Closer Than Blood

across the lot.

Unlike the woman walking toward him, Jeremy Howell had a singular focus. Once he found out who he was, he knew that it was his birthright to follow in footsteps marked with his own DNA. And that of his father. He bent over and fell to the pavement. He pretended that one of the crutches was just out of reach.

“Can I give you a hand,” Lisa said. He looked up at her with an embarrassed half smile.

“No,” he said, trying to get on his feet.

“I can manage.” She stood there, a hand on her hip. She was pretty. Prettier up close than she’d been when he’d first spotted her. She was smaller than he thought, too. That, like her looks, was also a good surprise. Smaller bones likely meant—though he was inexperienced and unsure—an easier go of it in the basement when he went about the business of butchering her. Butchering her, by the way, was as far as Jeremy would ever go. The idea of sex with a corpse sickened him. The idea of visiting human remains in the woods of the Pacific Northwest was wholly unappealing. This wasn’t about some psychosexual conquest, like his dad, but about control and technique. He wanted to take what had been done before and improve it. As if he was revising code on a slow-moving, jagged-looking computer game. That was cool. It was all about the cool factor and the fame that came with being the best. Being better than his father, a man he had never even met, but one he’d admired and fantasized about from the time his mother told him the truth. He’d been cheated a little and he knew it. Other serial killers had unwittingly or purposefully involved their family members. When Jeremy read about Green River Killer Gary Ridgway’s proclivity for bringing his little boy while hunting prostitutes along the SeaTac strip, he felt a pang of jealousy. He’d never had that time with his dad. That had been taken from him when Jeremy was a child and his father was strapped into Florida’s Old Sparky. The switch was flipped. Human flesh burned and his dad was electrocuted to death. That moment, as much as anything, set things in motion. Not right away, of course. Jeremy was a sleeper cell, but that night, on the Pacific Lutheran University campus, he was awakened. The dark-haired girl with the pretty blue eyes had done that. She was a shot of adrenaline. She was a ringer for the others.

“Let me help you,” Lisa said, bending down and hooking her hands under Jeremy’s arms. He stood wobbly on one leg, like a flamingo at the zoo. A good wind would knock him over. Lisa handed him his other crutch and picked up the backpack.

“You must be taking some heavy courses,” she said, instantly feeling embarrassed about the unintended pun. She got a good look at his face. He actually was a handsome dork, dark hair, large brown eyes, and stylish stubble above his upper lip and on the tip of his chin. A goatee in the works? Lisa grinned—not outwardly, but inside. The breed existed after all. She’ll tell Naomi the minute she helped him to his car.

“Where are you parked?” she said.

“Over there,” he said.

“I’m Jeremy, by the way. Jeremy Howell.” He was so sure of what he was about to do that he didn’t think twice about using his own name. Lisa glanced over at the burnished orange Honda Element, a boxy mini-SUV that was destined to be the VW bus of the new millennium.

“Fun car,” she said. He shrugged, although with crutches under each arm, it was hard.

“Good for outdoor stuff. If you go hiking and get mud in the car you can literally hose it out.”

“I guess that’s good. You like to hike?”

“I do. Sometimes I like to drive out to the middle of nowhere, pull off the road, and just find something cool to look at. A lake. A forest. Someplace where no one goes to.”

“I’m Lisa, by the way. What are you taking?” she asked, moving the heavy backpack to her other shoulder “Biology. Pre-med,” he said, though it was a lie. Inside his backpack were the A, B, and C volumes of old, outdated encyclopedias from his mother’s basement recreation room. He was looking even more handsome. When they got to his car, he directed her to the passenger side.

“Can you put my books there?” Jeremy asked.

“Easier to get to later.” She nodded and smiled. Jeremy pushed the electronic door-lock button on his key fob, and Lisa swung open the door.

“Did some other Good Samaritan take a nap in here?” she said, setting the backpack on a seat that had been completely reclined to form a bed. Jeremy didn’t answer, and Lisa turned to look over her shoulder. The young man was standing without crutches, framed by a lamp partially blocked by an oak that hung onto the last of its crinkly brown leaves. Braided shadows crisscrossed his face like a spiderweb. He was holding one of the crutches like a baseball bat.

“What the—” she started to say, but her words were cut short. He’d filled the aluminum tube of the crutch with his grandfather’s lead fishing weights, thinking that a little more heft would be helpful when he swung it at his victim’s head. Which he did. And it was. Lisa’s shoulder bag fell into the gutter, and her cell phone cartwheeled on the pavement and broke into pieces. The college student offered no final scream. No real sound but the slumping of her body against the doorjamb of the Element. In a moment’s blur of swift movements and a gasp of air from the victim’s lungs, Jeremy had her inside. He looked at her through the passenger window, satisfied and excited. He fixed the image in his memory like a photograph that he’d retrieve later. Lisa Lancaster was so beautiful. Sleeping. Like a doll with a swirl of pretty dark hair and perfect little features. Jeremy owned her right then, and a broad and unexpected smile came to his face. Not fear. Not a thumping heart sequestered behind a rib cage somewhere in his body. None of that. At that moment, Jeremy Howell understood something about the power of the hunt that had eluded him as he’d planned and stalked his first kill. The rush. The excitement of doing something few dared to do. And doing it better than the father he’d admired but never knew. He climbed behind the wheel and twisted the key in the car’s ignition. He let out a little laugh at the pun that came to him just then. He really was in his element. In every way.