Naked Cruelty

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2 to END OF YEAR 1968
CHAPTER VIII

When Helen asked Captain Delmonico for the return of her completed journals, he denied her request. “They’re locked up and they stay locked up until you’ve finished your training,” he said. “One question before you go, please. Why did you show part of them to Kurt von Fahlendorf? My instructions were explicit.”

“Sir, I showed Kurt the parts relevant to his kidnapping, in the hope he’d offer me a clue,” she said-well, it was half true.

One eyebrow rose, but he said nothing.

“I admit I didn’t preserve its security properly when I began my journals, but I have learned, sir. Delia chewed me out because my gun and badge were in my bag too-she was right, of course.” Her laugh sounded unconcerned. “But no one burgled my bag, sir.”

“Did you have an enjoyable little vacation?” Carmine asked.

“More enjoyable than you could know, Captain. I managed to avoid Dad’s Thanksgiving table.”

“That can’t have impressed him.”

“Well, no, it didn’t, but I had an excellent excuse.”

She really must have had a good excuse, Carmine thought, for M.M.’s Thanksgiving dinners were huge and required the whole of his rather meager family. His practice was to have his bursars find him fifty poor freshman students on scholarship who wouldn’t be able to afford to go home. Helen’s loss would have been felt.

“The Dodo didn’t strike,” she said, heading for the team’s office. “He’s way overdue.”

“Yes, he’s done what he intended to-confuse us,” Carmine said. “You’re on your own, Helen, I’m afraid. Nick and Delia are still on special duty. I know it’s not glamorous, but your most valuable occupation will be to man the phones and study. Stella only fields my calls, so the team phones are unattended. Fred has linked all three team offices plus Lieutenants Marshall and Goldberg together, which means you’ll be busy with messages.”

He was smiling; the least she could do was smile back. But as she went to sit at her desk, Helen was fighting annoyance. How dared they? Oh, why wasn’t she older and plainer, why did her hair have to be the famous apricot?

The phone rang.

“Helen MacIntosh taking messages for everyone!”

This was greeted by silence; then came a laugh. “Helen? Isn’t this your phone?”

“Oh, Kurt! I’m sorry, just-oh, it doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve been trying to get you for over a week.”

“The Captain gave me leave. They’ve got something going on that I’m not equipped to participate in, and since I had a private matter to attend to, I applied for leave.”

“I went around to Talisman Towers,” he said, “but no one was ever home. Thanksgiving Day, I suppose. But when your father didn’t know where you were, I was worried!”

“Oh, poor Kurt! I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that. I’ll forgive you anything if you come to Solo’s with me tonight.”

“What a brilliant idea! I can tell you everything.”

“I’ll pick you up at six forty-five,” he said.

“Uh-no, that’s too difficult. I’ll meet you there at seven, okay?”

“It will have to be,” he said, and hung up.

Typical Kurt: he was there to welcome her. Sometimes Helen contemplated arriving somewhere an hour earlier than the appointed time, just to see how early Kurt arrived. Not only was he dreamy to look at, he was also a total gentleman. And a genius besides.

“Did you finish your equations?” she asked, accepting a glass of French chambertin.

“Yes, I did, then went back and rewrote the ones on the tank wall.” He added sparkling mineral water to his own glass.

“Honestly, Kurt, how can you ruin a wine this good by diluting it? Sometimes you don’t make sense.”

“It’s heavy, darling Helen, and I want a clear head.” The icy blue eyes gleamed. “I want to hear your news, for instance.”

“No, let’s start with your news,” she said.

“How do you know I have any?”

“I can read you like a book.”

“Ach, so… It is stale news by now, but you are entitled to know it, I think. Josef was indeed married to the Richter woman, which made his marriage to Dagmar bigamous.”

“I am so sorry!”

“Sorrow is not necessary. No one will ever know. Frau Richter and her son were shot dead just minutes after Josef-isn’t that amazing? Such a coincidence!”

Helen threw her head back and laughed. “About as amazing a coincidence as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meeting at Yalta!”

“That is ironic,” he said placidly, starting on his shrimp cocktail. “This is delicious! You are not shocked?”

“No, Kurt, I’m not shocked. Who did it?”

“Turks, I believe.”

“Who are now on their way back to Turkey to live the life of lords,” she said, still chuckling.

“About that, I cannot postulate.”

“Did the Munich cops make the connection between Frau Richter and Josef von Fahlendorf?”

“How could they? Josef was careful to leave no evidence, and the Frau, who had all the documentation, kept it in her desk-not even locked, can you imagine that?”

“Yes, actually I can,” said Helen, who felt no pity for the Richters. What if she had been fool enough to fall for a con man and foisted him into the MacIntoshes? It wouldn’t have happened, of course, any more than it would happen in the future, but she understood the von Fahlendorf predicament completely. Dagmar had the flaws of genius: she could conceive new formulae and processes and she could administer a multi-factory company with all the shrewdness and knowledge of a born business person, but she couldn’t judge people or manage her private life. How like her was Kurt? Very different in most respects, but…

“Would you fall in love with the wrong person?” she asked.

He raised his head from his food, smiling. “You tell me.”

“If I could, Kurt, I wouldn’t need to ask.”

He put down his fork, took her hands. “Helen, Helen! I am in love with you. I have been in love with you since I first met you at that party of Mark’s ten months ago.”

“Oh, rubbish!” she cried, removing her hands. “You only think you are. It’s not real.”

And like that, he gave it up! “Have it your own way,” he said, pushing the empty shrimp cocktail bowl to one side, a habit that was not etiquette, perhaps, but some people couldn’t bear to look at a dirty plate, and Kurt was one such.

“When did Dagmar tell you?” she asked.

“The day after we returned here.”

“Thus making sure baby brother Kurt wasn’t incriminated.”

“How could any von Fahlendorf?” he asked, eyes wide. “There was nothing to connect our family to Turks on a rampage.”

“How many did die?”

“I have no idea.”

“Another question, Kurt-how wealthy are you?”

“I have more than enough for my personal needs.”

“As much as I have?”

“No, Helen. One-fifth of it-ten million.”

“Safely invested?”

“Absolutely.”

They settled to eat the main course, neither with the temperament to grieve over dead Richters, dead Turks or dead innocents. Dagmar had done the cleaning up her own incompetence had made necessary, it was as simple as that.

“Now,” he said over coffee, “I want to hear your news.”

Her face lit up. “I bought a new apartment,” she said.

