Random Walk: A Novel for a New Age

Seventeen

A Holiday Inn in Pueblo, Colorado. Mark signed in, went to his room. He showered, then put on a pair of bathing trunks.

They were loose in the seat, and the last time he’d worn them they had been tight. There was no question about it — he was losing weight. George Kingland had pointed it out to him before he’d noticed it himself, and the process had gone on uninterrupted since. He’d lost almost two inches in the waistline, he was wearing his belt two notches tighter, and he had slimmed down proportionately all over. When he shaved that morning he’d noticed definition around the jaw that he hadn’t had in years. His jowls were disappearing and he was losing that smug plump look.

He rather liked the change. He hadn’t minded carrying the extra weight, and now he found that he enjoyed losing it. He especially liked the fact that he never deprived himself at the table; indeed, he’d begun losing weight without any intent, and continued to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it.

Still, he was eating less. Until he’d decided to devote the summer to the pursuit of young women, he had lived with Marilee and the children and eaten breakfast and dinner at home. When he’d gone away overnight, on a two- or three-day trip to some other city, he had eaten in much the same fashion.

Now there were no points on his compass, no true rhythms to his days. Since his final departure from Wichita Falls, his sleeping habits had been erratic. He might go to sleep or get up at almost any time. Many of the chain restaurants stayed open twenty-four hours and offered their entire menu around the clock, so that you could get up in the late afternoon and go out for breakfast, then have a dinner salad at seven-thirty in the morning. Sometimes he would forget to eat; other times he would consider it and decide he wasn’t hungry.

It seemed to be agreeing with him. He felt fine, and his energy level was high. He didn’t look drawn or wasted, as people sometimes did after rapid weight loss. At first he had been a little concerned, because weight loss without dieting could be symptomatic of various illnesses, but then he’d realized that he was dieting, but that it was unintentional. He was snacking a lot less, and he suspected that had something to do with it. He didn’t seem to crave cookies and candy bars as he once had, and if he did have a snack it generally wound up serving as a replacement for a meal.

The Easy Weight-Loss Diet, he thought. When hunger strikes, just go out and kill someone lovely.

He went down to the pool, swam a couple of laps, stretched out on a chaise and let the sun dry him off. It was fairly late in the afternoon but the sun still had plenty of power left in it. He took a moment to look around the pool, noticing who was there, deciding which of the women he found attractive. There was a slender brunette who was sitting with her husband; she was a little thinner than he liked, but she would do. And there was a chubby teenager who kept climbing up the ladder, tugging the top of her one-piece suit up over the tops of her breasts, then mounting the diving board and plunging into the water, only to repeat the entire process moments later. She looked to be a blonde — it was hard to tell, her bathing cap covered everything but the nape of her neck — and she was cute, with a nice little puppy-fat body and shapely young legs. But she was too young, sixteen at the most.

Still, both of them would do for fantasy material, and that was as much as he wanted right now. He had killed a hitchhiker the previous morning, leaving her body in a culvert where it might never be found, and he might not hunt at all today, or tomorrow either, for that matter.

Something had crested in Wichita Falls. Missy Flanders had been quite literally irresistible, and he never could have rested until he had taken her. Since then he had been able to resume killing for the pleasure of it. When he was lucky enough to find a woman who really moved him he just had to have her, but not out of the absolute need that had operated in Wichita Falls. Now, if he found some little darling irresistible, it meant that he chose not to resist her. With Missy there had been no choice involved.

Now he closed his eyes and remembered the hitchhiker from yesterday morning. He remembered her eyes, and the way she had nibbled her lower lip when she asked him how far he was going. He thought about what he had done, and for just the shadow of a moment he wondered who might be waiting for her to come home, but those sort of thoughts were rare, and they never occupied him long.

He thought his thoughts, and he opened his eyes from time to time to glance at the teenager (pulling the top of her suit up again; why didn’t she give it up, those tits were not going to stay completely covered, not by that suit) and the married woman.

He liked the tight feeling in his groin, and the warmth that was centered there. He liked the heat of the sun, too, and the breeze that blew up every now and then.

