was a healthy scream, the shriek of a vital young animal, a high, ululant wail that ordinarily would have alerted the neighbors, who might have summoned the police. But the stereo was awfully loud; Rood was certain nobody outside these four walls had heard a thing.
Still clutching a fistful of reddish-blond hair, he pulled the woman to her feet. She screamed again, a lovely trilling sound registering pain and terror, infinitely sweeter than that raucous noise she seemed to regard as music. He spun her to face him and clapped a hand on her mouth, then swept his gaze over the living room, a place of white pile carpet and teakwood occasional tables, lit by ceramic lamps and the fluorescent panel in the adjacent kitchenette. A hallway led to what must be a bedroom and bath. Corner windows looked out on the lower branches of a fig tree.
The apartment appeared empty. He saw no sign of company. Well, she had company now.
Gripping her thin shoulders. Rood pulled the woman close.
“Tell me your name,” he ordered.
She swallowed. A tremor ran over her face, like a current of wind rippling through a field of tall grasses.
“Jennifer.”
“Your full name.”
“Jennifer Kutzlow,” she said hastily, then caught herself and corrected, “Jennifer Ellen Kutzlow.”
Rood nodded. Still holding her by the shoulders to prevent any attempt at escape, he examined Miss Jennifer Ellen Kutzlow. He estimated her age at twenty-five and her height at five-two, a head shorter than Rood himself. Her feet were bare, the toenails painted pink, a detail he found oddly alluring. White beltless shorts showed off her lithe, shapely legs. A low-cut blue T-shirt was pasted to her breasts, the thin cotton pinched by the hard knobs of her nipples. Small brown freckles stood out prettily on her cleavage, her pert nose, her flawless cheeks. Her green eyes made a pleasing contrast with the strawberry blond of her hair, long silken hair so marvelously luxuriant it seemed to beg you to put your hands in it and feel its gossamer softness, its spun-gold delicacy.
“Lovely,” Rood said softly.
Miss Jennifer Kutzlow shuddered. Her lower lip went spastic, squirming and writhing, a worm on a hook. Rood felt the trembling of her shoulders in his fingertips.
“No,” she whispered. “Please, no.”
She thought he was going to rape her. Rood realized. But he wouldn’t. He wasn’t even going to make her beg or recite the words he liked to hear. That ritual was reserved for those whom he chose as contestants in the game; Miss Kutzlow was merely an innocent bystander. Besides, the noise of the stereo would make a decent recording impossible. No, it would be a swift, clean kill this time.
“Don’t worry, my dear.” He smiled kindly. “I won’t try anything. I just happened to notice how attractive you are, that’s all.”
His words did nothing to reassure her. She trembled violently in his hands. Her body shook as if with palsy.
“And I wanted to know,” Rood went on smoothly, “if you don’t mind my asking, why such a charming young lady as yourself would be home all alone, taking out the garbage, when she ought to be on the arm of some dashing young gentleman, enjoying life.”
“I… I was supposed to be out of town tonight.”
“Where?”
“Seattle. I’m a flight attendant, see? But my flight was canceled. Mechanical problems…”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes.” She giggled. “It is, isn’t it? I… I really wish I’d gone to Seattle.”
“I’ll bet it’s nice up there,” Rood said. “Beautiful.” His smile widened. “Like you.”
Miss Kutzlow swallowed. “Look. Don’t hurt me, okay?” She spoke so softly that her words were covered by the thunder of the stereo, and Rood had to read her lips to make out what she was saying. “You can take all my stuff, take everything, but please don’t hurt me,”
He didn’t answer her directly. Instead he asked, “Who’s that you’re listening to?”
She blinked, surprised by the question. “Guns N’ Roses.”
Rood rather liked the way those words went together. Guns, roses. Guns meant death, and roses meant love. Death and love-he could hardly imagine one without the other.
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with them,” he said mildly.
“They’re pretty famous. They’ve got a real unique sound, you know? They…”
Her words trailed off as she appeared to grasp the absurdity of discussing the merits of Guns N’ Roses with a man whose leather-gloved hands were clamped on her shoulders like an animal’s claws.
