Intensity

covered by a blue drape with blackout lining. He doesn't need to draw the drape aside to see the motor home on the driveway below. The two pleated panels of fabric don't quite meet, and when he puts his eye to the two-inch gap, he has a clear view of the entire vehicle.

Unless she slipped out of the motor home immediately behind him, which is highly doubtful, the woman is still inside. He can see down through the windshield at an angle into the pilot's and copilot's seats, and she has not advanced to either.

He takes the pistol from his pocket and puts it on the dresser. He shrugs out of the raincoat and tosses it atop the chenille spread on the neatly made bed.

When he checks at the window again, there is as yet no sign of the mystery woman at the motor home below.

He hurries into the hallway to the bathroom. White tile, white paint, white tub, white sink, white toilet, polished brass fixtures with white ceramic knobs. Everything gleams. Not a single smudge mars the mirror.

Mr. Vess likes a bright, clean bathroom. For a while, lifetimes ago, he lived with his grandmother in Chicago, and she was incapable of keeping a bathroom clean enough to meet his standards. Finally, exasperated beyond endurance, he had killed the old bitch. He'd been eleven when he put the knife in her.

Now he reaches behind the shower curtain and cranks the COLD faucet all the way open. He isn't actually going to take a shower, so there's no point in wasting hot water.

He quickly adjusts the shower head until the spray is as heavy as it gets. The water pounds down into the fiberglass tub, filling the bathroom with thunder. He knows from experience that the sound carries throughout the small house; even with rain on the roof, this is much louder than the sound of the shower in Sarah Templeton's bedroom, and it will be heard downstairs.

On a wall shelf above the toilet is a clock radio. He switches it on and adjusts the volume.

The radio is set to a Portland station featuring twenty-four-hour-a-day news. Ordinarily, when bathing and attending to his toilet, Mr. Vess likes to listen to the news, not because he has any interest in the latest political or cultural developments but because these days the news is largely about people maiming and killing one another- war, terrorism, rape, assault, murder. And when people can't kill one another in sufficient numbers to keep the reporters busy, nature always saves the day with a tornado, a hurricane, a big earthquake, or an outbreak of flesh- eating bacteria.

Sometimes, listening to the news and letting the various reports spark fond memories of his own homicidal exploits, he realizes that he himself is also a force of nature: a hurricane, a lightning storm, a planet-smashing asteroid hurtling through the void, the distillate of all human ferocity in a single body. Elemental power. The thought pleases him.

Now, however, news will not set the stage properly. Hastily he turns the tuning knob until he finds a station playing music. 'Take the A Train' by Duke Ellington.

Perfect.

The big-band sound brings to his mind's eye an image of light flaring off cut crystal and luminous bubbles rising in a champagne glass, and it reminds him of the smell of fresh-cut limes, lemons. He can feel the notes in the air, some shimmering-bursting like bubbles and others bouncing off him like hundreds of little rubber balls and some like windblown leaves crisp with autumn: a very tactile music, exuberant and exhilarating.

The woman will be subtly lulled by the swing beat. It will be difficult for her to believe, really believe, that anything bad can happen to her with such music as background.

Perfect.

He hurries back to his bedroom, to the window, having been away from it no more than a minute.

Rain snaps against the glass, streams.

On the driveway below, the motor home stands as before. The woman still must be inside. She probably won't just burst out of the vehicle and run pell-mell; she's likely to exit warily, hesitant on both sides of the door. Although there might have been time for her to get out of the motor home while Mr. Vess was in the bathroom, she would almost certainly be huddling against it, getting her bearings, assessing the situation. From this high vantage point, he can see around most of the vehicle, with the exception of blind spots toward the rear on the port side and at the very back, and the woman is not in sight.

'Ready when you are, Miss Desmond,' he says, referring to the Gloria Swanson character in Sunset Boulevard.

That movie had had a great effect on him when he'd first seen it on television. He'd been thirteen, a year out of counseling for the murder of his grandmother. On one level, he had known that Norma Desmond was supposed to be the tragic villain of the piece, that the writer and director intended for her to fulfill that role-but he had admired her, loved her. Her selfishness was thrilling, her self- absorption heroic. She was the truest character he had ever seen in a movie. This was what people were actually like, under the pretense and hypocrisy, under all the crap about love, compassion, altruism; they were all like Norma Desmond but couldn't admit it to themselves. Norma didn't give a shit about the rest of the world, and she bent everyone to her iron will even when she was no longer young or beautiful or famous, and when she couldn't bend William Holden's character as far as she wanted, she just boldly picked up a gun and shot him, which was so powerful, so audacious, that young Edgler had been too excited to sleep that night. He had lain awake wondering what it would be like to encounter a woman as superior and genuine as Norma Desmond-and then to break her, kill her, take all the strength of her selfishness and make it his own.

Maybe this mystery woman is a little bit like Norma Desmond. She's bold, sure enough. He can't figure what the hell she's doing, what she's after; and when he understands her motivation, maybe she won't be anything like Norma Desmond. But at least she is already something new and interesting in his experience.

The rain.

The wind.

The motor home.

'Take the A Train' has given way to 'String of Pearls.'

Murmuring softly against the blue drapes, Mr. Vess says, 'Ready when you are.'

* * *

After the killer had gotten out of the motor home and slammed the door, Chyna had waited in the dark bedroom for a long while in the one-note lullaby of rain.

She had told herself that she was being prudent. Listen. Wait. Be sure. Absolutely sure.

But then she'd been forced to admit that she had lost her nerve. Although she had mostly dried out during the ride north from Humboldt County, she was still cold, and the source of her chills was the ice of doubt in her guts.

The eater of spiders was gone, and to Chyna, even remaining in blackness with two dead bodies was far preferable to going outside where she might encounter him again. She knew that he would be back, that this bedroom was not, in fact, a safe place, but for a while, what she knew was overruled by what she felt.

When at last she broke her paralysis, she moved with reckless abandon, as though any hesitation would result in another and worse paralysis, which she would be unable to overcome. She yanked open the bedroom door, plunged into the hall, with the revolver held in front of her because maybe the murderous bastard hadn't gotten out after all, and she went all the way forward past the bathroom and through the dining area and into the lounge, where she stopped a few feet back from the driver's seat.

The only light was a bleak gray haze that came through the skylight in the hall behind her and through the windshield ahead, but she could see that the killer wasn't here. She was alone.

Outside, directly ahead of the motor home, lay a sodden yard, a few dripping trees, and a rough driveway leading to a weathered barn.

Chyna moved to a starboard window, cautiously peeled back one corner of the greasy drape, and saw a log house about twenty feet away. Mottled with time and many coats of creosote, streaming with rain, the walls glistened like dark snakeskin.

Although she had no way of being certain, she assumed that it was the killer's house. He had told the men in