“I wasn’t aware you were unhappy at Talisman Towers.”

“I wasn’t, but then I had a chance at an eighth floor condo on Busquash Inlet,” she said, speaking in a rush. “They are so divine, Kurt! The owner of this one was murdered-had her throat cut. I happened to know her a little, and enough about her heirs to think that if I got in fast, they’d sell to me. I offered them one-point-two million, and they jumped at it. Of course probate hasn’t been granted yet, but it’s tied up so that they can’t get out of it. You know them-the Warburton twins.”

He had listened with intense concentration, and nodded when she had ended. “Yes, I know the building, it is beautiful, and the view must be superb. But Helen! So much money! It isn’t worth a quarter of the price you paid.”

“I agree, if it were not for the fact that no more high rises will ever be built on Busquash Peninsula. It would have gone for a million at least at auction. The twins were well aware of that. Everyone is happy!”

“Have you moved in?” Kurt asked.

“Yesterday, finally. I wanted to buy all new furniture-by that I mean some very old, some middling, and some very modern.”

“I ‘d love to see it.”

“Abandon your coffee and follow me to my new home. I’ll make us Jamaican Blue Mountain.”

Amanda would not have known her apartment, Helen had wrought so many changes. The carpet and the upholstery were cobalt blue, the walls and ceiling lime-green, and interesting antiques were scattered about. Her lamps were Tiffany and her chandelier 1910 Murano glass, a collection of magnificent paintings adorned the walls, and two bronze slave-girl lights six feet tall provided the first illumination once the front door was opened. Had she paid attention to her mother, whose taste was famous, she would perhaps have chosen a less strident theme, but Helen had her own ideas and Angela hadn’t been able to budge her. Mom was a source of New York shops and galleries, nothing else.

Kurt hated it, except for the Matisse and the Renoir, which, she admitted, were on loan from her father.

“They do not belong,” Kurt said. “They are too delicate.”

“I see what you mean, and anyway, I think I have to give them back,” she said, sounding displeased. “Dad says my security isn’t good enough. I say, why should anyone know they’re here?”

“I know now, and as time goes on, more and more people will. Come, Helen, your papa is right! There is a black market for work of this caliber.”

“Come and have a look at the bathroom” was her rejoinder, leading the way through a big bedroom containing an enormous bed and into a bathroom tiled in Norwegian Rose marble. “See? It even has a Jacuzzi, and I didn’t have to change a thing, I liked it just as it was.”

“I like the Jacuzzi,” he said, smiling at her, “but I would like it better if you and I were in it minus our clothes.”

She gave him a considering look. “I’ll think about it. Come and see the kitchen. It’s so perfect that I’m thinking of taking cooking lessons.”

“Every woman should know how to cook.”

She gasped. “You male chauvinist pig, Kurt!”

His eyes flashed. “I do not mind the reference to my sex, or to being called a chauvinist, but I will not be called a pig!”

“Pig, pig, pig!” she shouted.

He turned and left her; she heard the front door slam.

“Holy shits!” she said, only half inclined to laugh. The other half was angry-was he that German, that he had no sense of humor? Why did “pig” insult him more than the rest of a famous phrase? For a moment she thought about racing downstairs and begging his pardon, but then the MacIntosh stubbornness cut in; her chin lifted. Fuck Kurt von Fahlendorf!

A Jacuzzi-she’d immerse herself in its bubbles all alone. Not that she would have consented to sharing it with Kurt or any other man. Delia laughed and called her a “professional virgin”, and she had admitted the truth of that to Delia. It didn’t mean she was a physical virgin, it meant she was a cockteaser who pretended to outraged indignation when a man tried to have sex with her, convinced that she wanted it.

“You invite rape, Helen!” one man had said, frustrated.

“Go on!” she exclaimed. “I’m not the one at fault, you are!”

What she suspected about Kurt was certainly true of her: emotional coldness. Never having experienced a strong sexual drive, Helen could only ape its externals, and wondered how many other women were the same. The few men who had attracted her were all dark in a Silvestri way rather than a Captain Delmonico way, and she knew who her next target was going to be: Fernando Vasquez. That he was married and the father of children didn’t enter into her calculations: ethics and money never did, for she had none of the first and too much of the second. Christmas would see her make her move on Fernando, who was surely ripe for an affair, a deduction made for the crudest of reasons: gossip said he’d been faithfully married for a very long time.

Now was the right moment to get rid of Kurt, who was proving hard to get rid of. Which von Fahlendorf had commissioned the Turks, Dagmar or Kurt? It could as easily have been Kurt. In fact, in some ways Kurt made more sense. Would a Muslim culture accept a commission from a woman? Dagmar knew what was afoot, yes, but had she enacted the plan? Probably not, Helen concluded. No, Kurt did that before he boarded the plane, and in such a way that these foreign thugs had obeyed orders to the letter. How did he find them in a basically law-abiding immigrant populace? Kurt might be Nietzsche’s Superman, but he was also mild-mannered Clark Kent, America’s alter ego.

Having solved all that to her satisfaction, Helen stepped into the Jacuzzi and lay being gently pummeled by streams and jets of water for twenty minutes before emerging to wrap herself in a towel and go about her very last chores-bag and gun.

Her handbag went into a Chinese coromandel cabinet inside the front door; in the early days she had left it lying around anywhere, then Delia had objected, explaining that, since the bag held a firearm, she must conceal it. Looking back, Helen knew now that more than her gun had been vulnerable. So had her work journals. Not that anyone ever read them, but Delia had been right, it was better to be sure than sorry.

Her 9mm Parabellum pistol never remained in the bag these days, hadn’t in many weeks. It went under a pillow on her bed and stayed there until the morning. If, as tonight, she came home with someone, she left the person in the living room or, in Kurt’s case, the study, while she used her private bathroom-an excuse that let her enter the bedroom so she could park her weapon. She readied the gun for firing: safety off and a round in the chamber. If an intruder woke her, she didn’t have to fiddle. Tomorrow she would eject the round, insert it in the magazine, and put the safety on. That way, no accident.

I’m tired, she thought, wandering toward the bed.

Something cannoned into her back so forcibly that she went down in a heap on the floor, her face in the white bedroom carpet, her arms behind her back. The towel had gone in the initial attack, but Helen forgot all about modesty as she fought to free herself. He had her face downward and was sitting on her ribs; part of her fight was just to breathe, and she couldn’t seem to use her legs above the knees. Cold metal closed around her ankles and fettered her, then came the click of handcuffs on her wrists. Arms and legs were almost immobilized.

