Gallery of the Dead

Eighty-Five

The man had spent almost an entire week putting the final touches to his plan and making sure that everything would work exactly in the way he had schematized it. It was a complicated and bold plan. A lot more daring and complex than anything he had done so far. Every detail had to be perfect. There simply was no room for mistakes, but then again, the man never really made mistakes. He was way too smart for that.

Today, after purchasing a cheap pre-paid cellphone and an old-fashioned Polaroid camera, all the man needed to do was a couple of last-minute tweaks to the system; nothing major, just an adjustment here and there, and he’d be able to run his final test tonight. If everything went to plan, and there was no real reason why it wouldn’t, he would be hitting the road in the early hours of the morning and by tomorrow, he would have her.

Then the real fun would start.

As always, the man had already made the trip to where the girl lived. That was how he worked. Once he had identified a target, step two was always to go see them for himself. No matter where in the country they were. It gave him a much clearer idea of who the target really was and how to best approach him/her. He would, at least twice before he took them, stake them out for a period of never less than twenty-four hours each time, looking for patterns, routines, anything and everything that could make the job of taking them easier.

Only once had he deviated from this — while researching Linda Parker, whose daily schedule proved to be too elusive, too unpredictable. And so the man had decided to actually approach her beforehand.

Posing as an international photographer, he had booked a three-hour photo session with the model in a studio not that far from where she lived. It had been a risky move, the man knew that, but he also knew how to cover his tracks, and there was no way anyone would be able to track him through that photo-session booking.

But the man hadn’t needed to resort to any tricks with this new girl. She had the most predictable routine of them all, which, in a way, was expected, given who she was.

The man checked his watch, powered down his computer and sat back on his chair. As he envisaged what was about to unfold in the next few hours, he felt as if his body was being pricked by a thousand needles, injecting him with some new drug that electrified his veins.

The man smiled as he caught a glimpse of his reflection on the dark computer monitor.

It was time to go work on his disguise.

It was almost time to go get the girl.

No more Mr. Merciful.