Shiver by Michael Prescott Page B

newscasts and in newspaper photos, but one he found endlessly fascinating. The black hair swept back from the high forehead. The sharp nose, hawklike. The angry mouth bracketed by chiseled grooves.
    “Catch me. Detective,” Rood whispered. “Catch me before I kill again.”
    The newscast continued, but it was not about the Gryphon anymore. Rood flipped through the other channels and caught a few seconds of other, similar reports. Then there was nothing. Ah, well. He could get more air time whenever he liked.
    There would be newspaper stories too, of course. He’d brought home today’s edition of the L.A. Times , the Evening Outlook , the Daily News and, although he could not read Spanish, La Opinion . More clippings for his scrapbook.
    He rewound the tape and played the “Eyewitness News” story again. As he watched, he leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, smiling. The game was such fun.
    For most of his thirty-two years Rood had found little that brought him pleasure or pain. His life had been a blank, his days drudgery, his nights dreamless. He had been a zombie shuffling through the motions of living, dead inside.
    His first kill, five years ago, had changed all that. Freed from the strait jacket of normal existence, hunting his prey, Rood felt alive—wonderfully, intoxicatingly, dizzyingly alive—more alive than any other man had ever been. He was a god, vertiginously elevated above ordinary humanity, towering over the teeming mob as an average man would tower over a nest of squirming maggots. He was in total control of every aspect of reality, free to do as he pleased, utterly unconstrained. Nothing could compare to the exhilaration of taking a woman’s life, then using her body while the flesh was still warm, the blood still wet. It was a thrill as dark and heady as black wine.
    A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
    He froze. Suddenly he was afraid. Nobody ever visited him. In his two years in L.A., he’d never once had company. The very idea seemed unreal. In a distant, rather abstract way he was aware that people did such things; they learned one another’s addresses and dropped in now and then to say hello. But the ritual was as alien to him as the social habits of bees in a hive.
    He had no idea what to do. Perhaps if he made no sound, whoever was out there would go away.
    There was another knock, then a faint, muffled voice. A woman’s voice.
    “Franklin? It’s me. Melanie. From next door.”
    Rood swallowed. Oh, God. What was she doing here?
    He’d exchanged pleasantries with Miss Melanie Goshen on a few occasions while entering or leaving his apartment. She was a tall, pale blonde who spoke quietly, rarely meeting his eyes. Very shy and innocent. Or so she seemed. But Rood knew that her innocence was an act. On more than one night, she’d had a man over at her place. Rood had heard the noises of their lovemaking through his bedroom wall.
    “Franklin?”
    He didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to talk with her at all, but he felt he had to. Vaguely he thought it might seem suspicious if he didn’t. Lately he’d grown extremely conscious of avoiding any activity that might raise suspicions of any kind.
    He tried to imagine what a person would say when company called. After a moment’s thought, the correct response came to him.
    “I’m coming,” he said loudly, his voice pitched an octave higher than normal, his vocal cords stretched taut by nervous tension.
    He rose from his chair and switched off the TV, then hurried to the door and opened it. Miss Goshen was standing on his front steps, lit by the porch light, the empty courtyard behind her. Her sleeveless blouse was much too tight. Indecently tight.
    Fear squirmed in his gut. He felt droplets of sweat squeezing out all over his body.
    “Hello,” he said, straining for calm.
    “Hi.” She smiled, and her cheeks dimpled sweetly. “Sorry to bother you, but I’m making dinner, and the recipe calls for