Redheads Read Free Page A

living room, and ended in the kitchen. He imagined Allison being dragged by an ankle or by her soft red hair, off the bed and through the apartment. He followed the trail into the kitchen, knowing before he got there what he would find, knowing that this time he was early enough but not too late.   The apartment hadn’t been cleaned yet, so what he was looking for would still be here.
    He knew very little about his quarry, but there was one thing about which he was absolutely certain: sometimes he came back.
    It might be two days after, or even as long as five, depending on how long it took for the girl to be missed, the police to be called, and the forensic team to finish its work. Then, sometimes, but not always, he would come back to finish what he’d begun. This was the first thing Chris had learned, the primary fact that governed all of his trips.
    Sometimes the killer came back to finish feeding.
     
     
    Chris stepped into the kitchen and turned off the flashlight. He could see well enough by the streetlight outside the kitchen window and the green glow from the clock on the microwave oven. There was a deep cast iron frying pan on the stove. The pan and stovetop were spattered in grease. A fork lay on the countertop. Its tines were filmed in oil and flecked with blood. Next, he put the light into the frying pan.
    Left-over scraps of meat had blackened to crisps as the pan had cooled.
    He had no doubt these were all that remained of Allison’s breasts. There was no way the police would have missed this. They didn’t see it because it wasn’t there during the investigation. The killer had stayed close enough to watch them, to know when it was safe for him to come back and cook what was left of the pieces he’d hidden.
    He turned to the refrigerator, knowing. A lidless, empty ice cream carton lay on its side on the floor in front of the freezer. He knelt and aimed his flashlight. The white cardboard inside the container was smeared with blood. He snapped off the light and closed his eyes. His ears were ringing and his head was spinning, rolling back and back and getting nowhere, as if he’d swallowed half a bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach. He breathed the rank air and counted backwards in his mind, still kneeling on the floor. Finally, he stood. He put the fork in a wax paper evidence bag and pocketed it.
     
     
    He walked with his hands in his pockets until he got back to the street, then stripped off his latex gloves. It was a humid and hot night, but compared to the apartment, it felt cool and wonderful. The air smelled of oak bark and saltwater. He took three steps in the direction of his motel, then stopped.
    The street was empty except for a beat-up blue van parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant. Its sliding door was open. A dirty blanket hung off the seat and dangled over the gutter; food wrappers were littered across its dashboard.
    He saw a shadow rushing up behind him and turned, grabbing uselessly for his holstered pistol. The man was wearing a black ski mask and was already reaching out to him with an object the size of an electric razor.
    “Good night, asshole.”
    He heard this gravelly voice at the same time the stun gun crashed into his chest and the two sharpened electrodes punched through his sweatshirt. The current was like a shotgun blast, but before Chris collapsed to the sidewalk, the man had him under the arms and dragged him five more steps to the waiting van and muscled him inside. The man crawled in after him and slammed the door.
    Chris was face up on the wool blanket and the man in the ski mask was kneeling next to him. Chris jerked when he felt the needle go into his neck. He fought to sit up but the man had the stun gun’s electrodes pressed into his throat. His arms were pinned somehow. He felt the needle probe deeper, then gasped at the stinging heat when the man pressed the syringe’s plunger. The effect was almost instantaneous. His jaw went slack and his mouth fell