He yanked her on to her back so that she could see him, at the exact moment that she opened her mouth to shout for help. She didn’t seem able to scream, but she could shout, she could definitely shout! Too late. He had the duct tape over her mouth. You fool, you fool! Why didn’t you shout?

She didn’t need to see his face to know it was Kurt. In a weird way, her subconscious had always known Kurt was the Dodo. At dinner tonight, for sure. The paperweight… Why hadn’t her consciousness seen the truth of its significance? She had known, but something in her mind refused to let her admit his name, let her see what tonight had made manifest. After his frankness at Solo’s table, he had nowhere to go except to this.

“Your bed is hedonistic,” he said, looking disgusted. “How many pigs can fit on it at one and the same moment?”

She tossed her head about furiously, drummed her feet on the carpet, made noises of frustration, while her eyes blazed up into his devoid of fear. Take off the gag, let me talk!

Jerking her to her feet, he propelled her to the bed with a series of vicious kicks on the buttocks-he hurt, he hurt! At the bed, he dealt her an even stronger, harder kick that saw her upper half land three feet up the mattress. But her feet and legs didn’t make it, nor could she summon up the traction to move them in any direction; however she tried, they slipped. Then he grasped the ankle chain and lifted her legs himself, arranged her on the bed to please some idea of his own. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, but he couldn’t know why: she wept because he had put her on the far side of a king bed from her gun. Now she had to cross an acre of bed to reach it.

Her mimed show of defiance had produced a reaction; he ripped off the tape.

“Scream, and you will wish you had not,” he said.

“I’m only crying because I can’t kill you.”

A statement that made him laugh. “You are unique, Helen! I am delighted to talk to you. You are so interesting.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said mockingly. “How many of those marvelous disguises did you use, Kurt?”

“I did not count. I enjoy acting.”

“Why switch from rape to murder? Why kill Melantha?”

“Boredom, as much as anything. I needed fresh stimulus.”

“Catherine dos Santos must have stimulated!”

“Yes, I enjoyed that. A close call, but I was alive.”

“You’re crazy, Kurt.”

That stung. “I am not insane! I am a genius!”

“Yes, you are a genius, but in a limited way,” she said, deciding to humor and insult him simultaneously. “A Renaissance man you’re not. Really, all you are is a mathematician with a passion for sub-atomic particles. You couldn’t even get the Dodo’s taxonomic name right.”

“My choice of the Linnaean name was deliberate,” he said loftily. “The bird is an extinct species, therefore inept indeed. What kind of bird walks up to a hungry man and begs to be eaten? The modern taxonomic name is ludicrous! Didus ineptus it was, and Didus ineptus it is to me.”

“But why call yourself a dodo?” Talk to him, talk to him!

“My species is extinct.”

“What species is that?”

“Didus ineptus.”

He won’t tell me that, she thought. Whatever his reason, it’s locked inside his mania. “Tell me more about the dodo.”

“Women have made men so ineffectual that they are extinct! What man is master in his own home anymore? Even a physics bunker is not safe from women! Women are taking over!”

“That’s a load of crap, Kurt, and you know it! You’re manufacturing reasons you think will sidetrack me, and they won’t. I want to know the real reason for being a dodo.”

“Yes, you are intelligent. I have always known that, but never as positively as I do tonight. Why do you waste yourself on a police career? It is vulgar.”

“You’re a snob, Kurt, you couldn’t understand. I don’t waste myself-it’s the stepping stone to a public career that could take me to the White House if I wanted. The problem is that I don’t think I want that. What I know is that the Dodo can make me famous, win me decorations and a lot of media exposure.”

He looked incredulous. “You truly believe you will win?”

Her eyelids lowered, she sneered. “I know I’ll win.”

The chain made a dull, clunking noise as he brushed his hand across it. “Trussed up like a dodo? Like an unbelievably stupid, ugly bird? You cannot win, Helen. In a few hours you will be as dead as a dodo.” He tittered. “I am like the Pope, I am infallible!”

He began pinching, poking, punching and squeezing her flesh; she had to endure it without making the slightest noise, or he would gag her. Whatever happened, she must keep her mouth free! It was her best, her only weapon.

His erection had grown huge; twice he fitted its tip against her entrance and she stiffened, but on each occasion he muttered something in German and positioned himself away from the bed, muttering in German, staring at her.

“You can get it up, but can’t you get it in?” she asked.

“Stupid! Of course I can-if I want to. But the question is, do I want to? I like probing you better.”

“I bet you do!” she said. “It’s more disgusting.”

“Hasten slowly,” he said in her ear, applying tape to her mouth. “You must be silenced whenever I am not in the room. Good for me that you have a new apartment-no one will visit you.” And he flipped her over on to her stomach.

Wriggling desperately to turn over again, she reviewed all her options. She could bite his rubber glove to shreds, but if she did-no. He wouldn’t leave a fingerprint, he was too smart, and he might kill her in a rage. She had to reach her gun, and in order to do that, she had to talk. Talk constantly herself and keep him talking. Talk and her gun were her best options.

Eating a slice of cold pizza, he strolled in.

“Look at you! You’ve turned yourself back again, you clever little dodo! Well, no matter! Why do young American women starve themselves? Their refrigerators are empty. Cottage cheese… Diet this and diet that. I was amazed to find half a pizza in your refrigerator, but it is on its last day of edibility. Don’t you like my big words? You, Helen, are a tough bird. Your every movement tells me that you will not easily succumb to terror.”

He finished the pizza. “Lie there and think of death while I find a book that can teach me a new word or phrase-how I love that!-and entertain me as I wait.”

The books! Her eyes followed him as he walked toward her study, where three thousand books lined its walls. When he came back, he held a book she couldn’t identify. Take off the tape!

He tore the tape off and sat down in a white velvet chair.

“What’s the book, Kurt?”

“H. Rider Haggard. King Solomon’s Mines,” he answered. “I greatly esteem Victorian and Edwardian novels, provided that they are of the adventurous kind,” he said, apparently not averse to more talk. “The prose is excellent and the subject matter lurid. I have found that there is always an example of the genre on the shelves of a bookish woman, and I am not interested in women who are not bookish.”

“What would you do if you didn’t find an example of the genre?”

He laughed. “That cannot happen. I pay several visits to a woman’s apartment to check her out.”

“You haven’t been in this apartment before.”

“Ah, but many times in Talisman Towers!”

“I’ve changed a lot of things, Kurt.”