He dozed off, and when he stirred and opened his eyes the pool area was almost empty. The sun was gone; it wouldn’t set for some hours yet, but it had dropped from view behind the wall of the hotel. He was almost alone at the pool. The puppy-fat teenager was still there, lying on a chaise now with her bathing cap off, and yes, she was a blonde, and at last her suit was able to cover her breasts, and would probably continue to do the job until she moved.

The brunette and her husband were gone, and so were almost all of the others. One older man, gray-haired and slack-muscled, splashed himself in the shallow end, and a couple across the pool from him were even now gathering up their towels and returning to their room.

The old man left a few moments later, tucking his feet into a pair of beach slippers and shuffling off. Only the girl was left, and as Mark considered this fact she sat up, exposing the top portion of her breasts, and gave the suit her usual yank. She tucked her blond hair into her bathing cap, doing a careful job of it and fastening the strap under her chin. Then she stood up and walked to the diving board.

He studied the backs of her thighs as she walked. Come back in a couple of years, he told her silently. Come around when you’re old enough. You don’t even have to lose that puppy fat, it’s charming, but get a little older and turn up again in my life, and we’ll see what we can do with you.

She did a series of simple dives, each time adjusting the suit as she emerged from the water. Watching her, an audience of one, he began to feel intimately connected to her, as though she were addressing her performance exclusively to him. The pool area became a secluded world, and they its only occupants.

He placed a hand on his groin and felt himself. He was fully erect, urgently so, and he ached, but not unpleasantly.

Not true, he thought. There was something he could take. He could take her.

He sat there, still touching himself, still watching her, and objections occurred to him. She was too young. He was a registered guest of this hotel. And, more to the point, anyone could approach the pool at any moment and see what was going on. Even if no one decided to go for a swim, there was a wall of windows overlooking the pool. Someone could look out at them, someone could see.

She dove again and he waited for her to swim to the ladder. This time, however, she swam the length of the pool, turned, swam back. He watched her swimming laps, her crawl stroke choppy but effective. The quick glimpse of her hairless underarm midway through each stroke was a special intimacy.

He stood up, his legs trembling slightly, and walked over to the shallow end, lowering himself slowly into the water. He glided toward her in an economical breaststroke. She had switched from the crawl to a modified backstroke, using her arms as oars and rowing back and forth across the pool. He stayed with the breaststroke and matched her pace, swimming a few feet away from her.

When she relaxed and floated on her back, he swam over to her. She opened her eyes at his approach and smiled at him. “Hi,” she said.

“You shouldn’t keep pulling your suit up,” he said

“Huh?”

“Those titties are too nice to hide. You should let people see them.”

The shock in her face was something to see. She didn’t know how to react, and before she could decide he had her by the shoulders. He flung his body upon hers and extended his arms, pinning her beneath the water’s surface. She fought, she struggled, and she was strong and agile from all that swimming, but he was stronger and he had the great advantage of surprise. She put up a good fight, she was game as a trout, but at last she weakened and she was his. His climax came when the fight went out of her and the first bubbles issued from her mouth and nose.

When she was still, her lungs filled with water, her eyes open and staring, he lowered the top of her bathing suit and took her milk-white breasts in his hands. He held her for a moment. Then he released her and she slipped down toward the bottom of the pool.

#94.

In Denver he spent part of an afternoon going over some figures with his property management people. He drove by the house where Mr. and Mrs. Minnick still occupied the top flat, and he remembered how urgently he’d responded to the round-faced round-bodied little creature. Was she home now? Should he knock on her door, tell her how proud he was to be her landlord, and give her a gentle little push into the next world? Two months ago the risk had seemed too great. Now it didn’t appear all that dangerous.

Still, he decided against it. Maybe later, maybe on another trip to Denver. That was the nice thing about Mrs. Minnick. He knew where she lived, and she wasn’t going anywhere. She could remain indefinitely on his unwritten list, and someday, when the time was right and the need was great, he’d put a little checkmark next to her name.

He drove down into Littleton and managed to find the 7-Eleven store where he’d stunned the cashier with a can of motor oil and finished her off in the lavatory. It seemed ages ago, and he remembered how he’d had to improvise, how driven he’d been and how he’d had to hurry.

