It didn't take her long to glance at them and decide she'd throw them in the trash when she got upstairs. She hadn't won the lottery, or gotten a job offer, marriage proposal, or free vacation. She keyed the mailbox locked and told herself she also hadn't received an eviction notice or jury summons.
Cheer up, Anna.
She used another key to open the security door from the vestibule to the rest of the building's interior.
Her legs were twenty-three years old. Even in high heels, she barely noticed climbing the three flights of creaking wooden stairs to her corner unit apartment.
Twenty-three. For all she cared, it might as well have been a ten-story walkup.
The Butcher was pleased when he entered the vestibule of the attractive brunette's building. He had no trouble finding the mailbox he'd watched her open as he observed her through the long window in the street door. And just in case he couldn't trust his eyes, the tarnished brass box appeared to be one of the empty ones-only darkness beyond the carved fleur-de-lis. Second row end, he was sure, apartment 3-B.
The slotted card above the mailbox read A. Bragg. She was cautious, like most single women in New York, and simply used her first initial. He smiled. He'd seen what office she'd emerged from and followed her down in the elevator and then to the subway and home. While he only knew her first initial and last name, he also knew where she worked and where she lived.
He was also glad to see that, while the building had a sturdy security door between the vestibule and the first floor and stairwell, the intercom looked newer than the mailboxes, and workable.
He was whistling when he left the vestibule and took the marble steps down to the sidewalk, betting that, like most businesses, Courtney Publishing had a website.
Only fifteen minutes after sitting down at his computer, his search engine located Courtneypub. biz.
He clicked on Divisions on the home page and saw that Courtney published half a dozen magazines as well as a line of paperback romance novels. Back to the home page, where he clicked on Personnel.
Courtney's employees were arranged alphabetically. Bragg, Anna was third down.
Wonderful. This was much easier than constructing a puzzle note and then finding a suitable victim. Better to select the victim then construct the corresponding puzzle.
He clicked on her name and found that she was the editor of CrossWinds, a monthly magazine of crossword puzzles.
Small world, puzzles.
Fate.
Destiny. His and hers.
Anna Bragg. What might he do with that name? A literary allusion. Sports? Politics? Show business? He knew that while Quinn looked like a kind of handsome thug, he in fact was rather cultured and enjoyed the theater, reading, and dining out. The Butcher had followed him more than once to Barnes amp; Noble, and had sat directly behind Quinn one night in the theater and enjoyed a performance of an Edward Albee play, one of the playwright's more enigmatic endeavors.
After the play he'd studied Quinn's rugged face briefly in a lobby mirror. Quinn did seem to have understood the play.
The killer concentrated again on Courtneypub. biz on the screen of his laptop.
There was Anna's photo alongside her brief profile. She was smiling, head tilted to the side, looking beautiful. Her company profile didn't reveal her age, but she was younger than he might have wished. She'd graduated from Sweetbriar with a journalism degree, been with Courtney Publishing two years, and loved her work because she loved all kinds of puzzles. Her ambition was to set the world on fire, but not so the flames couldn't be controlled. Her likes were red convertibles and gin martinis with olives. Dislikes were dogs that bit and people who deliberately insulted.
The Butcher noted that the profile didn't list her fears.
29
Bocanne, Florida, 1980
Alone and lost and lonely.
That was how Sherman felt.
Sam had been gone for three days, and Sherman hadn't been the same. He didn't go fishing by himself, and of course there was nothing to read now that the swamp had claimed Sam's Civil War books. He tried to watch television, but reception wasn't good, far as they were from town, and he didn't want to see quiz shows and soap operas anyway. His days were hot and boring, and he felt so strange, like something was about to happen, like he was on a speeding train and another one was on the same track, headed toward him so they were bound to meet.
They would meet at night sometimes, in his dreams, and he'd spring awake wondering if he'd screamed out loud and stirred his mother from sleep.
The worst part was, he was afraid and wasn't sure why.
Evenings TV reception was better, and whenever they were on, Mom would let him watch The Rockford Files or Magnum, P.I., but none of it seemed as real to Sherman as the Battle of Gettysburg. He knew none of it was that real. There was a special on PBS once about the Civil War, but soon as she noticed what he was watching, Sherman's mother made him switch channels and watch some quiz show. He knew all the answers the contestants missed, but he kept quiet so as not to rile his mother.
Sherman thought about what she'd said the night they gave Sam to the swamp: "Bad don't figure into it, Sherman. It's about survival."
Sherman guessed she was right. A person first of all had to do everything possible just to survive. But it seemed to him they'd been doing that okay with Sam alive.
If there were only somebody he could talk to about how he felt inside, somebody like Sam, it would sure make things easier. He knew he couldn't talk to his mother. He'd considered it a few times, but then he'd see her standing with her fists on her hips, looking at him in a funny way that scared him. Other times he'd think that maybe if they talked about things, whatever was in her eyes that was scaring him would go away.
Or maybe it would get more scary.
He'd seen that look in her eyes before and knew what it might mean, though he didn't want to admit it to himself.
On the fifth night after Sam was gone, when Sherman was undressing for bed, he saw that he'd soiled his underwear. This was about the only situation that prompted Sherman to voluntarily change Jockey shorts, so he removed the shorts he was wearing and tossed them in a corner with some dirty socks, then went to his dresser for clean underwear to sleep in and wear tomorrow.
But he was out of underwear. His mother had fallen behind in the wash, and there were only clean socks and T-shirts. Sherman remembered stuffing some not-too-soiled underpants into his closet with some other dirty clothes, and he decided to retrieve them.
Rumpled and dirty clothes were piled two feet high on the closet floor, and the Jockey shorts were buried somewhere in there. Sherman got down on his hands and knees and began digging.
His fingertips slid over a surface unexpectedly smooth. He scooted deeper into the closet and pushed away some of the rumpled clothing and saw something glistening and black. More digging through the clothes revealed black plastic trash bags and his dad's power saw.
This was odd. Other than trash, there was only one use Sherman knew of for the bags. And he was the one who was always sent to the toolshed to get the saw.
He drew in his breath, and his heart broke like fragile glass as meaning came to him.
Sam…the look in his mother's eyes. She knew Sherman understood what she was doing-at least most of it-and after Sam died he'd questioned her about it as he never had before. She knew Sam had been different, had changed things forever, and Sherman would continue to question her. Sherman was getting older, getting ideas of his own.