Strip Search by William Bernhardt Page A

aspect of sexuality in anything he did. All she sensed was violence, rage. A fiery determination to do harm.
    “That was…so long…ago…”
    “Sometimes justice is slow. But it always finds you in the end,” he said, as if reciting something he had heard but only barely understood. “It’s in the equation.” He reached under his overcoat and, to Danielle’s horror, produced a long-handled axe.
    The shock was enough to jolt her system and force her into action. She thrust her body upward. Weak as she was, it was enough to throw him off balance. The instant his grip weakened, she raised a knee with all the strength she could muster, straight into his groin. He fell off the bed howling, clutching himself.
    She knew she had to act quickly. These handcuffs were just props, not the real thing. After all, they didn’t want any of their actors to be inadvertently hurt. You were supposed to be able to shake them loose at will. All you had to do was pull hard. And so she did. She yanked down with her right arm as fast and as hard as she could.
    Nothing happened.
    She pressed her lips together and tried again. She was not going down without a fight, not after so much time, so much work. Danielle pulled again with enough force to shatter a wooden plank.
    But nothing happened. Her arms were still trapped.
    And a moment later, she felt another set of handcuffs snap around her left ankle.
    The little monster stood beside her, his face flushed and full of rage. “I brought my own handcuffs,” he said simply, nostrils flared. “I replaced yours before you came in here.” He locked the fourth and final handcuff onto her other leg, and Danielle knew she was helpless. Unable to resist. At the mercy of a madman.
    He recovered his axe and resumed his position on top of her. With a swipe of his left fist, he knocked her across the face.
    Her head once again slammed against the brass railings. Her eyelids fluttered. She was almost gone now, she realized. In so many ways. Almost gone…
    “Are you…going to kill me?” she asked.
    “Is that what you think? That I’m just some—some crazy killer? That I’m doin’ this because I want to?”
    “Then…what…are you going to do?”
    “What the numbers dictate. The branding iron is still heating. But we don’t have to wait for that.”
    “Wh—what?”
    “You are Binah, the Godhead. You have dishonored your connection to the Sefirot. So I must remove your identifying feature. Your aspect of the primordial human form.”
    Her eyelids were so heavy; this time, she let them fall. “I still…I don’t understand…”
    “It’s really very simple,” he said, as he grabbed the front of her hair. Danielle felt the cold sharp blade at the base of her neck. “I’m going to remove your head.”
     
     
     

12
     
July 14
     
     
    THE ALARM CLOCK was like a shrieking banshee, relentlessly shattering every nerve in my body. It had taken me hours to fall asleep. I’d stayed at the office way too late, in part to show O’Bannon I was working hard, in part because I was so desperate to come up with something useful, some kind of lead. But I didn’t. Soon they would be expecting me to give them a profile, and I had nothing, nothing but the most obvious well-known profiling constants that would hardly justify my salary. I’d come home a wreck, pacing the floors, desperate for a drink. Tried to watch junk television, but couldn’t concentrate. Turned out the lights, but my eyes wouldn’t shut. The LED on my clock told me it was three in the morning long before my body finally succumbed to sleep.
    This case was getting to me, in the worst possible way. And I knew where this was going to lead. How long could I resist? How long could I keep my face out of a bottle when I was feeling this kind of stress?
    I finally stumbled out of bed, eyes blurred, and forced myself into the shower. That helped a little. At least enough to get me going. I remembered all the stuff they told me back in