Nowadays he was calmer, more confident. He walked through the store’s aisles and paused to pick up a can of motor oil and feel its weight. He put it back, picked up a newspaper and took it to the counter.

The attendant was a young woman with a mouthful of chewing gum. Her plastic badge said her name was Tina. She wasn’t pretty enough; anyway, the store was crowded. He paid for his paper and left.

After Denver he intended to drive home to Kansas City to see Marilee and the children. He got on the Interstate and drove east through Kansas, but something made him get off halfway across the state to Salina.

In the morning after breakfast he went hunting. He drove to a supermarket and pushed his cart up and down the aisles, looking for women. For almost an hour he cruised the air-conditioned market without finding anyone. The few women who appealed to him had children in tow, either walking at their sides or sharing cart space with heads of lettuce and boxes of Tide.

He left because he was afraid he might be making himself conspicuous. He abandoned his cart rather than go through the charade of buying groceries he didn’t need, and it seemed to him that people were regarding him with suspicion as he left the store. He drove right out of Salina and headed towards Kansas City again, but once more he stopped short of his destination, getting off I-70 at Junction City and driving up to Manhattan.

He found a suburban supermarket and began cruising the aisles, and within ten minutes he had spotted someone, a tall brown-haired woman who wore her hair in Indian-style braids. The hairdo plus her bib overalls and sandals made her look younger than she actually was; on closer inspection, he guessed her to be around thirty.

Nice figure. Good long legs. He beat her to the checkout counter, paid for a loaf of bread and a can of ravioli, and went to his car. When she drove out of the lot he was right behind her.

And she led him a merry chase. Instead of going straight home she drove to her bank, to another plaza to pick up her dry cleaning, to a K-Mart, and to an open-air farmers’ market just outside of town. Finally he followed her into the subdivision where she lived, but when she pulled into a driveway there was another car already parked there, and he looked at his watch and guessed that her husband was home. He made a face and tried to figure out how to get out of the subdivision.

In the morning he woke up thinking about her. He wasn’t obsessed, it wasn’t like Wichita Falls. He skipped breakfast and scouted a chain drugstore and a supermarket without finding anyone he liked. Back in his car, he wondered if he could even find her house. He hadn’t been paying attention when he drove there, and on the way back he’d just been trying to make his way out of the maze.

He started by finding the farmer’s market, and then he was able to retrace his route with surprising ease. He might have had trouble recognizing her house but her car was parked in the driveway and he had spent enough time following it to spot it at once. And this time her husband’s car was not present.

He left the Lincoln at the curb, picked up his clipboard, and rang her doorbell. She came to the door wearing a flared denim skirt and a white cotton blouse with a scoop neckline. A golden chain around her neck held a small gold cross set with diamonds. She had gold hoop earrings, and several bracelets on each wrist.

“Water company,” he said.

As soon as she turned her back on him he got a forearm around her throat and a hand over her mouth. She squirmed in his embrace, and it felt so good and he had waited so long that he was terribly eager, with the result that he very nearly throttled her on the spot. He wanted to, but at the same time he had invested enough time and effort in this to make him want to get his money’s worth out of her. So he eased into a choke hold and put her to sleep.

He had brought nothing with him but the clipboard, so he found her hardware drawer and searched through it. He stripped her naked and bound her hands and feet with picture wire, then looked for some tape for her mouth. He couldn’t find any. There was a nice and he took it from the drawer and set it down next to her, but there was no tape.

He was closing the drawer when he saw the tube of Krazy Glue. He looked at it and read the instructions carefully. Then he spread a thin film of the stuff on her upper and lower lip and pressed them together. He capped the tube, waited a minute or two, and tried to spread her lips with his fingers. They seemed to be stuck together firmly.

He ran a hand idly over her body and waited for her to come to. At last her eyes opened, and she looked at him in unbelieving terror and tried to open her mouth to scream, and of course she couldn’t. No matter how she fought, her lips refused to open.

He spent half an hour with her. Once the phone rang, and the calling party let it ring a full dozen times before giving up. When it finally stopped he decided he couldn’t wait any longer, and he reached for the icepick. Just as he was about to drive it into her ear he had another thought, and he set the aside and retrieved the tube of glue.

