among them as there ought to be. In fact, there's only one sure-fire way for them to recognize connections between several random killings--that's if at least two, and preferably three, of the murders take place in a relatively short span of time, within a single police jurisdiction, one county or one city.'
Hilary walked away from the desk, returned to the couch. 'So it's possible,' she said, feeling as cold as the October wind sounded. 'It's possible that he's been slaughtering women--two, six, ten, fifteen, maybe more-- during the past five years, and I'm the first one who ever gave him any trouble.'
'It's not only possible, but probable,' Tony said. 'I'd say we can count on it.' The Xerox of the letter that had been found in the safe-deposit box was on the coffee table in front of him; he picked it up and read the first sentence aloud. ''My mother, Katherine Anne Frye, died five years ago, but she keeps coming back to life in new bodies,''
'Bodies,' Hilary said.
'That's the key word,' Tony said. 'Not body, singular. Bodies, plural. From that, I think we can infer that he killed her several times and that he thought she came back from the grave more than once.'
Joshua's face was ash-gray. 'But if you're right ... I've been ... all of us in St. Helena have been living beside the most evil, vicious sort of monster. And we weren't even aware of it!'
Tony looked grim. ''The Beast of Hell walks among us in the clothes of a common man.''
'What's that from?' Joshua asked.
'I've got a dustbin mind,' Tony said. 'Very little gets thrown away, whether I want to hold on to it or not. I remember the quotation from my Catholic catechism classes a long time ago. It's from the writings of one of the saints, but I don't recall which one. 'The Beast of Hell walks among us in the clothes of a common man. If the demon should reveal its true face to you at a time when you have turned away from Christ, then you will be without protection, and it will gleefully devour your heart and rend you limb from limb and carry your immortal soul into the yawning pit.''
'You sound like Latham Hawthorne,' Joshua said.
Outside, the wind shrieked.
***
Frye put the knife on the nightstand, well out of Sally's reach. Then he grabbed the lapels of her uniform dress and tore the garment open. Buttons popped.
She was paralyzed by terror. She did not resist him; she could not.
He grinned at her and said, 'Now. Now, Mother. Now, I get even.'
He ripped the dress all the way down the front and flung it open. She was revealed in bra and panties and pantyhose, a slim, pretty body. He clutched the cups of her bra and jerked them down. The straps bit into her skin and then broke. Fabric tore. Elastic snapped.
Her breasts were large for her size and bone structure, round and full, with very dark, pebbly nipples. He squeezed them roughly.
'Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!' In his deep, gravelly voice, that one word acquired the eerie quality of a sinister chant, a Satanic litany.
He wrenched off her shoes, first the right, then the left, and threw them aside. One of them struck the mirror above the dresser and shattered it.
The sound of falling glass roused the woman from her shock-induced catatonic trance, and she tried to pull away from him, but fear sapped her strength; she writhed and fluttered ineffectually against him.
He held her without difficulty, slapped her twice with such force that her mouth sagged open and her eyes swam. A fine thread of blood unraveled from the corner of her mouth, ran down her chin.
'You rotten bitch!' he said, furious. 'No sex, huh? I can't have any sex, you said. No sex ever, you said. Can't risk some woman finding out what I am, you said. Well, you already know what I am, Mother. You already know my secret, I don't have to hide anything from you, Mother. You know I'm different from other men. You know my prick isn't like theirs. You know who my father was. You know. You know that my prick is like his. I don't have to hide it from you, Mother. I'm going to shove it into you, Mother. All the way up into you. You hear me? Do you?'
The woman was crying, tossing her head from side to side. 'No, no, no! Oh, God!' But then she got control of herself, locked eyes with him, gazed intently at him (and he could see Katherine in there, beyond the brown eyes, glaring out at him), and she said, 'Listen to me. Please, listen to me! You're sick. You're a very sick man. You're all mixed up. You need help.'
'Shut up, shut up, shut up!'
He slapped her again, harder than he had done before, swinging his big hand in a long swift arc, into the side of her face.
Each act of violence excited him. He was aroused by the sharp sound of each blow, by her gasps of pain and her birdlike cries, by the way her tender flesh reddened and swelled. The sight of her pain-contorted face and her scared-rabbit eyes stoked his lust to an unbearable white-hot flame.
He was shaking with need, trembling, quivering, quaking. He was breathing like a bull. His eyes were wide. His mouth was watering so excessively that he had to swallow every couple of seconds to avoid drooling on her.
He mauled her lovely breasts, squeezed and stroked them, roughed them up.
She had retreated from the terror, had slipped back into that semi-trance, motionless and rigid.
On the one hand, Bruno hated her and did not care how badly he hurt her. He wanted to cause her pain. He wanted her to suffer for all the things she had done to him--for even bringing him into the world in the first place.
But on the other hand, he was ashamed of touching his mother's breasts and ashamed of wanting to stick his penis into her. Therefore, as he pawed at her, he tried to explain himself and justify his actions: 'You told me that if I ever tried to make love to a woman, she'd know right away that I'm not human. You said she'd see the difference, and she'd know. She'd call the police, and they'd take me away, and they'd burn me at the stake because they'd know who my father was. But you already know. It's no surprise to you, Mother. So I can use my prick on you. I can stick it right up in you, Mother, and no one will burn me alive.'
