He's out of breath, slick with sweat and blood.
Satisfied.
For the moment.
'One down, three to go,' he says to the television.
All in all, a successful production. Perhaps a little quick, considering the weeks of careful planning it has taken to get to this point. But that can be blamed on excitement.
With the next one he will pace himself better. Make it last. Do the cutting while she's still alive.
He'll grab the next girl tomorrow and try out some new things.
In the meantime he rewinds the videotape to watch it again.
Chapter 4
DON, I'M HOME.'
I hid the wine bottle behind my back in case he was sitting in the kitchenette next to the front door.
He wasn't.
'Don?'
I did a quick tour of the place. It didn't take long, because my apartment was about the size of a Cracker Jack box. Except there was no prize inside.
But I wasn't discouraged. If he wasn't home, I could catch him at the health club. Don had vanity issues. True, he had a good body, but the amount of time he invested in it seemed disproportionate to the benefits.
I went to chill the wine, when I noticed the note on the fridge.
Jack,
I've left you for my personal trainer, Roxy. We just weren't right for each other, you were too into your stupid job, and the sex wasn't very good.
Plus your tossing and turning all night drove me crazy. Please pack up all my stuff. I'll pick it up Friday.
Thanks for fixing those parking tickets for me, and don't worry. Roxy's place is about ten times bigger than yours, so I'll have somewhere to stay.
Don
I read the note again, but it wasn't any nicer the second time. We'd dated for almost an entire year. He'd been living with me for six months. And now it was over, ended with a brief, indifferent letter. I didn't even warrant the standard 'I hope we can still be friends' line.
I hit the freezer and took out an ice tray. Three cubes went into a rocks glass, along with a shot of whiskey and a splash of sour mix. I sat down and thought, and drank, and thought some more.
When the cocktail was finished I made another. I was wading deep in the self-pity pool, but there was little sense of loss. I hadn't loved Don. He was a warm body to hold at night and a partner for restaurants and movies and occasional sex.
The only man I'd ever loved was my ex-husband, Alan. When he left me, the pain was physical. Fifteen years later, I'm still wary about giving another person that much control over my heart again.
I eyed the half-finished drink in my hand. When Jacqueline Streng married Alan Daniels, she became Jack Daniels. Ever since, people have given me bottles of the stuff as gifts, each probably thinking they were being clever. I was forced to develop a taste for it, or else open up my own liquor store.
I gulped down the rest of the cocktail and was about to pour another, when I noticed my reflection in the door of the microwave. Seeing myself, sitting at my cheap dinette set with my sleepy red eyes and my limp hair, I looked like a finalist in the Miss Pathetic America Pageant.
Lots of cops I knew drank. They drank alone, drank on the job, drank when they woke up, and drank themselves to sleep. Law enforcement officers had a higher rate of alcoholism than any other profession. They also had the most divorces and the most suicides.
Divorce was the only statistic I cared to add to.
So I took off my blazer and my shoulder holster, replaced my skirt and blouse with a pair of jeans and a sweater, and went out to explore Chicago.
I lived on Addison and Racine, in a part of town called Wrigleyville. Rent was reasonable because it was impossible to park anywhere, especially since the Cubs started hosting night games. But I had a badge, so any fireplug or no-parking zone was fair game.
The neighborhood was loud and active, as expected. At any given time there were at least ten drinking-age college students per square foot, barhopping among the area's forty-plus watering holes. Great if you were in your twenties. But a mature woman like me was out of place in these trendy clubs, where techno music shook the foundations and drinks like 'Screaming Orgasms' and 'Blow Jobs' were the house specials.
Don had once dragged me into a bar called Egypto, where the only lighting in the place came from several hundred Lava lamps lining the walls. He bought me a drink called a 'Slippery Dick.' I told him the drink wasn't stiff enough. He didn't laugh. I should have known then.
So for a woman of my advanced years, Wrigleyville gave me only two real choices: the bar at the Westminster Hotel, or Joe's Pool Hall.
I'd only been at the Westminster once, out of curiosity. It turned out to be the kind of place where old people gather to die. The entertainment that night had been Dario, a small hairy man in suspenders with an electric accordion. He did a disco version of 'When the Saints Go Marching In' while geriatrics polkaed furiously. I felt old, but not that old.
