The Impaler

Chapter 68

An hour after Edmund Lambert’s good night text to Cindy, the General saw the light go off in Bradley Cox’s apartment. He didn’t know if the young man was alone; didn’t know if the redheaded female with whom he sometimes copulated was staying with him. But the General didn’t care. He would take them both if he had to.

The timing of things demanded it.

Of course, the General would’ve much rather had the luxury to plan as he’d done with the other soldiers. At the same time, however, he was worried because of the uncertainty of what was to come. The time line of things most certainly would have to change. Of that, the General was sure. And he would need to leave the farmhouse and the doorway behind very soon—it was too risky to stay there to balance the equation, to complete the nine—but where would he go?

The doorway would tell him. Once it was finished draining, and once he had taken care of Cox, he would know what to do next.

The General had driven the FBI agent’s TrailBlazer and parked it in a lot across from the young actor’s apartment building—a two-level, student shithouse with a half-dozen single-bedroom units on each floor. The General had gotten his address and telephone number from the contact sheet. Cox lived in the corner unit on the first floor. His silver Mustang with the tinted windows was parked in front. The General had seen him pull up to theater in that car many times.

The General waited patiently in the TrailBlazer, his eyes never leaving Cox’s front door as groups of drunken students stumbled in and out of the shadows on their way home from the bars downtown. The General had a number of ideas as to how he would get into Cox’s apartment, but the timing of his arrival in Greenville was bad: early Sunday morning, the bars closing, a very good chance of him being seen.

And so the General would have to wait. But that was all right. The General was used to waiting.