He looked around again. Good. Brilliant. Only one shot into the target’s head, so Cushner looks no more like the target than any one of several others. The young couple share two holes, and that looks like random craziness. Shooting two little girls in the back makes it conclusive. All the brass casings are up. The cops use those to figure the order of shots, and now they won’t have them, or the distinctive marks a firing pin and extractor make on them that can reveal the model of the gun. There was a moment of elation, and Prescott savored it, tested it, and felt the delayed beating of the heart, the slug of fresh, oxygen-laden blood to the brain. Pride: I’m so fucking smart. A look at the bodies—a still life, juicy, cut fruit with a few dead fish laid beside it on the wooden floor, their eyes already clouding over. A work of art.
He turned and stepped to the kitchen door, switched off the light in the dining room, then backed through to the kitchen. He stopped to look down toward the spot where he had sliced the cook, to be sure he saw where the blood had run. Five quarts in a grown man, and a good bit of it pumped out on the floor while the heart was still beating: step carefully. But it’s okay: the tile floor in the kitchen has a little slope to it so water will go down to the drain when they wash it. The knife—take it? No, what the hell. Leave it in the sink.
First a new clip in the gun, then the back door. Stop, listen, then out quick and shut the door so the light won’t shine out into the alley and the door will lock. Walk at this pace—not in a big hurry, but not loitering in a dark alley, either. Don’t cut between buildings. This isn’t an emergency, so there’s no need to take the chance. Come out at the end on the side street. Now to the car and go. I’m gone now. There is no more connection to that restaurant than there is to any other place I see driving down this road. It’s done.
The elation is taking over. The pay. Yeah, that’s good too, but it’s almost beside the point. Reliving the sense that everyone else in the room is slow, as though they’re moving with weights tied to them. He had always been ahead of them, a superior being. He was still ahead, only this time he was ahead of the cops: they would never figure out what he had just done. Prescott pulled the car to the side of the road and turned the engine off. It was power. This killer had to be stronger and faster and braver, but mostly he had to be smarter, because that made the difference. If he was smarter, they were all in his power. If they were smarter, then he was in theirs. He could not allow them this giddy pleasure; he could not allow them to make him that afraid.
Millikan was grading final examinations when the telephone rang. The voice was the one he had been dreading for days. “Danny Millikan,” it said. “It’s me.”
Millikan sighed. “I’m not in this. I gave him your number, and that’s all. I’m not involved.”
“I wanted to thank you for the referral. It pays pretty well.”
“No, you didn’t,” Millikan said irritably. “You don’t do this for the money any more than the other killer does. You need the kick to keep your heart beating.”
“Actually, what I wanted to thank you for was giving the old man the stuff from the cops—the crime-scene photographs, and the reports. You knew he would give them to me. What good would they be to him?”
“You’re welcome,” said Millikan. “Now—”
Prescott interrupted. “You were there, weren’t you—at the restaurant? That’s why you gave him my number.”
“Yes.”
“You think it was Cushner first, then the rest?”
“That’s what I think.”
“I didn’t see any misses—none in the walls or the furniture.”
“There weren’t any.”
“Did he scoop up the shell casings too? I don’t see any pictures with brass, and no circles on the floor.”
“Right. No brass, no prints, no footprints in the blood, no identifiable fibers or hairs.”
“You have to wish somebody noticed him before he got this good at it, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Millikan. “I told the cops to find his client and make a deal for his name.”
“How promising is that?”
“The suspects are three big companies that wanted to take over Cushner’s business. The directors are retired senators, the chairmen of other companies, college presidents. There’s nobody to squeeze.” He was silent for a moment. “He’s yours now.”
“Don’t worry,” said Prescott. “If your luck holds, you may never hear from me again. I don’t need to check in with cops very often.”
“I’m not a cop anymore,” said Millikan. “I teach.”
“You teach people to be cops.”
“What is it? What do you want?”
“I spent the night at the restaurant. I can feel him. There’s something there at each step.”
“It’s different,” admitted Millikan. “I could feel that much.”
“He’s told us a lot. The padlock shows me he’s learned to open locks: probably took a locksmith course somewhere. He was in a hurry, but he spotted the lock and went right to it. That was because he knew he could open it, how long it would take. And he didn’t know the back door was open, either, but he knew that there would be a door, and that he would be able to open it. Then there’s the cook.”
Millikan couldn’t help himself. “That was the thing that struck me, too. He’s got a gun, he knows the front door is locked because he just locked it. Nobody can leave if he fires. Why sneak thirty feet across a lighted kitchen, find a knife, and risk a fight with a good-sized guy?”
“To show us he can. He can cross that distance in about three seconds without making a sound, grab the right knife and strike—once, with certainty—and step back before the first drop of blood hits the floor.”
“What are we talking about—martial arts?”
“I think so. I’m not sure what kind, yet. Other people can sneak up on a guy like that and cut his throat. But this one took a quick look and knew he could do it a hundred times out of a hundred, or he wouldn’t have tried. He didn’t need to. It was just the best way to do it. He has to do things that way.”
“The shots?”
“Right. More lessons, more practice. He must spend enormous amounts of time on firing ranges—probably combat ranges, with moving targets and pop-ups. He’s been perfecting himself.”
Millikan sighed and rubbed his eyes.
The silence caught Prescott’s attention. “What?”
“You want me to get somebody in law enforcement to give you some lists, don’t you? Black belts, regulars at shooting ranges, and all that.”
“No,” said Prescott. “You know what this guy is like.”
“I do,” said Millikan. “He’s the loner of all loners. Maybe a charmer, but even if he is, no real friends. Smart enough to avoid the notice of the authorities, or even of people who would put his name on a list for authorities.”
“He’s convinced himself he’s the best,” said Prescott. “That’s his vulnerability.”
“Very likely,” said Millikan. “I’m not sure it’s a vulnerability.”
“Of course it is. He’s not the best,” said Prescott. “I’m the best.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to tell him.”
4
Varney watched in fascination. A week ago, he had never heard of this Millikan jerk. Here he was on CNN, and they were calling him a leading expert on homicide. Varney gave a mirthless little laugh. A leading expert on homicide wasn’t some professor. It was somebody like Varney.
It was Millikan’s turn to talk. “We’re accustomed to having authorities, from the president on down, say killings like these are ‘senseless,’ or I believe the usual term is ‘random and senseless.’ They’re neither: the killer knows exactly what they were for.”