Rules of Prey

assumed all the top students knew about the residencies. They pay so well, and, you know, you probably get more experience in top-level personal injury and tort. They’re at least as sought after as the clerkships, especially since they pay so well.”
    She hesitated, looked at his face, his clothes, the brown envelope, the business card. “Maybe you better come in, Mr . . . .”
    “Vullion,” he said, stepping inside. “Louis Vullion. Nasty night, isn’t it?”
     
    This one was different. Comfortable, almost. He took almost twenty minutes to kill her, lying nude beside her on her bed, the rubber firmly protecting him from seminal disclosures. He needed it. He came once as he worked on her and again when he finally slipped the knife under her breastbone and her back arched and she left him.
    And he felt sleepy, looking at her, and laid his head upon her breast.
     
    Cold. Stiff. He sat up, looked around. My God, he had been asleep. Panic gripped him and he looked down at her cooling body and then wildly around the room. How long? How long? He glanced at his watch. Nine-forty-five.
    He stood, tore off the rubber, flushed it. His body was covered with blood. He stepped into the tiny bathroom, turned on the shower, and rinsed himself. He kept the latex gloves on; he didn’t want to leave prints. Not now. Not in his finest hour so far.
    When he’d cleaned off most of the blood, he stepped out of the shower but left it to run. If he’d lost any hair in the shower, the water might wash it down the drain. He picked up a towel, then put it down. Hair again. He dried himself with his undershirt, and when he was reasonably dry, he stuffed the shirt in his coat pocket. Thinking about hair had made him paranoid. He had continued shaving his pubic hair, but he feared the loss of hair from his chest or head. He got his roll of tape, made a loop around his hand, and blotted the bed where he’d been lying. When he was finished, he looked at the tape; there were small hairlike filaments stuck to it, and what might have been one or two black pubic hairs, the woman’s. Nothing red, nothing of his. He stuffed the tape in his coat pocket with the damp shirt, stepped into the bathroom, turned off the shower, and dressed.
    When he was ready, he looked around, took stock. Still wearing the latex gloves. Sport coat, overcoat, hat, scarf, driving gloves. Was he forgetting anything? The business card. He found it on the floor. That was everything. Leave the sock and potato on the floor. Drop the note on her chest: Isolate yourself from random discovery. Ready. He patted her on the tummy and left.
    He stepped out, walked down the sidewalk and around the house, stripping off the latex gloves as he walked. The old woman’s apartment was dark. There was a light upstairs, in the third apartment, but nobody at the window. He walkedbriskly down the sidewalk, and, as he passed under a streetlight, noticed a dark stain on the back of one hand. He hesitated, looking at it. Blood? He touched it to his tongue. Blood. Sweet. He passed no one on the street on the way to his car. He opened it, climbed in, and drove.
    Out to I-94. Pressure behind his eyes. He was going to do it. Telephone on a pole, outside a Laundromat. One guy inside, reading a newspaper while his clothes went around in the dryer. It was a mistake before, it would be a mistake again. But he needed it. He needed it like he needed the women. Someone to talk to. Someone who might understand. The maddog pulled in to the Laundromat phone, dialed Davenport’s house.
    And got an answering machine. “Leave a message,” Davenport’s voice said tersely, without identifying itself. There was a beep. The maddog was disappointed. It was not the same as human contact. He touched his tongue to the spot of blood on the back of his hand, savored it, then said, “I did another one.”
    The line stayed open and he wet his lips.
    “It was lovely,” he said.

CHAPTER
19
    “It was lovely.”
    Lucas listened a second time, the despair growing in his chest.
    “Motherfucker,” he whispered.
    He ran the tape back and played it again.
    “It was lovely.”
    “Motherfucker.” He sank down beside the desk, put his elbow on it, propped his forehead up with his hand. He sat for three minutes, unable to think. The house huddled around him, dim, protective, quiet. A car rolled by in the street, its lights tracking across the wall. Rousing himself, he called Minneapolis and asked for the watch