He put a small drop in each nostril and gently, gently, pinched them shut.

#95.

He was already out of town, heading north into Nebraska, when he remembered that he’d intended to go home to Kansas City. He thought about turning the car around but instead kept on in the direction he was going and drove into Lincoln. He hung around Lincoln until he got a nurse who’d just finished her shift at St. Elizabeth Hospital. From there he drove to Omaha, where he stayed two nights, then drove over the bridge to Council Bluffs and killed a housewife with the icepick he’d carried off from the house in Manhattan.

He got two women a few hours apart in Des Moines. North of there, in Ames, he scouted a supermarket and liked one of the checkout girls best of all. He was in his car when the market closed, and when she emerged heading for her own car he stalked her and picked a good spot and swooped down on her, striking her over the head with a tire iron. He didn’t bother to immobilize her with wire or tape, just bundled her into the trunk of his car and drove off with her, and he didn’t stop to open the trunk until he was miles from town on a country lane.

And she was already dead. Evidently he’d hit too hard with the tire iron. She was his hundredth kill, too, and it seemed to him that there should be some significance to the number, yet here she was, pointlessly dead.

She was pretty, too.

He carried her fifteen yards from the roadside and set her down where she wouldn’t be quickly found. A wave of nausea struck him, and he was almost sick. He went back to his car and sat behind the wheel for a while, thinking about things. Then he turned the key in the ignition and drove off.

Maybe it was time to stop.

The thought kept coming to him. He drove south from Ames, skirting Des Moines. It was late, he ought to get a hotel room, but he didn’t feel like it. He drove west on 80, thinking he could take a left at Council Bluffs and drive right through to Kansas City.

Instead he turned right and drove north on I-29 all the way to Sioux City.

He checked into a Ramada, slept for two hours, and woke up clawing his way out of a nightmare. In it, he kept killing the same woman over and over again and he couldn’t make her die. She came back to life again and again. He strangled her, he snapped her neck, he cut her and stabbed her, and she wouldn’t stay dead. Finally she was laughing at him, asking him if he knew who she was. Her face began to come more sharply into focus, he was on the point of recognizing her, and he came abruptly awake, breathless and covered with a fine film of perspiration.

Maybe it was time to stop.

He thought of the girl in Ames, the checkout girl, and how her death had been wasted. But weren’t they all wasted? He remembered the nausea that had threatened to overwhelm him, and as an experiment he let himself recall one of his other recent kills. The nurse in Lincoln, with her white uniform, wilted after a long day’s work, and her big soft pillow tits. He thought of her pain and her absence from the world now, and the nausea welled up in him, if less vivid than in Ames.

But he felt excitement, too. He was sickened and excited at the same time.

He couldn’t go back to sleep. He found an all-night Denny’s and had something to eat, drove around, returned to his room. He watched Australian Rules Football on ESPN, the announcer chattering away excitedly about something that made no sense to Mark. The bodies on the screen were just a blur, the voice just noise.

He couldn’t decide what to do.

After two days he checked out of the Ramada. He drove around, unable to decide where to go, and wound up staying in Sioux City, checking in at the Rodeway Inn. The television set at the Rodeway got the same cable stations as the one at the Ramada. The pool was a little smaller, but they had a sauna.

What difference did it make where he stayed? Or which city he stayed in?

Maybe it was time to stop.

The following night he went out for dinner. He wasn’t hungry but he made himself order baked chicken with a green salad. His waitress was a striking young woman, with long black hair and strong facial features — a hawk nose, deep-set eyes, a red slash of a mouth. Her uniform was tight over her breasts, and the skirt was short enough to show good legs.

He had brought a newspaper to the table, and he read it while he ate, but from time to time he would set it aside and steal a look at the waitress. She was nice. He wasn’t going to do anything about it, hadn’t done anything since the episode with the tire iron in Ames, but this didn’t mean he could stop looking at her, or thinking about her.

