The girl parked behind the building, near the door, and gathered up the stack of red insulators. She’d be back in a few minutes with another load ready to deliver.

The neon sign for Mama Mia’s included a delivery number. He flipped open the cellular phone and dialed the number while he unfolded a real estate flyer. The description promised a four-bedroom colonial with a whirlpool bath and skylight in the master bedroom. How romantic, he mused, just as a woman barked in his ear.

“Mama Mia’s.”

“I’d like two large pepperoni pizzas delivered.”

“Phone number.”

“555-4545,” he read off the flyer.

“Name and address.”

“Heston,” he continued reading, “at 5349 Archer Drive.”

“Would you like some breadsticks and soda with that?”

“No, just the pizza.”

“It’ll be about twenty minutes, Mr. Heston.”

“Fine.” He snapped the phone shut. Twenty minutes would be plenty of time. He pulled on his black leather driving gloves, and then he wiped the phone with a corner of his shirt. As he drove by the Dumpster, he tossed the phone.

He headed south on Archer Drive, thinking about pizza, a moonlit bath and that cute delivery girl with the polite smile and the tight ass.

CHAPTER 9

Maggie’s eyes begged to close. Her shoulders slouched from exhaustion. It was almost midnight by the time Gwen left. Maggie knew she’d never be able to sleep. She had already checked every window latch twice, leaving only a choice few open to keep the wonderful chilly breeze flowing through the main floor. Likewise, she had double-checked the security system several times after Gwen’s departure. Now she paced, dreading the night hours, hating the dark and vowing to put up drapes and blinds tomorrow.

Finally she sat back down cross-legged in the middle of the pile created from the contents of Stucky’s personal box of horror. She pulled out the folder with newspaper clippings and articles she had downloaded. Ever since Stucky’s escape five months ago, she had watched newspaper headlines across the country by using the Internet.

She still couldn’t believe how easily Albert Stucky had escaped. On his way to a maximum-security facility—a simple trip that should have taken a couple of hours—Stucky killed two transport guards. Then he disappeared into the Florida Everglades, never to be seen again.

Anyone else may not have been able to survive, having become a nifty snack for some alligator. But knowing Stucky, Maggie imagined him emerging from the Everglades in a three-piece suit and a briefcase made of alligator skin. Yes, Albert Stucky was intelligent and crafty and savvy enough to charm an alligator out of its own skin, and then reward it by slicing it up and feeding it to the other alligators.

She sorted through the most recent articles. Last week, the Philadelphia Journal had an article about a woman’s torso found in the river, her head and feet found in a Dumpster. It was the closest thing she had seen in months to Stucky’s M.O., yet it still didn’t feel like him. It was too much. It was overkill. Stucky’s handiwork, though inconceivably horrible, had never included chopping away a victim’s identity. No, Stucky enjoyed doing that with subtle psychological and mental tricks. Even his extraction of an organ from the victim was not a statement about the victim but rather his attempt to continue the game. Maggie imagined him watching and laughing as some unsuspecting diner found Stucky’s appalling surprise, often tucked into an ordinary take-out container and abandoned on an outside café table. It was all a game to Stucky, a morbid, twisted game.

The articles that frightened Maggie more than the ones with missing body parts were the ones of women who had disappeared. Women like her missing neighbor, Rachel Endicott. Intelligent, successful women, some with families, all attractive, and all described as women who would not suddenly leave their lives without telling a soul. Maggie couldn’t help wondering if any of them had become part of Stucky’s collection. By now he had surely found somewhere isolated, somewhere to start all over again. He had the money and the means. All he needed was time.

She knew Cunningham and his defunct task force, and now his new profiler, were waiting for a body. But if, and when, the bodies did start showing up, they were the ones Stucky killed only for fun. No, the ones they should be looking for were the women he collected. These were the women he tortured—who ended up in remote graves deep in the woods, only after he was completely finished playing his sick games with them. Games that would drag on for days, maybe weeks. The women Stucky chose were never young or naive. No, Stucky enjoyed a challenge. He carefully chose intelligent, mature women. Women who would fight back, not those easily broken. Women he could torture psychologically as well as physically.

Maggie rubbed her eyes. She wanted another Scotch. The two earlier, added to the beer, were already making her head buzz and her vision blur. Though she had brewed a pot of coffee earlier for Gwen, she hated the stuff and stayed away from it. Now she wished she had something to help her stay alert. Something like the Scotch, which she knew was becoming a dangerous anesthetic.

She lifted another file folder and a page fell out. Seeing his handwriting still sent chills down her spine. She picked it up by its corner as though its evil would contaminate her. It had been the first of many notes in the sick game Albert Stucky had played with her. He had written in careful script:

What challenge is there in breaking a horse without spirit? The challenge is to replace that spirit with fear, raw animal fear that makes one feel alive. Are you ready to feel alive, Margaret O’Dell?

It had been their first insight into the intellect of Albert Stucky, a man whose father had been a prominent doctor. A man who had been afforded all the best schools, all the privileges money could buy. Yet he was thrown out of Yale for almost burning down a women’s dormitory. There were other offenses: attempted rape, assault, petty theft. All charges had been either dropped or were never pressed, due to lack of evidence. Stucky had been questioned in the accidental death of his father, a freak boating accident though the man had supposedly been an expert yachtsman.

Then, about six or seven years ago, Albert Stucky took up a business partner, and the two of them succeeded in creating one of the Internet’s first stock-market trading sites. Stucky became a respectable businessman, and a multimillionaire.

Despite all of Maggie’s research, she never felt certain about what had set Stucky off in the first place. What had been the event, the precursor? Usually with serial killers, their crimes were precipitated by some stressor. An event, a death, a rejection, an abuse that one day made them decide to kill. She didn’t know what that had been for Stucky. Perhaps evil simply couldn’t be harnessed. And Stucky’s evil was especially terrifying.

Most serial killers murdered because it gave them pleasure, some form of gratification. It was a choice, not necessarily a sickness of the mind. But for Albert Stucky, the kill was not enough. His pleasure came from psychologically breaking down his victims, turning them into sniveling, pleading wretches—owning them body, mind and soul. He enjoyed breaking their spirit, turning it into fear. Then he rewarded his victims with a slow, torturous death. Ironically, those he killed immediately, those whose throats he slashed and whose bodies he discarded in Dumpsters—only after extracting a token organ—those were the lucky ones.

The phone startled her. She grabbed the Smith & Wesson .38 that sat by her side. Again, it was a simple reflex. It was late, and few people had her new number. She had refused to give it to the pizza place. She had even insisted Greg use her cell phone number. Maybe Gwen had forgotten something. From the floor, she reached up to the desktop and pulled the phone down.