Cut and Run by Ridley Pearson Page A

burned out. It’s true video. This webcam stuff is much better quality.”
    As it was, the webcam image didn’t impress Larson. It blurred with any quick motion, so that when the killer moved to cut her neck it looked as if someone had wiped Vaseline on the camera lens.
    â€œBack it up,” Larson instructed, all civility gone from his voice. It felt like a ghoulish act to repeatedly watch her die.
    On the fourth viewing, Larson accepted the VCR’s remote from Detective Manderly, to both men a symbolic exchange of power. Larson watched a particular twenty-second section well over a dozen times. He finally said, “I can’t make out any of that, can you?”
    â€œYou’re kidding, right?”
    â€œHave you got any kind of society or center for the deaf here in town?”
    â€œMetro Deaf School,” Manderly answered. “One of our captains . . .” he said, responding to Larson’s look of surprise, “has a kid enrolled. They do this music thing every Christmas. Pretty fucking amazing, actually.”
    â€œCan we get someone over here?”
    It had taken Manderly that long to understand the request. “Fucking A . . .” he said, his tanned face breaking into a smile. “Now
that
is fucking genius!”
    Two long hours later, Larson had a ticket in hand for the city mouthed on the video by the woman who was about to be murdered in the hospital linen closet.
    â€œSt. Louis.”
    Back to where he’d started.

CHAPTER NINE
    Wearing only a shirt, Paolo leaned back on the airport motel’s crisp white sheets and muted the television’s sound. On the screen, the videotape of the yoga instructor in her pink leotard played, just as it had been playing when he’d sneaked into apartment 3D. The woman on TV turned sideways, bent over, and practically touched her nose to the floor. But it was the way her compact little ass flared toward the ceiling that sent Paolo’s heart aflutter.
    He removed the small cardboard sheath that protected the new utility razor blade, examining its miraculous edge in the yellowish light of the motel room’s bedside lamp. In flashes, his face reflected partially in the steel of the tiny sharpened mirror—an eye, his teeth, another eye. He’d grown thinner in recent months, his face stretched unnaturally over sharp cheekbones, more like the face of a mummy, the dark eyes sunken deeply inside pronounced sockets. The rich brown color of his eyes only revealed itself when he tilted his head up into light. Despite the look of his gaunt frame, he’d never been this fit, this strong, this fast on his feet, in his life.
    He accepted that with crimes came punishment. Guilt gave way to confession. Release. He felt no pain, internally or otherwise, when he did these things to others, only when he did them to himself. Without pain there was no payment. It confirmed his existence.
    He examined the perfection of the blade. He loved it, and hated it.
    Propping his head up with two pillows, he saw past his erection to the screen where the pink leotard continued its contortions. He could picture the woman he’d killed mimicking those movements. He could smell her.
    He unbuttoned his shirt. It fell open revealing dozens of raised scars. Some pink and fresh. Others dark and older. A few lucky ones had been cut repeatedly and now protruded a quarter inch or more, a geometric lump of scar tissue.
    Under the glow of the lamp’s dim light he placed the blade to a vacant space on his abdomen and applied pressure, gentle at first, then pressing more firmly as the skin separated and curled away from the blade. He gritted his teeth, watched the television and stroked himself.
    He dragged the razor deeper, creating a red, feverish wound three inches long. As he climaxed he dropped the razor, awash in relief, a flood of departing tension, like a drain being opened beneath him. He closed his eyes, sighed deeply.
    Later, when he