Intensity

wet and cold and frightened-and strangely, for the first time in her entire life, she was at peace with herself.
        "Ariel," Chyna said softly, one girl in the darkness speaking reassuringly to another.

6
        
        Mr. Vess drives out of the redwoods into a drizzling dawn, first iron gray and then somewhat paler, through coastal meadows the same drear shades of metal as the sky, back onto Highway 101, into forests again, but of pine and spruce this time, out of Humboldt County into Del Norte County, ever more isolated terrain, eventually leaving 101 for a route that leads north-northeast.
        For the first part of the journey, he glances frequently at the rearview mirror, but the bedroom door remains closed, and the woman seems comfortable with the cadavers or, perhaps, with her ignorance of them. In her retreat, the window is sealed off with plywood, and the light of dawn doesn't penetrate.
        Vess is a superb driver, and he makes excellent time, even in bad weather. We do best those things that we enjoy doing, which is why Mr. Vess is such a success at killing and why he combines that enthusiasm with his love of driving rather than restrict himself to prey within a reasonable radius of his home.
        Being on the open road with landscapes ever changing, Edgler Vess is the recipient of a constant influx of fresh visual sensation. And of course, to one with his exquisitely refined senses and his ability to use them in a hologrammatic manner, a beautiful sight can also be a musical sound. A scent caught through the open window can be not solely an olfactory experience but tactile too, the sweet fragrance of lilac like a woman's warm breath against his skin. Ensconced in the driver's seat of his motor home, he travels through a rich sea of sensation that washes him the way water ceaselessly washes the hull of a deeply submerged submarine.
        Now he crosses into Oregon. The mountains come to him and pull him up into their fastnesses.
        The thickening stands of trees on the steep slopes are more gray than green in the stubborn rain, and the sight of them is like biting on a piece of ice, hard between his teeth, a slight but pleasant metallic taste, and a shattering coldness against his lips.
        He seldom glances at the rearview mirror any more. The woman is a mystery, and mysteries of this nature can't be resolved by the sheer desire to resolve them. Ultimately she will reveal herself, and the intensity of the experience will depend upon whatever purpose she has and what secrets she possesses.
        The waiting is delicious.
        Throughout the last few hours of the journey, Vess leaves the radio off, although not because he is afraid that music will mask the sounds of the woman stalking forward through the motor home. In fact, he rarely listens to the radio while driving. In his memory is a vast library of recordings of the music that he likes best: the cries and squeals, the prayerful whispers, the shrieks as thin as paper cuts, the pulsatory sobbings for mercy, and the erotic inducements of final desperations.
        As he leaves the state highway for the county route, he recalls specifically Sarah Templeton in her shower stall, her screams and her frantic gagging muffled by the green dishwashing sponge that he'd stuffed into her mouth and by the two strips of strapping tape that sealed her lips. Nothing on the radio, from Elton John to Garth Brooks to Pearl Jam to Sheryl Crow-to Mozart or Beethoven, for that matter-can compare to this interior entertainment.
        He follows the rain-swept, two-lane county route to his private driveway. The entrance is securely gated and flanked by thickets of pines and brambly underbrush.
        The gate is made of tubular steel and barbed wire, set between stainless-steel posts in concrete footings. It features an electric motor with remote operation, and when Mr. Vess pushes a button on the hand-held control that he fishes from the console box, the barrier swings inward to the left, in a satisfying stately manner.
        After driving the motor home onto his property, he brakes to a stop once more, rolls down his window, holds out the control unit, with the signal-transmission window reversed in his grip. In his sideview mirror, he watches as the gate closes.
        The driveway is nearly as long as that at the Templeton family's vineyards, as his property encompasses fifty-four acres that back up to a