Tick Tock

Chapter 80

CARL PULLED OFF the LIE into East Meadow, Long Island, an hour later.

He cruised the Hempstead Turnpike. Narrow streets of capes and split-levels, fast food, a driving range. His LeSabre fit right in.

It took him twenty minutes to find the address and parked across the street. There it was. Twenty-four Orchard Street. It looked like just another Long Island dump, but he knew it was actually more. He knew that many women had been killed behind its walls, that their bodies had been cut up in its garage.

He'd been thinking about doing another Brooklyn Vampire murder, or maybe the Mad Bomber, but then he'd remembered Lawrence's library and decided on a new string of killings. Lawrence was going to be so happy when he got the news.

Carl smiled as he thought about his friend. He'd killed for his country in the Special Forces. Called in air strikes in Bosnia, shot stinking goat herders in Afghanistan from as far away as eight hundred yards. But actually killing for something he cared about was another thing entirely.

Lawrence was his soulmate, his liberator, his master entire.

They'd taken into account that he would probably be captured. But instead of abandoning their efforts, Carl was going to redouble them. Their joint homage to the great murders and murderers of New York would keep occurring in bloodier and more horrifying ways during Lawrence's incarceration and trial. It would be the topper of the longest, most audacious crime spree of all time.

All the killing so far had been just for Lawrence. It had been Carl's pleasure. The least he could do, after all. Twelve years earlier, Lawrence had found him panhandling on Park Avenue. He'd cleaned him up and put him through City College, where he'd studied English lit, especially the classics.

He knew all about law enforcement profiling, how he was supposed to be inadequate, looking for power, for meaning in his pathetic life. What a joke! He wasn't doing this for himself. He was a warrior, a real catalyst for history. Besides, people like Lee Harvey Oswald really had changed the world with one pull of a trigger.

But he shouldn't get ahead of himself. First things first, he thought as he pulled out.

It was time to put a smile on his good buddy's face.