"Don't ever call me again. And I don't want to hear any more lies about Meg."

"You got it, Doc. Just keep your eyes shut tight. See no evil, right?"

"Stop it, Justin. Stop it."

"If Meg gets tired of whoever's dicking her now, send her my way. I'll show her what a real man can do."

Robin shut off the phone, then sat on the bed, shaking.

She shouldn't let him get to her like that. He was playing games, sick mind games, the kind he'd played when he was still at large. Now he was safely caged, but he could still use a telephone, still find a way to inflict pain on the world.

And she was trying to help him, make him better. She asked herself why.

"Because he's dysfunctional," she whispered.

Dysfunctional. Such a nice clinical term, so much more scientific and sanitized than other words she might have used. Words like soulless amp; malevolent amp; evil.

How much did she really believe in evil? Justin Gray was evil by any reasonable definition. Yet she treated him as someone with a disorder, someone to be cured. Then was there no evil, only illness? No morality, only the interaction of dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine?

She didn't know what she believed. She half suspected she didn't want to believe in evil, didn't want it to be real, because then her father amp; she would have to label him as amp;

She left the thought unfinished. The past wasn't the issue, anyway. It was the future that counted. A new method of treatment. Lowered rates of recidivism. A safer, saner society. Fewer victims. And an end to warehoused offenders, wasted lives.

Robin lay back in bed and closed her eyes.

New hope for people like her fatherand their families. New lives. For that, she would endure Gray's games. She would endure anything.

Gray hung up, smiling, and climbed onto his rack, hands laced behind his head.

Now that had been some good, clean fun.

He'd never called the doc before, but tonight he was so goddamn jazzed, he had to work off his nervous tension somehow. And the best way to do it was with a little old-fashioned, ail-American mind fucking.

That had been part of the sport all along. One of the best parts, always. He'd made it his trademark. He'd become known for the mind games he played on the parents of his victims.

Hours after one of his girls was dead, he would call her folks, using a stolen cell phonea different phone each time. It had been fun, like making prank calls when he was a kid. Being drunk hadn't hurt. Typically he stayed wasted for a day or two after a kill, enjoying the buzz. And the conversations with the parents only made the high that much sweeter.

He could remember every word.

"I'm the one what took your baby girl, ma'am," he would say in a trailer-trash drawl. "And the thing is, I'm wondering if you had any preferencesy'know, as to where you'd like to pick her up."

"You're letting her go?"

"Oh, sorry. I meant where you want to pick up her body."

"Oh, God, please, please don't, she's a good girl, she's all we have."

"You're telling me you want the little bitch alive?"

"Please amp;"

" 'Cause I just assumed you were glad to be rid of her. No offense, but she's kind of a pain in the ass."

"Don't hurt her."

"Here I thought you'd be grateful to me for taking her off your hands. I was doing you a major favor. Now all of a sudden I'm the bad guy?"

"She's a good girl; everybody loves her"

"If she's such a good girl, where'd she learn to give those high-quality blow jobs?"

"God, oh, dear God amp;"

"Sorry, must be some miscommunication. This ain't God you're talking to. My name's Willy. As in Free Willy. 'Cause I'm free and I intend to stay that way, and since your bitch daughter's seen my face amp;"

"She's all we have"

"Then you better get started on another one. Biological clock's ticking, lady. Tick-tock. Tick-tock."

Some of his games were more elaborate. He would call the parents and playact as a concerned citizen, saying he'd found their daughter wandering down Olympic Boulevard, dazed but unharmed. Or he would be a doctor at UCLA Medical, reporting that their daughter had been brought to the emergency room. Or a reporter asking to confirm the rumor that their daughter had been picked up in San Diego, suffering from amnesia and sexual abuse.

He chuckled, remembering. He hadn't played that game in a year, but he'd picked the right time to get his groove back. With any luck, the doc would be up all night worrying. Tomorrow she'd be tired and distracted and pissed off. Hate would make her careless. It worked that way for people like her.

Not him, though.

Hate made him stronger, sharper, fiercer. Always had. Hate was what drove him.

His first session with Dr. Robin, she'd given him some bullshit test, and he'd scored high on the hostility index. No surprise. Hate had never been a four-letter word to him. Hate was strength, and fire, and taking no shit from anybody. Hate built him up, made him big, got him pumped. Hate was his rocket fuel, his adrenaline rush. Hate was like sex to him, an orgasm that lasted for hours, days, and got him off again and again. He was in love with hate.

And the doc wanted to cure him of that? Might as well snip off his balls. Without hate he would be a neutered puppy, a weak sister, a nobody.

Without hate, he could never have done even half the shit he'd pulled. And that would have been a damn shame. Everybody was always on his case, asking why he'd killed those girls. The answer was fucking obvious. He enjoyed the hell out of it.

The first kill hadn't been completely intentional. He'd snatched the girl with the vague idea of holding her for ransom. At least, he'd told himself that ransom was his motive, although he'd never fixed a dollar amount or worked out any means of collecting the money. Still, maybe he would have demanded ransom if the little bitch hadn't kept struggling in the back of his van. She'd squirmed, moaning behind the gag in her mouth, while he sat up front listening, until finally he couldn't stand the damn noise any longer. So he went back to tell her to shut up, and found that her blouse had come unbuttoned, exposing her fine round jumanjis for anyone to see. At the time he'd been sure she had undone the blouse on purpose, trying to come on to him, seduce him into dropping his guard. She was like that slut Delilah in the Bibleor was it Jezebel?one of those old Bible whores who fucked with guys and played games with them and got them thinking with their dicks. Her trying to trick him that way amp; man, it had pissed him off royal. He'd taken her outside and put a bullet in her head without thinking twice about it.

Which was funny, because later, when he'd sobered uphe'd been wrecked out of his mind, like he always was when he pulled off dangerous shithe'd realized the blouse had gotten unbuttoned by accident. She was just trying to loosen the duct tape on her wrists and ankles, that's all.

Yeah, he'd felt pretty stupid once his head cleared, but not so stupid that he hadn't gone out a couple months later and done it again.

It had been fun, was the thing. You took one of those stuck-up junior misses, and you scared the living shit out of herliterally, in one case; goddamned girl had pooped in her pantiesand then you pumped a slug into her noggin, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. And every time you thought about it or heard some blow-dried asshole talking it up on the news, you got good and hard all over again, and you could whack off till your arm was sore. Better yet, hook up with a gal on Western Avenue for the lay of your lifebecause it didn't matter how much of a skank she was or how many needle tracks she had on her arms, you could close your eyes and pretend she was little Miss Prom Queen, and that was all you needed to get off again and again and again in a series of blastoffs straight to the fucking moon.