Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman by Edward Lee

Author:Edward Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fbi thriller, horror, police procedural, serial killer, suspense murder, thriller suspense legal courtroom drama women lawyer woman in jeapordy crime new mexico murder politics investigation psychological thriller
Publisher: Edward Lee

(II)

Spence couldn’t sleep. He’d waked repeatedly from an eerie, subterranean dream. A faraway red light was throbbing, like a heart. Spence was being chased through narrow stone corridor whose walls seemed to shed sweat or blood. He could only see by the pulsing light around each corner. Rapid footfalls pursued him, and panting. Running, he drew his Smith snub, but when he checked the five shot cylinder he found each chamber empty.

Wait a minute, he thought in the dream. What the hell am I running from?

He’d never found out, for next he lay awake in his bed. The clock ticked, though, in time with the dream’s throbbing light. It was 2:30 in the morning; moonlight hung like a pale film on the window.

It wasn’t really a nightmare. Spence didn’t have them—he hadn’t had a genuine nightmare in years. In the dream, he hadn’t even been scared—he was just running.

He rose and padded naked to the bathroom. The fluorescent tube buzzed in snatches, then blinked on. Bleaching light made him look ghastly in the mirror: a muscular cadaver with hole punch eyes.

He shook a can of shave cream—Edge Gel—and squirted a cross onto the mirror. Squinting, he tried to visualize it as the killer did, through Simmons’ hallucinotic aura of light. But no revelatory totem occurred to him. Just a cross of Edge Gel, lime green.

Next he wrote the word—NASCENT—into the glass. Exposed to the air, the gel fizzed and grew larger, limpening.

Simmons had told him to find the nascent.

Nascent, he contemplated. It was an awkward word, stifled. It seemed cryptic. Was it in Kathleen Shade’s work? Tomorrow Spence would read every back issue of ’90s Woman since Shade had been writing for them. He would read every “Verdict” column. Perhaps the killer had written in once, and been responded to by Shade. Or perhaps the killer identified with Shade’s response to some other reader’s problem.

Or maybe there’s no nascent at all, he weighed.

He didn’t feel like going back to sleep. Instead, he showered and dressed and brushed his teeth. He checked his gun—timid from the dream—and found the cylinder full of Q loads. Then he left his apartment and drove to Kathleen Shade’s.

Spence’s own mother haunted him during the ride. Diced thoughts irritating as pollen in the eye. He could only blame himself that his mother had died never really knowing him. He could still hear her voice from his senior year in high school. How come you don’t go out with friends, Jeffrey? What could he ever say? He never liked anybody. I’m so proud of you, she’d said when they’d beat the shit out of Parkdale High at homecoming. Spence had played middle guard; he’d tackled Parkdale’s star RB so hard in the first quarter, the guy had been out cold for the rest of the game. Cracked his fuckin’ lights out. Spence was a hero. But how come you never go out with girls? You have your pick of the cheerleaders! Then his mother had laughed. You don’t want people thinking you’re one of those queer boys.

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