hands up along the inside of the legs to the groin.
There her hands lingered for a long moment, cupping, patting. The touch was at once a violation and a caress.
'Definitely pre-op,' she announced. 'And no gun. Or would you like me to do a strip search, J.L.?'
'That's enough.'
'Are you sure? He could have a weapon up his heinie, J.L. He could have a whole bazooka up there.'
'You can go now.'
'I'd be willing to look for it.'
'I said you could go now.'
She pouted, then dropped the attitude and settled her big hands on my shoulders. I could smell her perfume, heady and floral, overlaid upon a body scent of indeterminate gender. She raised up a little on her toes and leaned forward to kiss me flush on the mouth. Her lips were parted and her tongue flicked out. Then she let go of me and drew away. Her expression was clouded, unreadable in the dimness.
'I really am sorry,' she said. And then she slipped past me and was gone.
'I could kill you right now,' he said. His tone was flat, cold, unemphatic. 'With my hands. I could paralyze you with pain. And then write you out a ticket to the boneyard.'
He was still holding me as before, one hand above the left elbow, the other at the right shoulder. The pressure he was exerting was painful but bearable.
'But I promised to save you for last. First all your women. And then you.'
'Why?'
'Ladies first. It's only polite.'
'Why any of this?'
He laughed, but it didn't come out sounding like laughter. He might have been reading a string of syllables off a cue card, ha ha ha ha ha. 'You took twelve years of my life,' he said. 'They locked me up.
Do you know what it's like to be locked up?''
'It didn't have to be twelve years. You could have been back on the street in a year or two. You're the one who decided to make it hard time.'
His grip tightened and my knees buckled. I might have fallen if he hadn't been holding on. 'I shouldn't have served a day,' he said. '
'Aggravated assault upon a police officer.' I never assaulted you. You assaulted me, and then you framed me. They sent the wrong man to jail.'
'You belonged there.'
'Why? Because I was moving in on one of your women and you couldn't keep her? You weren't strong enough to hold her on your own.
Therefore you didn't deserve her, but you couldn't accept that. Could you?'
I didn't say anything.
'Ah, but you made a mistake framing me. You thought prison would destroy me. It destroys a lot of men, but you have to understand how it operates. It weakens the weaklings and strengthens the strong.'
'Is that how it works?'
'Almost always. Cops don't last in prison. They almost never get out alive. They're weak, they need guns and badges and blue uniforms to survive, and they don't have any of those props in prison, and they die within the walls. But the strong just get stronger. You know what Nietzsche said? 'That which does not destroy me makes me stronger.'
Attica, Dannemora, every joint I was in just made me stronger.'
'Then you should be grateful to me for putting you there.'
He let go of my shoulder. I shifted my weight, looking to balance myself so that I could thrust behind me with my foot, raking his shin, stomping on his instep. Before I could begin to move he jabbed a finger into my kidney. He might as well have used a sword. I cried out in agony and fell forward, landing hard on my knees.
'I was always strong,' he said. 'I always had great strength in my hands. I never worked at it. It was always there.' He grabbed me by my upper arms, hoisted me to my feet. I couldn't even think about kicking out at him. My legs lacked the strength to keep me upright, and if he'd let go of me I think I'd have fallen.
'But I worked out in prison,' he went on. 'They had weights in the exercise yard and some of us would work out all day long. Especially the niggers. You'd see them with the sweat pouring off them, stinking like hogs, pumping themselves up, turning themselves into muscle-bound freaks. I worked twice as hard as they did but all I added was strength, not bulk. Endless sets, high reps. I never got any bigger but I turned myself into wrought iron. I just got stronger and stronger.'
'You needed a knife in Ohio. And a gun.'
'I didn't need them. I used them. The husband was soft, like the Pillsbury Doughboy. I could have put my fingers clear through him. I walked him into his living room and killed him with his own gun.' He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was softer.
'I used the knife on Connie just to make it look good. By then she was already dead in her soul. There wasn't much left of her to kill.'
'And the children?'