He opened the book and started to read while Helen continued trying to free her hands, safely hidden behind her back. These, she had realized, were her own cuffs, though the ones connected by a chain on her ankles were his. The Commissioner had taken some of these cuffs as an experiment, for the salesman claimed they tightened the more the prisoner struggled. Helen had been issued a pair to try on Nick and Delia, who soon learned how to immobilize the ratchet. So did Helen.

Kurt the Dodo had put the cuffs on quite efficiently, but hadn’t pushed them cruelly tight, perhaps because he wanted the focus of her pain to be what he did to her.

Her joints were slim and supple, her willpower immense. Pray that her book continued to hold his attention! The short chain held her hands close together; she grasped the fingers of her right hand with her left, clustered them, moved her left hand up to her right’s knuckles, then crushed them until her right hand was nearly as small as its wrist. Oh, the pain! The cuff slid off. Easier to work her imprisoned left hand, a little larger, with the right one liberated; closing her mind to the pain, she forced its knuckles through the cuff and now was completely free. She was in the middle of the bed, what seemed a day’s journey from the pillow, but she made herself lie ostensibly still and worked her way across the bed a millimeter at a time, so slowly that his peripheral vision saw no movement. The book was holding his interest, but if he turned to look at her, she was caught-her position had definitely changed.

She was petrified, understanding that this was her only chance at winning. From the moment when he had stood forth in all the glory of his alter ego, he had cast her into paroxysms of fear. Cold and dark as outer space, he was a creature inhabiting a lightless human body, obsessed with the spectacle of terror and the ecstasy of someone else’s suffering.

But her fear was not for her own torture and death. It was terror that she might fail. She couldn’t fail, she couldn’t!

“Do you take the rests so that you can get it up again?” she asked, interrupting his concentration.

He looked up, startled, and, as she had hoped, didn’t notice how far she had moved.

“Even you cannot inspire me to frenzy,” he said, sneering.

“Have you ever achieved orgasm?”

A look of horrified prudery came over his face. “Disgusting! You are disgusting! Things like that are not your business!”

“What utter crap! Do you come, Kurt?”

Now he was really angry, past noticing that she was moving.

“Immoral! You are immoral!”

A few more inches. Nearly there, nearly there…

He rose from the white velvet chair and stormed toward the bed, face contorted in fury; it was then that Helen saw the silenced.22 on the bedside table next to him. But it was her advantage. Even as she twisted her body up to a sitting position while he, astounded, gaped at her, Helen’s hand came up holding her gun, safety off, round in the chamber. She shot him in the right chest. He leaped backward to sprawl on the fluffy white floor, staring up at her as the pink bubbles gathered on his lips.

“You’re going to be as dead as a dodo, Kurt,” she said, swinging her legs on to the carpet well clear of the growing, wet red stain. “Can you still speak?”

He tried, but coughed instead; his hands flailed.

“Afraid of dying, Kurt?”

That provoked extreme agitation. “This is an excellent apartment, quite sound-proof,” she said in a relaxed, chatty voice. “No one will hear my gun as anything except far-off backfires. I will call the police, of course. When I feel like it. I’m going to make you suffer first. A gut shot. My, it will hurt!”

The squat, ugly muzzle came up; the pistol roared.

Kurt screamed, a thin, fluid sound.

“I don’t think that hit a major artery,” she said, “but you can always hope it did. No, no artery! Just liver and gut.”

His screams were dwindling, the pink foam spilling from his mouth, the blood from the gut shot dark and venous.

She kept talking to him, though whether at the end he heard her, Helen didn’t know.

Only after the last life died from his eyes did she shoot him in the heart. “Show’s over,” she said, looking at her naked body. “No way any cops are going to see this.” She went to her dressing room and slipped on a silk robe, then went to her study and picked up the phone.

“Captain Delmonico? This is Helen MacIntosh. I’ve killed the Dodo in my new apartment at Busquash Inlet. It belonged to Amanda Warburton. Will you organize things, please?”

When Carmine arrived with Delia, she was sitting on the far side of the bed from Kurt von Fahlendorf’s body, composed and displaying no symptoms of shock.

“What happened? The full story,” he said, standing where he could see her, but not too close.

She told him lucidly and plainly; it was, he thought, the most exemplary narration by a killer that he had ever heard; she had learned her lessons well.

“The Commissioner was right not to switch to these cuffs, Captain. Kurt saw them in my study and used them-lucky for me! I did a Houdini while he read his book. My hands are much smaller than yours. I knew how to work them so the ratchet didn’t move.”

“Irony in operation,” Carmine said.

“You knew he was the Dodo,” she accused.

“After reading your journals, yes. That can be your first examination, next Monday morning. Go through them and find out what gave Kurt away. It’s all there.”

“The paperweight?”

“Yes. The little colored glass trails going in all directions look like the tracks of sub-atomic particles. I saw it because I read science magazines.”

“And I saw it because Kurt had shown me photos, but then I forgot until tonight. My memory needs honing.” She looked disapproving. “Why didn’t you arrest him, Captain?”

“It had better be Carmine from now on, Helen. There was no tangible evidence. My big mistake was in thinking he’d never put you on his victims list. You didn’t fit the stereotype in so far as he had one. For example, you were too aggressive. You were a source of information-he read your journals until I saw the light and locked them up. My last mistake,” Carmine said, “was in underestimating the depth of his madness.”

“What about girls who did fit the stereotype, Carmine?” Delia asked. “We had so much trouble finding them.”

“That was because we never managed to refine our list of qualities that appealed to him,” Carmine said. “You and Helen exhausted yourselves looking, but always in something of a fog. Even now, do we really know all the qualities?”

“No,” said Helen. “He gave himself away to me over dinner tonight. I don’t know if he intended to, or not. It also came as a shock to him that I’d left Talisman Towers, moved out of Carew. Living in Carew is a definite, I believe now.”

This little madam is as tough as old army boots, thought Delia as she listened. Oh, she’ll undergo a reaction later on tonight, but nothing a battle-hardened veteran wouldn’t. She is going to be one of those cops around whom criminals steer a wide berth. Dainty and deadly, that’s Helen. I’m glad I like her, but I understand why none of our male detectives do.

“You’re a crack shot, Helen,” Delia said suddenly. “Why didn’t you go for his head?”

“I was so awkwardly positioned,” Helen said, a falter creeping into her voice. “He and I were on almost the same plane, it was like standing sideways to a target. The second shot went into his belly because right at the moment I squeezed the trigger, he leaped in the air. Finally he was right-that was the heart shot.”

