filled with loathing and fear that anyone could do that to another person. But more than anything, the image of Patti being harmed by Lipton at that very moment pushed her to the edge of sanity.
'How far away are we?' Sales said. He had no idea where Patti lived.
'Not far from here. She's on this side of town in Sunset Valley. Fifteen minutes, maybe ten,' Casey said grimly. 'We should have known…'
'How could we know?' Sales argued. Inside, he was awash with his own guilt. Lipton hadn't really been in the garage the night before. Sales had commandeered the elevator himself to scare Casey into helping him. The shots he'd fired were wasted rounds that he knew no one else would hear three levels below the ground in a garage abandoned for the weekend. While he'd never tell Casey, it was he who should have at least suspected that Lipton might be up to something else. He hadn't seen a sign of him in two days.
'But how could we have known he was going to go after Patti?' he said aloud. 'She wasn't on the disk.'
'But she fit his profile perfectly,' Casey said bitterly. 'I should have suspected it… The way he, the way he turned it on whenever he was around her at the trial, stroking her for the littlest insight. Even the tone of his voice when he spoke to her was…'
She shook her head and said, 'I should have seen it. But I was too worried about myself and I never even thought about her.'
Sales took the pistol from his belt and carefully examined it, unloading it, sliding the action smoothly back and forth, and reloading it with a metallic snap.
'We'll make it,' he said.
Casey unclamped her teeth only long enough to say, 'We have to make it. My God, we have to.'
CHAPTER 34
Patti was startled by the loud knock. It had come so much sooner than she'd expected. Besides the professor, she couldn't think of anyone else it could be. She hurried to the door and peered through the peephole. It was Lipton. Patti felt a strange mixture of dread and excitement. She couldn't imagine why Casey would send him to her apartment. Of course, that same enigma made it exciting.
Patti glanced quickly back into her apartment. It was tastefully decorated with dark green overstuffed furniture and white walls adorned with silver-framed posters of van Gogh's most famous paintings. Still, she felt self-conscious. She knew instinctively that it was inadequate for someone of Professor Lipton's taste and experience. He knocked again and, with a helpless sigh and a painful smile, she opened the door, letting in a hellish wave of heat from the outside.
Lipton greeted her with the same warm, handsome smile that he had when they'd first met. The gleam in his eyes would have made her think he was on drugs if she didn't know better. He also looked somewhat heavier to her, and then she realized that it was because of his clothes. Strange that he should be clad from head to toe in a dark sweat suit that he'd zipped to the top of his throat. Even his short walk from the parking lot had left his bronze forehead bathed in sweat. There was also something on his back, a duffel bag maybe, whose strap was wrapped around one shoulder and across his chest.
'Come in,' she said, smiling and flipping her hair nervously behind one ear. 'I wasn't expecting you this soon.'
'Thank you,' he said, stepping across the threshold and closing the door behind him. With a small laugh he added, 'I was really just around the corner, you know.'
Patti nodded and turned to lead him into the living room without noticing that he paused to throw the bolt on the door.
'Would you like something to drink?' she asked. 'A soda?'
'Nothing at all,' he told her, assessing the layout as he slowly followed her in. The kitchen was on the left. Beyond it was a combination dining area and living room that ended at a set of sliding glass doors leading out to a covered terrace. There was a door opposite the kitchen that led to a half bathroom. The door to the bedroom itself was toward the back of the living room on the right.
'Please, sit down,' Patti said, positioning herself in front of the bedroom door with a coffee table between them. There was something unnerving about the professor, the way he was dressed and the way he looked at her. Patti knew something was wrong, but she didn't want to admit to herself that she'd done a foolish thing by letting him in. She told herself over and over that everything was fine.
'Do you mind if I use the bathroom?' he asked suddenly.
'No, please,' Patti said, pointing, glad to have him out of her presence even for a moment. 'It's right there behind you.'
'Thank you,' he said urbanely. Inside the bathroom, Lipton shed his small canvas bag and removed a pair of thick wool dress socks as well as some black leather driving gloves and a small cloth object. The other things could wait. He set the bag on the floor in the corner.
After pulling the socks over his shoes and the gloves over his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. He, too, saw the glaze in his eyes. He was beaming, strong and virile. Nothing could stop him. It was the flush of destiny. With great satisfaction he took the cloth object and stretched it over his head. Besides the two holes for his eyes, there was only one other opening in the black mask, a small slit he could breathe through. He was death.
'Patti?' he said softly with his gloved hand on the doorknob. 'Patti?'
He heard her crossing the room.
'Is everything all right?' she said, standing back from the door, still insisting to herself that everything was perfectly fine.
Lipton emitted a nervous chuckle and said, 'The door, it's stuck. I can't get out. Is there a trick to this?'
