As the killer steps into the house, he kicks the woman’s feet out of the way and closes the door. He prays none of the neighbors saw him.
She lies on her back, eyes open. They roll around in their sockets as she tries to focus on his face. She is also trying to speak, but no sound is coming from her trembling lips.
The killer drops the Book of Mormon and reaches behind his back. He pulls a plastic cable tie from the waistband of his pants and loops it around the woman’s neck. He cinches it lightly, not tight enough to kill her but enough to prevent her from screaming. Or so he hopes. Murder is an art, not a science.
In a few seconds, the shock wears off and the woman starts kicking at him. He zaps her again. The faint smell of burning flesh drifts up toward him. He grabs her ponytail and drags her into the kitchen. Other than the TV, there are no sounds inside the house. He has steeled himself to deal with the children. On his way to the woman’s house he rehearsed what he was going to say to them.
Mommy fell down. Quick, help me get her up.
When they run over to help, he will simply zap them with the stun gun. If a million volts aren’t enough to kill them, it will certainly keep them quiet. Then he will do what has to be done.
God’s work requires sacrifices, both large and small.
But he sees no children.
He bends close to the woman. “Where are your children?”
Her mouth opens. Drool spills from one corner. She tries to speak but can’t. Maybe he has cinched the cable tie too tight.
“Where are they?” he says.
“Bedrooms,” she croaks, her choked voice barely audible. “Please don’t… hurt them.”
He rolls her onto her stomach and rips down her cotton shorts. Her buttocks are white and firm. He jabs the prongs of the stun gun against her right butt cheek and thumbs the trigger. The woman convulses. Her back arches in agony. The killer smiles.
He stands and pulls a butcher knife from a wooden block on the kitchen counter…
Ten minutes later, the killer strolls across the small den to the staircase. Upstairs he finds the children’s rooms. The girl’s room is on the right, the boy’s on the left. A bathroom stands between them at the top of the stairs.
The children are down for their naps.
The girl is six. He smothers her with a pillow.
He wakes up the boy. The nine-year-old is confused. The killer says he is Mommy’s friend. The boy nods like he understands. Mommy went out for a little while and asked him to watch the boy and his sister until she returns. Do you have any games you like to play?
Yes, the boy says, video games.
He and the boy play a colorful animated racing game for nearly half an hour. Then he strangles the boy.
The phone on Kirsten Sparks’s desk rang at 2:05 PM. She was at her keyboard, banging out a follow-up article containing a few more meaningless, on-the-record comments from top NOPD officials, just like those she had included in the story that ran in today’s paper. The officials still had nothing to say about the alleged serial killer, nothing to say about Sean Murphy’s summary dismissal from the Homicide Division, nothing to say about the string of unsolved prostitute killings. They may as well have been commenting on the weather or the price of pork bellies.
The phone rang again. She snatched the handset from its cradle.
“Sparks,” she said.
“Meet me in the conference room in sixty seconds,” Milton Stanford whispered.
Kirsten glanced across the newsroom. Milton was standing beside his desk holding the phone to his ear. He was the newspaper’s managing editor, her boss, but two rungs up the ladder. Gene Michaels, the city editor, was her direct boss. Even in the rather informal world of the newsroom, most things followed the chain of command.
Milton hung up his phone and nodded to her.
Kirsten grabbed a notebook and a pen from her desk. When she looked back up, Milton had vanished. She headed to the big conference room.
No one was there. She walked down a long hallway to what everyone referred to as the little conference room. The wall separating the little conference room from the hallway was glass. The shades were down but the light was on inside. The dry-erase board on the wall outside that was used to reserve the room said, SPORTS -10:00 AM. But that was from two days ago.
Kirsten knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a voice said.
She opened the door and found the Times-Picayune ’s brain trust seated at the conference table. In addition to Milton Stanford, who had beaten her to the conference room and already taken his seat, there was Charles Redfield, the newspaper’s executive editor, whom everyone called Red; city editor Gene Michaels; and the editor of the photo desk, Stephen Phelps. The company lawyer also had a seat at the table. And at the far end sat Mrs. Darlene Freeman, the publisher.