“You won’t go to trial, but there will be an internal police enquiry,” Carmine said. “Just tell them that, and don’t lose any sleep. When an officer lethally discharges a firearm, it’s inevitable.”

Her eyes filled with tears, she shivered. “I know all that! Don’t forget that I’ve been a police officer for three years.”

Ah! Signs of tension at last. Thank God for that. Carmine had begun to wonder at her self-control, forgetting she was M.M.’s daughter. Much steel there. “Kurt’s house can wait,” he said.

“I won’t be able to participate?” Helen asked.

“No. The Commissioner hasn’t taken your badge and gun. You can work anything except the Dodo-as a trainee. However, by the end of January I think you can start looking for a proper job.”

Her face lit up. “Captain! Carmine! That’s wonderful.”

“Take comfort from the fact that I’ll never have another trainee half as good. Which makes me doubly sorry for this shooting.”

“You mean there’s no vacancy for me here, sir?”

“I’m afraid not, Helen. We still have a pool of eligible men to wade through. Where would you like to go from here?”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“You do pick odd moments to dispense earth-shaking news,” Delia said as they put their coats on in the hall.

“She’s not nearly as composed as she looks,” Carmine said. “She needed a boost, and her fate is decided.”

“I offered to stay, but she wouldn’t hear of it,” Delia said. “She announced that she’ll sleep on a living room couch-apparently she hasn’t furnished the other bedrooms yet. Knowing she’s still in the throes of decorating makes me hope she does take my one piece of good advice.”

“What advice, Deels?” Carmine pulled the fur flaps of his Russian hat down; it was way below freezing outside.

“I told her not to have a white carpet.”

There was a further job to do that could have been done from Helen’s apartment, but Carmine waited until he was back in his office. He picked through the contents of her bag, surrendered as part of the investigation, and found her private notebook. Dagmar’s phone numbers were under F for Fahlendorf; he hadn’t expected Helen to get that wrong, nor had she. Eyes on the railroad clock, he decided Dagmar might have opened her office. The workload must have increased after Josef’s death, unless he had done a literal nothing for his fat pay check.

She answered with her first name: a very private line.

“Frau von Fahlendorf, this is Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman Police.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“I’m very much afraid I have bad news, ma’am. Your brother, Kurt, died a short time ago.”

When he ceased to speak, only the curious wrongness of the silence told him she was still listening; a broken connection was different, deader.

“Frau von Fahlendorf?”

“Yes, I am here. Kurt died? Kurt?” The incredulity was very apparent. Then, “My little Kurtchen? How?”

“He was shot, ma’am, trying to kill a police officer.”

“You imply Kurt was trying to commit murder?”

“He had already murdered, ma’am. Professor von Fahlendorf was the rapist-killer known as the Dodo,” Carmine said.

Another silence ensued, one Carmine for the life of him couldn’t find words to break; it stretched on and on.

At last she spoke. “Are you sure the name is Dodo? Are you sure Kurt and this Dodo are one and the same?”

“Positive, Frau von Fahlendorf. Positive.”

“How strange that Kurt would choose Didus ineptus! That is the bird you mean by dodo?”

“Yes, it is. Why is it strange?”

“When Kurt was a dunce at chemistry, our father always called him a dodo, too stupid to prevent his own extinction. He meant that Kurt was too stupid to perpetuate the family.”

No use! Carmine was thinking. Kurt’s psychopathology dates from an earlier age than his teens and chemistry. But I’ll ask.

“How old was Kurt at that time?”

“Three-four. He had a brain, we knew that, but Papa was convinced his destiny lay in chemistry,” said Dagmar.

Too flip, far too flip. Why is she lying?

“And that’s it, Frau von Fahlendorf?”

“It is all I can think of.”

He cleared his throat. “Er-the funeral, ma’am. Do you wish the body sent home?”

“I will make the arrangements, Captain. Privacy is all.”

The most intriguing thing he had learned was that the Frau hadn’t really been surprised. Grief showed, then flickered out; Kurt’s sister had been waiting for news like this since-when? His flight to Chubb? Or the chemistry dunce? Though the question that plagued Carmine most was why Kurt the Dodo had attacked Helen.

As always, his only confidante would be Desdemona.

The guest annex at Kurt von Fahlendorf’s house was not where he stored his operational gear; when it was searched at the time of his kidnapping it must have had the Dodo’s souvenired books on display, but no one had known their titles, so their significance wasn’t understood. Now they were joined by a glass paperweight and the glass teddy bear, both exhibited against a black background.

“I wonder why he stole the teddy bear?” Delia asked. “He had no intention of selling it, did he?”

“His original intention was simply to remove it from any location where Helen could see it,” Carmine said. “None of us knew exactly how friendly Helen had become with Amanda Warburton, but Kurt knew. Don’t forget too that he read her journals, in which she admired the glass teddy bear enormously. She was very proud of her skill in discovering the nature of its eyes.”

“But we did know how friendly she was with Amanda,” Delia objected. “She acted under your instructions.”

“Maybe I instructed her, but the friendship wasn’t counterfeit. Kurt was insanely jealous, so much so that his imagination turned her journals into diaries written in a code he couldn’t crack.”

“But they weren’t diaries in a true sense!” Delia cried.

“No code either. Just the tortured thinking patterns of a madman. By the time he broke into the glass shop to steal the teddy bear he was hardly able to keep up a front of sanity. I had his boss, Dean Gulrajani, on my phone at the crack of dawn this morning begging for help. He put the change in Kurt down to the kidnapping, but then admitted it had started when Jane Trefusis, a woman physicist, joined the lab. Kurt hated her.”

“Why murder those two nice, harmless people?” Delia asked.

“My theory is that he thought Amanda was really Helen, and Hank Murray was a new boyfriend. He’d read Helen’s early notebooks, where she’d raved about the glass teddy bear.”

“I know he squired Helen around,” Nick said, “but did he honestly love her? Was he capable of that much reality?”

“No, but he thought he was. His fixation on Helen was multi-layered, and a big section was devoted to his family, how they would react to an American wife. Helen was the only one who fitted. By definition, the teddy bear was hers.”

“Then who was the Vandal?” Nick asked.

“Hank Murray. It couldn’t have been anyone else. He used the Vandal to establish a friendship with Amanda, to whom he was strongly attracted. The trouble was, he had nothing to offer her financially, and his past was shady-no one seems to know whether he took a knife to his wife, or she took it to him. It does seem that he was scared stiff of a trial and its verdict.”

