“Wrong place, wrong time, that's all. The story of my life,” she said dryly.
Kovac looked thoughtful, as if he were considering saying something profound, then shook his head a little. “You're a wonder, Red.”
“Hardly. I've just got a guardian angel with a sick sense of humor. Go fight the fight, Sergeant. I'll take care of the witness.”
12
CHAPTER
THE TRAFFIC ANNOYS him. He takes 35W south out of downtown to avoid traffic lights and the tedious twists and turns of the alternate route. Stop-and-go traffic until he wants to abandon the car and walk down the shoulder, randomly pulling people out of their vehicles and beating their heads in with a tire iron. It amuses him that other motorists are likely entertaining the same fantasy. They have no idea that the man sitting in the dark sedan behind them, beside them, in front of them, could act on that fantasy without turning a hair.
He looks at the woman in the red Saturn beside him. She is pretty, with Nordic features and white-blond hair done in a voluminous, airy, tousled style that has been sprayed into place. She catches him looking, and he smiles and waves. She smiles back, then makes a gesture and a funny face at the traffic snarled ahead of them. He shrugs and grins, mouths “What can you do?”
He imagines that face drawn tight and pale with terror as he leans down over her with a knife. He can see her bare chest rise and fall in time with her shallow breathing. He can hear the tremor in her voice as she begs him for her life. He can hear her screams as he cuts her breasts.
Desire stirs deep in his groin.
His fantasies have never shocked him. Not in childhood, when he would think of what it might be like to watch a living thing die, what it would be like to close his hands around the throat of a cat or the kid down the block and hold the power of life and death literally within his grasp. Not in adolescence, when he would think of cutting the nipples from his mother's breasts, or cutting out her larynx and smashing it with a hammer, or cutting out her uterus and throwing it into the furnace.
He knows that for killers such as himself, these thoughts are a sustained part of the internal processing and cognitive operations. They are, in effect, natural for him. Natural, and, therefore, not deviant.
He exits on 36th and drives west on tree-lined side streets toward Lake Calhoun. The blonde is gone and the fantasy with her. He thinks again of the afternoon press briefing, both amused and frustrated. The police had a sketch—this amused him. He stood there in the crowd as Chief Greer held up the drawing that was supposed to be a rendition of him so accurate that people would recognize him at a glance on the street. And when the briefing had ended, all those reporters had walked right past him.
The frustration has its source in John Quinn. Quinn made no appearance at the briefing, and has made no official statement, which seems a deliberate slight. Quinn is too wrapped up in his deduction and speculation. He is probably focusing all his attention on the victims. Who they were and what they were, wondering why they were chosen.
Quinn believes this too. Quinn's textbook on sexual homicide is among many on his shelf.
He turns onto his block. Because of the way the lakes lie in this part of town, the streets immediately around them are often irregular. This one has a bend in it that gives the houses larger lots than usual. More privacy. He parks the car on the concrete apron outside the garage and gets out.
Night has inked out what meager daylight there had been earlier. The wind is blowing out of the west and bringing with it the scent of fresh dog shit. The smell hits his nostrils a split second before the sound of rapid-fire toy-dog barking.
Out of the darkness of the neighbor's yard darts Mrs. Vetter's bichon frise, a creature that looks like a collection of white pompoms sewn loosely together. The dog runs to within five feet of him, then stops and stands its ground, barking, snarling like a rabid squirrel.
The noise instantly sets off his temper. He hates the dog. He especially hates the dog now because it has triggered the return of his foul mood from the traffic jam. He wants to kick the dog as hard as he can. He can imagine the high-pitched yip, the animal's limp body as he picks it up by the throat and crushes its windpipe.
“Bitsy!” Mrs. Vetter shrieks from her front step. “Bitsy, come here!”
Yvonne Vetter is in her sixties, a widow, an unpleasant woman with a round, sour face and a shrill voice. He hates her in a deeply visceral way, and thinks of killing her every time he sees her, but something equally deep and fundamental holds him back. He refuses to examine what that feeling is, and becomes angrier imagining what John Quinn would make of it.
“Bitsy! Come here!”
The dog snarls at him, then turns and runs up and down the length of the garage, stopping to pee on the corners of the building.
A pulse begins to throb in his head and warmth floods his brain and washes down through his body. If Yvonne Vetter were to cross the lawn now, he will kill her. He will grab her and smother her screams with the newspapers he holds. He will quickly pull her into the garage, smash her head against the wall to knock her out, then kill the dog first to stop its infernal barking. Then he will let loose his temper and kill Yvonne Vetter in a way that will satiate a vicious hunger buried deep within him.
She begins to descend the front steps of her house.
The muscles across his back and shoulders tighten. His pulse quickens.
His lungs fill. His fingers flex on the edge of the newspapers.
The dog barks at him one last time, then darts back to its mistress. Fifteen feet away, Vetter bends down and scoops the dog into her arms as if he were a child.
Opportunity dies like an unsung song.
“He's excited tonight,” he says, smiling.
“He gets that way when he's inside too much. He doesn't like you either,” Mrs. Vetter says defensively, and takes the dog back to her house.
“Fucking bitch,” he whispers. The anger will vibrate within him for a long while, like a tuning fork still trembling long after it's been struck. He will play through the fantasy of killing Yvonne Vetter again and again and again.
He goes into the garage, where the Blazer and a red Saab sit, and enters the house through a side door, eager to read about the Cremator in the two newspapers. He will cut out all stories pertaining to the investigation and make photocopies of them, because newsprint is cheap and doesn't hold up over time. He has taped both the network evening news and the local evening news, and will watch for any mention of the Cremator.
The Cremator. The name amuses him. It sounds like something from a comic book. It conjures images of Nazi war criminals or B-movie monsters. The stuff of nightmares.
And like the creatures of childhood nightmares, he goes to the basement. The basement is his personal space, his ideal sanctuary. The main room is outfitted with an amateur sound studio. Walls and ceiling of sound- absorbing acoustic tile. Flat carpet the color of slate. He likes the low ceiling, the lack of natural light, the sensation of being in the earth with thick concrete walls around him. His own safe world. Just like when he was a boy.
He goes down the hall and into the game room, holding the newspapers out in front of him to admire the
