Cereal Killer

entrance. Once inside the brightly lit hallway, Savannah got her first look at their latest suspect. She shivered, thinking how unsettling it would be to have a weirdo like that fixated on you.
    Long ago, she had observed that wicked living often showed on a person’s face. Sicknesses of the soul frequently manifested themselves in dull eyes, muddy skin, bloated features, sluggish mannerisms, and even a rank body smell. Good old Ron had them all.
    But apparently, he didn’t feel the same revulsion to-ward her that she did for him. The moment they stepped out of the darkness and into the light, he caught a good look at her and smiled from ear to ear, in spite of his circumstances.
    “Wait a minute!” he cried. “You’re not a cop!”
    “I never said I was,” she replied.
    “I’ve seen you before! You’re a famous model!” Savannah cut a quick look at Dirk, who was instantly alert “Oh?” she said. “You’ve seen my pictures?”
    Tumblety looked mildly confused for a moment Then he said, “Uh, yeah. Some swimsuit pictures, I think. You looked really nice.”
    “And when did you see my pictures?” Savannah asked, forcing a dimpled smile.
    “Not too long ago.”
    “I’ll bet it was pretty darned recently,” she said, giving Dirk another pointed look. “Since I just started modeling.”
    Tumblety’s dead eyes cut back and forth between Savannah and Dirk. “Huh? What do you mean?”
    “What she means,” Dirk said, taking him by the arm and propelling him toward the interview room down the hall, “is that you and I have got a lot of talking to do, amigo.”
    Savannah watched them disappear into the tiny room that was hardly more than a cubicle. Then she hurried into the adjoining room, which was as cozy as a telephone booth with all the ambience of a broom closet. But the room’s big attraction was that she could see everything going on next door through a one-way mirror. And she could eavesdrop by listening to the speaker installed there for that purpose.
    “The first thing you get to do,” Dirk was saying as he pushed Tumblety down onto a chair and shoved him up to the table, “is explain to me where you were and what you did yesterday. And don’t leave nothing out, ’cause remember, I’ve got witnesses.”
    Dirk uncuffed Tumblety’s left hand and manacled his right one to a leg of his chair.
    “Talk to me,” Dirk said, “and don’t lie either. If you lie, I’ll know, and I’ll get really pissed.”
    “Maybe I oughta have a lawyer.” Tumblety flexed his wrist against the handcuff and winced at the pain it caused him.
    Dirk shrugged. “You’re not under arrest. We’re just havin’ a little chat here. But if you’ve done something you shouldn’t have and need yourself a lawyer...”
    “I told you before, I ain’t done nothing.”
    “That’s not what the witnesses said.”
    “What witnesses? There wasn’t nobody watching nothing I did yesterday.”
    Dirk glanced over at the mirror and grinned. “They saw you gawking at those models by the hot tub. You were told to stay away from those girls. What do you think those restraining orders are for... for you to wipe your nose on? Huh?”
    “I wasn’t watching those girls. And didn’t nobody see me do it neither.”
    Dirk leaned over him, practically breathing down the neck of his sweatshirt. “That’s not what a certain husband and wife say. They told me that they looked out the second-story window of their beach house, and they saw you acting suspiciously. They called 911, and we came out there, but I guess we just missed you.”
    “I wasn’t peeping!” Tumblety said, trying to stand. Dirk pushed him back down onto the chair. “I was just walking by that fence on my way to the beach. Since when is it against the law to walk down to the beach?”
    “Don’t yank my chain, dude,” Dirk said, pacing behind his chair. “You were watching those models from behind that fence, watching them and playing pocket pool.”
    Savannah stifled a laugh from the other side of the glass. Dirk was taking stabs in the dark with this guy, but Dirk had been on the job long enough to make accurate blind jabs.
    Along with her delight in watching Dirk in action, she couldn’t help feeling more than a little creepy to think that this guy had been spying on her and the others... not to mention pulling his taffy while he was peeping.
    It made her feel like she needed delousing.
    “So, you followed one of the girls from her house to the