Intensity

vulnerability so intensely as he'd sensed hers when he held her small, trembling, but strong hands in his. Oh, he had been like a swooning schoolboy with her hands.
        When he had hung the mobile on the porch, as a memento of the attorney, he had added one item. It dangles, now, on a piece of green string: her slender index finger, reduced to bare bones but still undeniably elegant, the three phalanges from tip to the base knuckle, clinking against the little conch shells and miniature bivalve fans and trumpet shells and tiny spirals similar to the whorled homes of snails.
         Clink-clink.
         Clink-clink.
        He unlocks the front door and enters the house. He closes but does not lock the door behind him, allowing the woman to have access if she chooses to take it.
        Who knows what she will choose to do?
        Already her behavior is as astonishing as it is mysterious. She excites him. Vess turns from the shadowy front room to the narrow enclosed stairs immediately to his left. He quickly climbs the steps two at a time, one hand on the oak banister, to the second floor. A short hallway serves two bedrooms and a bath. His room is to the left.
        In his private chamber, he drops the Mossberg on the bed and crosses to the south-facing window, which is covered by a blue drape with blackout lining. He doesn't need to draw the drape aside to see the motor home on the driveway below. The two pleated panels of fabric don't quite meet, and when he puts his eye to the two-inch gap, he has a clear view of the entire vehicle.
        Unless she slipped out of the motor home immediately behind him, which is highly doubtful, the woman is still inside. He can see down through the windshield at an angle into the pilot's and copilot's seats, and she has not advanced to either.
        He takes the pistol from his pocket and puts it on the dresser. He shrugs out of the raincoat and tosses it atop the chenille spread on the neatly made bed.
        When he checks at the window again, there is as yet no sign of the mystery woman at the motor home below.
        He hurries into the hallway to the bathroom. White tile, white paint, white tub, white sink, white toilet, polished brass fixtures with white ceramic knobs. Everything gleams. Not a single smudge mars the mirror.
        Mr. Vess likes a bright, clean bathroom. For a while, lifetimes ago, he lived with his grandmother in Chicago, and she was incapable of keeping a bathroom clean enough to meet his standards. Finally, exasperated beyond endurance, he had killed the old bitch. He'd been eleven when he put the knife in her.
        Now he reaches behind the shower curtain and cranks the COLD faucet all the way open. He isn't actually going to take a shower, so there's no point in wasting hot water.
        He quickly adjusts the shower head until the spray is as heavy as it gets. The water pounds down into the fiberglass tub, filling the bathroom with thunder. He knows from experience that the sound carries throughout the small house; even with rain on the roof, this is much louder than the sound of the shower in Sarah Templeton's bedroom, and it will be heard downstairs.
        On a wall shelf above the toilet is a clock radio. He switches it on and adjusts the volume.
        The radio is set to a Portland station featuring twenty-four-hour-a-day news. Ordinarily, when bathing and attending to his toilet, Mr. Vess likes to listen to the news, not because he has any interest in the latest political or cultural developments but because these days the news is largely about people maiming and killing one another-war, terrorism, rape, assault, murder. And when people can't kill one another in sufficient numbers to keep the reporters busy, nature always saves the day with a tornado, a hurricane, a big earthquake, or an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria.
        Sometimes, listening to the news and letting the various reports spark fond memories of his own homicidal exploits, he realizes that he himself is also a force of nature: a hurricane, a lightning storm, a planet-smashing asteroid hurtling through the void, the distillate of all human ferocity in a single body. Elemental power. The thought pleases him.
        Now, however, news will not set the stage properly. Hastily he turns the tuning knob until he finds a station playing music. "Take the A Train" by Duke Ellington.
        Perfect.
        The big-band sound brings to his