He ordered coffee but no dessert. He had drunk about a third of the coffee when she came unbidden to refill his cup. Quietly, without moving her lips, she said, “I get off at eleven. If you’re interested.” He was too stunned to reply. “Meet me in the lot outside,” she went on, her voice just strong enough to reach his ear. “My car’s the white Trans-Am. If you’re interested.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“I figured you might.”

He didn’t know that he’d come back for her. All the same, he paid the check in cash instead of with the credit card he’d planned on using. He left a good tip but not an outrageous one. On his way to the Lincoln he saw her white Trans-Am parked all the way at the back of the lot.

He drove around for two hours, trying to decide what to do. At ten minutes of eleven he was back at the restaurant lot, the Lincoln parked alongside the Trans-Am.

He got out of the car, leaned against the fender and waited. At five past the hour she exited the restaurant by the side door. She was still wearing her uniform and carrying her purse. Her face lit up when she saw him, and she hurried across the blacktop to him.

“I didn’t know if you’d be here,” she said. “I didn’t know for sure if I wanted you to. But the minute I saw you I was glad you came back. I don’t do this often.”

“Neither do I.”

“But the way you were looking at me, it really got to me. I mean it got me hot.”

“I didn’t mean to stare.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining.” Her eyes were very dark, black in the dim light of the parking lot. “My name’s T.J. You don’t want to know what it stands for.”

“I’m Mark.”

“Well, Mark, do you want to go for a drink? Because I don’t, particularly.”

“What do you want to do?”

For answer, she came into his arms and kissed him. The move took him a little by surprise, but he put his arms around her and felt her body against him and her mouth on his, and the kiss lasted.

“Wow,” she said.

“You’re a pretty good kisser, T.J.”

“So are you. That was research, I wanted to check the chemistry. While I was at it I seem to have broken the ice. You want to come to my place?”

“Sure.”

“This your car? I think we better take two cars. If we got in yours we’d never make it out of the lot. Have you got the leather seats? Maybe we should get in your car.”

“You like leather, T.J.?”

“I like everything,” she said. “God, you got me hot. Feel,” she commanded, and pressed his hand between her legs. He had just a moment to feel the damp warmth of her before she danced away, laughing. “Now you follow me, okay?”

Tagging along after her, he realized that he didn’t have to hurt her. She wasn’t a stranger now. They knew each other’s names, they had kissed, she was eager to be his companion for the evening. He could make love to her.

He hadn’t done that in a long time.

Her apartment was a one-bedroom unit in a garden apartment complex north of town near the river. She parked in her space and showed him where to leave the Lincoln. Inside, she showed him around, then offered to make coffee. He said he didn’t want any.

She lived in comfortable disorder. One wall was given over to bookcases made of boards and concrete blocks. The books, almost all paperbacks, filled the shelves and spilled over onto the floor. There were several unframed posters tacked to the walls, their edges curling around the tacks. Two of them advertised resorts on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. A third was a movie poster, with Jeff Bridges aiming an enormous pistol at the audience.

Her bed was a foam mattress on a plywood platform, and they were stretched out on it not ten minutes after they entered the apartment. “I’d hate for you to think I’m easy,” she said, after kissing him, “but why waste time?”

She was beautiful. Her uniform had hinted at the lushness of her figure, but with her clothes off she was better than he had expected, with beautifully shaped full breasts and a very narrow waist. He lay on the bed with her and held her in his arms and kissed her mouth, and he knew that this was going to be all right, that everything would be fine. He didn’t even want to harm her, he just wanted to give her pleasure.

“Lie still,” he told her after a moment, and he moved lower to pay some attention to her breasts. She responded nicely, she loved what he was doing to her, and he lingered awhile at her breasts, delighting in them.

Then he moved lower, stationing himself between her thighs. She was gratifyingly passionate, very vocal in her enthusiasm. He brought her to a shattering orgasm, then went on licking her until he had coaxed the last sweet tremor out of her body.

When he lay down beside her she said, “Holy shit. I think the phrase we’re looking for is ‘beyond her wildest dreams.’ Where’d you learn to do that?”

“There was this special on public television.”

