perhaps she would agree. He would compliment her dress or her hair or her eyes, and she would ask what he did for a living.
The two of them operated purely on instinct and reflex. Every move, every word, every detail of their grooming had been prompted by the unconscious emulation of others or the irresistible pull of instinctual drives.
The man wore those jeans and that belt because he had seen other men wearing them; imitative as a monkey, he had bought them for himself.
He had come to a bar because it was where other people would come. He had taken the empty seat beside the woman because this too was the action that was expected of him.
His conversational gambits had been picked up from movies or TV shows or from dialogue he’d overheard in other bars — nothing original, lines spoken by strangers, who in turn copied behavior they had witnessed elsewhere.
The ritual of offering to buy a drink, of making some cheap and obvious toast, of clinking glasses, all of it was a show played out countless times by countless others.
And if the woman allowed him to take her home, she would do so only because it was expected of her, because she had been raised in a culture that permitted and slyly approved of such behavior; she would be fitting herself seamlessly into the social framework that had shaped her.
The only honest part of what either of them did was their instinctive need for sexual relief, and this was a need they shared with every animal.
Cray had heard much about the dignity of man, but what he had seen was only the vacant thoughtlessness of a herd. The mind was largely an illusion; the great majority of people were, for all practical purposes, unconscious most of the time. Their conscious minds, if functional at all, served only to provide a veneer of rationalization for behavior patterns already prompted by social conditioning and instinct.
Cray considered the woman in the short skirt, and saw a mandrill, her buttocks flaming red in sexual heat. He studied the man dutifully attempting to seduce her, and saw a rutting gorilla driven by the need to establish himself as the alpha male.
Those two were random examples. He could have focused on anyone around him and seen the same. There were exceptions, but they were rare. In his life he had found only one person able to understand, really understand.
One person besides himself.
“Sir? Would you like to see our dinner menu?”
A waitress had paused by the table, smiling at him from under a raft of loose auburn hair. Her name tag read DEBBI.
“Not quite yet,” Cray said. “Perhaps you could bring me another drink.”
“Right away.” Her smile brightened, and she shook her ringlets of red hair as she walked away.
Cray watched her go. She was most cheerful, a healthy and vital young animal, but he wondered how long her high spirits would last if he took her into the mountains tonight and used her for sport.
The prospect did not entice him. He could do better. Debbi the waitress was too youthful and unformed to be really interesting. It was preferable to select a mature specimen, ripe for harvest.
He needed to find a woman who was alone, or who could be separated from her party. He would target his victim, trail her to her home or hotel room, then carry out the abduction. He would find a way to do it quietly.
Cray let his gaze travel around the room. A fair number of the tables had filled up since his arrival.
In a general sense he knew what he was looking for, but he had no precise image in mind. She might be tall or short, blonde or brunette or red-haired. She might be of any race. He liked them slender, never younger than sixteen or older than forty-five, but those were his only criteria.
Most of the patrons around him were couples, but a pair of unattached women sat at the bar, talking to the bartender and watching
There were no other solitary women in sight… except one, seated in a far corner.
Cray glimpsed her face, half-concealed behind a wide-brimmed straw hat. For an instant she seemed to meet his gaze, and then she averted her head slightly, a movement so subtle as to be almost natural.
“Here you go.” Debbi the waitress, returning with Cray’s second margarita.
He accepted it with thanks, then held the cold glass in his hand.
It was a hand that trembled now, only a little, and not so obviously that anyone would notice. He sat motionless, afraid to lift the drink and perhaps spill it. He studied the distant city in the window.
To the southwest he could see the lighted towers of downtown Tucson. Downtown, where he’d gone on Saturday night, only forty-eight hours ago. A street fair had drawn him there, a monthly bacchanal that attracted throngs of students from the university and other locals in search of fun and distraction. The scene had been crowded and noisy. Bands played on street corners, a blare of drums and amplified guitars and caterwauling voices. People threw money into open guitar cases at the musicians’ feet, because it was expected of them.
University students, back for the fall semester, yelled primal challenges at the night sky. Here and there a juggler or a magician would attract an audience, as their counterparts had done in medieval markets and Roman festivals.
Human nature never changed, because at its root it was not human at all. It was something older.
Cray had been musing on this as he wended, supple as smoke, through the noise and shadow-flicker of the crowd. The subject often occupied him. He had written a book, well received, to explore part of it — the less dangerous part. The title had been
He’d thought of masks while his eyes, narrowed and alert, scanned the swirl of faces around him. What part of these people was unique? Not their attire or grooming, their mores and tastes, not even their thoughts. What, then? Their souls? And what was the soul, if not the primordial part of them, predating words and ego? What was the soul, if not the beast within?
Yet they did not release the beast. They kept it caged and hidden. They hid it even from themselves. They wore masks, all of them, masks of flesh — smiling or frowning masks, as unreal as the stylized faces worn by Roman actors in the last decadent days of Empire.
He saw those masks and yearned to strip them off and see the bare truth beneath, the truth that was blood and fear and a racing heartbeat.
And then he had seen her.
Only fleetingly, a pale face in the swarm.
Blonde hair, a slim neck, white arms.
She was gone almost before he registered her existence. But in the instant of eye contact between them, he had sensed something, a frisson of mutual excitement.
He wanted her.
She was the one.
But she’d vanished. Though he looked for hours, elbowing his way through the masses of strangers, he had not spotted her again.
Until tonight.
The woman in the corner, with the straw hat that almost hid her face…
A pale face. And beneath the hat, a wisp of blonde hair.
It was the same woman.
He was certain.
He wanted to believe that this second sighting was a coincidence. But to believe in coincidence required faith.
Cray had no faith. He did not believe.
There was, then, no explanation for her presence except the obvious one.
He remembered the glint of chrome behind him on Route 191. The car that had maintained a steady distance from his Lexus, mile after mile.
Her car. It must have been.
She had followed him to the street fair. She had followed him to this resort.
She must be staking out his home and tailing him whenever he left.
She was…
