Rules of Prey

Wilson.
    He stopped again, confused. “Pardon?”
    “Channel Eight, Annie McGowan? The reporter with the short dark hair-bob like the ice skater What’s-her-name? She talked to somebody in the police. They say he’s impotent and that’s what’s driving him to do it,” she said. Was she taunting him? There seemed to be an element of challenge in her tone.
    “Well, they were wrong about the homosexual . . .” the maddog started tentatively.
    “It’s all that pop psychology,” the maddog’s secretary said scornfully. “Everybody else says he rapes them. If he can’t get it up, how does he . . . ?”
    “They never found any semen,” said Wilson. “They think he uses something.”
    All the women looked at each other, and the maddog said, “Well,” and went into his office and shut the door. He stood there, just for a second, suffused with rage. Impotence? Uses something? What were they talking about?
    There was a burst of laughter from outside, and he knew they were laughing about him. Uses something. Probably like old Louis there, I wonder what Louis uses? they were saying. They didn’t know who he was, what he was; they didn’t know the power. And they were laughing at him.
    He walked to his desk, dropped his briefcase, sat down, and stared at the duck print on the wall. Three mallards coming into a cattail swamp at dusk. The maddog stared at it without seeing it, the rage growing. There was another burst of laughter from beyond the door. If he’d had a pistol with him, he would have stepped into the hallway and killed them all.
     
    He left the office at eleven-thirty and drove home to watch the noon news. He watched TV3 by preference, believingthat what little dignity was allotted to news coverage by television could best be found there.
    But he might have to change channels if this McGowan had special sources. He left his car in the driveway and hurried inside. He was a little early and had time to make a cup of hot soup before the news came on. He sat in the overstuffed chair in the living room sipping the salty hot concoction, and when the news came up, McGowan’s was the lead story. It was apparently a rehash of the night before, with tape of McGowan interviewing the homosexual on the steps of the county jail and later repeating the impotence story. Her pretty, clear face was intent with the seriousness of her information; as the camera closed in on her face for the last shot, the maddog felt himself stir, even as the anger began to rekindle. He controlled it, breathing hard, and punched off the television. Annie McGowan. Her face hung in the bright afterimage of the television screen. She was an interesting one. Better than the blonde on TV3.
    The morning copy of the Star-Tribune was still on the kitchen table. He checked it again. There was a large story on the release of Smithe, but there was no reference to the impotence allegations.
    Why would the police tell McGowan that he was impotent? They must know he was not. They must know that it was wrong. Could it be an attempt to draw him out? Something to deliberately anger him? But that was . . . crazy. They would do anything to avoid angering him. Wouldn’t they?
    He went back to work, the anger still roiling his mind. There was a temptation to find Heather, to take her immediately. But not yet, he decided as he sat with his books and his yellow pads. He could feel the strength building, but it had not reached the urgency that guaranteed the kind of transcendent experience he had come to require. To kill Heather now was to strike at the cops, but it would do something . . . unpleasant to his need for her. It would be, he thought, premature, and therefore disappointing. He would wait.
    The maddog worked through the weekend, feeling the need for the girl developing, blossoming within him.
    He enjoyed himself. The office was empty on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, leaving him alone, as he preferred to be. And he’d found an interesting case. Since it would go to trial, he would not handle it, but the senior trial attorney had passed it down through the assignment system, asking for research.
    The defendant was named Emil Gant. He had been harassing his ex-wife and her current boyfriends. He followed them, exchanged words with them, finally threatened violence. The threats were believable. Gant was on parole, having served thirty months of a forty-five-month prison term on a conviction of aggravated assault. The woman was