“Is that right? I bet you watched it more than once. But now we’ve got to do something for you.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Are you? Oh, my, look what you’re trying to hide from me. ‘Officer, he had a concealed weapon.’ Mark, I have a place for you to conceal it.” Her hand fastened on him. “Come on,” she said, tugging. “If you think you’re going to escape with that beauty you’re out of your mind.”

And after all, why shouldn’t he do what she wanted? He didn’t have to worry about evidence. If his pubic hair cared to merge with hers, what difference did it make? He wasn’t going to hurt her. He could leave behind all the evidence in the world.

He slipped easily, deliciously, inside her. Her arms held him, her breasts cushioned him, her hips rocked him. They found a rhythm together and held it, and he gave himself up to the sensations of her flesh on his.

He brought her twice to climax that way and got no closer to it himself. He considered pretending, but now he wanted the release of orgasm, even needed it. Carefully, deliberately, he allowed himself a fantasy.

And in the fantasy he was with the checkout girl from Ames, but the fantasy took a different turn from the moment he parked the car on the deserted country road and opened the trunk. Instead of a corpse she emerged wild-eyed and furious, brandishing the tire iron with which he’d struck her down. And he took the tire iron away from her, snapping her arm at the elbow as he did so, and she cried out in pain and shock, but they were miles from the nearest house and no one could hear her.

And he stripped her naked, and first he had to punish her for attacking him, and he punished her brutally and with imagination. He used the tire iron. He used his hands and his teeth. He was cruel, very cruel…

And he was careful now, very careful, careful to keep his own hands away from T.J.’s neck, careful to let the fantasy play only in his mind while his body made love. And it worked, he reached his dry climax, and lay spent upon her.

But she wouldn’t leave it alone.

“Mark? How come you didn’t finish?”

“I did.”

“Then why aren’t I all wet and sticky?” She got up on an elbow. “Listen,” she said, “I feel like a violin that somebody just played the living shit out of. I never had loving this good. I mean it.”

He didn’t know what to say.

“If there’s something special you like—”

“There’s nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. Look, you don’t have to be embarrassed with me. I’m as kinky as you are, I like everything. You know what I am? I’m tri-sexual. If it’s sexual, I wanna try it.”

T.J., T.J., leave it the hell alone.

“Tell me what you like,” she said, “and we’ll do it.”

“How would you feel,” he said slowly, “about being tied up?”

She found a ball of binder’s twine and he tied her spreadeagled on her back on the bed, a pillow underneath her bottom. There were storage drawers in the platform the mattress rested on, and he anchored the twine to the drawer handles. When he was satisfied with her bondage he told her to try to move.

“I can’t,” she said, grinning.

“Do you feel helpless?”

“Sort of.”

“I may do things that frighten you a little,” he told her. “That’s part of the excitement. Let yourself be frightened, but at the same time remember that it’s safe.”

“Like a horror movie,” she said. “It’s a way you can be comfortable with your fear.”

He ran a hand lightly over her body. She moaned softly, appreciatively. “I think I could learn to like this,” she said.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her.

In the bathroom medicine cabinet he found a roll of white adhesive tape. He tore off strips and made a patch three inches square. He returned to the bedroom and sat down on the bed beside her.

“Now I’d like to tape your mouth,” he said, “but first I want to make sure it’s all right with you.”

“Well—”

“Because obviously you’re more helpless when you can’t make a sound.”

“You’re really an expert on this, aren’t you?”

“Well—”

“And you weren’t going to say a word about it, were you? I had to coax it out of you. How can you get what you want in this world if you don’t ask for it?”

He shrugged.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Tape my mouth. It’s the only way you’ll ever get me to shut up.”

He fastened the patch over her mouth, but first he gave her a kiss. Then, when she could not make a sound, he put his hands between her parted thighs and began playing with her. Her eyes were locked with his at first, but after a few moments she was sopping wet and she had to close her eyes. He made her come with his fingers, and when she opened her eyes at last she looked awestruck and overwhelmed. He knew that she wanted to say something, but of course her mouth was taped and she couldn’t.

