But he was careful. Very, very careful. He never killed twice in the same city. He switched weapons. He never used a car more than once. He never wore the same clothes twice on a shoot. Even the shoes would be discarded; he wore a fresh pair for each target run. And, usually, he was never seen at all.
He thought of it as a sport.
A game.
A run.
Avocation.
A skill.
But never murder.
His name was Jimmie Prescott and he was thirty-one years of age. Five foot ten. Slight build. Platform shoes could add three inches and body-pillows up to fifty pounds. He had thinning brown hair framing a bland, unmemorable face and shaved twice daily — but the case of wigs, beards and moustaches he always carried easily disguised the shape of his mouth, chin and skull. Sometimes he would wear a skin-colored fleshcap for baldness, or use heavy glasses — though his sight was perfect. Once, for a lark, he had worn a black eye patch. He would walk in a crouch, or stride with a sailor’s swagger, or assume a limp. Each disguise amused him, helped make life more challenging. Each was a small work of art, flawlessly executed.
Jimmie was a perfectionist.
And he was clean: no police record. Never arrested. No set of his prints on file, no dossier.
He had a great deal of money (inherited) with no need or inclination to earn more. He had spent his lifetime honing his considerable skills: he was an expert on weaponry, car theft, body-combat, police procedures; he made it a strict rule to memorize the street system of each city he entered before embarking on a shoot. And once his target was down he knew exactly how to leave the area. The proper escape route was essential.
Jimmie was a knowledgeable historian in his held: he had made a thorough study of snipers, and held them all in cold contempt. Not a worthwhile one in the lot. They deserved to be caught; they were fools and idiots and blunderers, often acting out of neurotic impulse or psychotic emotion. Even the hired professionals drew Jimmie’s ire — since these were men who espoused political causes or who worked for government money. Jimmie had no cause, nor would he ever allow himself to be bought like a pig on the market.
He considered himself quite sane. Lacking moral conscience, he did not suffer from a guilt complex. Nor did he operate from a basic hatred of humankind, as did so many of the warped criminals he had studied.
Basically, Jimmie liked people, got alone fine with them on a casual basis. He hated no one. (Except his parents, but they were long dead and something he did not think about any more.) He was incapable of love or friendship, but felt no need for either. Jimmie depended only on himself; he had learned to do that from childhood. He was, therefore, a loner by choice, and made it a rule (Jimmie had many rules) never to date the same female twice, no matter how sexually appealing she might be. Man-woman relationships were a weakness, a form of dangerous self-indulgence he carefully avoided.
In sum, Jimmie Prescott didn’t need-anyone. He had himself, his skills, his weapons and his targets. More than enough for a full, rich life. He did not drink or smoke. (Oh, a bit of vintage wine in a good restaurant was always welcome, but he had never been drunk in his life. You savor good wine; you don’t wallow in it.) He jogged each day, morning and evening, and worked out twice a week in the local gym in whatever city he was visiting. A trim, healthy body was an absolute necessity in his specialized career. Jimmie left nothing to chance. He was not a gambler and took no joy in risk.
A few times things had been close: a roof door which had jammed shut in Detroit after a kill, forcing him to make a perilous between-buildings leap... an engine that died during a police chase in Portland, causing him to abandon his car and win the pursuit on foot... an intense struggle with an off-duty patrolman in Kansas City who’d witnessed a shot. The fellow had been tough and dispatching him was physically difficult; Jimmie finally snapped his neck — but it had been close.
He kept a neat, handwritten record of each shoot in his tooled-leather notebook: state, city, name of street, weather, time of day, sex, age and skin color of target. Under “Comments,” he would add pertinent facts, including the make and year of the stolen car he had driven, and the type of disguise he had utilized. Each item of clothing worn was listed. And if he experienced any problem in exiting the target area this would also be noted. Thus, each shoot was critically analyzed upon completion — as a football coach might dissect a game after it had been played.
The only random factor was the target. Pre-selection spoiled the freshness, the purity of the act. Jimmie liked to surprise himself. Which shall it be: that young girl in red, laughing up at her boyfriend? The old newsman on the corner? The school kid skipping homeward with books under his arm? Or, perhaps, the beefy, bored truckdriver, sitting idly in his cab, waiting for the light to change?
Selection was always a big part of the challenge.
And this time...
A male. Strong looking. Well dressed. Businessman with a briefcase, in his late forties. Hair beginning to silver at the temples. He’d just left the drug store; probably stopped there to pick up something for his wife. Maybe she’d called to remind him at lunch.
Moving toward the corner. Walking briskly.
Yes, this one. By all means, this one.
Range: three hundred yards.
Adjust sight focus.
Rifle stock tight against right shoulder.
Finger inside guard, poised at trigger.
Cheek firm against wooden gunstock; eye to rubber scope-piece.
Line crosshairs on target.
Steady breathing.
Tighten trigger finger slowly.
Fire!
The man dropped forward to the walk like a clubbed animal, dead before he struck the pavement. Someone screamed. A child began to cry. A man shouted.
Pleasant, familiar sounds to Jimmie Prescott.
Calmly, he took apart his weapon, cased it, then carefully dusted his trousers. (Rooftops were often grimy, and although he would soon discard the trousers he liked to present a neat, well-tailored appearance — but only when the disguise called for it. What a marvelous, ill-smelling bum he had become in New Orleans; he smiled thinly, thinking about how truly offensive he was on that occasion.)
He walked through the roof exit to the elevator.
Within ten minutes he had cleared central Baltimore — and booked the next flight to the west coast.
Aboard the jet, he relaxed. In the soft, warm, humming interior of the airliner, he grew drowsy... closed his eyes.
And had The Dream again.
The Dream was the only disturbing element in Jimmie Prescott’s life. He invariably thought of it that way: The Dream. Never as a dream. Always about a large metropolitan city where chaos reigned — with buses running over babies in the street, and people falling down sewer holes and through plate glass store windows... violent and disturbing. He was never threatened in The Dream, never personally involved in the chaos around him. Merely a mute witness to it.
He would tell himself, this is only fantasy, a thing deep inside his sleeping mind; it would go away once he awakened and then he could ignore it, put it out of his conscience thoughts, bury it as he had buried the hatred for his father and mother.
Perhaps he had other dreams. Surely he did. But The Dream was the one he woke to, again and again, emerging from the chaos of the city with sweat on his cheeks and forehead, his breath tight and shallow in his chest, his heart thudding wildly.
“Are you all right?” a passenger across the aisle was asking him. “Shall I call somebody?”