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.Gaudet, along with those two numskulls, Doggs and Calumet, would have to handle it.Murphy wondered about the afterlife.Was all that Catholic crap his mother and the priests and the nuns had rammed down his throat for all those years really true? If so, he would certainly be in hell before the sun came up.Or maybe death was like an old friend had once said, just a bunch of nothing, absolute unconsciousness.He was hoping for that.That sounded painless—no guilt, no remorse, no regrets.By the time Murphy finished his third beer, his eyelids were so heavy he couldn’t keep them open for more than a few seconds at a stretch.His pistol lay in his lap.It wasn’t going anywhere.Just a few more minutes of life.He would allow himself one more mortal pleasure before condemning himself to eternal damnation.He put his head down on the arm of the sofa.A five-minute nap.Then he would kill himself.Surely, the devil could wait five minutes.The killer hits the enter key on his laptop keyboard, the final step to uploading his new video to the Devil’s Den Web site.In the bottom right-hand corner of his screen, the digital clock reads 3:35 AM.Within two hours, the video will be viewable on the Web site, and within three or four hours, tens of thousands of e-mail addresses will receive a link to the video file stored on servers in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.He rubs his hands together in anticipation.Everything is coming together.Even the unexpected developments—the sodomite bar and Kiesha—have been godsends.Police officers are two-dimensional thinkers, trained to look for simple patterns.Several of his recent cleansings fit a pattern.That was how Murphy stumbled upon his work.That was good.He wanted the publicity.But he didn’t want to make things too easy for them.Nothing ruins a pattern like randomness.Patterns represent order.Randomness represents chaos.His sudden deviation from his plan has injected randomness into whatever patterns the oafish police thought they uncovered.Only one thing disturbs him, a literal dark cloud on the horizon.The coming hurricane.Driving back home from the house on Burgundy, he heard a radio announcer say that the storm was bearing down on the Florida Keys.Forecasters are predicting that Catherine, now a category-three hurricane, could plow into the Gulf of Mexico as early as this evening.The warm waters of the gulf, the forecasters say, could strengthen the already-powerful storm to a category four by late tonight.Computer projections of the storm’s path, what the weather people call the cone of uncertainty, are centered on New Orleans.Unfortunately, the dire storm warnings have already pulled some of the media’s attention away from the beheading of Sandra Jackson.But even a deadly hurricane won’t be able to compete with the killer’s newest video.He shuts down his computer and turns away from his small desk.Exhaustion has overtaken him.He kicks off his shoes, pants, and shirt and dives into bed.With the covers pulled over his head, he stares into the darkness and thinks about tomorrow.today, really.After a few hours’ sleep, he will get up and watch the Sunday talk shows.His work, the Lord’s work—one and the same—will be on every channel.The killer closes his eyes and smiles.A hard knock rattled Murphy’s door.He came awake slowly and painfully as the pounding on the door increased in tempo, miraculously matching the pounding inside his skull.When he pried his eyes open, the daylight stabbed his brain.Someone’s cat had taken a shit in his mouth.He sat up and realized he was still dressed.His first try at standing was a failure.A wave of dizziness and nausea forced him back down onto the sofa.The knocking continued.He recognized it as police knocking.They must have found the body, he thought.Somehow they had already linked him to the murder.He struggled to his feet again and managed to stay upright.“I’m coming.”The knocking stopped.The cable box on the TV showed 8:05 AM.Murphy lurched toward the door.When he got there he looked through the peephole [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]