The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 15

Ziggy ran down the track, swift and silent as the wind that followed the trains through the close tunnels. Meeting Tesla was not a worry. Dog and man were at work for the day. The man had a company in Grand Central Terminal, and he’d be up there all day. For now, the tunnels belonged to Ziggy.

Owning the tunnels during the day was useless. The trains ran so often a man couldn’t hear himself think, let alone have a sustained conversation with someone else. Track workers and the occasional homeless person wandered around, so there was no real privacy. Most importantly, during the day the women didn’t have the feeling of despair Ziggy craved. He needed the tunnels at night.

His legs burned, and his backpack thumped against his back, but he didn’t slacken his pace. He liked running in the semi-darkness. He moved between gray walls of Manhattan schist like a ghost, shoes quiet against train ties and stones. No one could catch him down here.

He was wild and free, and his new mission was driving that man and his dog out. But the man had to choose. Though an outsider would dispute it, Ziggy hadn’t killed those women. He’d held a mirror up to their pitiful lives and, gazing into its depths, they had chosen their fates. He’d not pushed one, never even touched one in her final moment. Every single one could have stepped off the tracks and walked away unharmed.

None had.

He’d always found women who sought death. Even if they didn’t know it themselves, he did. Despair hung around each woman like a black miasma. He drew the darkness around her like a cape, showed her how the blackness had reached inside of her, and let her decide how to save herself from her misery.

He envied them. They had courage so few possessed, including him. They always reached peace; he never did. His doom was to keep searching for them, set them free, but remain trapped himself.

It wasn’t fair.

Tesla was trapped, too. He couldn’t leave the tunnels. He, too, despaired. Ziggy felt it. He only had to show the man his own well of darkness. Then Tesla would make the same choice the women had, the choice he should have made all those months before. Then he would be dead.

And Ziggy would be alone again.

Tonight, he’d find a woman. He’d draw his game out over the next few nights, taking her only when the man was neutralized. He hadn’t ever stalked a woman for more than a single night before. It would be fun to draw it out, to play with her again and again before freeing her from her despair. He’d have more moments to look back on when he held the new lipstick in his hands.

Breathing hard, he stopped in front of a metal door. Next to it an electronic keypad glowed green. They guarded the tunnel to the man’s house. Behind that door, the man and his dog had built a comfortable life together. They had settled too easily into his underground world. He must change that.

He took a small object from his pocket. Still in a protective bag, the plastic crinkled in his hand. He’d bought the device at a shop downtown, paying cash instead of using a credit card, although he didn’t see how the device could ever be traced back to him. But it was always better to be careful.

The device was the kind of thing that made him happy to be living in the twenty-first century. It was a tiny spy camera that fit easily in his palm and weighed very little. According to the package, the camera was activated by body heat and could record hours of video on a single charge. It even had night-vision capabilities. All that for less than the price of dinner at a high-end restaurant.

He shrugged off his backpack and set it on the stone floor. Metal clanked inside. With one quick unzip, he revealed a tactical portable ladder designed for military operations. It was lightweight and folded down small. He’d bought it at a military supply store, also using cash.

Working quickly, he donned gloves and positioned the ladder against the wall next to the door that blocked his way into that man’s domain. He climbed up, calculated the angle, and stuck the camera to the ceiling with a piece of double-sided tape. He aimed the camera’s gaze directly at the keypad. The next time Tesla came in through this door, Ziggy’s hidden eye would see his password.

Excitement bubbled up in him. By tomorrow, he’d be in Tesla’s house, able to show him the darkness that choked his life. Ziggy would use his drugs and his wits, and the man would realize he had nothing to live for.

That’s when he’d make his choice, the same as the others.