He’s finally found the spot.
The long drives have paid off. The last few nights have passed in a state of calm anticipation. He’s driven the city in the early evening on the way home from work, as the end-of-day traffic dissipated, looking for just the right location to finish it. And then he’d seen it. Or did it call to him? Long, low, black, and hulking. He’s passed it hundreds of times—the corporate campus of a drug company that has gone under. It stands darkened and abandoned now, waiting to be used. He douses his headlights and noses his car down the lane leading into and around the complex, through parking lots that are empty save for white lines marking the stalls no longer filled by workers’ vehicles.
He goes all the way around to the back of the main building. It too is darkened. He parks and makes his way to the rear doors on foot. He doesn’t expect anyone to be inside for any legitimate purpose, but it is the kind of location that groups of kids find their way into to drink and smoke, for all kinds of foul reasons. But he tries the doors and they are locked tight, the windows unbroken. He sees no security cameras either, just empty mounts. Back in his car, he pauses by the man-made lagoon in the front of the complex, its fountain sitting dormant. The place looks like a stage, a pedestal, and he knows exactly how he is going to use it. The spot is going to work. It is going to be beautiful.