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THE VIDEOTAPE REWOUND quickly, the scenes blurry and backward while the tape made its way to the beginning. When the digital readout reached zero, he pressed the play button on the remote.
The tape deck clicked and whirred and the picture solidified on the screen. A face filled two-thirds of the screen. The woman was an average television reporter—young, black, and strikingly pretty. In the background was the city’s morgue.
Her face mirrored a patently studied concern, declaring her emotions for the camera. But the way she emoted wasn’t important to him, the story was.
He lay back on the three pillows piled against the headboard of the brass bed and watched the news story unfold, again.
He inhaled through his nose. He could still smell her presence in the room. He liked that. It allowed him to continue to think of the lessons he’d taught her.
The dead woman’s face filled the screen. Her eyes were open and she was smiling. He guessed the picture was several years old. She had changed since that picture, but not a lot.
The screen flickered back to the reporter, who turned just as several people emerged from the morgue. She went over to them and began interviewing the chief of police.
The chief turned over the questions to the head of the Task Force, Captain Brice Walker.
He stared at the man, hatred and scorn burning through him. He didn’t hear what the cop said; he only felt his anger and his need to lash out.
Walker and the rest of the police were meddling where they did not belong! Only he was doing what was necessary. It was Amy Morgan who should be blamed for what was happening, not him. But no one understood. He knew no one would, which was why he had to take care of things himself.
Damn them! Damn them all!
He shut off the television. He breathed in short and forced gasps as he fought to control himself.
A moment later, his breathing eased and his fists uncurled. He moved, rolling to his side and springing from the bed. He went into the kitchen, and to the telephone. He stared at it for several seconds before he picked it up and dialed a number from memory.
<><><>
The glowing blue letters of the clock were ample evidence of her inability to sleep. Two a.m. and all was not well, she thought as she lowered the comforter to her waist and readjusted her head on the pillow in another futile effort to find a position that was comfortable.
Her mind was a twisting seething serpent, striking out and running away at the same time. Her confusion was palpable; and, her need to vindicate herself in the eyes of the department was strong. But her strongest need was to find him before he killed again.
Could Carolyn be right? It was a question she’d been repeating to herself ever since leaving her friend’s apartment. It was hard for her to think that one of the people she’d always trusted her life and her safety to was an insane murderer who wanted to possess, rape, and kill her.
What alternatives were there? She’d started on the case four years ago. The Phantom had been killing for five years, ever since she’d talked the bank robbers into giving up.
If it was a cop, a homicide cop at that, it was a good thing Todd Neary hadn’t believed her. If he had, and told the wrong one, he would be at risk himself.
Who? She thought of her ex-partner, Jim Frankel. She tried to picture the burly older homicide detective as the Phantom. She pushed herself to think hard about the women who had died and Frankel.
It couldn’t have been him. She would have known if it was him. Or would she? Carolyn had said if it was a case of multiple personalities, the dominating personality might not leave any traces within the personality Amy knew best.
“Could he kill like that?” she asked aloud, needing to hear a voice, even her own.
She shook her head. She would have known if the Phantom was Jim Frankel. Then she exhaled. She remembered the fourth victim had been taken the same night Jim Frankel had left for his honeymoon with his third wife. They’d gone to Barbados on a late-afternoon flight after a small wedding ceremony at City Hall.
She had driven him and his wife to the airport and seen them board the plane. Three days later the woman’s body had been found in a parking lot at the Museum of Art. The last time anyone had seen her had been the night of Jim Frankel’s wedding day.
Amy’s exhalation was long. The relief she felt was intense. Who else? She knew it wasn’t one of the two guys who had been with her the day he had run her down.
Who else? “Who?”
She pressed herself hard, trying to come up with a viable list of suspects. She grew suddenly angry with Harold Slater for not being the Phantom. She had wanted it to be him. She needed the Phantom to be a bad guy, not someone she knew.
But he was not the man she’d shot that night on the street. He had been unblemished by her bullet.
“Damn it!” she snapped.
Then a black thought exploded, turning itself into a pounding forerunner to a headache. She sat up, pressing her fingers to her temples. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought as well as the physical sensations.
Could he be Ron Somers? Could the Phantom be her ex-husband? It was possible. Anything was possible, she told herself. Could his anger, his emotional needs, and his competition with her to be a better cop than she put him over the edge and into a new personality?
