What the hell had happened? he asked himself. Again and again he flashed back to that scene in the hallway. Marcy Edwards stepping out of the bathroom, the terrified look on her face, the scream.
It had been her screaming that had done it, that had forced his hand. If she had not screamed, he might have been able to talk to her. He could have started with the truth, that he was the detective in charge of the serial-killer task force. Then he could have lied, claiming he was following up on an anonymous tip. Someone had called in the serial killer’s address. He didn’t have enough for a search warrant, but he was desperate to stop more women from being murdered, even if it took an illegal search.
That story might have even flown with PIB.
But Marcy Edwards had screamed. And Murphy had strangled her.
What had happened next existed in his memory as nothing more than a blur of images. He remembered running through the house, looking for children or an infirm parent stuffed in a hospital bed. But the house was empty. He remembered stopping to examine the damage he had done to the back door, thinking how similar it looked to the pry marks on Sandra Jackson’s door. He remembered his plodding steps as he approached the bathroom again.
He remembered Marcy Edwards lying on her back, her nightgown torn open, exactly as he had left her. He remembered being surprised she hadn’t moved. This couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. She was dead.
He was afraid to touch her. But he had to. He rolled her onto her stomach and yanked her nightgown up high enough to expose her buttocks and lower back. He pulled his folding knife from his pocket and flicked it open. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to carve into her flesh.
He remembered what he had done instead. Using the gloved index finger of his left hand, he had traced the letters L-O-G in blood on the cold tile floor. Desperation was what it had been. A panicked man’s attempt to distance himself from the horrible thing he had done.
Then he stumbled out the back door and staggered to his car. He was halfway home before he realized he was driving without headlights. He was lucky a cop hadn’t pulled him over.
It was only after he got inside his apartment that he noticed he was still wearing the bloody latex gloves. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized he should wipe down the inside of his car and his apartment doorknob with bleach and burn the gloves, but he didn’t care. He was going to be dead soon.
Sitting on his sofa, Murphy raised his gun again. He opened his mouth and clamped his teeth down on the muzzle. He wrapped his index finger around the trigger and squeezed, watching his middle knuckle draw farther away. It stopped at what he guessed was only a few ounces of pressure away from tripping the firing pin.
He took a deep breath and held the gun steady. One tiny pull, a millimeter perhaps, and it would be over. One tug on the trigger and he could silence the raging guilt feeding on his insides. His finger tightened.
He let the breath out slowly, forcing himself to relax. This time had been the closest so far. Next time he would do it.
Murphy polished off the second beer and opened a third.
For him, the serial-killer case was over. Gaudet, along with those two numskulls, Doggs and Calumet, would have to handle it. Murphy wondered about the afterlife. Was all that Catholic crap his mother and the priests and the nuns had rammed down his throat for all those years really true? If so, he would certainly be in hell before the sun came up.
Or maybe death was like an old friend had once said, just a bunch of nothing, absolute unconsciousness. He was hoping for that. That sounded painless-no guilt, no remorse, no regrets.
By the time Murphy finished his third beer, his eyelids were so heavy he couldn’t keep them open for more than a few seconds at a stretch. His pistol lay in his lap. It wasn’t going anywhere. Just a few more minutes of life. He would allow himself one more mortal pleasure before condemning himself to eternal damnation. He put his head down on the arm of the sofa. A five-minute nap. Then he would kill himself.
Surely, the devil could wait five minutes.
The killer hits the enter key on his laptop keyboard, the final step to uploading his new video to the Devil’s Den Web site. In the bottom right-hand corner of his screen, the digital clock reads 3:35 AM. Within two hours, the video will be viewable on the Web site, and within three or four hours, tens of thousands of e-mail addresses will receive a link to the video file stored on servers in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
He rubs his hands together in anticipation. Everything is coming together. Even the unexpected developments-the sodomite bar and Kiesha-have been godsends.
Police officers are two-dimensional thinkers, trained to look for simple patterns. Several of his recent cleansings fit a pattern. That was how Murphy stumbled upon his work. That was good. He wanted the publicity. But he didn’t want to make things too easy for them.
Nothing ruins a pattern like randomness. Patterns represent order. Randomness represents chaos. His sudden deviation from his plan has injected randomness into whatever patterns the oafish police thought they uncovered.
Only one thing disturbs him, a literal dark cloud on the horizon. The coming hurricane.
Driving back home from the house on Burgundy, he heard a radio announcer say that the storm was bearing down on the Florida Keys. Forecasters are predicting that Catherine, now a category-three hurricane, could plow into the Gulf of Mexico as early as this evening. The warm waters of the gulf, the forecasters say, could strengthen the already-powerful storm to a category four by late tonight. Computer projections of the storm’s path, what the weather people call the cone of uncertainty, are centered on New Orleans.
Unfortunately, the dire storm warnings have already pulled some of the media’s attention away from the beheading of Sandra Jackson. But even a deadly hurricane won’t be able to compete with the killer’s newest video.
He shuts down his computer and turns away from his small desk. Exhaustion has overtaken him. He kicks off his shoes, pants, and shirt and dives into bed. With the covers pulled over his head, he stares into the darkness and thinks about tomorrow… today, really. After a few hours’ sleep, he will get up and watch the Sunday talk shows. His work, the Lord’s work-one and the same-will be on every channel.
The killer closes his eyes and smiles.
A hard knock rattled Murphy’s door. He came awake slowly and painfully as the pounding on the door increased in tempo, miraculously matching the pounding inside his skull. When he pried his eyes open, the daylight stabbed his brain. Someone’s cat had taken a shit in his mouth.
He sat up and realized he was still dressed. His first try at standing was a failure. A wave of dizziness and nausea forced him back down onto the sofa. The knocking continued. He recognized it as police knocking. They must have found the body, he thought. Somehow they had already linked him to the murder.
He struggled to his feet again and managed to stay upright. “I’m coming.”
The knocking stopped. The cable box on the TV showed 8:05 AM.
Murphy lurched toward the door. When he got there he looked through the peephole. On the other side stood two uniformed policemen. Murphy glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen. The trash can, filled to the top, was clearly visible. On top of the garbage lay the bloody surgical gloves. He glanced down. His pants were dark, but there were darker stains on his knees-bloodstains.
He peeped again through the hole. He saw one of the officers rap on the door. “Detective Murphy,” the cop called out.
There was no time and nowhere to run. Murphy’s apartment didn’t even have a back way out. He took a deep breath and pulled open the door.
There was just the two of them. One in his midforties, the other in his early twenties. Probably a field-training officer with a rookie partner. The older cop looked familiar, but Murphy couldn’t place him. He stared at Murphy with unfiltered disgust. The rookie just looked embarrassed.