He went to the kitchen. Sabatier carbon-steel knives hung on a magnetized board next to the sink. He took down the largest one and tested its blade for sharpness with his thumb. In old Japan they had tested samurai swords by lining up peasants and seeing how many the blade would slice through in a single pass. “Ah, very good, a six-peasant sword.” And what would be a fitting test for this knife?

He saw himself sitting on the bed beside her, showing her the knife, then laying the flat of it upon her stomach. “Now here’s the part you might not like, angel. Here’s where I cut your tits off.”

She would think it was part of the game. She would be frightened, but not really frightened, not really thinking she was in danger, and she wouldn’t really believe it until she felt the knife.

He swayed, leaned against the sink for support. Ignorant armies clashed on a battlefield within him. At length he opened his eyes and put the knife down on the sinkboard.

His clothes were piled on a rush-seated chair in the bedroom. He scooped them up, bent to retrieve his shoes. From the bedroom doorway he told her he’d be back in a minute. “You stay right where you are,” he said.

He dressed in the kitchen. Making as little noise as possible, he let himself out of the house and got behind the wheel of his car. The motor was running before he realized he had brought the kitchen knife with him. There it was, gleaming on the seat beside him. He didn’t dare try to return it.

A mile down the road he thought he ought to call someone. An anonymous phone call to the police, saying merely that a woman needed assistance at such-and-such an address. She’d be embarrassed when they showed up and found her like that, but at least she’d be cut loose.

But how could he make the call? He didn’t know the name or address of the apartment complex, or the number of her unit. He didn’t know her name, either, not her last name or her first name, just a pair of initials.

So let her work it out herself. She wasn’t tied all that tightly, or that securely. Sooner or later she’d work a hand loose.

In any case, he couldn’t go back. If he went back, if he set foot again in that apartment, he’d kill her.

There was no way out.

Driving, driving aimlessly, he began to see the hopelessness of his situation. He had almost killed T.J. Never mind that the knife was never in the same room with her; in point of fact, she had been within inches of death. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, he had made a firm conscious decision that he was not going to kill her. It wasn’t just the risk he’d have been running — his pubic hairs shed in her bed, his fingerprints idly impressed on more surfaces in her apartment than he could ever remember to wipe. More to the point, he had wanted the night to end with the woman alive and well. He had made love to her, he had felt something for her, and the last thing he’d wanted to do was kill her.

Yet he’d very nearly done it anyway. He’d had to fight with himself, and he’d come very close to losing.

He wasn’t going to be able to stop killing. If it had ever been a matter of choice, it had long since become something else. He would go on killing, and he would never entirely enjoy it again.

It would still thrill him. It would have thrilled him just now, with T.J., although it would have sickened and revolted him in the bargain. It would even continue to provide a measure of satisfaction. But he had reached that point in the cycle of addiction where he could no longer genuinely enjoy what he now more than ever required.

And what would happen to him?

Well, sooner or later they would catch him. They might already have realized that a serial killer was circling the region. As much as he’d varied his victims and his methods, the sheer quantity of his work would establish some sort of pattern. There was probably something about the way he tied a woman’s hands behind her back, for instance, that would mark several of his killings as the work of a single killer.

And he’d take more chances, not to test limits or raise the stakes, but because there seemed less reason for caution. Sooner or later they’d catch up with him, and when that happened he suspected he would most likely confess. Once it was over, why draw it out?

And then? A death sentence, a life sentence, or a state hospital for the criminally insane. All three prospects seemed about as attractive. Until then he would do what he had no choice but to do. He would keep traveling, and he would continue killing, and he would play the string out to the end. He would not make it easy for them.

He stopped for gas at an all-night station on the highway. He filled the tank, went to pay. The clerk was a woman, not pretty, but there was something about her. He put his credit card away and paid cash and went back to the car for the kitchen knife.

#101.

Driving again, he thought of T.J. By now she had surely realized that he wasn’t coming back. She’d think it was the kinkiest thing ever. She might even like it.

But she’d never guess how close she had come to dying. And, thinking of that, he realized why he had been unable to allow himself to return to Kansas City. Somehow he had known that he could no longer trust himself around his wife. Or his daughter.

He drove into South Dakota. He didn’t pay any real attention to the route. The car seemed to know where it wanted to take him.