Could he hate her so fiercely that he was killing her over and over and over again? Could there be another reason for not killing her? Could the good part of him still love her, while the bad part wants her dead? Was that feasible?
Or could it be that he was using the other women as a substitute for her because something inside him would not kill the mother of his son?
But if he’d been wounded, wouldn’t she have heard? A smart cop would have faked a shoot-out with someone and then called in. And if he’d done so, she would have found out.
Unless he’d gone to an underground doctor—one who operated outside the law. There were plenty of them in the city.
Could it be Ron?
She squeezed her eyes shut under the assault of her emotions and fears. She started to reach for the phone, to call Carolyn, and remembered her friend was gone.
If only she could talk to her, tell her these latest thoughts and see what she could come up with. But she could, she remembered. There was a way.
She took up the phone and dialed Carolyn’s number. When the call was answered by the machine, and it told her to speak as long as she needed she did so, quickly and rapidly outlining her thoughts about Ron.
“Call me when you can,” she finished.
Hanging up, she lay back on the bed. She closed her eyes, but all too soon the visions of dark shapes and dead women were dancing through her thoughts. She opened her eyes and stared at the red-lighted numbers of her clock.
The minute changed and the phone rang.
The shrill sound cut through the silence, startling her even as it stabbed into her mind. The moment she lifted her arm to reach for the receiver, she knew who it was. She picked up the phone, her head pounding, but remained silent.
“Hello, Amy,” came the guttural voice.
The sound of his voice was chilling, and raised goose bumps over every inch of her skin. Her mouth went dry and her tongue turned to cotton.
“You shouldn’t have brought those others into it. I thought you’d finally understood it was just between us.”
Amy held back. She wanted him to talk, so that she might be able to detect who he was. She listened intently, forcing herself to hear every breath, every syllable. She needed to hear his voice, to listen carefully to it. With luck, he might make a mistake, perhaps speak with a certain inflection that would betray him.
“Are you so afraid of me you can’t talk?”
“How did it feel, being shot?” she asked suddenly.
He barked a short laugh. “I’m a Phantom. You can’t hurt me.”
She heard him take a deep breath. And then he said, “I’m coming for you, soon, bitch.”
She held herself silent, drawing out every moment, every second. Then she swallowed to moisten her dry throat. “You don’t have to come for me. I’ll come to you. Where?”
He laughed again, but this time the sound was tainted with such a profound visceral darkness she shuddered. “Clever little lady. And that’s what you are, you know. It’s just too bad you don’t really know what being a lady means. But don’t worry, I’m going to teach you.”
“Like you did the others? It’ll take more than you,” Amy hissed, anger submersing the base fears he rose inside her.
He gave vent to a short and coarse laugh, then hung up.
Amy replaced the phone. She stared at it for several long seconds, waiting for the racing of her heart to slow.
She thought about his voice. It had been guttural and low and unfamiliar. She tried to think back and remember if there had been anything she’d found familiar. But there hadn’t been. If it was Ron, then he was a Ron Somers she had never known.
And if it was Ron, or someone else she knew, as Carolyn believed, his voice was not giving him away. Could it have been electronically altered?
Intuitively, she knew the voice that had sent chills of fear through her had not been some mechanically altered thing.
She lay back, pondering her next step. She tried to analyze the fear that speaking to him had brought. It was different from facing a criminal, knowing the person was capable of hurting or even killing you. No, it was something else.
She struggled, searching the depths of her inner being, and suddenly found what she’d been seeking. Her fear was of being a victim of the unknown—much like a child who was afraid of the dark.
She was being hunted. She was prey! Somewhere in the city, lurking amidst the darkness of life, a predator tracked her. I’m vulnerable because I don’t know where the hunter is.
She slammed her open palm on the bed as her frustration boiled over. She had to do something!
Knowing her tortured mind would not permit sleep, she slipped on her robe, and went to her office.
Inside what had once been her father’s sanctuary, she looked at the box of files from Jim Frankel. Then she looked at the two marker boards, and the names and dates written so boldly on them.
She went to the old oak desk and sat in the chair. The soft leather welcomed her within its soft grip.
“What do I do, Daddy? What would you do?”
<><><>
The hallway was dark, but he knew it well. It took him less than five minutes to enter, find her office, unlock it, and leave his calling card.