The three of them emerged from Kurt’s house to find Robert and Gordon Warburton lying in wait for them.

“We hear Kurt’s as dead as a dodo,” Robbie said, giggling.

“That joke is worn out by now,” Carmine said wearily.

“Is it true? Is it really true?” Gordie squeaked.

They look like gnomes, Carmine thought, though they aren’t small, or ugly, or misshapen. Other-worldly? No, more sub-wordly. Then it hit him: they were from Mars.

Since it would be on the news, Carmine nodded. “Yes.”

“Didn’t I always tell you?” Gordie asked Robbie. “A villain! A dyed-in-the-wool villain!”

“A dyed-in-the-synthetic villain, from that background.”

Carmine had to smile: they were witty.

“A professor of physics named Kurt

Played with radioactive dirt;

Even God on high

Got some in his eye,

And cast Kurt into Hell for the hurt,” said Robbie.

“You’re probably right about Kurt’s ultimate destiny,” Carmine said. “Do you coin your limericks on the spot?”

“Of course,” said Robbie. “That’s why ‘radioactive’ doesn’t scan properly. Never mind, never mind!”

Gordie rushed into speech. “Captain, Robbie and I had this genius idea for an original screenplay!” The greenish eyes slid sideways in a remarkable suggestion of cold and ruthless passion; a quick glance at the other twin revealed the identical look. “Even now it’s finished and copyrighted, a few weeks can see a stolen version out before we could get ours off the ground. We don’t know any real moguls!” Now there was a hint of persecuted desperation in his voice, and his eyes were wild with fear; the other twin’s look was identical. How do they do it?

“Oh, shut up, Gordie!” Robbie said irritably. “Not that Gordie’s picture is too pessimistic, Captain, it isn’t. It’s more that he bewilders rather than enlightens.”

“Correct,” said Carmine, settling to enjoy the situation. “Enlighten me, Robert-if indeed I address Robert?”

“You do because I am,” said Robert. “Gordie isn’t wrong, Captain, I do assure you. Our screenplay will be pinched, tweaked and bowdlerized out of all recognition, especially the legal kind, leaving us with something no longer original.” He drew Carmine farther away from Delia and Nick. “It has come to our attention, Captain, that Myron Mendel Mandelbaum is your best friend. In fact, that you share a wife. We have been working maniacally to finish our Grand Guignol, which we beg you to read. It’s complete down to the story boards-Gordie is a brilliant, brilliant artist.”

“Story boards?” Carmine asked blankly.

“Yes. Imagine your favorite movie drawn as a gigantic comic book-they’re the story boards. Film is a visual medium, and its purveyors are not fond of reading words. In fact, words are enemies. Reduced to a comic, any Hollywood dodo-oops!-idiot can grasp its plot and substance.” Robbie pulled a face. “I fear that characterization is another matter.”

“You want me to ask Mr. Mandelbaum to grant you an audience?” asked Carmine, loving it.

“Yes, exactly! Our screenplay is perfect for him, but we can’t even get through his outer defenses. If we could just see him in person, I know he’d go for our project! Blood out of Stone may not win any Academy Awards, but it will make gazillions!”

“That’s sure to appeal to Mr. Mandelbaum,” said Carmine with a grin. “If I get you your audience, will you promise to keep out of my way?”

Robbie gave a theatrical gasp and wrung his hands together. “Captain, Captain, if you do that, you won’t even see our dust!”

“Then it’s a deal.” Carmine glanced at his watch. “By now he’ll be at his office. Can I use your phone?”

“Does a fat baby fart? Of course you can!”

The Warburton twins cavorting in joyous circles around him, Carmine entered their house and stopped. A ghastly head, bloated and greenish, was fixed to the wall in front of him.

“That’s Arthur de Mortain,” Gordie said. “Number one in the Stone Man’s trail of victims. They are all descended from King Arthur and his legitimate French wife, Ghislaine.”

“Aren’t you in the film yourselves?”

“In it? Captain, we are it!” Robbie cried. “Behold the Tennyson Twins, sleuths extraordinaire!”

“Ah! The action takes place around 1890.”

“Amid London fogs and gloomy graveyards a-drip with dews and yews. The Stone Man will look like a cross between the mummy and Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Why not make him smooth and handsome like Gregory Peck?”

That didn’t go down well; they were creatures of habit.

“I guarantee you’ll love the Warburton twins and whatever they’ve written,” he said to Myron some minutes later. “It’s pure Hollywood.” He flicked over the pages of one of a number of massive albums. “The movie makes a great comic, which I gather also makes it ideal. Not to mention that the Warburtons are refugees out of a comic… Well? Do I tell them to climb on a westbound plane, or not?”

He hung up. “Climb on a westbound plane today, gentlemen. Mr. Mandelbaum will give you a whole morning, and if he likes your comic, lunch afterward at the Polo Lounge.”

“Courted for my connection to a Hollywood movie mogul,” he said with disgust when they arrived at County Services.

“They sure fell on their feet,” said Nick, not approving. “Innocent of all wrong-doing, the richer by whatever poor Miss Warburton left, and now selling their ideas to Myron Mendel Mandelbaum in person.” His lip curled. “They’re crooks.”

“I agree, Nick, they are,” Carmine said, “but they’re a great example of what can happen to borderline people. Fortune favored them, so crime isn’t necessary.”

“Yeah, like lawyers,” said Nick.

“Someone suing you?”

“No. I’m in Shakespeare’s camp, is all.”

“He must have had the tights sued off him,” Delia said. “Probably by that twister Bacon.”

“No, no, we are not going down this road again!” Carmine yelled. “Just because a couple of cases have resolved themselves doesn’t give us an excuse to celebrate. Too many bodies.”

That’s the part of this job I hate the most, he thought, damping down their enthusiasms and elation at the close of a long and very hard investigation.

Helen came in. “Am I allowed?” she asked.

“Sure. It’s lunch in a minute anyway.”

“Was Kurt the Vandal?” Helen asked.

Carmine went through that again, with some amendments; she didn’t need to know that Kurt saw her, not Amanda, as his victim.

Then she changed the subject abruptly.

“Has Dad seen the glass teddy bear?”

“I’m taking him this afternoon.”

“And I can’t go, right?”

“I’m afraid not, no.”

She drew a breath. “I know it’s off-limits, Carmine, but I don’t see how it can stay sequestered from me,” she said. “It’s a brain-teaser, really, and I can’t come up with the answer. If you know, and you tell me, I promise I won’t mention the Dodo ever again.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Helen.”

