16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

NEDDIE CROSSED THE Embarcadero at Broadway and proceeded to a small patio with potted trees and benches next to the Waterside Restaurant, where customers had a smoke or waited for their rides.

As he stepped onto the patio, his fading memories of the Beige Woman flooded over him in HD and living color. He could see her now, wearing a beige-colored knit skirt and jacket. She had been deeply engrossed in her phone and was reading out directions to herself.

She hadn’t noticed the slight man with sandy hair and deformed arms, so he had said, “Hey, I’m Neddie.”

She had turned away, both showing her disgust and giving him a full view of the target.

He hadn’t hesitated. He had pulled his fully loaded sharp from his pocket and had stuck her hard in her meaty haunch, pushing the plunger at the same time. She had grabbed at her rear end and swiveled to stare at him.

Neddie had had her attention then.

He had stared back into her gray-blue eyes for one long moment. Then she had wheezed, before stepping off the curb into oncoming traffic. A taxicab had just brushed her, but she had been off balance and had fallen. She had still been alive. She had been flapping and flailing in the gutter when there had been a boom, like a jet breaking the sound barrier directly overhead.

Neddie had seen the sky change from sunset to a blackout, smothering gray. He had known that he had to run and he had done so, camouflaged by the chaos, disappearing below the surface for long tunnel runs, reappearing on empty streets as if from nowhere.

But the loss of his big moment stayed with him.

He hadn’t seen the Beige Woman die.

Tonight he would try to claw that moment back. There was no rush, no need to panic.

Before him ranged the whole panorama of promenade and restaurant and patio and sky. He relived the way the Beige Woman had looked at him and actually seen him just before she was hit by the taxi.

Neddie was filling in the missing details, going in for a close-up of her last breath—when he was interrupted again.

A police car cruising in a northbound lane pulled up only yards away from where he was standing. Two Cops, a man and a woman, got out of the cruiser and headed toward him.

Neddie froze as they approached, blinding him with their flashlights. Why had they stopped for him?

“Any problem here?” asked the tall woman cop.

“No problem,” said Neddie in his pitchy Nutty Neddie voice. “No problem at all, Officer. I was just looking at the water. Just looking at the water.”

The flashlight beam flicked up and down his body. What were they looking for? What did they see? Had someone witnessed his killing right here? Had that witness reported him to the police? Were cops watching this place to see if the killer returned?

Neddie shielded his eyes with a crooked forearm.

“Just looking at the water,” he said again.

The male cop said, “All right, then. Have a good night.”

“Thanks, Officers. I’m going now. Going now. Bye.”

By the time he’d crossed back over the Embarcadero, his rosy and beautiful mood had changed to a menacing gray cloud, just as the sky had changed after he’d made his kill.

He’d been cheated again.

“This isn’t fair,” he said to himself. “Not fair at all.”

CHAPTER 60

NEDDIE WAS WALKING west on Broadway, agitated, muttering, mad at himself for returning to the crime scene. It had been a rookie mistake and he’d gotten exactly nothing for it.

Now he had to take a different route home, throw off anyone who might be looking for him. Using the Transamerica Pyramid, directly to the left, as his guiding star, he walked at a normal pace, skirting the tourist magnet of North Beach.

Passing the Green Tortoise Hostel, he approached the intersection of Broadway and Columbus Avenue, all of the neon-blazing North Beach spread out to his right.

Cars sped past him. Crowds of so-called normal people laughed and joked and touched and teased. It was a world he wasn’t part of, but—here was a gift—he could move through it unseen.