The Experimenter did not intend to die.
Not ever.
Thus, he had stepped in instantly, seizing control, pulling Glen back from the precipice.
He entered the elevator, studied the controls for a moment, then pressed the button that should take him downward. The machinery came to life and the cage began rattling down the shaft The Experimenter glanced idly through the grating of the floor, wondering what it was about heights that bothered some people.
To him, they meant nothing.
Nodding a greeting to each of the men who spoke to him, the Experimenter left the construction site. As he paused at the corner, his eyes fell on a newspaper box. Fishing in Glen’s pocket for the right change, he bought a copy of the Herald, then looked around for a coffee shop. Spotting a Starbucks less than a block away, he strode down the street, bought a latte, and began paging through the newspaper. He found Anne’s story on page three in the second section.
Except it wasn’t Anne’s story: there was no mention of a copycat, let alone of himself. And no byline. Someone else must have written it.
Why?
What were they afraid of?
A copycat?
But a copycat was nothing but a nuisance.
Particularly this copycat.
The Experimenter dropped the newspaper into a wastebasket.
The police might well spend weeks trying to figure out who had killed the whore over near Broadway, and the woman next door.
The Experimenter knew who had done it
He even knew why the murders had been committed.
And that was all they had been — murders, pure and simple.
Nothing had been accomplished, no new bit of knowledge gained, no basic truth uncovered. It had been killing for the sake of killing.
Worse, it had been killing for no other purpose than to gain attention.
The Experimenter had been thinking about it since the moment he recognized the man who carried Joyce Cottrell’s butchered corpse through her backyard and out into the alley. Reluctantly, he’d come to a decision about what he must do.
Unless he acted, other people would die for no better reason than to gain attention for a fool. That was wasteful.
Any way he looked at it, it was wasteful.
But there was another reason for him to carry out the work of the police, the courts, and the executioner. A reason that appealed to the Experimenter’s sense of irony, his sense of style, even his sense of humor. Justice would be served, and Anne — finally — would understand exactly what game was truly afoot.
Dropping a quarter in the pay phone at the back of the coffee shop, the Experimenter dialed a number from memory. On the third ring, a familiar voice answered.
“Hello?” The voice sounded nervous.
The Experimenter said nothing.
“Hello?” the voice said again, and now the Experimenter could clearly hear the terror in it.
The Experimenter knew why the voice sounded nervous.
And he knew more than that — he knew where the man lived, and he knew he hadn’t gone to work.
The Experimenter would pay him a visit.
First, though, he would need certain supplies.
Leaving the coffee shop, the Experimenter found a cab and took it to the Broadway Market.
He began picking up the things he would need.
A pen, the kind you could buy anywhere.
A box of notepaper, again the kind you could buy anywhere.
Gloves — cheap knitted ones, nondescript, the kind everyone had.
A roll of transparent plastic.
Paying for it all with cash from Glen Jeffers’s wallet, he left the market and started south, walking at a steady pace, neither too fast nor too slow, doing nothing that would attract unwanted attention. Anonymity, he had discovered years ago, was by far the best protection.
He came finally to John Street, turned left, and started toward Fifteenth East Less than ten minutes later he was across the street from the building in which lived the man he had come to kill. Gazing up at the second floor, he saw the man peering out of the window.
The man looked nervous.
The man was staring right at him.
The man did not, of course, recognize him.
The Experimenter smiled to himself, crossed the street, and entered the building.…
CHAPTER 45
The plans the Butcher began making after reading the story in that morning’s Herald had grown, until he’d finally shaped a perfect structure for his next killing.
It would be a man — he’d definitely made up his mind on that. And he knew where he could find the perfect prey: there were plenty of them over on Broadway, shopping in the QFC, or hanging around the Broadway Market, or just sitting drinking coffee at one of the small espresso bars scattered along both sides of the street. Even better, they were always watching each other, playing their endless mating game. He even knew how they did it, because he’d watched them operate practically every time he’d gone over there. One would be walking toward another on the street, and often, after the two men passed, one would turn around to look at the other. If the second man had turned around, too, they might strike up a conversation and, after a few minutes, head off together. Sometimes one of them only glanced back and smiled, but kept walking. When that happened, the other would pause, watching. If the first one glanced back again, or stopped to look in a window, the watcher would follow him.
Twice, the Butcher had trailed behind to see what would happen, always making sure no one knew what he was doing, so he knew the pattern of pursuit and surrender well.
Once or twice he himself had been followed, but both times he’d gone into the magazine store, or Bartell’s drugstore, and browsed through the shelves until his admirer finally got the message that he just wasn’t interested and disappeared.
So that was what he would do today.
When he went out to buy the photo album, he would watch the men on the sidewalk, and when he found the right one, he would follow him. The person he chose would not be too big — certainly no taller than himself — and he’d try to select someone who didn’t look too strong, either. But it would be easy — even easier than picking up Shawnelle Davis had been. And when they got to the guy’s apartment and his quarry made a pass at him, he would act.
The Butcher’s reputation would grow.
Just thinking about it excited him. With sudden inspiration, he thought maybe he’d do to the guy he followed home what he’d done to Joyce Cottrell the night before last. That thought excited him even more. He was starting to feel a tingling in his crotch when the phone jangled, the unexpected sound startling him so badly that he almost dropped the Coke he’d been drinking.
“Is that you?” his mother demanded when he picked up the phone on the third ring, her voice carrying an inculpatory tone that made his stomach churn. Could she already know what he’d done? But how could she? Then she spoke again, and his fears eased somewhat. “I called over to Boeing’s,” she said. “They told me you weren’t there again today. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Ma,” the man replied, the words already out of his mouth before he remembered he was supposed to be sick. “I mean, I was feeling kinda sick earlier, but I’m better now.”
“You weren’t home when I called earlier,” his mother accused. “Did you go to the doctor?”
“No, Ma,” he replied, feeling the way he had when he was ten years old and his mother had accused him of faking an illness so he wouldn’t have to go to school, in spite of the fact that his temperature had been 102. “I went to the QFC and bought some soup. Chunky Chicken.”
“Well, don’t ask me to come and fix it for you,” his mother told him. “Did you see the paper this morning?”