“Have a seat and close the door,” Milton said. “I’m sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger, but the phone in here”-he pointed to the multiline extension at the center of the table-“is busted and I had to go to my desk to call you. We’ve got something very important to talk about.”
There were eight seats around the dark wooden conference table, three on either side and one at each end. The seat nearest the door was vacant. As Kirsten laid her notebook on the table and sat down, she noticed a padded manila envelope in front of Mr. Redfield. The flap had been torn open. A pair of yellow rubber gloves, the kind used for washing dishes, lay beside it.
Milton Stanford spoke first. “We received a package in the mail this afternoon, a little over an hour ago. We think it’s from the serial killer. The mail room opened it. When they saw what was in it, they brought it to me.”
No one said anything. Kirsten got the impression that she was the only one who didn’t know what was going on. The meeting had obviously been in progress for a while before she was summoned. “What was in it?” she said.
Charles Redfield cleared his throat. “A letter and a… box. The box appears to contain a severed human finger.”
“A what?” Kirsten said.
“We’re pretty sure it’s real,” Milton said. “The killer, or at least the letter’s author, says it is from the last victim, the woman killed under the Jeff Davis overpass.”
“Have you called the police?” Kirsten said.
Redfield shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
The company lawyer spoke up. He was small and thin and wore a baggy suit. Kirsten had only spoken to him half a dozen times over the years. A pair of reading glasses sat midway down his nose. “The package and the letter are addressed to us. We don’t know if it’s a hoax or not, and we certainly have the right to examine our own mail before contacting the police.”
Kirsten looked at the managing editor. “You just said you’re sure it’s a real finger.”
Milton looked down at the table. “I said we’re pretty sure it’s real.”
“We’re going to call the police very soon,” Redfield said. “But first we have to decide what to publish. This may very well devolve into a First Amendment fight with the police department and the DA’s office.”
“What does the letter say?” Kirsten asked.
Redfield had several eight-by-ten photo sheets on the desk in front of him. As he slid one of the pictures to her, he nodded to Phelps, the photo editor. “Stephen took these pictures himself. No one outside of this room knows about this.”
Kirsten understood that to mean that she was supposed to keep her mouth shut. She looked at the photo of the letter. DEAR EDITOR:
THIS IS THE KILLER OF, AMONG OTHERS, THE TWO HARLOTS YOU DISKOVERED RECENTLY. TO PROVE THAT I AM HE, I HAVE INKLUDED A FINGER FROM MY MOST RECENT “VIKTIM.” ADDITIONALLY, I HAVE INKLUDED A CYPHER THAT WILL REVEAL TO YOU MY BIRTH NAME AND AN EXPLANATION OF WHY I WAS CHOSEN TO DO THE LORD’S WORK. IN EXCHANGE, I DEMAND THAT YOU PRINT THIS LETTER AND THE AKKOMPANYING CI(Y)PHER ON THE FRONT PAGE OF YOUR NEWSPAPER WITHIN TWO DAYS. IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL UNLEASH A KILLING RAMPAGE THE LIKES OF WHICH THIS CITY HAS NEVER SEEN. SINCE THE POLICE ARE SO DIMWITTED, WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF DETEKTIVE MURPHY, I WILL TRY NOT TO STRAIN THEM. NEW VIKTIMS WILL BEAR A SPECIAL MARK, AND IN FUTURE KORRESPONDENCE I WILL ADDRESS MYSELF TO YOU BY MY TRUE NAME-THE LAMB OF GOD. P.S. EVEN MURPHY DOESN’T HAVE A CHANCE OF KATCHING ME. XMOIIOVHEZZLCOOCLILELAKDLKAJOIUWETYEO TPAOIPOICZXNQUTIJKSLOIGHFJIGJKIWOBNMVC BXVZMKJIUEGJHGUTHRJUGNSHYTJUIHDNBHFUR YRBCJUKSIRHFJKSIDHRHGJGUHQIQAKJGUIWQOP RTHFBGJYIIUKJUDEREHGJFHGUTYHDSKALQORHJFUTHN JFUTHTYJDGHFJGKIADBVHEGFYTH