Kill Me Once (2 page)

The names had followed after that, of course. Names that would stick with him throughout the remainder of his schooldays. Freak. Nutcase.
Weirdo
.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me
.

Nathan smiled sardonically. Who cared what they called him, anyway? To paraphrase old Billy Shakespeare, what the hell was in a name? Did a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?

These days the hopelessly childish nickname they’d pinned on him was ‘The Cleveland Slasher’. For Christ’s sake, how cartoonish was that? But as usual a press corps hungry to sell more papers had gone straight for the jugular. With Nathan’s journalism background he understood that better than most, even if he knew that
he
’d have done a much better job chronicling a case that could surely land the right reporter with the proper motivation a goddamn Pulitzer Prize.

Nathan shook his head.
Fuck it
. In the grand scheme of things names were of little consequence here. The only thing anyone needed to know about him was that he’d soon be considered the most perfect serial killer who’d ever lived. And once he was done sharpening the thorns on this particular rose – sharpening them to the point they drew
gallons
of blood – it was something they’d never forget. Not his parents. Not his former classmates.
Especially
not the thieving bitch in Cleveland, Ohio, who’d so carelessly stolen his life all those years ago.

But first there was work to be done, so that was the primary task of the day.

Nathan had already had a busy morning – an exquisitely beautiful fifth murder followed by the long plane ride back out to California – but a killer’s work was never done, was it? Not for the good ones, at least. Certainly not for the
best
one.

Running was a strange way to prepare to kill people, but he knew he had to do it if he wanted to be the best there’d ever been. And he
did
want to be the best. God knew that much. Ever since he was a little boy (
freak, nutcase, weirdo
) he’d always felt the need to contribute his own special slant to the events of the past. To erase the jumbled chalkboard and start over from scratch. To make things better than they were. To make them
clean
again.

This morning it was hill repeats in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park under the steady California sun. Hill repeats sucked ass, especially for a man Nathan’s age. Spring twenty-five yards up the steep incline, jog down and repeat. The thighs would burn and ache like they were on fire, the chest would gasp helplessly for air and the sweat would pour in endless rivers down the back.

Most athletes would do this drill ten times, maybe fifteen if they were seriously world-class and really looking to build up a strong aerobic base. But that wasn’t enough for Nathan. Never had been. He knew he had to push himself harder, faster and
longer
than all the others if he truly wanted to be the best killer of all time, so he forced himself through an agonising twenty trips up the steep hill before finally beginning the short jog back to the cheap motel he was temporarily calling home.

Running was the key for this one. It would establish him as a real player and set the tone for the other murders to come. And unlike most people out there running away from their own fucked-up pasts –
chickens running around with their heads chopped off
– he was running toward his future now. Running
for
his future. At least that was what he kept telling himself. Hell, one of these days he might even get around to believing it.

But it was fucking
hot
outside. Nathan had no trouble believing that. Over the past couple of days an Indian summer had slapped LA around like a husband would a mouthy wife, taking her by the throat and throttling hard. Eighty-eight degrees and air so heavy with humidity you could probably wring it out like a saturated washcloth if only you could get your fingers around it.

The sun was the sizzling yolk in the centre of a robin’s-egg sky, beating down on his head like a solar jackhammer wielded by an especially malevolent god as he struggled out of the park on cast-iron legs a good ten times heavier than when he’d first started out this morning. But at least the exquisite fatigue in Nathan’s aching muscles let him know that he’d accomplished
exactly
what he’d set out to do.

He knew there was no way in hell that Richard Ramirez had trained like this for
his
killing spree. Fat fucking chance. Wan and gaunt, with hollow cheeks sucked in around twin dead eyes, the only time when the Night Stalker had probably ever run was to the nearest corner store when he’d been looking for another pack of off-brand cigarettes to further pollute his wheezing lungs.

Nathan shook his head and chuckled to himself as he left the park.
The Night Stalker
. What a joke
that
was. When you really looked at things with a critical eye, it was amazing that Ramirez had ever been given a nickname at all.

