John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“If you really think you and I getting together might help,” she said, “maybe we should do it again.”

Quinn felt surprised and oddly embarrassed. He couldn’t contain his smile. “I thought you psychoanalysts were supposed to be obscure.”

“That was me being obscure,” she said. “What I really meant is that you intrigue me. Your methods, who you are. Maybe it’s because you’re trying to track my brother’s killer. Maybe when you catch him, or kill him, you’ll no longer intrigue me.”

“That was direct enough,” Quinn said.

“Often being direct is wise. Life offers only so many opportunities, it’s a shame not to explore them. Believe me, I’m not being impulsive. I’d tell you I hardly ever do this kind of thing, only you already know that.”

“I do know it,” Quinn said.

“I don’t take very many chances.”

Oh, yes you do. Was your brother a gambler like you? A risk taker? Some people say that’s in the genes.

“Neither do I,” he said.

She crossed her arms, cocked her head to the side, and stared at him with hope and a certain vulnerability. He knew what courage it must take. But at the same time, the lady seemed to get off on risk. Quinn understood that; he often fought the same instinct in himself.

And sometimes he didn’t fight it.

What the hell, since we’re being direct: “How about dinner, then maybe later…?”

“How about sooner,” she said “then maybe dinner?”

Later that night Quinn wondered, is there a victim gene?

It was almost like watching a wary exotic fish considering a variety of lures. The man in the unmarked blue baseball cap had watched her yesterday from across Broadway as she meandered from shop to shop, looking in windows, regarding the bait. He knew she’d finally see something that interested her and enter one of the shops. She would finally bite.

Men and women thought quite differently. He understood how women thought, had made a study of it. Certain women, for certain reasons, he studied individually and closely.

That was because only certain women would do. It would be wrong to call them all the same physical type. It was more something about their bearing, the way they held themselves and moved. The way they thought. The look in their eyes.

That was something he hadn’t yet seen. He hadn’t looked into this one’s eyes.

She was certainly attractive, he thought, as he slowed and stood with his hands in his pockets, staring across the street. She was medium height, with long dark hair, long legs encased in tight jeans, long and graceful arms that nonetheless looked strong. Even her neck was long and slender. What interested him most was her ballet dancer’s tightly sprung body. It hinted at physical strength as well as grace, reminiscent of a wild and lovely animal that might bolt and be up to speed in seconds. A prey animal, like an elegant gazelle. Every slight movement she made was unconscious art.

She went into a mid-price fashion shop and, after about fifteen minutes, emerged carrying a small white shopping bag. From outside the shop he followed her back the way she’d come, along Broadway. She was walking now with a firm destination in mind, and he had to quicken his pace to keep up with her long, graceful strides.

Finally she took the concrete steps down a shadowed stairwell to a subway platform. Even descending the steps, had she wanted to, she could have balanced a book on her head.

Though the train was crowded, she managed to find a seat. He stood halfway down the car, holding on to a vertical steel bar, unobtrusively watching her.

They didn’t ride far before exiting the subway and surfacing back into the bright sun. Like moles, he thought, blinking at the light. He was sure she still hadn’t noticed him as he fell in behind her at a prudent distance.

He had to find out as much as possible about her, and where she lived was essential information.

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.