Twisted (Burbank and Parker 1)

This one was messier than the others. The drugs took longer. And she was stronger than I expected for someone so delicate. She broke my choke hold long enough to bite me and scream.

One scream—that’s all she managed to get out. I cut her after that. Painful and nasty, but not lethal. Three deep slices across her throat. I was careful to avoid the major arteries. That part would come later. Right at the moment, I just needed her to know I meant business.

She got the message, fast. Her body arched, then stiffened, and she opened her mouth to let out a shriek of agony. I anticipated that—and I stopped it. I clapped my hand over her mouth and told her to shut up or I’d chop her into little pieces. I meant it, too. I would have.

She knew it. I saw it in her eyes.

She choked back her scream, although she retched a few times. Then big tears started sliding down her cheeks.

That didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. The real nuisance was the blood streaming down her neck and soaking into her jacket. The flow was intensifying. Soon it would pool at her feet.

I was forced to change my plan. That infuriated me. I hate change. And I hated her for making me deal with it.

I needed a different location. The abandoned warehouse I’d chosen was two blocks away. I couldn’t carry her that distance. There would be blood all over the streets. Worse, all over me. I never allowed their blood to touch me. They were filth. Disease carriers. I’d brought my cleaning and disinfecting supplies, of course, but they were set up—along with everything else—at the warehouse.

I acted efficiently. Right down the street, I found an empty tenement. The basement door was open, the lock broken. Inside were a couple of rats and a rusted boiler. The place would do just fine.

I dragged her inside and tied her to a pole. Then I duct-taped her mouth, and injected her with enough Nembutal to keep her unconscious while I ran down to the warehouse and retrieved my equipment. She was still out cold when I got back. It took a lot of work on my part to wake her up. She really was more trouble than she was worth. That got me angry all over again. I was tired and impatient, so I set up the tripod and video camera, and started taping without my usual precision and fine-tuning. She didn’t deserve the effort anyway.

The demons were roaring to life. I turned my full attention to silencing them. It took a long time before they were sated. I didn’t mind. I liked hurting her. It appeased my anger. But it also felt good. Too good. That was wrong and dirty. I felt ashamed.

It was her fault. Her and the others like her. They were the reason the demons wouldn’t go away.

She needed to be punished. She needed to feel every ounce of pain before I let her die.

I lingered until the shame faded and the triumph surged. Then I arranged her and the room as always, placed the coin beside her, and scoured away the evidence.

I couldn’t wait to get home. I needed to scrub her off of me. I needed to cleanse the night from my body, and the demons from my mind. And I needed to sleep.

March 28

8:36 P.M.

Sloane’s plane touched down in Newark Airport twenty minutes late. Then came the endless taxiing to the gate. Like Sloane, most of the passengers were business travelers. So they were used to delays. They glanced up, then continued scanning their newspapers or leaning back to relax against the headrests.

That wasn’t going to cut it for Sloane.

Given the nonstop pace of the past two days, she was way too pumped up to relax. Between the intensive, two-day seminar she’d just conducted, Derek’s phone call yesterday filling her in on the new leads that had resulted from his meeting with Deanna on Penny’s case, and the news from Bob Erwin that the DNA on the hair band found at the John Jay crime scene matched Cynthia’s, Sloane’s brain was racing on overdrive.

She was ready to hit the ground running.

She’d promised Bob Erwin she’d drop by Mrs. Alexander’s hotel tomorrow. Her goal there was to talk to the woman, to forge some emotional trust, and then maybe to glean a piece of information that Cynthia’s mother didn’t know she possessed.

As for Penny’s case, Sloane planned to pay Hope Truman a visit. She wanted to be there when she provided Penny’s mother with the latest update. That way, she could help channel her expectations in a realistic direction, while offering her the comfort of her presence.

Sloane frowned, surrendering to the realization that there’d be no sleep again tonight. She’d pick up the hounds, smother them with the attention she’d stored up for them all week long, then get on the computer and start doing some research into last year’s Richard Stockton graduating classes—both undergrad and grad—and departing faculty members. She’d coordinate her efforts with Derek’s and those of the Newark field office. There was more than enough work for all of them. Hundreds of the people who’d lived or worked at Stockton last year had since moved on to other endeavors. Any one of them could be a potential witness.

On that thought, Sloane felt the Boeing 737 slow down and ease around to the terminal, where it stopped. A minute later, the “Fasten Your Seat Belts” sign chirped and went off. That was all the permission Sloane needed. She grabbed her suitcase from the overhead bin, and by the time the cabin door opened, she was making her way to the front of the plane.

Before the other passengers had even stretched their legs and collected their things, Sloane was off the plane, down the ramp, and sprinting through Newark Airport.

9:15 P.M.

Derek was hoping for a quiet night.

He was pretty wiped out from the week. He could count the number of hours he’d slept

since Monday on two hands. And, since he wasn’t assigned to tonight’s surveillance, he’d spent an entire day gathering information on rival gangs who might want to stir up trouble between the Red Dragons and the Black Tigers. He felt perfectly justified accepting Tony’s offer when his boss had told him to go home and have a weekend.