Timothy angled the tip of the blade into position and began to carve as deeply into the flesh of his forearm as necessary to get the bugs out, using a washcloth to sop up the blood.

Then.

A nightmare.

The worst kind. The waking kind.

The fibers began twitching, began coming to life. Thin black worms wriggled from his skin, clusters of them that began growing fatter and fatter as they tugged free and then dropped, slimy and writhing, to the tiling.

They squiggled toward the baseboard near the sink, leaving lurid, bloody trails in their wake, and he stomped on them to make them go away, all go away!

Kill them, just like you killed those people.

“I haven’t killed anyone.”

Are you sure?

“Yes!”

How many has it been?

How many more will there be?

“There haven’t been any. There won’t be any!”

Timothy squashed the worms that he knew weren’t real.

No one can find out what you’re doing or how many there’ve been. Don’t let anyone know the truth, Timothy.

“I need to know. I’m going to find out.”

No, Timothy. If you poke around, the police will find you. They’ll put you away, lock you away. That’s not what you want.

“It’s not what you want. If there’ve been any, any at all, then I need to know. I need to know the truth.”

Even if it means being locked away?

“No matter what it means!”

He finished with the last of the worms, then stared at the clean tiling, spotted only with drops of blood from the weeping sores on his arm.

And so, Timothy Sabian made the decision to find out for sure how many people he had murdered. There was a number—of course, there was. After all, there’s a number for everyone.

6

Killers tend to show up at the wakes and funerals of the people they’ve killed. I wondered if someone who’d witnessed a suicide would do the same.

Back at our apartment, I texted Assistant Director DeYoung, telling him that I wanted to attend Jon Murray’s funeral tomorrow. Give me a call when you get a chance, I wrote.

I didn’t have to wait long. As I was finishing getting ready for bed, the phone rang: DeYoung contacting me for a video call.

His haggard look, his sighs, and his head shakes were all evidence of the stress that was a constant companion in his job.

After a quick greeting, he said, “Senator Murray is on board with us surveilling the funeral tomorrow morning.”

“Excellent.” I filled him in on what I’d discovered at the senator’s house earlier.

“But we still have no idea about the identity of the person in the window?”

“Not yet, sir. No.”