veil. If she became a sister, her hair would be cut short, something she wished for but nonetheless dreaded. She was tall and big-boned, gangly like a yearling, pretty, with perpetually blush-apple cheeks.
“Well, Octavus, it’s a fine summer morning up there, wouldn’t you like to know.”
She put the tray on his desk. Sometimes he would not even touch his food but she knew he had a fondness for bacon. He put his quill down and started chomping at the bread and meat. “You know why you’ve got bacon today?” she asked. He ate greedily, staring at the plate. “It’s because it is your birthday, that’s why!” she exclaimed. “You’re eighteen years old! If you want to take a good rest today and put down your quill and take a walk in the sunshine, I’ll let them know and I’m sure they’ll let you.”
He finished the food and immediately started writing again, his fingers rubbing grease on the parchment. For the two years she had catered for him, she’d grown increasingly intrigued by the boy. She had imagined that she alone would one day unlock his tongue and get him to speak his secrets. And she had convinced herself that there was something significant about his eighteenth birthday, as if the passage to manhood would break the spell and let this strangely beautiful youth enter the fraternity of man.
“You didn’t even know it was your birthday, did you?” she said with frustration. She taunted him. “Seventh of July. Everyone knows when you were born because you’re special, aren’t you?”
She reached under her linen smock and pulled out a small bundle secreted there. It was the size of an apple, wrapped in a bit of cloth and tied with a thin strip of leather.
“I’ve got a present for you, Octavus,” she said in singsong.
She was behind his chair and reached around him, putting the package on top of his page, forcing him to stop. He stared at the package with the same blankness he reserved for everything.
“Unwrap it,” she urged.
He continued to stare.
“All right, then, I’ll do it for you!”
She leaned over his back, encircled his thin torso with her sturdy arms and began to untie the parcel. It was a round golden cake that stained the cloth with sweet goo.
“Look! It’s a honey cake! I made it myself, just for you!”
She was pressing against him.
Perhaps he felt the sensation of her firm small breasts against his thin shirt. Perhaps he felt the warm skin of her upper arm brush his cheek. Perhaps he smelled a female musk from her pubescent body or the warm gusts from her mouth as she talked.
He dropped his quill and let his hand drop to his lap. He was breathing hard and appeared to be in some kind of distress. Frightened, Mary took a few steps backward.
She could not see what he was doing, but he seemed to be grabbing at himself as if stung by a bee. She heard small animal-like noises whistling through his teeth.
Abruptly, he stood up and turned. She gasped and felt her knees go weak.
His trousers were open and in his hand he held a huge, erect cock, pinker than any flesh on his body.
He lurched toward her, tripping on his leggings as he clamped onto her breasts with his long delicate fingers, like tentacles with suckers.
Both of them fell to the dirt floor.
She was far stronger than Octavus but the shock had made her weak as a kitten. Instinctively, he pulled up her smock and exposed her creamy thighs. He was between her legs, pushing hard against her. His head was draped over her shoulder, his forehead pressed to the ground. He was making his quick little whistling noises. She was a worldly girl; she knew what was happening to her.
“Christ the Lord, have mercy on me!” she cried over and over.
By the time Jose, the Iberian monk, heard the screams and rushed down the stairs from his copy desk in the main gallery, Mary was seated against the wall softly crying, her smock stained red with blood, and Octavus was back at his desk, his trousers around his ankles, his quill flying over the page.
JULY 15, 2009
I t was sticky and steamy, a high-humidity afternoon where the heat radiating off the pavement seemed like a punishment. New Yorkers tread on hot-plate sidewalks, rubber soles softening, limbs heavy with the effort of walking through what seemed gruel. Will’s polo shirt clung to his chest as he lugged a couple of heavy plastic grocery bags bulging with the fixings for a party.
He cracked a beer, lit a burner, and sliced an onion while the saucepan heated. The sizzle of the onions and the sweet smoke filling the kitchenette pleased him. He hadn’t smelled home cooking in a long while and couldn’t remember when he’d last used the stove. Probably in the Jennifer era, but everything about that relationship had gone blurry.
The ground beef was browning nicely when the doorbell rang. Nancy had an apple pie and a melting tub of frozen yogurt and looked relaxed in hip-hugger jeans and a short sleeveless blouse.
Will felt relaxed, and she noticed. His face was softer than usual, his jaw less clenched, his shoulders less rounded. He grinned at her.
“You look happy,” she said with some surprise.
He took the bag from her and spontaneously bent to deliver a peck on the cheek, the gesture taking both of them by surprise.
He quickly took a step back and she made a blushing recovery by sniffing at the spicy cumin and chili-pepper haze and making a joke about undiscovered culinary skills. While he stirred the saucepan, she set his table then called out, “Did you get her anything?”
He hesitated, his mind grinding on the question. “No,” he said finally. “Should I have?”
“Yes!”
“What?”
“How should I know! You’re her father.”
He went quiet, his mood turning sooty.
“Let me run out and get some flowers,” she offered.
“Thanks,” he said, nodding to himself. “She likes flowers.” It was a guess-he had a memory of a toddler with a bunch of freshly picked daisies in her chubby hand. “I’m sure she likes flowers.”
The past few weeks had been drudgery. The substance of the larger case against Luis Camacho eroded away, leaving only one count of murder. Hard as they pressed, they couldn’t make a single other Doomsday case stick to him; in fact, they couldn’t come close. They had painstakingly mapped him, reconstructing every day of his life for the past three months. Luis worked steadily and reliably, jetting back and forth to Las Vegas two to three times a week. He was mainly domesticated, spending most nights in New York at his lover’s house. But he also had the instincts of a tomcat, drifting to clubs and gay bars when his partner was tired or otherwise occupied, zealously pursuing liaisons. John Pepperdine was a low-energy monogamous sort, while Luis Camacho had sexual energy that burned like magnesium. There wasn’t any doubt that his fiery temper had led to murder, but John, it appeared, was his only victim.
And the killings had stopped: good news for everyone still drawing air, bad news for the investigation, which could only rehash the same tired clues. Then one day Will had a Eureka moment, of sorts. What if John Pepperdine had been the intended ninth victim of the Doomsday Killer but Luis Camacho had struck first in an ordinary crime of passion?
Maybe Luis’s Las Vegas connection was a classic red herring. What if the real Doomsday Killer was there on City Island that day, on the other side of the police tape, watching, bemused that someone else had committed the crime? Then, to bedevil the authorities, what if he had gone into hiatus, letting them stew, sowing the seeds of confusion and frustration?
Will obtained subpoenas for the news organizations that had been on Minnieford Avenue that warm bloody evening, and over the course of several days he and Nancy pored over hours of videotape and hundreds of digital
