Prescott sensed that something about the voice had changed. He decided to concede something. “I’ve seen what you do.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Nope,” he said. “I tried it once, when I was young and optimistic, but it doesn’t fit with this kind of life.”
“Who do you love?”
Prescott chuckled, hoping that the alarm he was beginning to feel was not audible in his voice. “Nobody.”
“There must be somebody you care about, somebody that will get your attention.”
Prescott had been listening attentively to the voice. He had begun to identify the change he had heard. The voice had started out querulous and sullen, but as the words had begun to be about killing—not the people he had killed, but about plans to kill someone new—it had gained strength. It had deepened, gotten quicker and more lively. The change was shocking, frightening. This was not the sort of killer who could be convinced to go off and do something else just because it was safer or more lucrative. Killing wasn’t hard. It didn’t scare him or worry him or repel him. As soon as he had started thinking about it, talking about it, he was confident and eager. Prescott had to deflate that mood, make him think differently. “Well, as I said, Slick, you’ll have to wait your turn. I’ve already got somebody else who needs my attention right now. After I’ve got him, I’ll get to you. Just in case you lose your nerve again, where should it be?”
“Where?” The voice was genuinely confused.
“Sure,” said Prescott. “You think you can handle it, we’ll meet someplace.”
There was a silence on the other end that was part amazement and part outrage: How could this man think he was that stupid? The fact that Prescott had even tried this was proof that he was utterly sincere in his contempt. Varney gave a quiet, voiceless chuckle that came out as empty air. “I think you need a demonstration first.”
“Killing some unsuspecting little old lady is not going to convince me of anything, so don’t bother.” Prescott’s own voice sounded a little hollow to him. He knew this man really was thinking of murdering somebody else, just to rattle him. He had to stop it.
“I don’t mind. It’s no trouble. It’ll be easier to talk to you after.”
Prescott forced his face into a false smile, in the hope that it would change his voice subtly to hide the concern he felt. “Do I strike you as somebody who cares about strangers?”
“Yes. You do. It’ll be a cop. Maybe two. Just so you know I don’t have to do easy ones.”
Prescott said, “No! Come and get me, not them.”
“Them first. Then you.”
Prescott heard the click as the killer hung up. He pushed the button to get a dial tone, and quickly punched in a number.
Millikan approached the telephone on the table beside his favorite reading chair in the living room with foreboding. These days nobody called Millikan after ten at night, and a deviation from the expected was not welcome to him. The telephone began its second ring, and he snatched it up to silence it so it wouldn’t ring again in the bedroom and wake his wife. “Hello.”
“Millikan.”
Millikan controlled his irritation, then let it out slowly. “I thought you weren’t going to call me again. I’m doing what you asked.”
“It worked. You can stop now. He’s called me twice. But there’s something I can’t keep to myself.”
“What is it?”
“He’s going to kill a cop.”
Millikan was silent for a moment, trying to overcome his shock and concentrate. “Why?”
“To show me he can do it—no, that he will do it. He wants me to sweat. He’s going to show me that he can do just about anybody, anytime he wants. Then he’ll come for me.”
“Jesus,” muttered Millikan. “Did he say when, or where, or anything?”
“No. He’s neurotic—defensive and hostile—but not delusional. Whatever is wrong with him makes him aggressive, but it doesn’t seem to make him reckless.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because if I call the police and tell them who I am and what I heard, they won’t do what they need to do. If you tell them, maybe they will.”
After Varney had pushed down the hook on the pay telephone to sever the connection with Prescott, he had stood with the phone to his ear for a minute or two, surveying the area around him to be sure there was no one nearby who might have overheard. Now he hung up the telephone and began to walk. That son of a bitch thought he was stupid. He could hardly contain his rage. He was not going to be as easy as Prescott seemed to think. Varney was not stupid, and he was beginning to work on exactly how he was going to prove it.
He was walking along Hertel Avenue in Buffalo in his sport coat, carrying a grocery bag from the store where he had stopped to make the phone call. He watched a police car drift up the street past him, knowing the car wouldn’t stop. He knew the profile they were trained to look for, and he had made himself look different from it. He looked like a young man whose wife had sent him out after midnight because they were out of formula for the baby. Varney was not stupid. He had even been to college before he’d left California.
It was only a two-year college, but he could have gone to a four-year place. He just didn’t have the money. As it was, he’d had to be inventive just to eat and sleep under a roof. He had left home at the beginning of summer, when high school ended. He had seen a HELP WANTED sign in the window of a hamburger place, and worked there for a while. He had gotten an idiot pleasure out of laying the burgers on the tray and popping them into the oven, then timing the french fries and getting the shakes lined up just in time to get the burgers out and bagged and on the hot table in time to sell them.
Then in August, the manager had taken him aside at the end of the shift and asked him if he wanted to train to be an assistant manager. Varney had looked at the manager—Darryl Sams, his name was—and it was as though he had suddenly awakened from a dream. That had been all it took, looking at Darryl. He was chubby, with narrow shoulders and pants that went up to his solar plexus. He wore a tie in the colors of the franchise that was too short. His small, close-set black eyes were dumb and worried about nothing visible, the way a dog’s were. Darryl meant well, but Darryl was Exhibit A. He was what Varney would become if he stayed and worked hard for ten years. He could get a new paper hat that said MANAGER and get to come home from work smelling that same smell of rancid cooking fat every night.
Varney had been filled with terror that turned into anger. He’d had to get out, to burn up this temptation: this looked like an opportunity, but it was a trap, an offer of slavery made when he was just a step from starving. Varney was making so little money that when he dumped the burgers that had been too long on the hot table, he always secretly diverted one for his dinner. Darryl was trying to look like a benefactor, but he was the enemy. Varney turned a wry, malicious stare at the small, dumb, eager eyes. “Are you shitting me?” he asked. “You think I want to end up flipping burgers when I’m thirty-one?” Darryl was thirty-one. It had only been a week since the girls at the cash registers had put a candle on a hot cherry tart and sung “Happy Birthday” to him. His smile flattened, his dumb eyes seemed to cloud over, and his chubby face slowly turned pink with hurt and humiliation.
Varney said, “I was going to quit this week anyway.” He thought quickly. “I’ve got to leave for college. This is my last day.”
Darryl was so dumb that Varney had managed to distract him from his wound. The smile returned. “Well, good luck, Jim. I know you’ll do great.”
Varney was already taking his apron off. “Damn right,” he said. He headed for the rear door without looking back. Darryl called out, maybe in an extreme attack of stupidity, or maybe because a tiny dose of venom had remained in his system from Varney’s insult. “If you ever need the job back, just come and ask me.”
Varney kept walking for a few steps and then stopped and began to turn around. But then he heard the steel door swing shut and lock. He considered going back in the front door, vaulting over the counter, and beating Darryl senseless, but he controlled himself. He resisted because he was smart, not the kind of fool that Prescott obviously thought he was.
He spent the next few days feeling lost. He had begun the summer sleeping at the house of his one high school friend, until the friend’s parents had made it clear that this could not be a permanent arrangement. After that he had spent a period going to parties. He had walked the neighborhoods surrounding the college listening for
