Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer Read Free Page B

go for a ride and have some drinks
with me?" He spoke slowly, as if feeling his way. He flashed her a
wide smile as he gawked at her young body with puppy dog eyes that
seemed to droop ever so slightly on his durably boyish face, and
motioned for her to get inside. Pale and soft-spoken, he could have
passed for the actor John Ritter from a distance, and close up he
somewhat resembled a popular local television news reporter.
Outwardly he looked innocuous enough, and Tracie settled quickly
into the seat beside him.
    Tracie noticed that he seemed easygoing,
cool, and relaxed as he put the truck in motion. But the traits
that she believed she observed were deceiving, and she would
realize only too late that she had misinterpreted them. His
apparent congeniality was, in reality, calculating
cold-bloodedness, and even though considerably streetwise at
sixteen, Tracie was still too naive to see the evil that lurked
behind his mask. Although flashes of the tales she had heard about
the bondage and dominance freak kept returning, she really didn't
want to worry that he might be the same man that the other girls
had warned her about. So what if his pickup was similar to the
bondage freak's? Hell, there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands
of small blue trucks in the Portland area. Why worry that this one
was his ? Besides, he seemed like a nice enough guy, and she
was desperate for the money.
    "My name's Steve," said the man quietly,
biting the nails of his left hand as he steered the pickup with his
right. As they turned around in the parking lot of Bob's Big Boy,
Tracie noticed that he not only chewed on his fingernails, he bit
them to the quick. Aware that she was watching him, he quickly took
his hand away from his mouth. He pulled back onto the side street,
but remained silent. Aside from the cars that zoomed in front of
them while they waited at the stop sign, the only sound that came
from inside the pickup's cab was the windshield wipers slapping
back and forth at the ever-blowing Oregon rain. At the first break
in the seemingly never-ending stream of traffic, he turned right
onto 82nd Avenue and headed south toward Oregon City, a Portland
suburb.
    It was a nice pickup. It had a stick shift,
and the interior was a vinyl grayish blue color. Tracie noticed
that it didn't have a sliding back window, like many pickups have.
It appeared very clean, at least on the surface, and it seemed to
her that the owner was very particular. As they drove along,
Trade's attention was momentarily drawn to the ignition switch,
where she was mesmerized by the swinging of a black plastic swivel
hook that dangled from his key chain. For some strange reason, it
was a minor detail that she would not forget.
    Tracie brought herself out of the trance and
introduced herself to make idle conversation, making a spurious
attempt at returning Steve's smile, if that was his name. Instinct
told her it wasn't, but it didn't really matter. Unless her johns
impressed her in some way, she nearly always forgot their names
anyway. Tracie peered straight ahead, waiting for the man to say
something, anything. But he never uttered a sound.
    Not wanting to make her date feel like he was
being unduly scrutinized, Tracie tried not to look directly at him
while he drove. But she could feel his eyes alternating between her
and the road, moving up and down her sleek body as he studied her.
Normally she wouldn't have found that annoying. Guys did it all the
time. But in this instance, because of what she'd heard about the
bondage and dominance freak in the blue pickup, a coldness consumed
her entire body from the inside out. She shivered involuntarily and
knew that sudden fear had inserted its icy finger inside her chest.
Could it be him?
    The man suddenly seemed detached and aloof to
her and was all-consumed by the deep mental state he was in.
Although she had no way of knowing it, her temporary companion was
planning and mentally rehearsing a violent scenario he