Intensity

sight of their blood would intensify the redness of his own and make his arteries sing.
        Though usually reticent and easily spooked, the elk stare boldly at him. They do not seem to be watching with alarm, are not in the least skittish or poised to flee. Indeed, their directness strikes him as strange; uncharacteristically, he feels uneasy.
        Anyway, the woman in the red sweater awaits him, and she is more interesting than any number of elk. He is a grown man now, no longer a boy, and his quest for intense experiences cannot be satisfactorily conducted along the byways of the past. Edgler Vess has long ago put aside childish things.
        He returns to the motor home.
        At the door, he sees that the woman is in neither the pilot's nor the copilot's position.
        Swinging in behind the steering wheel, he glances back but can see no sign of her in the lounge or the dining area. The short and shadowy hall at the end appears deserted as well.
        Facing forward but keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror, he opens the tambour-top console between the seats. His pistol is still there, where he left it, sans silencer.
        Pistol in hand, he swivels in his chair, gets up, and moves back through the motor home to the kitchen and dining area. The butcher knife, found on the service-station blacktop, lies on the counter as before. He opens the cabinet to the left of the oven and discovers that the 12-gauge Mossberg is securely in its spring clamps, to which he returned it after killing the two clerks.
        He doesn't know if she is armed with a weapon of her own. From the distance at which he'd seen her, he hadn't been able to discern whether she was empty-handed or, equally important, whether she was attractive enough to be a fun kill.
        Farther back, then, through his narrow domain, with special caution at the end of the dining nook, behind which lies the step well. She's not crouched here either.
        Into the hall.
        The sound of the rain. The idling engine.
        He opens the bathroom door, quickly and noisily, aware that stealth isn't possible in this reverberant tin can on wheels. The cramped bathroom is as it should be, no stowaway on the pot or in the shower stall.
        Next the shallow wardrobe with its sliding door. But she isn't in there either.
        The only place remaining to be searched is the bedroom. Vess stands before this last closed door, positively enchanted by the thought of the woman huddled in there, unaware of those with whom she shares her hiding place.
        No thread of light is visible along the threshold or the jamb, so she no doubt entered in darkness. Evidently she has not yet sat upon the bed and found the sleeping beauty.
        Perhaps she has edged warily around the small room and, by blind exploration, has discovered the folding door to the closet. Perhaps if Vess opens this bedroom door, she will simultaneously pull aside those vinyl panels and attempt to slip swiftly and quietly into the closet, only to feel a strange cold form hanging there instead of sport shirts.
        Mr. Vess is amused.
        The temptation to throw open the door is almost irresistible, to see her carom off the body in the closet, then to the bed, then away from the dead girl, screaming first at the sewn-shut face of the boy and then at the manacled girl and then at Vess himself, in a comic pinball spin of terror.
        Following that spectacle, however, they will have to get down to issues at once. He will quickly learn who she is and what she thinks she is doing here.
        Mr. Vess realizes that he doesn't want this rare experience with mystery to end. He finds it more pleasing to prolong the suspense and chew on the puzzle for a while.
        He was beginning to feel weary from his recent activities. Now he is energized by these unexpected developments.
        Certain risks are involved, of course, in playing it this way. But it is impossible to live with intensity and avoid risk. Risk is at the heart of an intense existence.
        He backs quietly away from the bedroom door. Noisily, he steps into the bathroom, takes a piss, and flushes the toilet, so the woman will think that he came to the back of the motor home not in search of her but to answer the call of nature. If she continues to believe that her presence is unknown, she will proceed on whatever course of action brought her here in the first place, and it will