Outside the park, his rubber-soled Nike cross-trainers slapped rhythmically against the cement and pushed the hot pavement back in consistent five-foot increments. Reaching up, he slid an annoying layer of perspiration away from his eyes and frowned suddenly. What the hell had been Richard Ramirez’s problem, anyway? How could he have let himself be so fucking careless? So goddamn
unprofessional?

If you wanted to become a master of your craft – to become a killer so far above reproach that not even your harshest critic would utter a single bad word against your work – all it took was a little bit of thought, a little preparation, a little goddamn
discipline
to get it right. What was so hard about that?

Absolutely nothing, that was what. If you wanted to be the best then you had to swallow your pride and become a student of the game first. That much went without saying. And if nothing else Nathan had always been an extremely diligent student, carefully studying even the tiniest details of how the heavyweights who’d come before him had operated inside the killing zone.

That was why he was going to be the best there’d ever been. It was as simple as that.

Lost in his thoughts, the bouncing breasts fifteen feet away knocked him out of his reverie and back onto the cracked sidewalk snaking its way along the boiling shore of the Pacific Ocean. Seagulls squawked noisily in the blue sky above and a strong westerly wind heavy with sea salt whipped hard through his full head of thick brown hair as he summoned up his best smile and nodded to the pair of attractive college-aged blondes jogging by in the opposite direction. Wearing matching sweat-soaked sports bras and barely-there Adidas running shorts, the little sluts held up their flawlessly manicured hands and smiled back at him in return.

Kill the right way
, they seemed to be telling him.

Nathan chuckled again when they had passed and lowered his head, forcing himself to pick up his pace despite the fingernails of pain clawing at his sides. Hell, if even the stupid whores out here in sunny Southern California knew that much, just
what
, exactly, was so goddamn difficult about the equation?

Again, nothing hard about it in the least. Nothing to give him the slightest pause or reason for concern. There was no room for conscience here. Killers killed: it was what they did. It was their
job
, for Christ’s sake. The good ones never got caught. The best ones were still talked about hundreds of years after they themselves had given up the ghost. But there was only room for one at the top of the heap – the unquestioned dominant lion of their special pride, as it were – and that was a title Nathan fully intended to claim for himself.

Now it was time for the dominant lion to show off his sharp white teeth and let out a thunderous roar.

Finally back at the run-down motel fifteen minutes later, Nathan couldn’t help flinching at the building’s outward appearance – dull, square, busted-up, a real shithole from ass to elbows – but he knew the anonymity that it provided was well worth the sacrifice of having to live there.

Waves of reflected heat shimmered up from the baking pavement like a troupe of drunken belly dancers in a crowded bar while he carefully picked his way through the rusted-out cars littering the blacktopped parking lot. Datsuns, Cadillacs, Chryslers – even a forty-year-old Pinto featuring a smashed-in back window. Moments later Nathan’s taut calf muscles were bouncing him up the concrete stairs on the outside of the building two at a time like a pair of stiff new pogo sticks until he reached the third floor, where he pushed open the rickety wooden door to Room 312 and locked it behind himself before kicking off his brand-new running shoes and tossing his room key onto the queen-sized bed that was covered by an especially garish paisley comforter.

Sweat poured down his temples as he sat on the bed and peeled off his ankle-length socks. He sighed contentedly. The lack of air conditioning provided a temperature exactly how he liked it best.

Hot
.

It was one of the main reasons he’d come to LA, though certainly not the most
important
one.

His Oakley board shorts, plaid Armani boxers and soaking-wet Billabong T-shirt came off next. Completely naked now, Nathan rose to his feet and strode over to the full-length mirror in the corner to check himself out.

I look stronger
, he thought, admiring a shredded midsection positively
rippling
with lean muscle.
I bet I could outrun an entire goddamn country if I really wanted to
.

But it would be just a small group of people he’d need to outlast tonight.