“But information brought her back.”

“Okay, one question. Ask.”

“Kurt was at every Carew party, but he certainly wasn’t the sympathetic guy on the secluded couch. I mean, he was up front! Bold as brass, nothing sneaky or anonymous. So what’s with the stranger no one can identify?”

“None of us has an answer. Kurt could easily have gathered sufficient information to fuel his plans, that’s not an issue,” Carmine said. “Who the other guy was is a mystery.”

“Does that mean another Dodo is hunting?”

“If he were, he would have struck by now, and I doubt that Holloman will ever see women concealing rape again, at least in such numbers. Since the victim drawings all show the same man-well, more or less-we have to assume that he did go to the Carew parties. My guess is that he’s a psychologist writing a thesis or a book. As he didn’t announce any intentions in that direction, he’s sneaky and unethical. I understand that Carew is back in party mode, but all the Gentleman Walkers are looking out for the mystery man. If he shows up, he’s under arrest.”

“Even if he’s done nothing?” Helen asked.

“Only for long enough to be interviewed-and warned, if it seems necessary. No one wants Son of Dodo taking over.”

“I never thought of that.” Helen turned to Delia. “I thought you said lightning never strikes twice in the same place?”

“It depends on the lightning, dear.”

“No, that’s too much! Son of Dodo! You’re surely not serious?”

“Then who is he?” Delia asked. “Not a sneaky psychologist.”

M.M. was staggered. “It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, gazing at the glass teddy bear. “Helen’s right about the eyes, they’re mesmerizing.”

“You should have seen it in the shop window, properly lit,” said Carmine. “Took the breath away.”

“I hear you commandeered the dog and the cat.”

“With infant children, I thought it was a good move.”

“Until one of them dies.” M.M. groaned. “What a circus!”

“The voice of experience?”

“Several times.”

“Where are you going to put this beauty?”

“The Aubergs have been nagging me to fund some wonderful art building, but they want it small-intimate, said Horace Auberg. I’m having terrible trouble finding somewhere to put Blue Bear-that’s his classy new name-so I think I’ll ask Horace for Blue Bear’s house. Just one room, with some other pieces around the walls in niches, and Blue Bear in the middle. He’ll have to be ten feet away from the nearest spectator in case some maniac tries to swing a hammer at him.” M.M. sighed. “The world is full of maniacs! Look at Kurt von Fahlendorf. I even hoped my daughter might marry him. You can’t trust anyone anymore.”

“That you can’t,” said Carmine gravely.

“Blue Bear can’t stay here either.”

“He’s off to a bank vault this afternoon, sir. I’ll bring the paperwork around for you, then you can put him in your own vaults.”

“What do you think, Carmine?” M.M. asked as they departed.

“About what, Mr. President?”

“Blue Bear’s house.”

“Ask your wife to chair the approval board. She’ll know.”

“You have a beautiful house,” said Fernando Vasquez to his host that Saturday night, ensconced in Carmine’s leathery study. “So much oriental art, such rich colors.”

“And like the men of ancient Rome, I deal with the decor,” Carmine said, smiling contentedly. It had taken longer to have a dinner for Fernando and his wife than was strictly polite, but Desdemona had to want to do it, and she was only now, in early December, really getting back to her old self.

She was in the kitchen with Solidad Vasquez, leaving the two men to their port and cigars in peace.

“Maureen Marshall thinks that Corey’s been promoted,” said Fernando with a grin.

“His pay is up some,” Carmine said, “and he’s got a very pretty uniform. I give it six months before Maureen starts chewing about some new imagined slight.”

“Know thine enemy,” Fernando said.

“She won’t get through your defenses, will she?”

“Nope. She doesn’t know me the way she knows the rest of you. A large part of your difficulties was due to familiarity, and you know what they say about familiarity-it breeds contempt. My strong suit is the sheer number of my men.”

“I can see the point and the strength of your argument, but don’t forget that Corey was a uniform for eleven years. Some of your most senior men know him very well.”

Fernando laughed. “I can handle Corey-and Maureen.”

Solidad Vasquez was a willowy beauty with that iron backbone most wives of ambitious men seemed to own. It hadn’t taken Desdemona long to discover Solidad’s metal, or to admit that her own backbone was of the ordinary kind. But then, thank God, Carmine was not an overly ambitious man. Though it ate at him sometimes, he liked the job he had. Listening to Solidad’s artless but crafty chatter, Desdemona found it easy to trace the upward rise of the Vasquezes, and, reading what wasn’t said, understood the prejudices and insults that followed those of Hispanic origins. Fernando and Solidad Vasquez were going to get there, hand their children an upper middle class existence.

Desdemona’s extreme fairness and height fascinated her guest.

“Your skin is like milk!” Solidad exclaimed.

“Comes of no sunshine as a child,” said Desdemona, smiling. “The part of England I come from gets a lot of rain and little sun. As for the height-my ancestors were Vikings.”

The Vasquez children, two girls and a boy, were older than the Delmonico pair, but not by enough to kill a burgeoning friendship. For the first time in her American career, Desdemona was choosing a friend for herself, someone unconnected to Carmine’s huge family. Solidad too was a stranger, it made sense for them to stick together, and they liked being opposites in so much, from size and coloring to background and nationality.

The Vasquezes had bought a house on East Circle four doors down, which meant a jetty and a boat shed.

“I liked them, especially Solidad,” Desdemona said to Carmine after their guests had walked home.

“Good,” said Carmine, not blind. “How’s your mood?”

“Back to normal, I would say. No, leave the dishes. Dorcas is coming in tomorrow morning to tidy up.” She huffed. “I can’t thank my Aunt Margaret enough,” she said in a whisper as they passed through the nursery to check on the boys.

“You’ve decided what to do with your legacy?” Carmine asked as they reached their bedroom.

“Yes. It’s going on domestic help. By rights it should go on college fees, but I have a funny feeling that domestic help is more beneficial. I’m such a hygiene freak.”

“Anything that gets you through your days more happily is better,” he said. “I love you, Mrs. Delmonico.”

She snuggled close. “And I love you, Captain.”

“How are you coping with the guns?”

“Quite well. The Taft High business opened my eyes a little. New countries take people from so many different places. Slavery was a part of the people movement too, involuntary though it was. Eventually it will all settle down, just not yet.”

He held her tightly. “You won’t leave me?”

