Killer Among Us (6 page)

The yet startled him. “Am I planning on
training her? I would have to…” realizing where his thoughts had
wandered he closed them off and forced himself to go to sleep.

***

The Creeper stood in the small living room
of the apartment he had broken into earlier. There was something
wrong, and he felt it. His gut tightened and his eyes scanned the
gloom, looking at the pictures on the wall. A woman smiled at him
from one frame, her arms around a small child. In another she posed
beside a man, both of them in wedding finery.

He did not have to check to know he was in
the right place, it was the people were wrong. A wave of dizziness
swept over him, he had gotten something wrong; he had made a
mistake somewhere. But, how?

He could hear her mocking laughter; it
gusted through his mind like poisoned wind. “You are so stupid,”
she jeered, “You are a fool! Everyone knew but you…”

He clapped his hands to his ears, hoping to
drown her out but her voice remained, cutting through him like a
chainsaw. He ground his teeth together and crept toward the door. A
small squeak caught his attention; he turned his head to see a
shadow gather and coalesce in the hallway. Curious eyes peeked at
him from a solemn little face.

“
Are you lost? “

“
Yeah,” the Creeper said
gruffly, “Very lost.”

“
You should get a phone
like my dad’s; it tells you where you are and where you’re going
too.”

“
I’ll remember that.” How
old was the kid, ten? Twelve? What had he been doing when he was
that age? He could recall the fourth grade vaguely: the smell of
chalk and the taste of the paste he had liked to eat, the bicycle
that had dumped him in the driveway and led to two chipped front
teeth. His old man had beaten his ass good for that stunt, teeth
were expensive to fix, after all.

The kid watched him leave. He closed the
door softly then tugged the hat down lower. His hand stayed on the
doorknob for a few moments while he weighed the pros and cons of
going back in and killing the kid; he had seen him after all. But
what had he seen really, a man in dark clothes with a mustache a
totally different color from his hair and tufts of the same colored
wig sticking out from under a ball cap; that was all. No need to
slaughter the whole family.

The rage that always simmered below the
surface had grown quiet, leaving just the anxiety. His nerve seemed
to be failing him and that alone made a small bud of that anger
unfold but luckily for the family on the other side of the door it
was not enough to make him reenter the apartment.

He turned and went down the hall, taking the
stairs instead of the elevator to keep his face off of the cameras
inside of that small steel coffin.

Out on the streets he walked slowly,
deliberately pacing himself to appear as if he had no reason to be
away from the streetlights and the hot white glow of the
headlights. Something she had said to him, years before, about
tigers walking in a concrete jungle came back to him and he could
feel that same confusion that had haunted him for the last several
years bleeding back in.

How had it all gone wrong? The city had
changed, or maybe he had grown weary. Their life had somehow gone
downhill and she had begun to hate him, to hold him in contempt.
The Creeper stared at his face in a dark window for long moments,
trying to capture the face of the man he had once been but all he
saw reflected back at him was a wavering face whose lines looked
indistinct and blurred, he looked like a ghost imprinted on a dead
television screen.

The thought of being a ghost frightened him;
he turned and fled back toward the subway, running for home and its
illusion of safety.

***

Three days had passed and the city lay
sweltering under an unexpected and unseasonable blanket of heat.
The temperatures rose and the Creeper remained silent. Trucks
parked along the curbs served up dripping cones and the tourists
huddled on the double decker buses that ran the sightseeing
circuits, too tired and hot to walk the steaming streets.

Sophie still had yet to purchase a
television but she had learned a great deal about the Creeper since
the night she had seen him, and all of it made her very nervous, as
did the newly awakened sexual longing inside her. The night before
she had lain in bed, surprised to find her crotch slick and wet.
She had never masturbated, yet she somehow had known by instinct
where and how to touch, and when it had been too hard and when it
was too light. The strange and desperate feeling that had come up
in her when her fingers had grazed her clit had made her gasp,
shame had made her stop before she could find release so as a
consequence she had woken up cranky and a little sore.

The bookstore was very busy, the usual
customers culled the dollar shelves and the tourists drooped in the
aisles, loudly comparing the store to the large chain bookstores.
Sophie had to smile each time she heard the word quaint used just
to keep from swearing out loud. Geoff had long since tired of what
he deemed the necessary evils of business ownership and vanished
into his office. His door sat decidedly closed and she knew he
would not come out until closing time, which was two hours
away.

She could understand his feelings; he loved
books, old, rare, new and used. He loved classics and trashy novels
both and the hunt associated with finding them. He did not,
however, like people. He hated seeing his books going out of the
shop, even though he understood it was the nature of the
business.

The day dragged, a little boy threw a
screaming fit and spilled sticky egg cream on a pile of children’s
books. While she ran for paper towels the parents scooped him up
and left, not even asking if anything was damaged. Three books were
soaked with the gooey mess and she knew one was wrecked; the words
were smeared across the page too badly to read. She left it open to
dry anyway just in case and rang up the old man with a love for
Westerns written in the nineteen fifties and the young woman who
liked Ayn Rand and self-help books.

When she left for the evening she was
thoroughly exhausted and a bit irritated. A strange hush hung over
the streets as she trudged home, she could feel it. It felt like
everyone and everything was holding its breath, waiting for
something to happen.

Sassy greeted her with a long lick and an
even longer whine. “Oh you poor thing,” Sophie said, cuddling her
pet close, “You need to go out, don’t you?”

She took her to the closest park, allowing
her to run until the twilight cast dark indigo and purple mantles
over the statues in the park and the quiet faces of the buildings.
They stopped at a cart for dinner, Sassy barking excitedly when
Sophie ordered hot dogs and French fries for dinner.

When she opened her wallet
to pay her eyes fell on the slickly laminated card she had been
handed at the club. It read, quite simply,
Sophie
and had a number printed below
it. The card seemed to blare up at her, she looked over at the
other cart patrons guiltily, wondering if they had seen it and knew
where she had been. She found herself wanting to say, “I was there
by accident, I was running from a killer,” but that bizarre urge
passed almost as soon as it made itself known.

Dinner in hand, she and Sassy strolled back
to the apartment. Sassy gulped hers down and then gave her owner’s
meal a hopeful look, yipping excitedly when she was given a few
extra fries. With dinner over Sophie tried to read but she put the
book back down after scanning a few pages without interest.
Loneliness set in, bringing depression with it and her eyes drifted
back to the picture of Susan.

Three weeks before her suicide Susan had
come home again. She had spent four days in bed, drying out. When
she had gotten up she had been a mess, pasty and exhausted. Her
hair had been snarled and oily, her eyes circled by yellow and
brown bruises, the remnants of black eyes.

Sophie had hurt for her, and missed her even
then. She had missed the beautiful blonde girl with the big grin
and the fuck you attitude that had walked into her life and
befriended her when she had needed someone the most.

Sitting at the kitchen table, her needle
tracked arms showing all too clearly in the bar of sunlight that
had poured through the window behind her, Susan had asked, “Do you
think you will unfreeze long enough to realize that love happens,
even if you don’t want it to?”

The question had come because Sophie had
broken up with the guy she had been seeing and Susan thought it was
because Sophie was afraid to let anyone in. At the time she had
thought that Susan was wrong, but at that moment she wondered if
she had been right after all.

She had left her old life behind, she had
moved to New York City and yet she was doing the very same things
she had done in her former apartment, hiding away and reading about
love and life instead of getting out and trying to find those
things.

She went into the bedroom and picked up her
purse, pulling out the card. Her heart beat painfully and she slid
it back into her wallet, then she yanked it out again with an
almost convulsive gesture.

The things she had seen at the club burned
through her shyness, burned through her fears. She didn’t know why
but she needed to be there, needed to see those things again. She
dressed hurriedly, putting on a pretty dress and thin sandals,
remembering the doorman’s growled words about her clothing when she
had run in the last time, she had a feeling if it had not been for
Kane she would have been turned away. Her heartbeat accelerated,
wondering if she would see him there.

That thought shook her, and she realized
that she wanted to see him. In fact, she had never wanted to see
anyone so badly before in her life. She put on a little eyeliner,
eye shadow and mascara and surveyed her face critically. Susan had
given her a tube of glossy scarlet lip stain and she put some on,
then she rubbed it off, embarrassed.

She put on a second coat and stared at her
reflection, torn between self-doubt and a small sense of bravado.
The makeup made her look different, older and bolder. She looked at
her hair hanging in soft black waves to her shoulders and then went
back to the closet, trading the modest little pastel colored dress
for a green sheath that glowed like an emerald against her pale
skin.

“
Oh that is ridiculous,”
she said, then took the dress off and threw it on the floor. Three
seconds later she picked it up and put it back on, scolding herself
for being a coward. She changed the shoes out for higher heeled
ones and then took her car keys and went out the door.

She rarely drove the car anymore, the city
had great transportation and parking fees were outrageous. The
street outside her apartment had parking but she was afraid if she
moved someone would take her spot and she would have to pay those
high rates. On that night though she was terrified that someone
would look at her and make her feel afraid, make her run back home
again and more than anything else she did not want to go back to
her apartment and hide.

***

Kane gave up on trying to work. The FBI was
coming in the next day, the Captain had given up hope that he could
handle the serial killer in house, and Kane already knew he was
going to have to deal with his past in a major way when the Feds
came in.

He paced his living room, fighting hard
against the urge to go to the club but he could not hold off any
longer. He dressed in solid black: black jeans, black silk button
down shirt, heavy boots that gleamed with polish and then he packed
his toy bag. He was not sure why he did; he didn’t really want to
play with anyone.

“
Oh yes you do, you want to
play with Sophie,” he jeered at himself. “Admit it, she touched
something in you. And you would like very much to touch her
back.”

He packed the violet wand on a whim, it was
not really his favorite implement but he took it anyway and then he
jumped in a cab, heading for the club.

***

Sophie rang the bell and waited, trepidation
setting in as the camera swiveled its one blank eye toward her
face. She almost left, sure that some disembodied voice would tell
her no but instead the door clicked open.

The man behind the counter barely gave her a
glance, she stood there for a second, unsure of what to do, and he
barked out, “Your membership and ID card, please,” startling her.
She fumbled for those items, passed them over and he gave them a
glance than added, “Twenty dollars.”

She paid the twenty; he stamped her hand and
waved her on. The music was so loud behind the doors that when she
put her hands out to push them open they vibrated like living
things under her fingertips.

She stepped inside the club, her eyes
adjusting to its dimness, and a rush of something expected hit her.
It had been a long time since she had felt that feeling but not so
long that it was so alien she could not name it. When she stepped
inside the long room, she felt like she had just come home. It was
an odd feeling, and an unsettling one. She glanced around and her
eyes stopped on a woman wearing a long black coat, fishnets and
pumps with heels sharp enough to double as an ice pick. The woman
knelt at the feet of a man whose hand rested lightly on her bowed
head. When he stroked her hair and spoke softly she looked up, a
smile lighting up her entire face.

“
I want that,” Sophie
thought, and her face went warm as she noticed several people
eyeing her appreciatively.

Kane walked in and the first thing he saw
was the woman in the backless green dress. Her back was to him, he
stared at it, at the long and clearly delineated column of her
spine, the creamy white skin, the delicate slope of her shoulders,
the black hair that brushed against those shoulders and the curves
that were her hips. The dress could have been poured over her; it
clung without being tight, lying against her skin.