Outside, the night was fading and to the east, behind the city’s montage of buildings, the first faint bands of dawn arose.
Pausing to inhale the last of the night air, he smiled with the visualization of her face at the moment she would come upon his final offering.
When they’d spoken earlier, she had all but accepted his rules. His newest gift was to insure she would not involve anyone else, ever!
<><><>
Amy put her key in the lock. She tried to remember if she’d locked her office when she’d left yesterday afternoon, but couldn’t be sure.
Shrugging, she turned it and went inside. Everything seemed okay. She slipped off her coat, hung it on the wall hook, and went to her desk.
Sitting down, Amy found a white envelope with her name and title typed on it. She picked it up, opened the flap, and saw a photograph inside.
She took the photo out, and her heart stopped.
“No.” She shook her head at the picture of her son, sleeping in his bed. Paul’s face was completely visible, as was his body, which was half in the bed and half out of it. The picture slipped from her numbed fingers and fell to the desk, face down. On the back was a handwritten message, printed in bold block letters.
Nice boy! Remember, it’s just you and me.
“No!” The sound was more a painful sob torn from her throat than a truly formed word. Blackness descended, seeping into her soul, wrapping dark and cold fingers around her heart.
A vision of Paul filled her mind. His young tender face was set in a death mask of immobility, and his beautiful eyes dull and unseeing.
Paralyzed by the sight, she was unable to move and unable to think. And then, while enmeshed within the darkness that this glimpse of horror brought forth, something inside her shattered.
The panic holding her prisoner was gone, replaced by a rage rising from deep inside, which in turn leached out the agonizing vision from her inner sight, turning her fear into a burning fury. A rage that cleared her mind and directed her to a new purpose.
“No more,” she whispered to the dark shadow, which had haunted her for far too long.
She looked around the office, seeing everything in it with a rare and crystal clarity. There was much here that belonged, but she was not one of those things—not yet, not until her past was settled.
Picking up the photograph, she put it in her jacket pocket, grabbed her coat, and left the office. Six minutes later she entered the main administrative office and went to the secretary’s desk.
“I’m not well,” she told the secretary. “Flu.”
The woman nodded sympathetically. “It’s going around. I’ll get someone to cover your classes. I’ll notify Captain Jaeger for you, Lieutenant. Feel better.”
“Thank you.” Turning, she left the office and the school. The moment she was in her car and heading home, she took out her cell phone and turned it on, hoping there was still some battery left. The power light glowed red. She breathed a sigh of relief and dialed her mother.
When Joan answered, she said, “Just listen and do what I ask. Pack a suitcase for Paul and for yourself. I’m picking him up at school now. I want you to take him to visit Aunt Marguerite.”
“Amy, what’s happened?”
“Mom, please. You have to do this. I can’t stop him unless I know the two of you are safe.”
“Amy—”
“Mom, I’ll explain when I get there. Please, pack and be ready.” Without waiting for a reply, Amy hung up.
A half hour later she entered the town house with Paul. Her mother was packed and ready.
“Get whatever books and toys you want to take,” Joan told her grandson.
When Paul was gone, Joan turned to her daughter. “Explanation, now!”
Amy knew her mother well, and was prepared for the question. She reached into her pocket and withdrew the photo. Handing it to her mother, she said, “Do you remember when I changed the alarm code?”
When Joan nodded, she said, “That was because I believed someone had come into the house. I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t want to take any chances. This proves I was right.”
She lifted the photo from her mother’s hand and turned it over. “He sent it to me, at the academy. Mom, I can’t stop him unless I know you and Paul are safe. That’s why I need you to do this.”
Joan Morgan looked from the photo to Amy. Her face was pale beneath the realization of what she’d just seen. Her eyes misted. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Mom, I—”
“Listen to me. I know you have to find him. I understand it’s a part of your makeup, just like it was a part of your father’s makeup. But don’t do this alone.”
The concern on her mother’s face tore at her. She wanted to lie to her mother and tell her she would have someone with her, but the lie would not pass her lips. “I’ll be okay,” she promised. “I can do this, but only as long as I know that Paul is safe.”
<><><>
At three A.M, the cast-off circles of street lamps spotted the pavement like a string of Christmas lights. The night’s fall air was growing colder, foreshadowing the approaching winter.