“They are good,” Rood agreed, although in truth he found such ugly, discordant noise intolerable. “But that music is awfully loud. I’m afraid it’s giving me a headache. Would you do me a favor and turn it down?”
“Turn it down?” Miss Kutzlow echoed as if she were unfamiliar with the concept, which, all things considered, might very well be the case. Then she smiled and nodded with desperate affability. “Oh, sure. No problem.”
Rood released her shoulders. She turned toward the stereo, and in one practiced motion he plucked the garrote from his pocket, grasped the wooden handles firmly in both hands, and tossed the noose over her head. She staggered backward, her hands flailing wildly, fingers scrabbling at the garrote in a desperate, doomed effort to pry it free. Rood twisted the handles clockwise, and the wire bit deep, severing the carotid arteries. She whipped her head crazily from side to side, gargling bloody froth, while her reddish- blonde hair was stained a purer shade of red.
Blindly she thrust her hands backward, seeking to claw Rood’s face. Laughing, he dodged her stabbing fingernails. She balanced on one leg and kicked backward with the other, striking again and again with the ferocious determination of the dying. The heel of her bare foot bruised Rood’s ankles and shins, but he barely felt the blows; the momentary twinges of pain were lost in the buzzing, humming cicada song of euphoria rising in his brain.
Rood tugged harder at the garrote, choking off the last of Miss Jennifer Kutzlow’s blood and breath. He felt the burning strain in his forearms, biceps, shoulders, felt the muscles of his neck standing out in sharp relief, felt the pressure of his gloved fingers on the garrote’s wooden handles. Looking down through a mist of sweat, past the bloody mop of the woman’s hair, he saw the tanned and freckled cleavage exposed in the vee of her T-shirt, her small firm breasts jogging frenetically while her body spasmed and sunfished and jackknifed. Whose hands, he wondered, had fondled those lovely breasts? Whose lips had kissed them? What secret pleasures had she known in lovers’ beds? She would not know pleasure again, any kind of pleasure, ever.
She was still struggling, but more weakly now, her energy ebbing, life and strength spiraling away, her arms and legs moving sluggishly, with the slow-motion languor of an underwater dancer. Finally her knees buckled, her legs folding under her like broken flower stems. Her body sagged. For a last moment her lithe arms beat listlessly at air, and then her head lolled back on her shoulders, her hair matted and sticky with blood, her eyes open, her green gaze lifted to Rood as if in supplication. He stared down at her, studying those round hopeless eyes brimming with tears, the tongue protruding from her mouth as if in a last futile gesture of defiance, the freckles on her nose and cheeks standing out against the bloodless paleness of her skin. Her death rattle was swallowed by the stereo.
Rood lifted the garrote from around her neck, peeling the blood-slick wire free of the deep wound it had gouged.
“You’re mine now. Miss Jennifer Kutzlow,” he whispered, his voice suddenly husky and so low that the pounding music rendered it inaudible even to his own ears. “All mine.”
Tenderly he kissed her forehead. Slowly his mouth traveled down her cheek to her lips, then farther down, to her neck, her cleavage, the round hill of a breast. He licked her skin, tasting the salty sweat glistening there. He pressed his lips to the T-shirt, his tongue probing her nipple through the thin fabric. She was beautiful. So beautiful.
A sudden frenzied need possessed him, the same need he’d felt after every previous kill. With frantic haste he tore at the T-shirt, stripping it from her body, then ripped off her shorts and pawed at her panties till they shredded in his hands. He tossed the bloody rags of her clothes in a corner. Gulping air, heart pounding, he lowered her body to the carpet and kissed her naked breasts, her smooth belly, her tanned legs. His gloved hands fumbled with the zipper of his fly. He mounted her and thrust himself inside, grinding his hips and gasping. An instant later it was over; he was empty and flaccid and satisfied.
Exhausted, he lay atop her, breathing hard, planting more wet kisses on her face. After what seemed like a long time, he got to his feet and zipped his pants again.
