Shame

working.
    And neither were the two spotlights used to illuminate the Kappa Omega sign.
    He’s already here, Caleb thought. Maybe I’m too late.
    But part of his mind was still thinking like the killer’s. The lights would have been sabotaged the day before or earlier in the week. That’s how my father would have done it, Caleb thought. And that’s how I would have done it.
    Bending low on his haunches, Caleb surveyed the area around him. He scanned the cars parked on the street. None was fogged up, and he could see nothing that made him believe any were currently occupied. Maybe his enemy had yet to make his appearance.
    Caleb studied the front of the sorority house. The setting looked very familiar to him, and then he realized that Brandy Wein must have been photographed very near to where he was standing. Dead and cooling and naked, she’d been used as a prop by the killer.
    He heard a scream and jumped up, but then realized it was only a burst of loud laughter coming from inside the sorority.
    The unexpected laughter offered him hope. He could do something to help himself, and help others, this time.
    From where he was standing, Caleb could see four bedroom windows. There were lights on in two of them. But Caleb was sure the killer wouldn’t try to gain entry through the front of the house. Even with the diminished lighting, the street was too well traveled, and the front too visible. He’d try to gain access through the back.
    Caleb crossed the street and walked across the white, decorative rocks that took up most of the front landscaping of the sorority. Though he tried to walk quietly, the stones crunched under his feet. As he passed the side of the house, a motion detector tripped on. He ran to the back, out of the light’s range, and waited to see if an alarm was raised. None was.
    He knelt behind some lawn furniture. There wasn’t much to the backyard: a barbecue area, redwood decking, a struggling vegetable garden, and some haphazard shrubbery. There was no foliage near the house, no way anyone could lurk without being easily seen. Above the patio’s sliding glass doors was another motion detector. Stickers were affixed to windows warning intruders of the house’s alarm system. Caleb wondered whether all the strategies and devices had succeeded in keeping out the uninvited.
    The backyard allowed him a better vantage point to observe what was going on inside. Two rooms offered the glow of television sets; in another he could hear a stereo; one woman was sitting at her desk reading.
    With the two additions, there were nine or ten bedrooms to the house. Caleb studied the layout and tried to figure out how an intruder could get inside. With so many occupants, it was likely that security was often compromised by opened windows or propped doors, but he hadn’t seen any of those, and this wasn’t an opportunistic killer. This was someone who planned his murders.
    Caleb scanned for skylights. None. And no attic window either.
    There was nothing to indicate the house had been compromised. And there was no sign the killer was anywhere nearby.
    But then what usually marked his presence was a body.
    Caleb made his way around to the east side of the house. He maintained his distance from it, kept at bay by yet another motion detector, but there didn’t appear to be a need for him to approach any closer. This side offered only two darkened rooms and what appeared to be a secure door.
    Hunched over, he circled his way back to the lawn furniture. It seemed as good a place as any to wait. Over the next half hour, the night claimed its victims. First a light went off, and then a television went dark, but from what Caleb could see and sense, only the sandman was responsible for the outages.
    The night grew quieter and little sounds grew louder, but that’s all they were, little sounds. Caleb’s vigil seemed fruitless until he saw the stealthy movements in the recreation room.
    There were no lights on, but through the partially opened vertical blinds he could make out someone moving around. No—two people. There was an exaggerated furtiveness to their maneuvering about. They paused at the door, played with whatlooked to be the alarm panel, then the vertical blinds separated and the sliding glass door opened.
    Caleb flattened himself on the lawn. Giggling, the women, a blonde and a brunette, walked outside. Their movements activated the motion detector, which caused them to laugh a little more. They were