John Lutz - Serial

At least when Westerley was finished with his devastating testimony and walked past the jury on his way out, no one had asked for his autograph.

What I should have done, Murray thought, was go to engineering school. Built bridges or something. Or maybe done stand-up comedy. A couple of times he’d managed to make the jury laugh.

It helped some that after the guilty verdict, Maurice Givens had taken him aside out in front of the courthouse and told him not to worry, this had been his first murder trial; Murray was young and had the makings of a top-notch trial lawyer.

The next week, after sentencing, Givens again approached Murray outside the courthouse and slapped him on the back. “If the scumbag had anybody else for a lawyer-but me, of course-he’d have gotten fifty-five to sixty.”

Salas had been sentenced to thirty-five years in the state penitentiary in Jefferson City. If he managed to survive, it would seem like an eternity. Murray didn’t feel good about it.

“Don’t be downcast,” Givens had told him in parting. “We both know the bastard’s guilty.”

If Salas was downcast, it was difficult to know it. When he’d been sentenced, he’d worn the same stoic expression he’d displayed when found guilty, almost as if he were bored. Even when Murray visited him later in the lockup and they discussed the appeals process, Salas seemed disinterested. Both men knew where that short road would lead.

Murray told himself that what Givens had related to him outside the courthouse was true. Not just about him having the stuff to become a top-notch trial lawyer, but about Salas’s obvious guilt. The evidence had certainly been there. And Salas had certainly acted like a guilty man. Now it was time simply to go through the process of appeal. Automatic motions that would mean nothing.

Time to chalk this one up to experience and think ahead, Murray told himself. And not just to this evening, when he had a date with a sexy court stenographer.

In two weeks he was going to defend in court some members of an organization called Humane Commandoes, who’d blown up a chicken coop, chickens and all, for no apparent reason. The ACLU wouldn’t touch that one. The commandoes would have Murray as their lawyer.

It had been a small coop. Only a few chickens had died.

Murray figured maybe he had a chance.

New York, the present

Candice Culligan knew immediately upon entering the apartment that she wasn’t alone. Her senses informed her of what her mind didn’t yet know. Subtle movement in the air, a scent, a geometry unlike the one she’d left when she’d gone to work this morning, slight sounds of a frequency felt rather than heard.

After seeing what might have been the impression of a man on the duvet on her bed, Candice had become more cautious in everything she did. It was amazing what fear could do. The go-getter woman of supreme confidence had been replaced by someone meeker and milder. She’d come more and more to see her apartment as a refuge, a sanctuary from fear.

So powerful was the sum of these sensations that she actually turned to leave.

Her hand was reaching for the doorknob when she heard a man’s voice say, “You’re here now. You might as well stay for a while.”

For the rest of your life.

She was still frozen by fear when he moved in close to her. His breath was warm on the back of her neck. She hadn’t even had time to whirl and see who’d spoken.

He turned her around slowly, using only the tips of his fingers on one hand to guide her, almost as if they were dance partners. With the slight movement she felt some of her fear slip away.

Candice had shifted her attache case to her left hand to unlock and open her apartment door. Now, as she turned, she moved it to her right. It was leather, stuffed with legal briefs, heavy and with brass corners. A weapon. She drew her breath, planning to continue revolving her body, moving away from her assailant, coming up and around with the attache case. Fast. Hard. Visualize it and you can do it.

Make it count!

As she coiled her body and made the beginning of her turn, her eyes snapped to the knife he held before her face. It had a knobby wooden handle and a short, wide blade that curved in on itself and ended in a sharp point.

Visualize it.

What she found herself visualizing was the knife parting her flesh, loosing torrents of scarlet blood.

If it hadn’t been for the knife she might have made the initial moves of resistance. At least put up a struggle. But her resolution wilted within her and she heard herself whimper as she let her arm holding the attache case drop. She couldn’t make out her assailant’s features through her fear and tears, but she could see that he was smiling. He was smiling and she was paralyzed.

Goddamn him, he was smiling!

Her willpower seemed to flow from her in exact proportion to his sadistic amusement.

That’s all I am to him-something amusing.

He encircled her wrist with a powerful hand, squeezed, and she heard rather than felt her attache case drop to the floor.

“I brought a case of goodies, too,” he said. “It’s in the bedroom. Let’s go there and I’ll show you.”

He marched her slowly but steadily toward the short hall leading to her bedroom, guiding her by her aching wrist, the cool knife blade now resting against her throat.

She glanced back and got a glimpse at his face. He didn’t look like the man she’d mistakenly identified as her rapist years ago. Or, as far as she could tell, like the man who actually had raped her. And yet…

The mind could play such tricks.

His fingers dug into her arm and she whimpered again, and at the same time felt a hot coal of anger deep inside her. She wouldn’t let herself be led like this, like a goddamned lamb to slaughter.

I know tae kwan do. Took the concentrated course in selfdefense. I can beat this bastard in a fair fight.

But there was the odd little knife, and at that moment all she really knew was terror. One abrupt motion of his arm and her blood would flow.

The ember of anger refused to become flame. She would do what he said. It was her only chance of survival. And she clung to the belief that she did have a chance. That she’d be talking about this at the law office tomorrow, that she might even be testifying against this man in court.

She tried to tell him he was ruining his own life by what he was about to do, but the words wouldn’t come. And what was he about to do? What crime was he about to commit?

Rape? Murder? Both?

Maybe he knows the risk he’s taking, and is willing because this isn’t the first time. Maybe he’s done this before.

Maybe he’s that killer.

The Skinner!

She struggled to speak, to plead with him, but her throat was so dry that she could only croak. Which made him smile again. It was the smile that struck her numb and dumb, that controlled her. Control. That was what he wanted. What all the assholes of the world wanted. That was why she’d become an attorney. She was the one who was supposed to be in control. The law controlled everyone. It was fair, or at least logical. She was a representative of the law.

And the person who had her was a representative of the devil. There was a force emanating from him that seemed supernatural, that dwarfed her own feeble efforts and made them meaningless.

He sat her down on the bed, pushed her back. The killer attorney might as well have been a humanlike doll in the hands of this real killer. His plaything. On the bed was the attache case he’d mentioned, not so unlike her own. Except for the contents, which were visible because the case was opened so he could get what he needed in a hurry.

With quick, practiced motions, he deftly ripped off long strips of silver duct tape and bound her ankles, then turned her onto her stomach and taped her wrists behind her back. Rolled her over again so she was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling.