his bedroom. He dressed in dark blue slacks, a gray sweatshirt and navy jacket, loafers. He gobbled a methamphetamine and went out the back, through the garage, and got in the car.
A neighborhood restaurant had a pay phone just inside the door. He stopped, dialed, got the answering machine on the second ring-a message was waiting. He punched in the code, 4384. The machine rewound, paused, then Druze's voice blurted a single syllable.
Druze hunched over the wheel, the weight of the night pressing on him.
Like the tarbaby. One foot stuck, then you have to kick with the other one, then you have to punch him, and your fist gets stuck…
This would be the last for him. He'd talk Bekker out of the third killing. There was no need for a third. Not now. He'd seen them on television, and the cops were convinced: one killer, a psycho.
Druze was orbiting a red-brick university building, Peik Hall, watching. Lots of lights, big orange sodium-vapor anti-crime lights, walk lights, globe lights outside the entrances to the university buildings. Lots of trees and shrubbery, too. Good cover. And nobody around.
The night was cold, with heavy broken clouds darting across the sky, a full moon sailing between them; and it smelled of coming rain. A good night for beer and brats and television in the Riverside Avenue taverns with the theater crowd. Druze could never be one of the happy crowd, throwing darts or chattering, but he could sit on his stool at the end of the bar, feeling a little of the reflected warmth. Anything would be better than this-but he had nobody to blame for this but himself. He should have gone after the fat man…
Druze was wearing the ski jacket again, but this time as much for concealment as for protection from the weather. He wouldn't want George to recognize him prematurely.
George's Cherokee was parked in a small public parking lot tucked behind an older building adjacent to Peik Hall. Pillsbury Drive, a cross-campus road, ran past the end of the lot. After ten o'clock there was little traffic-but there was some. Every few minutes or so, a car went past, and the road was smooth enough that you couldn't hear it coming.
One other car was parked in the lot, across from George's. Druze circled the campus complex as long as he dared, then parked his Dodge wagon beside George's Jeep, leaving a full parking space between them. He sat for a moment, watching, then got out, listened a few seconds more. The lot was poorly lit, with most of the light coming from a bowl-shaped fixture on the back of the building.
No people around, unless they were hiding in the bushes. Druze started toward the sidewalk that led past the building, stopped next to a bush of bridal wreath and listened again, ten seconds, twenty. Nothing. He walked back to the Jeep, squatted, took a tire-pressure gauge out of his pocket, reversed it and used the spike to let the air out of the Cherokee's left rear tire. George had to approach from that side; he should see it.
The hissing air sounded like a train whistle in Druze's ears, and it seemed to go on forever. But it didn't. In less than a minute, the tire was flat. Druze stood, looked around again and wandered away.
The parking meters. Jesus Christ.
He walked back and plugged the university's twenty-four-hour parking meters. He'd have to remember to look for the campus cops. They checked the parking lots once or twice a night. A ticket would be a disaster.
Druze didn't feel anything when he killed-revulsion, sorrow, empathy. He didn't fear much, either. But tonight there was an edge of apprehension: it came as he almost walked away from the meters. Suppose he came back, killed George and only then noticed a ticket on his windshield? They'd have him. Or, like Brer Rabbit with the tarbaby, he'd be chasing around the campus, hunting down the cop with the ticket book. He'd have to kill him to get the book. And then…
That'd be impossible. That was a nightmare, not a rational possibility. Druze shivered and hunched his shoulders. He hadn't expected to get this tangled.
A woman student, carrying books, walked by on the other side of the street, looking resolutely away from him. He went out to University Avenue, keeping an eye on the lighted windows in Peik. Bekker had scouted the building, told him which ones to watch… A black kid in a red jacket hurried by, on the other side of the street. Another kid, white, wearing a white helmet and a daypack, zipped past on Rollerblades.
Druze sauntered now, moving into actor mode, one hand in his pocket, on the handle of the antique German knife-sharpening steel. The steel was as heavy as a fireplace poker, but shorter, eighteen inches long, tapering like a sword, with a smooth hickory handle. He'd shoved the point of the steel right through the bottom of his pocket. The handle was big enough for the steel to hang there on its own, cold down his leg, out of sight. He'd practiced drawing it. It came out smoothly and swung like a pipe wrench, with better balance. It would do the job.
Druze moved off University Avenue and walked across a lawn outside Peik. He was doing a lot for Bekker, he thought, and then: But not only for Bekker. This is for me, I'm the one he'd recognize…
At five minutes after ten, three students carrying books came out the front door of Peik Hall. They stopped on the steps for a moment; then one of the men went left, the man and woman right. Another minute passed, and another knot of students came out of the building, talking, and walked away together. A bank of lights went off in the target windows, then another. Druze drifted out toward University Avenue again, then down Pillsbury, toward the parking lot. He walked to the far end of the lot, stepped between two bushes, waited, waited…
Two men walked into the lot, from along the side of the building. He could hear their voices, at first like a faraway typewriter, clacking, then as human speech:
'… Can't figure out how they won it, given the way the company failed to warn anybody about the gas-tank leaks…' The speaker was the shorter of the two men.
'Juries. You have to keep that in mind, always. There's no absolutely good way to predict what they'll do, even with the best screening program. In this particular… Oh, shit.' The conversation stopped. Druze started back up the sidewalk toward the building. If there were two of them, he'd have to forget it. 'Look at the goddamn tire. It's only three months old…'
'You want me…' the other man offered. A student, Druze thought.
'No, no, I can change it in two minutes,' George said, peering down at the tire in disgust. 'But it pisses me off, excuse the expression. I should be able to drive over railroad spikes with those tires… Now, there's a case for you, Mr. Brekke. Sue the goddamn tire company for me…'
'Glad to…'
There was more talk and a clatter of tools as the slender student stood and watched the heavyset professor dismount the spare from the Jeep. Druze, feeling something almost like relief, thought the student would stay. But after watching for a couple of minutes, the man looked at his watch and said, 'Well, my wife will be wondering…'
'Go on. This'll just take a minute.'
The student was gone, rolling out of the lot, never looking toward Druze's bush. Druze let him go, heard his car accelerate down University… The professor had his jacket off, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and he grunted and cursed in the night. The flat came off, the spare went on. He seemed to know what he was doing, working without wasted motion. With a series of quick twists, the spare was lugged down.
Druze took a deep breath, got a grip on the sharpening steel with his right hand and stepped into the parking lot, jingling his car keys with his left hand, moving slowly.
The professor popped open the back of the Jeep, leaving the keys in the lock-everything was moving slowly for Druze now, everything was in needle-sharp focus-lifted the flat, holding it carefully clear of his trousers, and heaved it inside the Jeep.
Druze was ten feet away, checking, checking. Nobody around. Nothing coming on Pillsbury, no cars: The professor, a big, beefy blond man, slamming the back of the Jeep, now turning at the sound of Druze's keys… The keys would be a soothing sound, suggesting that Druze was headed for the last car in the lot…
'Flat tire?' Druze asked.
The professor nodded without a flicker of recognition, although Druze was less than a long step away. 'Yeah, damn thing was flat as a pancake.'
'Got it under control?' Druze asked, slowing. He looked around a last time: Nothing. The handle of the sharpening steel was cool in his hand.
'Oh yeah, no problem,' George said, pulling on his jacket. His hands were black with grease from the lug nuts.
'Well…' Druze drew the steel behind his leg and stepped on, heading for his car, then pivoted and swung the
