Mr. Murder

have to wait until another night to hear it. We've reached our first stopping place."
        Charlotte poked her head out from beneath the covers, and both girls insisted that he read the first part of the poem again, as he had known they would. Even the second time through, they would be too involved to be ready to sleep. They would demand a third reading, and he would oblige, for then they would be familiar enough with the words to settle down. Later, by the end of the third reading, they finally would be either deep in sleep or on the drowsy edge of it.
        As he started with the first line again, Marty heard Paige turn out of the doorway and walk toward the stairs. She would be waiting for him in the family room, perhaps with flames crackling in the fireplace, perhaps with red wine and a snack of some kind, and they would curl up together and tell each other about their day.
        Any five minutes of the evening, now or later, would be more interesting to him than a trip around the world. He was a hopeless homebody. The charms of hearth and family had more allure than the enigmatic sands of Egypt, the glamour of Paris, and the mystery of the Far East combined.
        Winking at each of his daughters, reciting again, "Well, now Thanksgiving is safely past," he had for the moment forgotten that something disturbing had happened earlier in his office and that the sanctity of his home had been violated.
        In the Blue Life Lounge, a woman brushes against the killer and slides onto the bar stool beside him. She is not as beautiful as the dancers, but she is attractive enough for his purposes. Wearing tan jeans and a tight red T-shirt, she could be just another customer, but she is not.
        He knows her type a discount Venus with the skills of a naturalborn accountant.
        They conduct a conversation by leaning close to each other to be heard above the band, and soon their heads are almost touching. Her name is Heather, or so she says. She has wintermint breath.
        By the time the dancers retreat and the band takes a break, Heather has decided he isn't a vice cop on stakeout, so she grows, bolder. She knows what he wants, she has what he wants, and she lets him know that he is a buyer in a seller's market.
        Heather tells him that across the highway from the Blue Life Lounge is a motel where, if a girl is known to the management, rooms can be rented by the hour. This is no surprise to him, for there are laws of lust and economics as immutable as the laws of nature.
        She pulls on her lambskin-lined jacket, and together they go out into the chilly night, where her wintermint breath turns to steam in the crisp air. They cross the parking lot and then the highway, hand-in-hand as if they are high school sweethearts.
        Though she knows what he wants, she does not know what he needs any more than he does. When he gets what he wants, and when it does not quench the hot need in him, Heather will learn the pattern of emotion that is now so familiar to him, need fosters frustration, frustration grows into anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred genera The sky is a massive slab of crystal-clear ice. The trees stand leafless and sere at the end of barren November. The wind makes a cold, mournful sound as it sweeps off the vast surrounding prairie, through the city. And violence sometimes soothes.
        Later, having spent himself in Heather more than once, no longer in the urgent grip of lust, he finds the shabbiness of the motel room to be an intolerable reminder of the shallow, grubby nature of his existence.
        His immediate desire is sated, but his desire for more of a life, for direction and meaning, is undiminished.
        The naked young woman, on top of whom he still lies, seems ugly now, even disgusting. The memory of intimacy with her repels him. She can't or won't give him what he needs. Living on the edge of society, selling her body, she is an outcast herself, and therefore an infuriating symbol of his own alienation.
        She is taken by surprise when he punches her in the face. The blow is hard enough to stun her. As Heather goes limp, nearly unconscious, he slips both hands around her throat and chokes her with all the force of which he is capable.
        The struggle is quiet. The blow, followed by extreme pressure on her windpipe and diminishment of the blood supply to her brain through the carotid arteries, renders her incapable of