Night Prey

didn’t interest Koop: they just weren’t right. He left them alone, and after a couple of tentative feelers, they left him alone.
    Koop said to himself, Five , and felt the muscle failing.
    A TV was screwed to the wall in front of the empty stair climbers, tuned to the midday news program, Nooner. A stunning auburn-haired anchorwoman said through a suggestive overbite that Cheryl Young was dead of massive head wounds.
    Koop strained, got the last inch, and dropped his feet again, came back up, the muscle trembling with fatigue. He closed his eyes, willed his legs up; they came up a half inch, another quarter inch, to the top. Six. He dropped them, started up again. The burn was massive, as though somebody had poured alcohol on his legs and lit it off. He shook with the burn, eyes clenched, sweat popping. He needed an inch, one inch . . . and failed. He always worked to failure. Satisfied, he let the bar drop and pivoted on the bench to look at the television.
    “. . . believed to be the work of young drug addicts.” And a cop saying, “. . . the attack was incredibly violent for so little gain. We believe Mr. Flory had less than thirty dollars in his wallet—we believe it was probably the work of younger gang members who build their status with this kind of meaningless killing. . . .”
    Good. They put it on the gangs. Little motherfuckers deserved anything they got. And Koop couldn’t wait any longer. He knew he should wait. The people in the building would be in an uproar. If he was seen, and recognized as an outsider, there could be trouble.
    But he just couldn’t wait. He picked up his towel and headed for the locker room.
     
     
     
    KOOP WENT INTO the lakes neighborhood on foot, a few minutes before nine, in the dying twilight. There were other walkers in the neighborhood, but nothing in particular around the building where he’d killed the woman: the blood had been washed away, the medical garbage picked up. Just another door in another apartment building.
    “Stupid,” he said aloud. He looked around to see if anyone had heard. Nobody close enough. Stupid, but the pressure was terrific. And different. When he went after a woman, that was sex. The impulse came from his testicles; he could literally feel it.
    This impulse seemed to come from somewhere else; well, not entirely, but it was different. It drove him, like a child looking for candy. . . .
    Koop carried his newly minted key and a briefcase. Inside the briefcase was a Kowa TSN-2 spotting scope with a lightweight aluminum tripod, a setup recommended for professional birders and voyeurs. He swung the briefcase casually, letting it dangle, keeping himself loose, as he started up the apartment walk. Feelers out: nothing. Up close, the arborvitae beside the apartment door looked beaten, ragged; there were footprints in the mud around the shrubs.
    Inside, the lobby light was brighter, harsher. The management’s response to murder: put in a brighter bulb. Maybe they’d changed locks? Koop slipped the key into the door, turned it, and it worked just fine.
    He took the stairs to the top, no problem. At the top, he checked the hallway, nervous, but not nearly as tense as he was during an entry. He really shouldn’t be here . . . Nobody in the hall. He walked down it, to the Exit sign, and up the stairs to the roof access. He used the new key again, pushed through the door, climbed another short flight to the roof, and pushed through the roof door.
    He was alone on the roof. The night was pleasant, but the roof was not a particularly inviting place, asphalt and pea-rock, and the lingering odor of sun-warmed tar. He walked as quietly as he could to the edge of the roof, and looked across the street. Damn. He was just below Sara Jensen’s window. Not much, but enough that he wouldn’t be able to see her unless she came and stood near the window.
    An air-conditioner housing squatted on the rooftop, a large gray-metal cube, projecting up another eight feet. Koop walked around to the back of it, reached up, pushed the briefcase onto the edge of it, then grabbed the edge, chinned and pressed himself up on top, never breaking a sweat or even holding his breath. A three-foot-wide venting stack poked up above the housing. Koop squatted behind the stack and looked across the street.
    Jensen’s apartment was a fishbowl. To the right, there was a balcony with a wrought-iron railing in front of sliding glass doors, and through the doors, the living room. To