Urge to Kill

It turned out to be a West Side apartment in an old brick building with phony green shutters and fancy grillwork on the ground-floor windows. He’d watched, but it was impossible to know which unit she’d entered. It was probably useless to cross the street and look at the mailboxes, and he might attract suspicion.

He’d be back tomorrow, though. And if things worked out as he suspected, he’d return here often. At least for a while. He’d find out what he needed to know. He always did.

He thought about the woman with the strong and elegant ballerina’s body, the way her hair flipped with each step as she strode with her long legs. So delicate and precise, with a grace one had to be blessed with at birth. He replayed the image over and over in his mind, studying it for meaning and vulnerability.

He was learning. He was stalking.

The next morning he found out where she worked.

He’d been waiting less than half an hour when she appeared outside her building, wearing jeans again (though these weren’t as tight) and a T-shirt with some sort of lettering across the back. He was too far away to read what it said. Her graceful stride lengthened as she headed in the direction of the subway stop where they’d emerged last night. He fell in behind her as he’d done yesterday.

He followed her to an Office Tech, one of the big-box chain stores that retailed office supplies and electronics. It wasn’t far from where she’d been shopping early yesterday evening.

Now he followed her into the store, along the aisles of electronics, seeing nothing in focus but her. Without hesitating she strode toward the rear of the store, occasionally nodding a good morning to some of her fellow employees. Closer to her now, he could read the lettering on the back of her T-shirt: PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINKINESS.

A joke. She thinks.

Her regal elegance was incongruous and somehow stimulating as she brushed through a swinging door into what must be a storage area. Apparently she didn’t work on the sales floor.

Not quite ready to be disappointed, he decided to hang around for a while. He browsed about, pretending to study notebook computers, printers, various computer supplies. Twice he had to assure salespeople that he didn’t need or want help. There were about half a dozen of them in the spacious store, all of them wearing identical pin-on green buttons with identical fake ink stains on them that, if you looked closely, resembled desktop computers. The Office Tech logo.

Ten minutes, and she hadn’t come out of the storage area. He was becoming impatient. Close behind her, he’d been able to pick up her scent, the harbinger of her fear. Of her excitement.

Almost immediately they know without knowing.

He heard one of the salespeople, an older woman, ask a young clerk if “Terri” had come in yet.

“Few minutes ago,” the clerk said. He was a skinny teenager with a wannabe mustache. “She’s in back moving stock.”

“I figured you’d notice,” the woman said, and they both smiled.

The older woman, apparently a supervisor, walked toward the back of the store.

Going to check on Terri? Make sure she’s working?

A small message board was mounted on the wall next to the door to the storeroom. It was one of those erasable ones of the sort you saw outside hospital rooms. The name “Terri Gaddis” was written on it, along with several other names. The woman used a writing instrument hanging on a string beside the board and put a checkmark next to Terri’s name.

In his mind, the man in the blue baseball cap put a checkmark next to Terri’s name.

Terri Gaddis.

He was about ready to give up for the morning and leave Office Tech when Terri emerged from the storeroom. She was wearing one of the green buttons with the logo ink stain.

So she did work on the sales floor.

It was still early, so there weren’t many shoppers in the gadget-lined aisles. She walked over and stood near a display of notebook computers, all with their screens glowing, and looked beautifully bored.

Well, he enjoyed shopping for computers, talking about them, learning. He enjoyed learning about almost anything. Who knew when any bit of knowledge might prove useful? So he wouldn’t completely tune out what Terri was going to tell him while he was primarily learning about her. Studying her from only a few feet away. Looking into her eyes as he must so he could see in them the commitment they would make to each other on a deeper level than her conscious knowledge. Those who were prey always recognized the predators, always accepted what would surely occur. Often the premeditation in what the courts called premeditated murder took two.

He walked toward her, smiling.

Terri Gaddis didn’t know it, but she was ready for her close-up.

24

“If I’d known it was going to be like this,” Quinn said, “I’d have seen a shrink sooner.”