More Twisted

with the telltale caw of aging government furniture, and eyed the narrow, jittery man sitting across from him. “Go on,” the cop said.
    “So I check out this book from the library. Just for the fun of it. I never do that, just read a book for the fun of it. I mean, never. I don’t get much time off, you know.”
    Altman hadn’t known this but he could certainly have deduced it. Wallace Gordon was the Greenville Tribune ’s sole crime reporter and must’ve spent sixty, seventy hours a week banging out copy, to judge by the number of stories appearing under his byline every day.
    “And I’m reading along and—”
    “What is it you’re reading?”
    “A novel—a murder mystery. I’ll get to that . . . . I’m reading along and I’m irritated,” the reporter continued, “because somebody’d circled some passages. In a library book.”
    Altman grunted distractedly. He was head of Homicide in a burgh with a small-town name but big-city crime statistics. The fifty-something detective was busy and he didn’t have much time for reporters with crackpot theories.There were twenty-two folders of current cases on his desk and here Wallace was delivering some elliptical message about defaced books.
    “I don’t pay much attention at first but I go back and reread one of the circled paragraphs. It jogs my memory. Anyway, I checked the morgue—”
    “Morgue?” Altman frowned, rubbing his wiry red hair, which showed not a strand of gray.
    “ Our morgue, not yours. In the newspaper office. All the old stories.”
    “Got it. How ’bout getting to the point?”
    “I found the articles about the Kimberly Banning murder.”
    Quentin Altman grew more attentive. Twenty-eight-year-old Kimberly had been strangled to death eight months ago. The murder occurred two weeks after a similar killing—of a young female grad student. The two deaths appeared to be the work of the same person but there were few forensic leads and no motive that anyone could determine. The cases prompted a task force investigation but eventually the suspects were cleared and the case grew cold.
    Tall and gaunt, with tendons and veins rising from his pale skin, reporter Wallace tried—usually unsuccessfully—to tone down his intimidating physique and face with brown tweed jackets, corduroy slacks and pastel shirts. He asked the cop, “You remember how the whole town was paranoid after the first girl was killed? And how everybody was double locking their doors and never letting strangers into their houses?”
    Altman nodded.
    “Well, look at this.” The reporter pulled latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on.
    “Why the gloves, Wallace?”
    The man ignored the question and dug a book out of his battered briefcase. Altman got a look at the title. Two Deaths in a Small Town. He’d never heard of it.
    “This was published six months before the first killing.” He opened the book to a yellow Post-it tab and pushed it forward. “Read those paragraphs.” The detective pulled on his CVS drugstore glasses and leaned forward.
    The Hunter knew that now that he’d killed once, the town would be more alert than ever. Its soul would be edgier, its collective nerves would be as tense as an animal trap’s blue-steel spring. Women would not stroll the streets alone and those who did would be looking around constantly, alert for any risk. Only a fool would let a stranger into her house and the Hunter did not enjoy killing fools.
    So on Tuesday night he waited until bedtime—11:00 p.m.—and then slipped onto Maple Street. There, he doused a parked convertible’s roof with gasoline and ignited the pungent, amber liquid. A huge whoosh . . . He hid in the bushes and, hypnotized by the tornado of flames and ebony smoke swirling into the night sky above the dying car, he waited. In ten minutes behemoths of fire trucks roared up the street, their wailing sirens drawing people from their homes to find out what the excitement might be.
    Among those on the sidewalk was a young, demure blonde with a heart-shaped face, Clara Steading. This was the woman the Hunter knew he had to possess—possess completely. She was love incarnate, Amore herself, she was Beauty, she was Passion . . . . And she was also completely ignorant of her role as the object of his demented desire. Clara shivered in her bathrobe, standing on the sidewalk, along with a clutch of chattery neighbors, as they watched the firemen extinguish the blaze and offered words of