It's quiet in the hallway, and he's excited. His heart is pounding in his chest as he waits for Annie to open the door. One hand is poised to knock again, the other holds . . . what? A knife?
Yeah.
He has a story to give her, and he's rehearsed it many times. Something simple, like . . . he's a neighbor from the floor below with a question. Something that feels like it belongs.
She opens the door, and not just a crack. It's early evening; the city is awake. Annie is at home, inside a security-gated apartment building. All of her lights are on. She has no reason to be afraid.
He comes through the door before she can react, an unstoppable force. He pushes inside, knocking Annie down, closing the door behind him. He rushes to Bonnie. He pulls her close and puts the knife to her throat.
"Make a sound and your daughter dies."
Annie forces back the instinctive scream that had been building in her throat. Her shock is total. Everything has happened too fast for her to process. She's still looking for some kind of rational explanation. Maybe she's on a hidden-camera show, maybe a friend is pulling a prank on her, maybe . . . crazy ideas, but crazy would be better than the truth.
Bonnie is gazing up at her, eyes full of fear. Annie would have accepted then that this was no prank. A stranger had a knife to her daughter's throat. This was REAL.
"What do you want?" was her first question. She was hoping that she could bargain with this stranger. That he wanted something less than murder. Perhaps he was a burglar, or a rapist. Please, oh please, she's thinking, don't let him be a pedophile.
I remember something. "She had a small cut on her throat," I say.
"What?"
"Bonnie. She had a small cut in the hollow of her throat." I touch my own. "Here. I noticed it at the hospital."
I see James think about this. His face goes grim. "He made it with the knife."
We can't be sure, of course. But it feels right.
The stranger takes the point of his knife and pricks the hollow of Bonnie's throat. Nothing major, just enough to draw a single bead of blood, a single gasp. Enough to show that he means business, to make Annie's heart jump and thud and quiver.
"Do what I say," he says, "or your daughter dies slow."
And right then, it was over. Bonnie was his leverage, and Annie belonged to him.
"I'll do whatever you want. Just don't hurt her."
He smells Annie's fear, and it excites him. An erection stirs in his trousers.
"I think Bonnie was there while he raped and tortured Annie. I think he made her watch it all," I say.
James cocks his head. "Why?"
"A few reasons. The main one is that he kept Bonnie alive. Why? It gave him an extra person he had to control. It would have been easier if he'd just killed her. But Annie was the prey. He's into torture, he likes fear. Anguish. Having Bonnie there, having Annie know she was there and seeing what was happening . . . it would have driven her insane. He would have liked that."
James mulls this over. "I agree. For another reason too."
"What?"
He looks me in the eye. "You. He's hunting you too, Smoky. And hurting Bonnie makes the cut that much deeper."
I stare at him in surprise.
He's right.
Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a, the dark train is picking up speed . . .
"Do what I tell you, or I'll hurt your mommy," he says to Bonnie. He uses their love of each other like a cattle prod, driving them toward the bedroom.
"He moves them into the bedroom." I walk down the hall. James follows. We step inside. "He closes it." I reach over and shut the door. I imagine Annie, watching it close and not realizing that she would never see it open again.
James stares at the bed, thinking. Envisioning. "He still has two of them to control," he says. "He wouldn't have been afraid of Bonnie, but he can't relax yet, not until Annie's secured."
"Annie was handcuffed in the video."
"Right. So he made her handcuff herself. Just one wrist is all he'd need."
"Take these," he'd said to Annie, removing a pair of handcuffs from a bag, tossing them at her--
No, that wasn't right. Rewind.
He has the knife to Bonnie's throat. He looks at Annie. Looks her up and down, owning her with his eyes. Making sure she understands this.
"Strip," he says. "Strip for me."
She hesitates, and he wiggles the blade against Bonnie's throat. "Strip."
Annie does, weeping, as Bonnie watches. She leaves her bra and panties on, one last resistance.
"All of it!" he growls at her. Wiggles the knife. Annie complies, weeping harder now--
No. Rewind.
Annie complies and forces herself not to weep. To be strong for her daughter. She removes her bra and panties and holds Bonnie's eyes with her own. Look at my face, she's thinking, willing. Look at my face. Not this. Not him. Now he removes the handcuffs from the bag he'd brought in.
"Handcuff your wrist to the bed," he tells Annie. "Do it now."
She does. Once he hears the click of the ratchet, he reaches into the bag and pulls out two other pairs of handcuffs. These go around Bonnie's tiny wrists and ankles. She is trembling. He ignores her sobs as he gags her. Bonnie looks at her mother, a pleading look. A look that says: "Make it stop!" This makes Annie cry harder.
He's still cautious, careful. He's not letting himself relax yet. He moves over to Annie and handcuffs her other wrist to the bed. Followed by her ankles. Then he gags her.
Now. Now he can relax. His prey is secure. She can't escape, won't escape. Didn't escape, I think.
Now he can savor the moment.
He takes his time setting up the room. Positioning the bed, getting the video camera just right. There is a way that things are done, a symmetry that is impor- tant, vital. You don't rush this. To miss a step is to take away from the beauty of the act, and the act is everything. It's his air and his water.
"The bed," James says.
"What?" I look at it, puzzled.
He stands up and walks over to the baseboard. Annie's bed is queen-size, formed of smooth, rounded wooden pieces. Sturdy.
"How did he move it?" He walks to the headboard and looks down at the carpet. "Drag marks. So he pulled it toward him." He moves back to the base of the bed. "He would have gripped it somewhere here and pulled it by walking backward. He'd need leverage . . ." James kneels down. "He'd have grabbed it at the bottom and lifted it." He stands up, walks to the side of the bed, drops onto his back, and squirms under the bed up to his shoulders. I see the light of his flashlight go on, then back off. When he comes back out, he is smiling. "No print powder there."
We look at each other. I can almost feel each of us crossing our fingers. People make the mistake of thinking that latex gloves prevent the transfer of fingerprints. In most cases, this is true. But not always. These types of gloves were originally developed for surgeons so they could maintain a sterile buffer during operations. The flip side of this is that the gloves have to fit like a second skin for the surgeons to use their instruments with no loss of precision or sensitivity. This tightness and thinness can cause the gloves to form-fit into the ridges and bifurcations of the prints on the hand and fingertips. If--and this is a big if, but still possible--someone wearing the gloves then touches a surface that can take an impression, they can leave a usable print. Annie's bed is made of wood. It's possible that cleaning solutions used on it could have left a residue that would retain a fingerprint impression, even through the killer's gloves.