A cold rush of adrenalin flooded into his loins at the thought, and he felt himself begin to harden slowly. Only a few more hours left now until he’d find out if all his hard work and meticulous preparation were going to pay off. It had taken the laying of a lot of irritating groundwork, to be sure, but now that he had the attention of the thief back in Cleveland, tonight frightened little girls all around the Renaissance City could rest just a little bit easier as a result.

Nathan laughed out loud – a deep, throaty laugh that filled the room and vibrated his vocal cords like the strings on a perfectly tuned bass guitar. If they’d tried, could they have possibly picked a grander nickname for Cleveland – a city widely considered the shittiest place to live in all of the United States?

He shook his head to clear the thought away. No matter. As he’d established earlier, names were of no consequence here. And for better or worse he’d moved his one-man act on to the bright lights and fertile hunting grounds of LA. Soon he’d be recognised as the very best serial killer who’d ever lived. But for now it was simply time for the greatest show on earth to begin truly in earnest.

Lights.

Camera.

Action
.

CHAPTER TWO

Cleveland, Ohio – 8 p.m
.

What unspeakable things my eyes have seen
.

The line from an old TV movie flashed through Dana Whitestone’s mind as she slipped on a pair of paper shoe-covers and watched a balding forensic photographer named Doug Freeman lean in for a close-up of the little girl’s spilled intestines. The flashbulb popped brightly once, followed by the electric sound of rewinding film. Not for the first time, Dana wondered how Freeman had the stomach for his job. How did
any
of them?

A uniformed Cleveland cop nodded to her and scribbled something down on a clipboard. As the first person at the crime scene he was responsible for establishing the perimeter, closely monitoring everyone who entered and exited. The fewer people inside the yellow tape the better the chance of maintaining integrity.

They were on the seventh floor of a Section-8 apartment complex on the east side of Cleveland, the hardest hit sector of a hard-luck city recently named the second-poorest metropolitan area in the country. Last year they’d been Number One but this year Detroit wore the tinfoil crown.

Dana had been on a dinner date downtown when she’d received the call but she hadn’t been especially sad to leave. For all their silly commercials, Match.com had slim offerings in the boyfriend department. Still, idly picking at a dozen mild chicken wings and washing them down with a quick succession of ice-cold Miller Lites while an overweight accountant from Parma stared at her breasts across the table had to be better than
this
.

She tied a paper mask over her mouth and nose and glanced around the apartment to make sure that everyone else was wearing the proper protective gear. Dana didn’t want to miss out on the chance of catching a killer simply because somebody in the room had a cold. ‘What’s her name?’ she asked.

The photographer looked up with his own mask tied on, making him look like a crestfallen surgeon documenting a hopelessly botched job. ‘Jacinda Holloway,’ he said. ‘Eight years old.’

‘Who found her?’

‘The mother.’

‘Where’s she now?’

‘Hospital.’

‘Nervous breakdown?’

‘You got it.’

Dana crossed into the room along the established entry/exit point – a crucial element in all crime scenes – and knelt beside Freeman for a closer look. Automatically shifting into investigator mode, she popped two pieces of Citrusmint Orbit into her mouth to mask the smell of beer and pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves.

She reached out a hand and lifted a slender wrist six inches off the floor, then did the same with a swollen ankle. No need for emergency medical care, that was clear, and Dana was thankful the EMTs had recognised that. Few people compromised crime scenes more than medical personnel. Not that Dana blamed the EMTs for their zeal. Saving lives
was
the most important consideration, after all – even more than catching killers.

She squeezed her fingers gently around the girl’s ankle and frowned. Full rigor mortis had set in, indicating that she’d been dead for about twelve hours. Dana glanced down at her watch. At eight a.m. the little girl should have been in school learning her times tables, not lying dead in a pool of her own blood. Still, school wasn’t always Priority Number One in this neighbourhood. That said – why hadn’t the mother found her earlier? And why had the little girl been left unsupervised in the first place? She was only eight years old, for Christ’s sake. Much too young to look after herself.