Getting out, he locked his car and crunched through the woods, heading for the river. When he emerged at the Hudson’s shoreline, he looked across the way. There were some houses on the other side, but they had outdoor lights on only, which meant the inhabitants were asleep—although it wouldn’t matter if they were awake, lying in bed, or even walking through their kitchens, trolling for a snack. No one was going to see him. The river was wide here, wide and deep.

Lifting up his black fleece, he freed the tire iron, and with a bracing throw, pitched it along with its windbreaker bathing suit into the water. With a plunk and just a little splash, the thing sank in the blink of an eye, never to be found again: The riverbed was at least ten feet down in this part, but even better, he’d chosen a spot where there was a curve to the Hudson’s course—the current would not only carry the tire iron farther away from Caldwell; it would drag the thing farther out into the middle, away from the shore.

Back at his car, he got in and kept on going.

He drove around for a while, listening to the local radio, dying to know what the police were going to report about what had happened in that alley. But there was nothing. Just hip-hop and pop rock on FM and conspiracy theorists and right-wing talking heads on AM.

As he went along, taking random lefts and rights, he thought about the way things had gone tonight. He could feel himself slipping into old ways and habits, and that was not good—although on some level, it seemed inevitable.

Hard to change who you were inside. Very hard.

The thing was, shooting those college boys the night before had been a bit of shock, but the whole tire-iron incident just now seemed like business as usual. And the trigger for the kill had been much lower. The guy hadn’t even been aggressive toward her in that club. He’d had her and that was enough: One look at that self-satisfied smile when he’d come out of that bathroom they’d disappeared into and the sonofabitch was a dead man.

But things couldn’t keep going like this. He was smart enough to know that if he continued to off men downtown, his chances of getting caught increased with each body he left behind. So he either needed to stop…or clean up his messes.

When he was satisfied he hadn’t been followed, and when he could no longer fight the urge to check the TV, he headed for home—or for what had been home for the past two months.