which floor he'd left the elevator.
Furthermore, they couldn't have gotten down here in time to surprise
him.
The thirty-first floor was a different story. They might have time to
set a trap for him up there. When the elevator doors slid open, they
might be waiting for him; he would be most vulnerable at that moment.
Then again, he was the one with the pistol. So what if they were
waiting with makeshift weapons? They didn't stand a chance of
overpowering him.
At the elevator he put the key in the control board and activated the
circuit.
He looked at his watch. 9:19.
If there were no more delays, he could kill Harris and still have twenty
minutes or half an hour with the woman.
Whistling again, he pushed one of the buttons: 31.
The lab technician disconnected the garbage disposal, wrapped it in a
heavy white plastic sheet, and carried it out of the apartment.
Preduski and Enderby were left alone in the kitchen.
in the foyer, a grandfather clock struck the quarter hour: two soft
chimes, running five minutes late. In accompaniment, the wind fluted
musically through the eaves just above the kitchen windows.
'If you find it hard to accept the idea of two psychopaths working so
smoothly together,' Enderby said, 'then consider the possibility that
they aren't psychopaths of any sort we've seen before.'
'Now you sound like Graham Harris.'
'I know.'
'The Butcher is mentally ill, Harris says. But you wouldn't know it to
took at him Harris says. Either the symptoms of his mania don't show,
or he knows how to conceal them. He'd pass any psychiatric exam, Harris
says.
'I'm beginning to agree with him.'
'Except you say there are two Butchers.'
Enderby nodded.
Preduski sighed. He went to the nearest window and drew the outline of
a knife in the thin gray-white film of moisture that coated the glass.
'If you're right, I can't hold onto my theory. That he's just your
ordinary paranoid schizophrenic. Maybe a lone killer could be operating
in a psychotic fugue. But not two of them simultaneously.
'They're not suffering any psychotic fugue,' Enderby agreed.
'Both of these men know precisely what they're doing. Neither of them
suffers from amnesia.'
Turning from the window, from the drawing of the knife which had begun
to streak as droplets of water slid down the pane, Preduski said,
'Whether this is a new type of psychotic or not, the crime is familiar.
Sex murders are-'
'These aren't sex murders,' Enderby said.
Preduski cocked his head. 'Come again?'
'These aren't sex murders.'
'They only kill women.'
'Yes, but-'
