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Day Six, 6:42 a.m.: Time for salmon and trout. Get a move on!
Day Six, noon: Let's do the Adam and Eve thing.
Which naturally brought to mind Lovely Girl. He pictured her for a moment, face, hair, pure-white skin, then eased away the distracting image the way you'd set aside a precious snapshot of a departed loved one - carefully, out of a superstitious fear of harming your love if you dropped the frame.
Flipping through the pages, he studied what was coming next. Pausing once again to reflect that the Modification was certainly complicated. At various points in the process he'd wondered if it was too much so. But he thought back to the pages of the chapter he'd stolen from the library earlier that day, Serial Cities, recalling all the surprising - no, shocking - information it had revealed.
Experts in law enforcement universally voice the opinion of Lincoln Rhyme that his greatest skill was his ability to anticipate what the criminals he's pursuing will do next.
He believed that was the quotation; he wasn't sure, since Chloe Moore, no longer of this earth, had inconsiderately ripped a portion of that passage from the book.
Anticipate ...
So, yes, the plan for the Modification had to be this precise. The people he was up against were too good for him to be careless, to miss a cue in any way.
He reviewed plans for the next attack, tomorrow. He memorized locations, he memorized timing. Everything seemed in order. In his mind he rehearsed the attack; he'd already been to the site. He now pictured it, he smelled it.
Good. He was ready.
Then he glanced at his right wrist, the watch. He was tired.
And what, he wondered, was going on with the investigation into the demise of Ms Chloe?
He turned on the radio, hoping for news.
The earlier reports had been that a young resident of Queens, a woman clerk in a stylish boutique in SoHo, had been found dead in an access tunnel off the cellar. Well, Billy had thought, perplexed, it was hardly very stylish. Chinese crap, overpriced and meant for frothy-hair sluts from Jersey and mothers seared by the approach of middle age.
Initially Chloe's name had not been released, pending notification of next of kin.
Hearing that, Billy had reflected: How sadistic can one cop be? To release the news that a young woman from Queens has been killed and not divulge the name? How many parents of kids living in that area had started making desperate phone calls?
Now, waiting for an update, all he got were commercials. Didn't anyone care about poor Chloe Moore?
Chloe Moore, Chloe the whore ...
He paced back and forth in front of his terrariums. White leaves, green leaves, red leaves, blue ...
Then, as often happened when he looked over the plants who were his companions, he thought of Oleander.
And the Oleander Room.
Billy resented that that thought intruded but there was nothing to do about it. He could--
Ah, now the news. Finally.
A city council scandal,
a minor train derailment, an economic report. Then, at last, a follow-up on Chloe Moore's demise. Additional details were coughed up now, a bit of history. The facts suggested the attack was not sexual in nature. (Of course not; Billy was offended that the subject had even come up. The media. Despicable.) A rough description. So someone had spotted him near the manhole.
He listened as the story wound down.
Still nothing about tattooing. Nothing about poison.
That was typical, Billy knew. He'd read about police procedures in verifying confessions. The cops ask people taking credit for a crime certain unique details and, if they can't answer, the supposed perpetrators are dismissed as crackpots (a surprising number of people confessed to crimes they hadn't committed).
Nor had the story mentioned anything about the phrase 'the second'.
But that would be a thorn in their sides, of course.
