More Twisted

hadn’t been so mysterious after all. The CI was simply telling them to look out for a hit man masquerading as a guard whose first name was what Silverman now gaped at on the man’s plastic name plate: “Luke.”
    And, as for the chapter and verse, well, that was pretty simple too. The CI’s note meant that the killer was planning the hit shortly after the start of the second shift, to give himself fifteen minutes to find where the prisoner was being held.
    Right on schedule  . . .
    The time on the wall clock was exactly 12:15.

T HE C OMMUTER

    M onday started out bad.
    Charles Monroe was on the 8:11 out of Greenwich, his usual train. He was juggling his briefcase and coffee—today tepid and burnt tasting—as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to get a head start on his morning calls. It brayed loudly. The sound startled him and he spilled a large comma of coffee on his tan suit slacks.
    “God damn,” he whispered, flipping open the phone. Monroe grumbled, “’Lo?”
    “Honey.”
    His wife. He’d told her never to call on the cell phone unless it was an emergency.
    “What is it?” he asked, rubbing the stain furiously as if the anger alone would make it vanish.
    “Thank God I got you, Charlie.”
    Hell, did he have another pair of trousers at the office? No. But he knew where he could get one. The slacks slipped from his mind as he realized his wife had started crying.
    “Hey, Cath, settle down. What is it?” She irritated him in a lot of ways—her incessant volunteering for charities and schools, her buying bargain-basement clothesfor herself, her nagging about his coming home for dinner—but crying wasn’t one of her usual vices.
    “They found another one,” Cathy said, sniffling.
    She did, however, often start talking as if he were supposed to know exactly what she meant.
    “ Who found another what?”
    “Another body.”
    Oh, that. In the past several months, two local residents had been murdered. The South Shore Killer, as one of the local rags had dubbed him, stabbed his victims to death and then eviscerated them with hunting knives. They were murdered for virtually no reason. One, following what seemed to be a minor traffic dispute. The other was killed, police speculated, because his dog wouldn’t stop barking.
    “So?” Monroe asked.
    “Honey,” Cathy said, catching her breath, “it was in Loudon.”
    “That’s miles from us.”
    His voice was dismissing but Monroe in fact felt a faint chill. He drove through Loudon every morning on his way to the train station in Greenwich. Maybe he’d driven right past the corpse.
    “But that makes three now!”
    I can count too, he thought. But said calmly, “Cath, honey, the odds’re a million to one he’s going to come after you. Just forget about it. I don’t see what you’re worried about.”
    “You don’t see what I’m worried about?” she asked.
    Apparently he didn’t. When Monroe didn’t respond she continued, “ You . What do you think?”
    “Me?”
    “The victims have all been men in their thirties. And they all lived near Greenwich.”
    “I can take care of myself,” he said absently, gazing out the window at a line of schoolchildren waiting on a train platform. They were sullen. He wondered why they weren’t looking forward to their outing in the city.
    “You’ve been getting home so late, honey. I worry about you walking from the station to the car. I—”
    “Cath, I’m really busy. Look at it this way: He seems to pick a victim once a month, right?”
    “What? . . .”
    Monroe continued, “And he’s just killed somebody. So we can relax for a while.”
    “Is that . . . Are you making a joke, Charlie?”
    His voice rose. “Cathy, I really have to go. I don’t have time for this.”
    A businesswoman in the seat in front of him turned and gave him an angry glance.
    What’s her problem?
    Then he heard a voice. “Excuse me, sir?”
    The businessman sitting next to him—an accountant or lawyer, Monroe guessed—was smiling ruefully at him.
    “Yes?” Monroe asked.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’re speaking pretty loud. Some of us are trying to read.”
    Monroe glanced at several other commuters. Their irritated faces told him they felt the same.
    He was in no mood for lectures. Everybody used cell phones on the train. When one would ring, a dozen hands went for their own phones.
    “Yeah, well,” Monroe grumbled, “I was here first. You saw me on the phone and you sat