Hope to Die

TWENTY-EIGHT

He sits, watching the lights of the city go on and off, on and off. It's the middle of the afternoon, but on his computer it is forever night, and his screensaver is tireless. Office and apartment lights wink on and wink off, and gradually buildings change their shapes, adding floors, losing floors, becoming wider or narrower. The idea, of course, is that each tiny subsection of the monitor will have its turn to be dark, and thus no single high-traffic spot will burn out ahead of the others.

Is this a real problem? Do computer screens ever burn out? With the relentless march of technology, does anyone actually keep a piece of equipment long enough for wear and tear to affect it?

Probably not. Every year- every six months- the new computers are faster and more powerful, and cost less than the previous generation. Soon he'll replace his own computer. There is nothing wrong with it, it does everything he could possibly require of it, but he'll replace it with one that is newer-better-faster… and he'll dutifully install his screensaver on his new hard drive.

All so he can watch lights wink on and off…

He lowers a finger, touches a key, and the screensaver is gone. He touches more keys, clicks his mouse, and in no time at all (though the next machine will do it even faster) he's on-line.

He checks his e-mail, hurrying through it, deleting the garbage, the junk mail, answering one message that needs to be answered, keeping the rest for later. Pulls down the Favorite Places menu, selects Newsgroups: ACSK.

And his newsgroup comes on-screen, alt.crime.serialkillers. He scrolls down the list of new messages. There are four in the Jason Bierman thread, and he reads them, and there's nothing very interesting. He's seen this happen time and time again in a thread. After a few days the whole point of the topic gets lost, as people post responses to someone else's off-topic meandering, and as others, the Johnny One-Note element, ride their individual hobby horses- for/against capital punishment, say, or warning of government intrusion and the New World Order. There is a way to screen out messages from the most obnoxious members, you add their names to your killfile and their messages never appear on your screen, but he hasn't done that yet. Soon, perhaps.

There's nothing about Lia Parkman.

Well, how could there be? If all has gone well, they think the little darling had too much to drink and forgot you needed gills to breathe underwater. That may not hold up, it depends how good the medical examiner is and what kind of a day he's having. If they're good, if they look closely, they may well guess that she had help.

Eyes staring up through the water…

But even if they work it out, he realizes, they won't know who did it. That's fine, that's the way he wants it, and yet, well, there is a slight downside.

Bierman's not getting credit.

Bierman's going to drop off the edge of the newsgroup's consciousness. He doesn't really belong there, he's barely a mass murderer and by no means a serial killer. He has three victims, all killed the same day, one miles apart from the others, to be sure, but all slain as part of a single extended episode.

So it's quite proper that he fade and be forgotten.

But there's a real serial killer involved, and nobody even knows. Nobody has a clue!

Call him- well, just for now, call him Arden Brill. It was an error, borrowing a name from that musty old Freudian, but let it go. Unless the investigating officer has a side interest in discredited psychoanalytic claptrap, the name will set off no alarms. So why not use it, if only in the privacy of one's own mind?

Arden Brill has killed not three people but five. He killed twice on West Seventy-fourth Street, twice on Coney Island Avenue (at intervals several hours apart, making them, really, two separate incidents), and now he can claim a fifth victim, on Claremont Avenue.

And no one knows!

He scans the computer screen. At the bottom of the newsgroup window is a button that reads New Message. He clicks on it, and there's a new screen, all set up to receive a message for alt.crime. serialkillers.

On the subject line he types: BIERMAN INNOCENT VICTIM.

No, only the worst idiots use all caps like that. It's the newsgroup equivalent of shouting. He deletes it, tries again: Bierman innocent victim.

Better.

He looks at the screen, then begins to type:

Jason Bierman never killed anybody. He was artfully set up to take the rap for a killer none of you know anything about. That man's name is Arden Brill.

He deletes the last sentence and goes on:

… I am that man, and you may call me Arden Brill. I have killed five times. Bierman was my first victim, the Hollanders numbers two and three. Carl Ivanko was fourth. You have credited Jason Bierman with all of these killings, and he never even met or heard of a single one of his purported victims!

My fifth victim is Lia Parkman, and you have never heard of her, but you will. I drowned her in a tub of water, held her by her tits and watched her fight for life.

But she hadn't struggled. In fact he was not altogether sure she ever regained consciousness. Her eyes were open, but did that necessarily mean she knew what was going on? Maybe he should change that last sentence:

… I drowned her in a tub of water, held her by her sweet little tits and watched the bubbles rise to the surface as the life went out of her.

That was better. That, in fact, was exactly how it had happened. Calling her tits sweet and little was not exactly clinical, but no one could fault him for veracity.

… I do not kill for the thrill of it. I have a motive, and it is perfectly logical. I shall profit enormously from my crimes.

No, not crimes. He deleted "crimes," resumed:

… profit enormously from my actions, which may disqualify me as a serial killer. Still, for all that my work is undertaken for profit. I cannot deny that the act of killing is satisfying to me in ways I would never have anticipated. I enjoy it before the act, during the act, and after the act has been completed.

He pauses, forming his thoughts:

I have killed both men and women. Killing men, I would say, provides me with more of a sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, for sheer pleasure, there's nothing like killing a woman.

No, amend that slightly:

… nothing like killing an attractive woman.

He sits there, looking at what he has written, nodding his approval. His watch beeps, signaling that it is ten minutes before the hour.

He moves the mouse, poises the cursor over the Post button.

Oh, no. No, I don't think so.

He shifts the mouse, clicks on Cancel. The message, unsent, vanishes from the screen. A few more clicks and he's off-line, and his screensaver is back in place, lights winking on and off, on and off…