excitement and the depth of his satisfaction. Henceforth he employed memories and fantasies of killing as he had previously used memories and fantasies of other women, and to far greater advantage. His ardor had waned somewhat even before the second pregnancy, as is hardly uncommon after a few years of marriage; it now returned with a vengeance, and his wife caught a little of his own renewed enthusiasm. It was, she told him, like a second honeymoon.
That set his mind entirely to rest. It was good for both of them, he realized, and if what he did in the privacy of his own mind was a little kinky, even a little unpleasant, well, who was harmed?
Memories would take him only so far. You used them up when you replayed them over and over. Fantasies, though, were pretty good. He would think of someone he’d noticed at work or on television, and he would imagine the whole thing, stalking the person, making the kill. He would spend time with the fantasy, living it over and over in his mind each time he and his wife made love, refining it until it was just the way he wanted it.
And then, perhaps inevitably, there came a time when he found himself thinking about bringing one of his fantasies to life. Or, if you prefer, to death.
“Hunting,” the policeman said. “Soldier, why the hell didn’t the poor sonofabitch try hunting? No safer outlet for a man who wants to kill something. You get up early in the morning and go out in the woods and take it out on a deer or a squirrel.”
“ I wonder,” said the priest. “Do you suppose that’s why men hunt? I thought it was for the joy of walking in the woods, and the satisfaction of putting meat on one’s table.”
“ Meat’s cheaper in a store,” the policeman said, “and you don’t need to pick up a gun to take a walk in the woods. Oh, I’m sure there are other motives for hunting. It makes you feel resourceful and self-reliant and manly, fit to hang out with Daniel Boone and Natty Bumppo. But when all’s said and done you’re out there killing things, and if you don’t like killing you’ll find some other way to pass the time.”
“ He’d hunted as a boy,” the soldier said. “You’d be hard put to avoid it if you grew up where he did. His brother took him out hunting rabbits, and he shot and killed one, and it made him sick.”
“ What did he get, tularemia?” the doctor wondered. “You can get it from handling infected rabbits.”
“ Sick to his stomach,” the soldier said. “Sick inside. Killing an animal left him feeling awful.”
“ He was a boy then,” the policeman said. “Now he was a man, and one who’d killed other men and was thinking about doing it again. You’d think he’d go out in the woods, if only for curiosity.”
“ And he did,” said the soldier.
He thought along the very lines you suggested (continued the soldier), and he went out and bought a rifle and shells, and one crisp autumn morning he shouldered his rifle and drove a half hour north, where there was supposed to be good hunting. The deer season wouldn’t open for another month, but all that meant was that the woods wouldn’t be swarming with hunters. And you didn’t have to wait for deer season to shoot varmints and small game.
He walked around for an hour or so, stopped to eat his lunch and drink a cup of coffee from the Thermos jug, got up and hefted his gun and walked around some more. Early on he spotted a bird on a branch, greeting the dawn in song. He squinted through the scope and took aim at the creature, not intending to shoot. What kind of person would gun down a songbird? But he wondered what it would feel like to have the bird in his sights, and was not surprised to note that there was no sense of excitement whatsoever, just a queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach.
Later he took aim at a squirrel and had the same reaction, or non-reaction. Hunting, he could see, was not an answer for him. He was if anything somewhat relieved that he hadn’t had to shoot an animal to establish this.
He unloaded his rifle and walked some more, enjoying the crunch of fallen leaves under his feet, the sweetness of the air in his lungs. And then he came to a clearing, and in an old orchard across the way he saw a woman on a ladder, picking apples.
His pulse quickened. Without thinking he slipped into the shadows where he’d be invisible. He stood there, watching her, and he was excited.
She was pretty, or at least he thought she was. It was hard to tell at this distance. He should have brought binoculars, he thought, so he could get a better look.
And he remembered that the gun’s telescopic sight would work as well.
He spun around, walked back the way he’d come. He was not going to look at the woman through a rifle sight. That was not what he was going to do.
He walked around for another hour and wound up right back where he’d seen the woman. Probably gone by now, he told himself. But no, there she was, still in the orchard, still up on the ladder. She was working a different tree now, and he could get a better look at her now. Earlier her back had been toward him, but now he was presented with a frontal view, and he could see her face.
Not very well, though. Not from this far away.
He took the rifle from his shoulder, looked at her through the scope. Very pretty, he saw. Auburn hair-without the scope it had just looked dark-and a long oval face, and breasts that swelled the front of her plaid shirt.
He had never been so excited in his life. He unzipped his pants, freed himself from his underwear. His cock was huge, and fiercely erect.
He touched himself, then returned his hand to the rifle. His finger curled tentatively around the trigger.
He thought he must be trembling too much to take aim, but his excitement was all within him, and his stance was rock-solid, his hands sure and skilled. He aimed, and drew a breath, and held the breath.
And squeezed the trigger.
The bullet took her in the throat. She hung on the ladder for a moment, blood gouting from the wound. Then she fell.
He stared through the scope while his seed sprang forth from his body and fell upon the carpet of leaves.
He was shocked, appalled. And, of course, more than a little frightened. He had taken life before, but that involved killing the enemy in time of war. He had just struck down a fellow citizen engaged in lawful activity on her own property, and for no good reason whatsoever. His sharpshooting overseas had won him medals and promotions; this would earn him-what? Life in prison? A death sentence?
He left the woods, and on the way home he dropped his rifle in the river. No one would note its absence. He’d purchased it without mentioning it to his wife, and now it was gone, and as if he’d never owned it.
But he had in fact owned it, and as a result a woman was dead.
The story was in the papers for days, weeks. A woman had been struck down by a single shot from a high- powered rifle. The woman’s estranged husband, who was questioned and released, had been arrested twice on drug charges, and police theorized that her death was some sort of warning or reprisal. Another theory held that mere bad luck was to blame; a hunter, somewhere in the woods, had fired at a squirrel and missed, and the bullet, still lethal at a considerable distance, had flown with unerring aim at an unintended and unseen target.
Luke waited for some shred of evidence to materialize and trip him up. When that didn’t happen, he realized he was in the clear. He could do nothing for the woman, but he could put the incident out of his mind and make certain nothing like it ever happened again.
He could, as it turned out, do neither. The incident returned to his mind, its memory kindling a passion that heightened his relations with his wife a hundredfold. And he found, after his initial fear and shock had dissipated, that he felt no more remorse for the woman’s death than he had for those enemy soldiers he’d gunned down. If anything, what he felt for her was a curious gratitude, gratitude for being an instrument of pleasure for him. Every time he thought of her, every time he relived the memory of her murder, she furnished pleasure anew.
You can probably imagine the rest. He went to a nearby city, and in a downtown motel room he mounted a hollow-eyed whore. While she toiled beneath him, he whipped out a silenced small-caliber pistol and held it to her temple. The horror in her eyes tore at him, but at the same time it thrilled him. He held off as long as he could, then squeezed the trigger and spurted into her even as the life flowed out of her.
He picked up a hitchhiker, raped her, then killed her with a knife. Two states away, he picked up another hitchhiker, a teenage boy. When he stopped the car and drew a gun, the boy, terrified, offered sex. Luke was aroused and accepted the offer, but his ardor wilted the moment the boy took him in his mouth. He pushed the youth away, then pressed the gun to his chest and fired two shots into his heart.