Patti stood where she was.
'Patti?' he said. 'Help me, will you?'
'All right.'
Lipton held the doorknob tight until he could sense her pressing against the door, putting all her strength into it. With one swift motion, he twisted the knob, yanked it open, and caught her by the throat as she fell toward him.
For almost two seconds, the shock was too much for Patti to overcome. In that time he'd thrown her down to the floor and mounted her with all his weight bearing down on her chest. Then she began to fight, and in that area she didn't disappoint him. Wildly she clawed and kicked, her nails falling harmlessly on his nylon suit and her feet striking nothing but air. Then she began to punch, tight little fists thrown with remarkable ferocity, but waning by the second.
Lipton bore down with all his strength, cutting off the blood to her brain, but at the same time keeping his thumbs on either side of her larynx to maximize the pressure on her carotid arteries. Soon her limbs did nothing more than twitch, and he felt a thrill run through him as her eyes rolled back in her head. Immediately, he let go of her neck and scrambled into the bathroom for his kit. Within seconds, he had stripped her naked and bound her wrists, ankles, and mouth tightly with his tape. Once she was secured, he took the time to neatly fold her clothes and set them on the back of the couch, saving the underwear for himself. Those he would use to clean his knife and save as a trophy of his conquest.
After all, she was his now. Her essence belonged to him. It was waiting there for him. But he wanted her awake. He wanted her to know just how much power he had. All the whispering between her and Casey during the trial, he'd seen that. He knew they talked about him. He knew they made jokes between themselves about his impotence. Strong women loved to emasculate a man, especially a man of his great intellect. They paled next to his mental brilliance and they were bitter about it. Now she would know. She would know that he was a sexual beast and that he would use her own sexual essence as a fuel for his latent passions.
Lipton whipped off his mask and stuffed it into the bag with his other things. He stood over her, waiting and staring hungrily at her naked figure until he felt a remote stirring within his groin. Part of him wanted her badly, but he would not risk that. He needed his powder, and he needed a woman who would not only succumb to him, but beg him for it. He conjured up the image of his little whore downtown and turned that over in his mind until Patti began to stir. Soon her eyelids would flutter to life and she would see him there, standing over her in complete control.
Lipton bent down and took the long, cruel-looking knife from his bag. Lovingly, he unsheathed it. When her eyes finally opened, they were wide with horror. Lipton began to talk and as he explained to her what he was going to do and why, he also chortled quietly but uncontrollably at the pitifully smothered shrieks and moans that escaped her injured throat.
'Are you crying now?' he asked, mimicking concern. Then with venom he added, 'You should have thought of that when you were mocking me! When you were laughing at me and looking like a little slut and thinking that there was nothing I could do about it. But there is something I can do! I can do this!'
Lipton bent down over her thrashing body and pinned her with his knees. Expertly, he inserted the point of his knife just below her rib cage and slipped it down toward her belly, opening a hideous bloody gash in her torso. Her terrified strangled screams mingled with Lipton's laughter, filling the room with inhuman noise.
CHAPTER 35
Casey raced into the parking lot. Over the scream of tires, Sales asked her which unit belonged to Patti.
'Three-C,' Casey said, remembering the first week Patti moved in and proudly invited her for a spaghetti dinner. 'The top corner at the far end of the building!'
Sales pointed toward a white van at the other end of the lot and said, 'He's here!'
Casey slammed on her brakes, sending the car in a sideways skid. Sales leapt from the vehicle before it had even stopped. Casey slammed the car into park and chased Sales up the stairs as fast as she could. When Sales got to 3-C, he tried the door's handle once before kicking it. The door shuddered from the blow but stood strong. Spinning around, Sales leaned forward and kicked back like a mule, bursting the door from its frame in a cascade of splintered wood.
With Casey now just behind him, Sales sprang into the hallway in a crouched position. Lipton, warned by the first kick at the door, welcomed him with a deafening hail of bullets from his Tech-9 sending Sales back out the doorway as quickly as he'd come. When the gunfire stopped, Sales waved a hand up high and came in low again. This time there was no gunfire. He edged into the apartment, knees bent, his Glock extended with both hands in a shooting position.
After a moment of silence, Casey peeked in after Sales. He had reached the living room now, and as he ducked into the bedroom gun first, Casey rushed toward Patti's inert body. A dreadful shriek escaped her lips at the sight of the gore. Blood was everywhere. She rushed for the phone and dialed 911. Her mind barely registered Sales as he burst from the bedroom and out onto the terrace. Gunfire cut through her shock, and she realized that Sales was firing over the edge of the railing.
Lipton had climbed down the outside of the building, hanging and jumping from terrace to terrace until he reached the ground. Sales caught only a glimpse of him
