One good twist and the bear’s head was sliced clean off.
Smiling, on top of the world, he went to his favorite testing grounds under the Whitehurst Freeway for the first attempt. He chose a young guy with a brain full of cats—he’d be strong, but no one was going to miss him. He’d already been talking about moving south, to warmer climes, and the other homeless wanted him gone. Even the forgotten didn’t like being around crazy.
Adrian followed him out of the lot, down to the river and waited until the guy finished taking a leak to jump him.
The garrote worked perfectly. He was able to relax the pressure a few times, let him start to breathe again, which was ideal. Before, if he’d let his arms go slack, his prey could slip out, run away. No more. He took his time. It was fifteen minutes of sheer, heady bliss. When it was over, satiated and happy, he slid the body into the water in a good solid current, knowing it would be days before it was found.
This newfound toy consumed all of Adrian’s thoughts. He was edgy, and distracted, always on the lookout for the next neck to wrap his wire around. His grades started to slip—who could do homework when you held life in your very hands? His dad was questioning his comings and goings. Even Doug started drifting away. He had become obsessed with going into the marines to impress Candy Elizabeth, who’d smartly moved her oral attentions to a boy who didn’t make her feel like a lamb about to go to the slaughter. He still hung out with Adrian, but there was an invisible wedge between them. As if Doug sensed the strength of the man below the surface, and couldn’t reconcile that person with his old friend.
Alone, Adrian became the night. He couldn’t help himself. He was going down the rat hole, his stack of bodies growing. But the perfect kill eluded him. His pursuit became more and more frantic. Toward the end of May, even the homeless shut him out, realizing something wasn’t quite right about the big blond-haired kid who’d been hanging around a lot more lately.
Discouraged, he was sitting on a bench on the National Mall, watching the flags surrounding the Washington Monument flip and snap in the breeze, when she walked by.
The one.
Not the next one, but the one who was going to be his perfect kill. He’d take her down, then lie back for a while. Take the summer off. He needed to get himself back under some semblance of control.
He didn’t hesitate. He stood and followed, watching how her ass moved beneath the thin cotton of her skirt, her slender ankles shifting and moving in worn espadrilles, the muscles in her thighs tightening and lengthening with each step. She was young, an intern on the Hill, maybe. A dangerous victim. He felt the familiar tingle in his groin. He felt the blood rushing through his veins, and knew he was powerless to stop things now.
It was twilight, the sun fighting to hang on in the west, and he decided to take her right there in the middle of the Mall, with all the people around. The softball teams finishing their games and settling in with a beer or three, the congressional staffers walking down to the Metro, the tourists soaking in the last bit of the city before night set in. He could do it. He could grab her and pull her into the sculpture garden by the Hirschhorn Museum. No one would be there now, after museum hours, and he knew the lone camera that watched over the gardens was placed at the entrance. He would go over the wall to the downward path, yank her right over the edge.
His pulse raced, and his breath came short. He stalked her, waiting for the moment she’d be his.
In the shadow of the gardens, where no one could see them, he took three swift steps, pulled her behind the wall and wrapped the wire around her delicate white throat.
She was light and graceful in his arms, and in his frenzy of adrenaline, he’d pulled the garrote too tight. She didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. She went limp.
Caught off guard, he relaxed his grip.
And a voice commanded, “Let her go, Adrian.”
Startled, he gasped and dropped the girl in a heap on the ground. She lay unmoving, and he searched for the owner of the voice, legs poised to sprint him away from the scene.
A woman of unsurpassed beauty stepped out of the shadows.
In the space of a heartbeat, she stared into his eyes, and he was mesmerized. Frozen. Her eyes were green, the color of moss, and wide-open. There was no fear. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. Her reaction confused him. He didn’t know what to do.
He wondered then if she was an angel. If something had happened to him, and he’d died.
But the birds were chirping, and he could hear the shouts and traffic. He was not dead. The calm was an illusion.