black hair, even when it’s natural, somehow always looks dyed—and the color he’s selected is very nearly as pedestrian as his own, yet undeniably different.
He leaves his eyebrows undyed, so that they’ll appear even less distinct.
His new hairline has exposed skin heretofore untouched by the sun, 216
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and consequently lighter than the rest. The contrast is slight, but noticeable all the same, like evidence of the former presence of a ring or wrist-watch. He’s allowed for this, however, and he applies a small amount of sunless tanning lotion to the pale areas, and to the rest of his face as well.
He’s naturally light-complected, and avoids the sun, so a little color in his face will make him just a little more ordinary.
And, finally, a pair of glasses.
Not sunglasses. While they do a wonderful job of hiding the eyes and masking the face, they have the disadvantage of looking like a disguise.
Ordinary eyeglasses, on the other hand, are almost as good at concealing the eyes and changing the shape of the face without looking as though that’s what they’re doing.
His distance vision is perfect, better than 20-20, and, while he’s reached an age when presbyopia could be expected to show itself, his close vision is equally good. He doesn’t even need glasses for reading.
He wanted real glasses, not a stage prop or a drugstore special. And yesterday he went to a LensCrafters shop and let the resident optometrist examine his eyes. He feigned difficulty with one of the chart’s lower lines, then let the man find a lens that “improved” his vision. It does no such thing, but it is mild enough so that it doesn’t greatly interfere with it. He won’t see any better with his new glasses, but he won’t see all that much worse, and he doesn’t think they will give him a headache.
And he’ll only wear them when he’s out in public.
With the glasses on, he stands at the bathroom mirror and shifts his gaze back and forth, from his reflection to the sketch to the reflection again.
Why, his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.
But that’s something he doesn’t want to think about, not now, not ever, and he quickly wills the thought away. No one will recognize him, that’s the point. Not the readers of the Daily News, not the viewers of Live at Five. The cops, fumbling about in the manner of their tribe, won’t give him a second glance. Matthew Scudder won’t recognize him until the Messer bowie is planted in his guts, opening him up, carving him from asshole to appetite. And as for Elaine . . .
Yes, he’ll definitely skin her.
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.
.
.
A problem, of course, lies in the fact that the other residents in his building, Joe Bohan’s neighbors, have seen him as he appeared earlier—
without the mustache, he has never worn that here, but with his full head of lighter hair, his paler skin, his fuller eyebrows, his unspectacled eyes.
Few of them, to be sure, have had more than a glimpse of him, passing him on the stairs, perhaps. But he’s had several chats with Mrs. Laskowski and passed the time of day with one or two others.
So it will be best to avoid them, best to minimize his own comings and goings. It might even be prudent to quit the premises and take up residence elsewhere. Not another transient hotel, though. That’s just the sort of place the police check first.
Perhaps he’ll be able to stay where he is. Time is on his side; after the first fruitless days, the cops, having lost the scent, will lose their zeal as well. The press will tire of showing his picture, and the public, bom-barded with new images and new horrors, will begin to forget what he looks like.
Time takes time. And you get what you get.
But he waits until dark to leave the building, waits until Mrs.
Laskowski will surely have given up the glory of the front stoop for the comfort of her television set. Then, the Jenkins folding knife in his pocket, he descends into the night.
At another Kinko’s, this one over on the East Side, he logs on and visits one of his newsgroups. He scans the new posts, gives a few of them a thorough reading, then starts a new thread of his own.
He types:
The experts, self-styled and otherwise, the criminologists and psychologists and journalists, see those of us who kill for pleasure as driven men, essentially helpless in the grip of our own overpowering compulsions. No doubt it is more comforting to believe a man has to kill than that he simply loves to kill.
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We kill, they tell us, according to the calendar, our behavior often dictated by phases of the moon. Much was made of the fact that our late brother Preston Applewhite dispatched his young friends at one-month intervals. Of course if one wished to establish a pattern, to draw public attention to the idea that a serial killer was operating, mightn’t one deliberately wait a month between incidents? But no one seems to have considered this possibility.
There are, to be sure, those of us who are at the effect of our compulsions. But there are also those of us who are not. We can wait, if need be, no matter how the moon draws tides in our blood. And, when it is expedient, we can act in an instant in the absence of any inner prompting. We are much more dangerous and far less predictable than you find it comforting to believe.
He reads it over, ponders a signature, decides none is required. And hits send.
Back at the apartment, he thinks about what he has posted. The one thing he must do, he knows, is give himself time. Time for the Scudders to let their guard down. Time for the police to lose interest. Time for the public to forget.
But earlier, walking across town, he looked up and caught a glimpse of the moon. And it told him of what his very own blood has already informed him. That in a day, two at the most, it will be full.
He is not an automaton. He does not simply react to stimuli. He does not exist at the whim of fate. He makes his own fate, carves out his own destiny.
Yet how can he argue that the full moon is without influence?
It draws up the very seas, for heaven’s sake. No one denies its role as the source of the tides. How then deny its pull upon the blood in one’s veins?
Was the moon full that night in Durango? Along with the glow of the bedside lamp, did moonlight fall upon the throat and lead the bowie to it?
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He rather thinks so.
Tomorrow, he knows, the pull will be at its strongest. Will it be irresistible? No, certainly not. His will is stronger than the tides, stronger than the moon.
But it might influence him to hurry things, to take needless chances.
The longer he delays resolving matters with the Scudders, the more certain he can be of success. So must he stifle the moon-driven urges? Must he put them aside, perhaps until the next full moon, perhaps even longer?
Often, counseling patients, he’s stressed the importance of getting away from binary thinking. Beware the trap of the two alternatives, he advised them. So often, if you but look for it, you discover a third choice.
For him, the third choice, the only real choice, is obvious. All he has to do is take the pressure off.
Late Monday afternoon, at the peak of rush hour, he’s crammed into a subway car on the southbound E train. As the train pulls out of the Fiftieth Street station, he draws the knife from his pocket, opens it with a practiced flick of the wrist. The bodies of his fellow passengers screen his actions from view, and no one can see him slip the knife between two ribs of the woman he’s pressed against.
He’s aware of the sudden intake of breath that stops when the blade finds her heart. For an instant she seems to be dancing on the end of his knife. Then the dance is over. He feels the life go out of her and breathes it in along with her scent.
The train pulls into Times Square. The doors open. He’s one of many heading out the doors, and he’s on the platform before the woman he’s just killed has room enough to fall down. By the time they clear enough space to attempt to help her, he’s up the stairs. He’s out on the street long before anyone has the slightest suspicion she’s dead.