared thought. The same people who made light of a man like John Edwards, the TV psychic, attributed an entire array of emotions and feelings of love that their cat or dog provided them, when in fact the animal liked your smell, and why'd it like your odor? Because when your smell was nearby, they knew they'd be fed. And this Childe woman with her birds and this crazy belief system she had built up around them, as if they spent time thinking about her, placing her in their little animal dreams and thoughts, as if they gave a shit about her when all they really cared about came out of a bag of feed in her hand. The woman had come to think of herself as a kind of Uncle Remus-like in a Disney film-birds flitting about her cheek, stealing kisses, or a St. Francis of Assisi in a skirt, animals whispering in her ear the secrets of the universe and peace on fucking Earth. And all that crap about the complexity of the bird's brain written by that so-called naturalist who bought his degree was exactly that- crap. “Birds're as smart as my left nipple,” Giles allowed. “Bird Man of Alcatraz only proved one thing-birds contract as many diseases as we do, but it took the brain of a man to combat those diseases.”

Poor stupid self-deluded reclusive Louisa Childe. Her last thoughts were likely of her birds and Archer.

Giles went back to the door he would exit from, and there he removed what might be taken as a big blue easel bag, struggling to bring it from deep within his backpack. Successful, he dug from the bag a large towel. Using the towel, he lifted the woman's spine from where he had left it on her buttocks, wrapping the serpentine rack of bones in the towel and carefully working it, section by section, into the oblong bag without its coming apart.

The vertebral column filled the blue bag, creating a somewhat irregular line, but Giles had read somewhere that the eye saw only what the eye wanted to see. He worried little that anyone would stop him to ask what might be inside the bag. After all, it wasn't as if he were transporting a body. It would appear to anyone he might pass that he carried an easel inside. Nothing sinister about an easel.

He then located his change of clothes. He quickly pulled on a set of clean underclothes, pants and a pullover sweatshirt to accompany his hat and gloves. Finally, he replaced his shoes and socks with what he'd brought. He then threw on his coat, filled his hands with bags, and with a final look around, surveying the charcoal drawings on the wall, and the one clutched in Louisa's hand, he bid adieu to the place and the woman who had supplied him with what he needed. He inched out the door, careful to make no noise.

As he walked down the hallway, the bagged spine over his shoulder, he located the incinerator shaft and dropped the trash bag with glass, leftover sandwich, fingertips with his DNA embedded (all save the one the cat had squirreled away), and the bloody clothing he'd been wearing. It would all burn with the Tuesday morning trash as it did every Tuesday morning on the corner of Cologen and Geldman streets, a crossroads intersection with a stern green light in the middle of icy Millbrook, Minnesota.

The cold air fired brisk chilling needles into the pours of his face.

“Thank you, Miss Childe for a lovely evening and a fine trade,” he said to himself as he stepped out onto the street. Surprised, he found that the plumber's van had remained parked out front of the building the entire night. “Looks like someone else got lucky at Number Forty-eight Geldman,” he muttered, hefting the bone sack and sauntering casually toward the bus stop.

Giles loved riding buses. Loved people watching.