The jaunty tune—the theme song for a favorite game show—began to play, and he turned up the volume, filling every corner and crevice of the small motel room with the catchy little ditty. Humming along, he snapped off his laptop and settled himself on the bed, leaning back against the cushions, the remote control held between both hands much the way a child might hold a popsicle. The camera scanned the audience, and as always, he made his own game out of guessing who would be that day’s contestants. When the host—he just loved that they called the emcee the host, as if they were all his guests—called down the first lucky player, he grinned broadly and laughed out loud. He’d picked her, that plump little middle-aged redhead, the first time the camera had made its way across the left side of the studio.
It was just another sign that everything was right in his world.
Okay, he conceded as the host promised he’d be right back after this brief commercial break, maybe everything wasn’t quite right. He was having a little bit of a problem on account of this blasted heat. He’d tried to make allowances for it, tried his best to figure out how much water and when it would be needed. So he’d miscalculated a little. It wasn’t as if he’d set out to let them die. Goodness, no. Didn’t the Bible say Thou shalt not kill?
And hadn’t he compensated by giving the others extra water, even bringing them oranges, as had been requested?
Bold piece of business that was, her telling him to bring them fruit. But he’d felt weak that day, after discovering that he’d lost yet another one, and he’d given in. Of course, the lost ones were of no use to him, and he’d had to find a way to dispose of them. After all, he couldn’t very well take them back.
Though the thought of it did amuse him greatly, of returning them to the same places where he’d found them. In the case of the unfortunate Carin Whitten, that would have meant driving back to West Virginia and dumping her at a precise point behind the track at the high school where she’d been running so very early on that summer morning. She had been one of the easier ones, Carin had. He’d watched her for days, enough days to determine that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she left the track by the back gate, rather than the front, as she did on the others, and headed to the backyard of a house that edged up to the tennis courts. To do this, she had to walk along a very narrow path between the fence on the court side, and a row of arborvitae on the other. Once at her destination, she would slip through the hedge and spend a half hour to forty-five minutes visiting before leaving by the front door to return home. Several times he’d seen her in the doorway leisurely chatting to her friend, as if she had all the time in the world.
But she’d been a pretty thing, that’s for certain. Mother would have said that Carin had grown up nicely.
He’d felt badly that he’d had to dispose of her the way he had, but, well, she’d live on, in a sense. He had to think of it as recycling in its truest form. He found himself smiling at the thought of it, in spite of his very real sorrow at having lost her and the few others who had succumbed.
The commercials having ended, he focused again on the screen, readying himself for the first round of play. But instead of the familiar face of his favorite game show host, he saw, instead, the face of a well-known news commentator.
“. . . interrupt our programming to bring you the following breaking news. We’re joining our local affiliate station. . .”
He barely heard the rest.
“What?!” He screamed at the TV, then growled.
He hated when they did this. Hated it.
“. . . press conference is underway. Let’s listen. . .”
A man in a dark suit—with that hair, he was obviously some type of politician or in law enforcement—was standing at a podium, a look of deep concern on his face. Someone from the audience was asking a question, but with the air conditioner on there in the motel room, he hadn’t heard it. The whole thing just made him even more annoyed. It was bad enough that they broke into his favorite show, but to not know why, why, that just. . .
What was that, what did the cop-type say. . . ?
Why, he’s talking about. . . he’s talking about. . .
ME!!
He moved to the end of the bed, the better to hear.
A press conference, about him! On national TV!
He’d expected some media coverage, eventually, but a full press conference! Important enough to preempt the morning game shows!
And so soon!
Could it really be?
His heart began to beat with the excitement of the moment. He increased the volume yet again, lest he miss a single word.
“. . . no one has said that any of the missing women have been killed, so your use of the term ‘serial killer’ is irresponsible and inaccurate. . .” The blue suit was saying with great emphasis and sincerity.
Hmmmm. He pondered this. He had lost several of them so far, but he hadn’t really thought of himself as having killed them. Did this make him a serial killer? The thought disturbed him.
Thou shalt not kill.
“. . . most striking bit of evidence is that there is no evidence at all. . .”
“Yes, of course there’s no evidence,” he muttered. “How can you find evidence when you don’t know where the crime scene is?”
“How can a random series of kidnappings—” a woman was asking.
“Random?” He laughed out loud. “My dear, my dear, nothing has been random.”
“. . . a very highly organized plan in a very specific order.”
“Well, you got that much right.” He nodded appreciatively.
“But if he’s not killing them, what’s he doing with them?” Another question from the audience.
“Ha!” He whooped when the police-type at the podium responded to the question with an admission that he hadn’t a clue. “And you’re dying to know, aren’t you? You’re all just dying to know!”
He leaned forward again when the profile was read off, nodding his head in agreement. “Right there. . . and there. . . right again.”
“Oh, please, no! UGH!” He cried aloud when he was referred to as a chameleon. Chameleons were slimy little, what, amphibians? Reptiles?
Disgusting. He shivered just to think of it.
He couldn’t help but swell with a kind of pride when the FBI began to pin up the little flags marking off the sites of his accomplishments.
It truly was his finest hour.
And it was taking place right there, on network television.
That the FBI was going to such trouble for him. . . well, it humbled him, to be sure. To know that he had them so baffled was a tribute to his cleverness, an affirmation that his actions were righteous. He grinned as the FBI asked for help from the public. As if there was anyone smart enough to put it together.
And then, there, on the screen, was the legendary John Mancini.
Legendary because his name was well known throughout the nation’s prison system after he’d taken such a beating—mentally, that is—from Sheldon Woods. Anyone who’d been in a federal prison at any time over the past few years had heard about it. And in his own last home, hadn’t he been two cells away from someone who knew someone who had once had a cell on the same block as Woods and who’d heard the talk. About how tough Mancini was, but how Woods’s persistence broke him down. And here he was, back again, like that little pink bunny on the battery commercials. Woods had said that Mancini had been really hard to break, but the fact that he had been able to get to him would have assured him a certain status in prison had it not been for the fact that he was, among other things, a child murderer.
And what was this Mancini saying? Something about a special unit being formed to track him down?
A team of four. Three men, and one woman.
He sat stunned, even after the press conference had ended. Could anything be more perfect?
He wished he had someone to share the moment with, but then again, if anyone knew what he was doing—kidnapping being a capital offense—he’d probably have to break his own promise to himself and kill them.
Genna Snow. Genna would be on the special team that was hunting him.
“Genna.” He spoke her name aloud reverently.
He exhaled sharply and pressed a pillow to his chest to keep his beating heart from bursting through.
Genna was coming after him.
The beauty of it all but overwhelmed him, almost to tears. The sheer perfection—the irony—of it all.
That he—the hunter—was now the hunted.
And she, so soon to be the hunted, was now the hunter.