HE DISCOVERED EDEN by accident. Or, as Curtis loved to say, Eden discovered him.
Adrian was in love with his newfound power. He loved killing. Loved it so much that a year after the incident at the construction site in McLean, he’d already taken four more lives. He was very careful, had been preying on the homeless who wandered the dark night streets of D.C. Off the Key Bridge into Georgetown, under the Whitehurst Freeway, there was a parking lot across from a bar called Chadwicks. D.C.’s homeless crowded in the back of the lot, near the river, away from the streetlights, under the shadow of the bridge. They had a full-blown camp, and Adrian found he could move among them without too much trouble, passing out blankets and water, magazines and candy bars and greasy fast food bags. They liked him all right. He liked himself, too. He was becoming a regular philanthropist.
His knew his size was an issue; he stuck out and was easily remembered, but there was nothing he could do about that. Better to be their friend. There was less chance of them turning on him if he was found out. He was very careful no one would match the sweet high schooler who brought them some much-needed things out of the goodness of his own heart with the vicious killer dropping bodies in the Potomac.
Even when the police came calling to do a welfare check and talked to everyone about the rise in homeless deaths, he played it perfectly. He’d gone up to one of the cops who’d been eyeing him and asked if he was safe being down here. The cop had shrugged and said, “You’re a big kid, but best be careful, just in case.”
A big kid.
Yes, he was.
Life was good. During the day, he was an average senior, making decent enough grades to stay off the radar, hanging with Doug in Georgetown, even venturing on a few dates. He doubled with Doug to the Homecoming dance, managed to get through having his cock sucked in the parking lot behind the school by a stoned blonde with a nose ring who wanted him to call her Candy, though her real name was something like Elizabeth. What he wanted to do was put his hands around her neck and squeeze the life out of her perfect body, but he restrained himself. Doug wouldn’t have approved if he’d dragged his date back to the dance dead. And his only real friend’s approval meant the world to him.
The days were long, and boring, and uneventful. But after midnight, he became his true self. He almost felt as if he was becoming a vampire, feeding on the blood of his victims, becoming strong and capable. Of course, he hated blood. It was messy, and too easily transferred between people. He’d tried stabbing and cutting, but it didn’t give him the same rush. Looking into someone’s eyes as they realized what was happening didn’t do it for him, especially the resignation he’d seen from some of the homeless, who almost seemed grateful to him for ending their suffering.
No, it was the struggle he craved. The spastic, panicky movements of arms and legs, the chest heaving, hands ripping at his forearms, feet kicking his shins. The struggle was his thing, what he sought.
He’d had his final growth spurt; at his school physical, the doctor had measured him at six foot six and suggested he go out for football. He was seventeen, huge and strong, and not afraid of anything. He had to keep up appearances, being his usual quiet, deferential self. But inside he was on fire. Inside, he was a god.
Under cover of his advanced biology class, he spent some time in the library learning about the process of dying. They said when the heart stops, the brain has two to three minutes of continued activity while the body shuts itself down, so he was always careful to speak to his victims afterward. To thank them for their sacrifice. To assure them their death had not been in vain. He’d always been a polite boy; there was no reason to devolve into a raving maniac at the end the way he’d done with Frank and the nameless defaulter. He felt bad sometimes for Frank, but he never felt sorry for the other man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, dude.
It was late April toward the end of his senior year when he discovered the garrote.
He read about it in a book—one of his dad’s spy thrillers—and decided it might be worth a try. It seemed...elegant. Sophisticated. Grown-up. Sheer brute force had gotten him by until now. If he was going to continue on this path, he needed something a little more seemly.
He knew using a device was more dangerous than his own hands, so he was careful when he bought the materials—borrowing Doug’s car to drive to Bethesda to buy the wire from a hardware store, getting a child’s jump rope at a sports store in Falls Church. He fashioned the garrote, admired his work, then tested it out on one of his old stuffed teddy bears, shoved away in the corner of his closet, forgotten and unloved.