Free Carnage: Short Story by John Lutz Page A

calculated was true north, sunlight lanced through the clouds and lay golden on the winding road. As he drove he reran the murder over and over in his mind, finding new angles, fresh perspectives. It got better each time.
    The girl—Taylor Reminger—had been easy prey, a naïve and pliable young woman, especially with a few doctored drinks in her. He’d been so nice to her—oh, he could be a charmer—that they were in her motel room before sundown. His every move was practiced and economical. He’d perfected his routine over the past several years. Within the hour, he’d had her taped tightly and gagged.
    That’s when the fun began.

    When she’d regained consciousness, Taylor opened her eyes and met the real true him.
    He’d been learning with each victim. She had experienced the blade and the flame, and had spent the rest of the night dying in pain, making desperate noises that barely escaped her taped lips and wadded pillow. Her pleas near the end were scarcely recognizable as human.
    When, finally, she died, he looked into her eyes and knew he had gotten all of her.
    He smiled as he drove. He would remember Taylor. She died well and would stand out in memory among the others. She was special.
    Or maybe he was simply getting better.
    Directly in front of the car, three pelicans in perfect V formation like aircraft arced across the sky. Surely some kind of omen.
    The killer, who carved the letters D.O.A. in his victims’ foreheads, had come to be known simply as that: “D.O.A.” In his estimation, not enough people had heard of him. So far, he and his relatively few murders (he’d started this latest spate of killings in Miami) were simply local news. This northward jaunt, leaving a bloody string of murders like a comet’s tail, would alert everyone along the eastern seacoast to the danger and terror. New York media would soon come to understand the pattern and path of the murders. No media could cover series killings better than the New York news. They would pursue every tidbit of information as if they were starving wolves, and give it an importance that made legend. The strength of the pack.
    The killer tightened his grip on the steering wheel and thought about New York City. All that movement. All those voices. All those people. Jostling each other. Breathing each other’s breath. Terror was contagious and traveled fast among them. Especially the young single women, trying to make New York their own personal big apple.
    What a wonderful town.
    He’d get there eventually. There was no rush. Let them contemplate his approach.
    The road curved, and a brightening reflection lay like a squirming chimera on the gleaming black hood of the rented Chevy. It had been easy enough to use phony documentation to rent the car for a month. Somewhere farther north, he would make sure it was clean of fingerprints or any other identifying factors—perhaps burn the vehicle—then find some other mode of transportation
    His plan was simple and as inescapable as fate.
    He would kill along the way. All the way to New York City and beyond. “Beyond” was important to the killer, but New York was special to him because of the famous Frank Quinn.
    Quinn, or one of his minions, would soon understand the killer’s intent. But understanding it was a long way from being able to stop it.
    The morning was heating up, and the killer had the Chevy’s air conditioner on high. He also had the front windows lowered about six inches so he could hear the surf. There hadn’t been much surf on the other coast, the Gulf coast. The waters there were much calmer. That was a shame, because there were indistinct but undeniable messages in the surf. Voices that knew secrets, and shared them.
    As well as receiving information indirectly in surprising ways, D.O.A. watched the local and national TV news. And he read the newspapers. Not religiously, but he read them.
    That was how he’d learned about Quinn. And how he’d learned even more, in the