Free Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag Page B

hugging her pillow as if it was a teddy bear, and tried to fall asleep.

9
     
    Roland Ballencoa liked to work at night. There was something intimate about the night. The world was less populated. With fewer conscious beings tapping into the energy fields of life, there was more for him. He felt stronger at night, more powerful at night.
    At night the whole world was his darkroom. He spent the first few hours of the evening developing film he had shot during the day. Then it was time to go out, and his eyes became his camera.
    The night was cool. He was glad for the dark hooded sweatshirt jacket he had grabbed on his way out the door. He got in his van and drove a few blocks to a neighborhood he had been to earlier in the day. Near the college, lights still burned in a few windows despite the hour, but there was no one on the street. Roland parked at the curb of a side street, near the alley, got out and began his stroll.
    He enjoyed exploring. He enjoyed looking at the styles of the houses. Most of the architecture in this part of town was a mix of old Victorian, Spanish revival, and Craftsman built in the late twenties and early thirties. The odd fifties ranch-style house stuck out like a sore thumb.
    It was a neighborhood of mature trees and hedges, a place that was easy to move around without standing out or being noticed at all. He could be invisible, which was a very good thing for an observer to be.
    Roland had come to this neighborhood earlier in the day, and two days before, and just parked his van and watched the comings and goings of residents—mostly college students, many of them very pretty.
    McAster College was unique in that it was nearly as busy in summer as during the school year. Renowned for its music program, McAster hosted an annual summer music festival that drew people from literally all over the world. Many well-known classical musicians came to Oak Knoll in advance of the festival and stayed for weeks after to teach in the summer artists-in-residence program.
    Roland had discerned through observation that many of the residences in this neighborhood had been cut up into apartments for the students. The big Victorian on the corner was a sorority house.
    He turned off the sidewalk, flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt, and walked down the alley.
    There was no fence or gate along the back of the property. There was a hedge for privacy, but it ended at the driveway to the large garage, which had been converted to an oversized laundry to serve the residents of the house.
    The side door was not locked. The lights were off. No sound of washers or dryers tumbling. Roland let himself in and slipped his small flashlight from his pocket. The dot of pale yellow light showed two washers and two dryers, and a pair of long stainless steel tables down the center of the space for sorting and folding clothes.
    A laundry basket sat on the table with a load of towels that had been washed and dried but not folded. Sitting on the floor near one of the washing machines was a bag of laundry with the name Renee Paquin written in permanent marker down the side.
    Bag in hand, he took a seat in one of the mismatched stuffed chairs congregated at the end of the room. He held the flashlight between his teeth, opened the bag, and began pawing through the garments.
    T-shirts, a pair of khaki shorts, a pair of jeans, white tennis clothes. At the bottom he found what he wanted: several pair of pastel silk bikini underpants. Jackpot.
    Roland turned the flashlight off and put it back in his jacket pocket. He took one of the panties and held it to his face, breathing deep the scent of a girl. He rubbed the silk against his face, found the crotch of the panties and pressed it to his nose and mouth. With his free hand he unzipped his jeans, took out his erection, and began to stroke it with the other pair of underwear.
    This scent was heaven and hell, pleasure and torment. Intoxicating. He filled his head with it. He licked the fabric and