His mental violations made him even hungrier.

Here was a blonde with short hair, carrying a shopping bag. Vincent could imagine his hands cupping her head as he lay on top of her.

And here was a brunette, her hair long like Sally Anne’s, dangling from underneath her stocking cap. He could almost feel the quivering of her muscles as his hand pressed into the small of her back.

Here, another blonde, in a suit, carrying a briefcase. He wondered if she’d scream or cry. He bet she was a screamer.

Gerald Duncan was now driving the Band-Aid-mobile, maneuvering it down an alley and then back to a main street, heading north.

“No more transmissions.” The killer nodded at the police scanner, from which was clattering only routine calls and more traffic information. “They’ve changed the frequency.”

“Should I try to find the new one?”

“They’ll be scrambling it. I’m surprised they weren’t from the beginning.”

Vincent saw another brunette—oh, she’s nice—walking out of a Starbucks. She was wearing boots. Vincent liked boots.

How long could he wait? he wondered.

Not very long. Maybe until tonight, maybe until tomorrow. When he’d met Duncan, the killer told him he’d have to give up having his heart-to-hearts until they started on their “project.” Vincent had agreed—why not? The Watchmaker told him there would be five women among his victims. Two were older, middle-aged, but he could have them too if he was interested (it’s a chore but somebody’s got to do it, Clever Vincent quipped to himself).

So he’d been abstaining.

Duncan shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure out how they knew it was we.”

We? He did talk funny sometimes.

“You have any idea?”

“Nope,” Vincent offered.

Duncan still wasn’t angry, which surprised Vincent. Vincent’s stepfather had screamed and shouted when he was mad, like after the Sally Anne incident. And Vincent himself would grow enraged when one of his ladies fought back and hurt him. But not Duncan. He said anger was inefficient. You had to look at the great scheme of things, he’d say. There was always a grand plan, and little setbacks were insignificant, not worth wasting your energy on. “It’s like time. The centuries and millennia are what matter. With humans, it’s the same thing. A single life is nothing. It’s the generations that count.”

Vincent supposed he agreed, though as far as he was concerned, every heart-to-heart was important; he didn’t want to miss a chance for a single one. And so he asked, “Are we going to try again? With Joanne?”

“Not now,” the killer replied. “They might have a guard with her. And even if we’re able to get to her they’d realize I wanted her dead for a reason. It’s important that they think these are just random victims. What we’ll do now is—”

He stopped talking. He was looking in the rearview mirror.

“What?”

“Cops. A police car came out of a side street. It started to turn one way but then turned toward us.”