She was tired. Her legs ached, and her feet were sore and pinched after a night in her running shoes. She’d been walking for hours in an aimless pattern that moved her along the varied blocks of the city, while she waited for him to find her and to hunt her.
She’d felt something earlier, when a chill of warning rippled along her spine, centering at that soft spot at the nape of her neck.
The instant the feeling touched her, she’d slowed her frenetic walking so she would make an easier target. But nothing came of it. A half hour ago, the feeling left as quickly as it had come.
Amy stopped walking. She knew he wasn’t coming after her tonight, not any longer. She sighed, shook her head, and crossed the street. She was ten blocks from home.
<><><>
He stood naked in the center of the room. She was on every wall. Newspaper stories dotted one wall. Photographs of Amy Morgan, taken without her knowledge lined another wall like striped wallpaper.
Oh the third wall were the newspaper stories about him, and of the lessons he was teaching her. The fourth wall was empty. No, not quite empty. Two large bolts were sunk into the wall, attached to the support beams. Hanging from the bolts were strands of thick rope.
The wall would be Amy Morgan’s classroom. He had planned and practiced all of it for a long, long time. First, he would teach her what it was like to be subservient. When she learned her lesson, he would teach her how to pleasure him. Only then, when she had learned that, and she was completely his, would he give her the final lesson, and take her soul into his so she could never revert back to what she had once been.
His breathing deepened. He grew hard and long. He groaned, staring at the photographs of Amy Morgan. His mind shifted and took him on another long journey into the future, to tell him what would happen tomorrow night.
He had watched her tonight, followed her as she’d walked the streets, offering herself to him. But he had not accepted the offering.
He smiled, his hands running over his body, feeling the lean muscles quiver beneath his palms. Tomorrow night, he told himself, would be the last time anyone would ever see Amy Morgan.
<><><>
Amy woke at eleven. She lay still, listening to the sounds of the empty house; a feeling of loss settled over her.
She thought about her life—the past and the present, and came to a sickening revelation He had been so much a part of her life, such an influence on her for so long, that he was responsible for much of what had happened to her.
She didn’t want to believe the truth, but it was there. Even the breakup of her marriage could be partially traced to him because of her need to find him. She’d lost her husband, and now her mother and her son were gone, too. The people on the Job, the ones who had been her friends and partners, were all distancing themselves from her. All of them, even her ex-partner, viewed her as damaged goods—emotionally damaged.
She knew, too, that if she didn’t catch the Phantom and put an end to his reign of horror, she would lose her family and her friends...forever.
He’d been stalking her for years, killing women because he couldn’t kill her. But no more! It would end soon. She would see to that. Deep inside, at the very core of her being, she knew he would take her tonight.
Amy tried to think about the future, about tomorrow and the days after, but she couldn’t visualize any of it. All she could contemplate was tonight, and of what she might lose if she failed.
Turning, she looked at the clock. There were seven hours until dark and a dozen hours until the time he usually struck.
She stared at the ceiling. Her personal life was in order, except for one last item.
She reached out, picked up the telephone on her night table, and set it on her chest. She lifted up the receiver and dialed. The phone was answered on the fourth ring.
“Walker.”
“Brice, its Amy. Please don’t say anything, just listen. I want to see you tonight. Please come over to my place for dinner. Seven, okay?”
“Seven,” he repeated.
“See you.” She hung up before anything else could be said.
Yesterday she’d said goodbye to Paul and her mother. Tonight she would say goodbye to Brice in another way. If there was a tomorrow, after tonight, she would look at it and her life differently.
Tonight, she had only two things to focus on: Seeing Brice, and then finding him.
<><><>
“I’m worried about her. Please, keep an eye out for her, but don’t tell her I said anything, all right?”
“I won’t say a word,” he promised. “I’ll make sure she’s all right. I’ll keep an eye on her,” Ron Somers said. “You keep an eye on Paul. And give him a kiss for me.” Hanging up, he turned to look out the window. She had sent her mother and Paul out of town. She was alone and he knew she was out hunting.
Ron had tried to tell her to stop what she was doing, but she hadn’t listened to him. He laughed silently to himself. She’d never listened to him. She’d always done things the way she wanted, and it had never mattered what he had wanted or needed.
He’d tried to help her. He had tried to warn her about the results of being what she wanted to be, but she hadn’t listened to him back then, and she wouldn’t listen to him now, either.
Ron shook his head slowly.
