him out of there.
Out in the hal way the security guards had gone back to their posts and the naked fat man was once more back in his room. Joe was now far enough down the hal to be out of the guards' sight. He continued looking into the rooms as he strode down the hal way with his back to the guards. He was careful not to seem too obvious. Midway down the hal he located Trent's room. The door was open but Trent had been strapped to the bed with leather restraints that held him fast to the bed rails.
'Wel, glad you could make it.'
'Shut the fuck up,' Joe sneered. The fat child kil er lay on the hospital bed with a TV remote in his hand and his thick vulgar lips smeared with what Joe hoped was chocolate pudding.
'What did you do to your teeth? They look wonderful! Very sexy. And I see you've had a snack recently. Tel me about it, would you? It's been so long.'
'We don't have time. I need to get you out of here.'
'We've got a little time. The guards and nurses wil be taking lunch soon. They go in shifts. Half of them stay behind while the first shift goes downstairs to the cafeteria or down the street to that
Mexican place on the corner. That's the best time for you to try to sneak me out. That way if they try to stop us they'l be less of them for you to contend with.'
'You mean us,' don't you?'
'I'm a lover, not a fighter.' The fat pedophile leered at Joe and licked his tongue across his fat lips. Joe finished unbuckling his restraints and snatched him out of the bed by his throat.
'Don't test me, fat boy. Now hurry up and get dressed.'
'I told you there's no hurry. Look at your watch. We've got another hour before lunchtime. You might as wel get comfortable.'
Chapter Thirty-nine
Night slipped into the unmarked Chevy
Cavalier and wrapped itself around
Detective Montgomery. His eyes peered like lasers out of the shadows as he stared intently at Professor Locke's modest home. Something was going on.
The professor had seemed more than annoyed when Montgomery and his partner had approached him earlier. He had seemed scared, guilty, and he'd been lying. At almost every question the detective had asked, Locke's eyes had slipped up and to the left, accessing the creative side of his brain in search of a response, in search of a lie. response, in search of a lie.
Montgomery had fol owed him as he rushed across the campus to visit his friend and fel ow suspect Professor
Martin Douglas. He'd watched them argue while seated on a bench facing the professor's office window. Then he'd watched as they appeared to reconcile and shake hands over some secret pact.
It was nearly an hour later when the two of them stalked across campus to the medical building. They smiled and backslapped with the head of the psychiatry department and left with what appeared to be a prescription. They then continued on to a nearby pharmacy and then to Locke's home in Protrero Hil.
Now he could see their silhouettes behind drawn shades, fil ing a bag with supplies as if preparing for a hunting trip. Montgomery was pretty sure that was exactly what they were doing, going to hunt a predator named Joseph Miles.
Hours after being confronted by the two detectives, Professors Locke and
Douglas crept out to a waiting car carrying two suitcases and a duffel bag fil ed with handcuffs, duct tape, chloroform, a. 45-caliber Taurus semiautomatic loaded with Glaser
Safety Slugs, and several packs of powerful serotonin suppressors.
'It feels like we're carrying a murder kit.' Locke smiled at his col eague in bemusement. 'What do you know about murder kits?'
'I've listened to your lectures before. Murder kits are the tools that serial kil ers carry with them to their kil s. Duct tape, handcuffs, add a ski mask and leather gloves and it would be almost identical to the stuff they found in the trunk of Bundy's car the first time he was arrested. I mean, what are we doing here?'
'Going to stop a kil er. And to cure a young man with a possibly treatable impulse-control disorder that is ruining his life and the lives of everyone he comes in contact with. That's what we're doing, Douglas.'
'Serotonin inhibitors. Could it real y be that simple?'
'It might be. It just might be.'
'And if it isn't and he keeps kil ing?'
'Then we turn him over to the police. Either way we're both heroes.'
They dropped their luggage into the trunk and enjoyed one last look around the safe, sane neighborhood before stepping into the car to begin their journey into madness. Professor Locke slipped behind the wheel of his six-yearold BMW and pul ed away from the curb. The vehicle crept to the end of the block, crawling slowly as if hesitating. At the end of the corner it seemed to recommit itself, turning the corner and accelerating toward the freeway.
Detective Montgomery took off in silent pursuit, fol owing nearly a block behind them as the professor's BMW climbed the freeway on-ramp, headed toward
Washington.
'What the hel are you two up to?' he grumbled as he watched their headlights charge off into the night. He then picked up his radio and cal ed in to the station to let his captain know that he would be out of state for a few days in pursuit of a suspect.
Chapter Forty
The urge to kil the obese pervert was almost unbearable. Joe sat staring across at him with a murderous lust pulsating through his veins with every heartbeat. Only this time it was less sensuous, black as death and sin; born of hatred rather than desire. This was the man who'd made him what he was: a monster. It was his fault that he'd nearly kil ed Alicia. His fault that he'd kil ed al the others. He was the one who'd cut him, raped him, and scarred him within and without. It was his face that he stil saw in his nightmares.
'Has anyone ever told you that you look
'Has anyone ever told you that you look like Superman? I mean, not like
Christopher Reeve, but I mean the real
Superman… from the comic books. You look just like that son of bitch!' Damon chuckled in amusement.
It took a Herculean effort to keep from taking him right there in the hospital. Joe desperately wanted to see the man bleed. He had no desire to feed on him. This wouldn't be kil ing for food. For the first time it would be kil ing for the pure enjoyment of ending another human being's sorry existence.
If it weren't for al the noise the fat bastard would make, squealing like a stricken hog, he would have tried to end it right there and take his chances getting back out of the hospital. It would have been easier to get out without the fat freak in tow anyway, Joe thought. The discovery of his body would even act as a perfect distraction to al ow him to slip past the guards. But there was also the possibility that they'd lock the whole place down as soon as the body was discovered and he'd be trapped.
'Shut the hel up before the nurses hear you. Do they check the patients before they go on break?'
'Only the terminal ones and the ones who can't control their bowel movements. There's a schizophrenic spree kil er at the end of the hal that they keep a pretty tight watch on. He's always going on about `The High Score.' See, the record for the most people kil ed in a single murder spree is twenty-one. This guy kil ed about thirteen when he went off on a rampage at a supermarket in
Seattle. But he was trying to crack twenty-one, beat the high score. He stil wants to do it and he makes no
