were empty, just more people of no account to keep his mother occupied at the edge of his vision.
The good part was that the constant squabbling about money had ended. Whatever negotiations she had with the men who stayed or passed through were carried on out of earshot, and seemed to be resolved mostly in her favor. The things she liked—new dresses, makeup, hair and nail work—were in plentiful supply. But he still was alone most of the time. He got up and went to school, came home, ate what was left over from the dinners she had shared with her male guests, washed the dishes, and went out again. If he was home in time to be gone again by the time she woke up, he had nothing to fear from her displeasure.
For years, he made no further forays into the world of adventure he had glimpsed in the death of Aunt Toni. He prepared. He got up in the morning and did his sets with weights, chinned himself, did crunches and push-ups, showered, and went to school. Then he came home, did his homework, ate what he could find around the house, and went out to run a few miles. When he came back he did a second workout, showered, and went out again to walk the night streets.
He detested the weak, so he worked and sweated to be strong and hard and fast. Failure was humiliating and brought unwelcome attention, so he avoided trouble by doing his homework and getting good grades.
In the second month of his senior year of high school, it seemed to occur to his mother, all at once, that he existed. It was as though while he was young and small he was able to be invisible, but by that October, he had grown too big to ignore. He had to endure detailed recitations of her daily life. He had to endure less specific lists of sacrifices she had made for his sake. He had always had to hear her say that having him around was such a terrible burden that she could not stand it any longer. But now he had to experience a strange new set of indictments: the complaints against his father that had been silently refined in her mind during six years of resentment were now delivered to the boy as though the transgressions were his.
Varney waited. He concentrated on his routines, for he was of a curiously disciplined temperament. He worked harder and longer, and maintained his silence. This was a method he had perfected in order to stay invisible when he was small, and he found it worked nearly as well now that he had been rediscovered. He lasted until June. On the afternoon of his graduation he came home with a diploma and began to pack for his life of adventure just as his mother was waking up.
She came out of her bedroom and stared at him, then went back in to get her robe. When she came out this time, she had tied it so tight at the waist that her eyes were bulging. She said in a voice like cracking glass, “What do you think you’re doing?”
He shrugged. “I just graduated. Time to go.”
She shrieked at him, “You bastard!” Then she began to pace. “I raised you all by myself! I gave you everything you ever had! Everything you ever did was because I did it for you! Now you’re just going to leave?”
He looked at her, puzzled. She had always said that he was a burden and she wanted him to leave. “What else?”
“What else? You ask me what else? You can get a job and do the same for me. You can—”
He was already shaking his head. “No.” He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t interested in any more trouble. He went on packing. He had not anticipated this. From the moment when he had been old enough to decipher her words, she had said she couldn’t wait until this day. But the fact that her reaction was the opposite wasn’t enough of a surprise to disturb him. It simply explained a few of her most recent tirades. She had noticed he was grown into a man. She had not been trying to hasten his departure. She had simply identified him as an adult male—someone who could be induced to get money for her.
He had almost finished packing, since he owned very little that he wasn’t wearing. She saw the diploma and it seemed to outrage her, as though the piece of paper was what had caused him to offend her. She snatched it off the couch, tore it in four pieces, and tried to hurl it at his face, but the pieces merely fluttered to the floor at her feet.
She looked around her, and then her eyes settled on the suitcase. She snatched the handle. “These are mine!” she shouted. “I paid for everything! You want to go, you’re not taking anything of mine with you.”
He looked at her for only a second, then picked up the pieces of his diploma and walked to the door.
She screamed, “You’ll be back! You’re going to need me!”
He thought for a moment. “If cannibalism comes back in style, I might come back to cut up your fat ass and sell it. Otherwise . . .” He shrugged, stepped out, and closed the door. His life of adventure began.
That had been ten years ago, and Varney did not often think about those days anymore. He finished his breakfast in the hotel dining room, reread the editorial in the
3
Prescott stood at the front door of the restaurant, then stepped to the side and stared in the window past the FOR LEASE sign. He raised his eyes a few degrees, and he could see the folding steel grate extended across the storefront two doors away. This was probably where the killer had been standing when he had noticed the lock.
The new padlock the owners had put on the grate stuck out a little. Prescott walked toward the store, looking at the pattern of cars on the street, listening for engines and counting, gauging speeds. There had probably been more cars parked at the curb on this side that night, because the restaurant had still been in business, but it wasn’t a street that had much foot traffic. He reached the padlock, then gave himself a few seconds to open it in his mind. The killer had probably carried a shim pick in his pocket. No, Prescott decided, it had been a small, all-purpose set, because the killer had been improvising.
Prescott walked back to the door, stopped for a couple of seconds to simulate putting the chain and padlock on the door and hanging the CLOSED sign on the knob, then went around the small building toward the rear. There was a little parking area in the alley where trucks could unload supplies, and spaces for five cars—the boss, the two cooks, the two waiters. He stopped and looked in one direction, then the other. There was nothing for the length of the alley that would have concerned the shooter: no big light fixtures, no other businesses that were open at night. Instead, there were dumpsters, piles of empty boxes, long dark stretches, and places where he could climb a fence or step between buildings and be on the next street in seconds. Prescott began to feel a faint echo of the killer’s sensation. This looked good to him—safe, almost—but the time was going by, and the opportunity was too good to pass up. He went to the back door and used the key to open it, then put the key away and propped the door open six inches with the doorstop.
Prescott stepped back into the dark alley again to clear his mind. The police had finished here a few days ago, and had returned the building to the possession of its owner. Prescott had presented himself as a potential tenant and gotten the keys for the night. Now he had to forget those details, and see this place as the killer had.
Within a few seconds, he had succeeded. He looked at the light falling from the open door onto the rough, pitted pavement at his feet. In his mind, the door was open because someone in the kitchen had opened it. The cook had done it to disperse the heat and steam and food smells. The last meals of the evening had been served. Soon the dishwasher would arrive to help with the cleanup in the kitchen while he waited for the last customers to leave the dining room. This way he wouldn’t have to bang on the door to get in.
Prescott stepped close to the door, looked inside, and listened. The killer’s ears would have been what told him where the cook was. He took the pistol he carried in his jacket and moved it to his belt at the small of his back, so he could reach it but it would not get in his way. He leaned into the doorway and waited until the sounds the cook was making moved away, then farther away, toward the sink at the end of the room.
He saw the knives where they used to hang on the rack. He scanned for the one: most were big, flat, and unwieldy. The serrated edge of the bread knife had a small attraction, but the blade was thin and flexible. The boning knife was the one. He took three deep breaths, and drifted in. He did not tiptoe slowly in but floated quickly to the rack, his hand already feeling the handle so it came into his grip smoothly, without pause. There was still a space of about twenty feet to cross, and he moved even more swiftly. Then his left arm came up to hook around