Her head reared up in shock. “Carmine! Whatever made you think that? My goodness, I must have been depressed!” She slid into bed. “Now that Alex is weaned, I’m a box of birds, truly.”

There was no more talk. Words were simply sounds. Passion, tenderness and a delicious familiarity of touch and sensation sometimes meant more than any words.

December wore down toward Christmas in racial discontent and several attempted riots provoked by Black People’s Power; that they came to nothing was due to the city’s small size and careful management. But the BPP continued to create persistent disturbances that no one wanted publicized by arrest and arraignment. The Holloman PD was very busy.

And, as is perpetually the way with people, individual griefs, problems, troubles and dilemmas outweighed the larger picture; a family’s budget was more important than the national one, its members more treasured than anonymous millions.

For Carmine the year tottered to an end in an inevitable mixture of the personal and the cop. Desdemona was commander of her domestic ship again; there were no more attacks of despair, no more delusions of inadequacy, but, having had her fingers burned, Carmine’s wife lost the last of her beloved independence. She was inextricably bound to her family, she would never be free again. Wishful thinking to yearn for it, yet sometimes, in the very remotest watches of the night, its ghostly summons sounded, a tattoo from a distant, youthful battlefield. For Carmine himself this life of watching his sons grow and his wife change was near idyllic, for he sensed that their need of him was greater.

His people settled down in their new configurations, though some of the senior uniforms noticed that the men of Detectives avoided Corey Marshall as if he were a leper. Memories were long; he would always wear the odium of Morty Jones’s suicide and the unhappy fate of Morty’s children. He was, however, a good chief lieutenant for an autocratic martinet like Fernando Vasquez; as he had a staff of his own, paperwork was a breeze.

The problem Helen MacIntosh posed was solved thanks to her ability to suck up huge amounts of professional information; when Carmine told the Commissioner that he thought her ready to move on at the end of January, Silvestri blandly agreed, readying himself to do battle with Hartford over a replacement. As he would have M.M. on side, he anticipated victory.

Judge Thwaites had her measure.

“She’s feral,” he said over Christmas drinks in his chambers.

“Interesting word,” Carmine said.

“As wild as she is cunning, and capable of evading every trap set for her.” His beady old eyes glittered; he sipped his Kentucky bourbon. “A fantastic instinct for the kill.”

“You make her sound a criminal, Doug,” said Silvestri.

“She would be, given a different upbringing. As it is, I predict she’ll be governor of the state before she’s forty-five.”

“Or governor of someone else’s state,” said Carmine. “She’s going to one of the New York Manhattan precincts.”

“Vindicated,” His Honor said with a chuckle. “All of this was only to return from whence she came-as who she wants to be.”

People were looking at her differently since she had shot and killed Kurt von Fahlendorf; Helen was never as conscious of it as when she was with the male detectives. Not overtly from Abe Goldberg, so immensely professional that he could subdue every emotion. And not at all from Carmine Delmonico, who understood her predicament, Helen sensed, because his wife had twice been threatened by a killer with a gun. Some superstitious atavism, buried deep, told Carmine that Helen’s peril had deflected evil intent away from Desdemona.

The rest of the men were a lost cause. Nick, Buzz, Liam, Tony and Donny eyed her warily, avoided one-on-one situations if they possibly could, and dried up conversationally whenever she hove in view. Privately she despised them as specimens off the Ark; they believed women belonged to the kitchen and their children. Well, let them be male chauvinist pigs! She was protected by Captain Delmonico, and she stood on better terms with him than they did.

Delia was Delia, a good friend, a staunch supporter, the loyalest of fellow women. Never having fired her.38 or her Saturday night special save at the range, she couldn’t fit herself into Helen’s shoes, was the trouble. Since her secondment to Abe Goldberg, Helen didn’t see enough of Delia, a pity.

Most astonishing change of all to Helen was that in her parents. Her mother waffled about “bad karma” and was having sessions with her swami or guru or whatever he was called-just like the Beatles, really. Though Angela was very happy at the resolution of a quincunx in Helen’s natal horoscope-it had bothered her ever since, she told Helen, now she knew that it was Helen’s ability to shoot people dead. Her father, one of the nation’s great liberals, found himself on the receiving end of remorseless sarcasm at producing a killer-cop child, and hadn’t thanked her for the adverse publicity.

In fact, Kurt’s death had changed everything, Helen thought as she stared down at Busquash Inlet from behind her glass wall. The Warburton twins, briefly owners of this apartment, were moving back to the West Coast, having struck a fabulous deal with the movie mogul Myron Mendel Mandelbaum to write, direct, and star in a blood soaked film about murder and twin detectives.

It hadn’t taken any steel on her part to continue living here. The white carpet had been replaced by a rust-red one-Delia was right, no snowy bedroom vistas for Helen MacIntosh! The trouble was that now the rust-red carpet was down, she found she didn’t like it. Purple would look better. This debate over decor, she was astonished to discover, was seen by people like the male detectives as callousness! She was supposed to be cringing in fear! Why? Hadn’t she achieved a great victory? She, a weak woman, had put paid to the existence of a man who had raped, tortured and eventually murdered fellow women! They should give her a medal, not subject her to an enquiry. Of course that had exonerated her; she had acted in self-defense.

Some of the consequences were exasperating, like the one that compelled her to see Dr. Liz Meyers and attend the rape clinic sessions devoted to Dodo victims. How she hated those sessions! After she spent two of them insisting loudly that the Dodo had not raped her, Dr. Meyers dismissed her as unsuitable for group therapy of this nature; after another one-on-one session, Dr. Meyers referred Helen to Dr. Matthew Worthing, who specialized in difficult cases. But Helen never saw him.

What a profound experience it had been! The thrill of the kill… When she closed her eyes she could see, as if in slow motion, the crimson flower bloom in Kurt’s bare chest, followed by another in the right upper belly, and a final one over the heart. Not huge blooms, but tight little buds that had slowly unfurled. The sight of him on that white carpet! The look in his eyes! That was best of all. Amazement and terror, absolute incredulity. And then he died. Poof! Lights out.

How often dare I kill? Not here-never again in Holloman! Not even in Connecticut. I’ll be able to kill at least once in Manhattan, maybe twice or three times before I have to move on. Three million square miles of police departments, so many that I can wander from place to place at my whim. I’ll get better at it. To dispose of a body would be a tremendous help…

The look in his eyes! Watching the life vanish from his eyes, I came to climax. Now, even thinking of it, I climax again.