rattle with a faint, evil, metallic chuckling. The headlights, slightly cross-eyed, threw wild shadows behind wind-stirred pines and granite boulders with edges as sharp as butcher knives. Low, rambling, glass and redwood houses on each side of the road lay in darkness, and only occasionally did a car pass on its way down to the city. The Volkswagen turned off Outpost Drive onto a narrow road of broken concrete that curved like a snake's spine and climbed upward at a forty-degree angle. Forbidding heaps of cracked granite loomed on the right-hand side of the road; on the left, where the road fell off abruptly into a series of ravines, stood a few hundred gnarled, dwarfish, dead trees.
Though there was no sign or road marker, the driver had made the correct turn onto Blackwood Road.
His name was Walter Benefield, and on the seat beside him, head lolling with every lurch of the car, was a twenty-year-old Chicano girl named Angela Pavion. Her eyes were half-open, the whites showing, and every once in a while she whimpered softly. Benefield wondered what she was dreaming about.
Wafting through the car's interior was a thick, almondy, slightly medicinal odor. Beneath Benefield's seat was a wadded cloth that had turned brown after being soaked in a solution of chemicals that he'd stolen from work. His eyes, behind thick, black-framed glasses, were watering slightly, though he'd rolled down the window only seconds after the girl had gone to sleep. At least this had been better than those first few times, he told himself. The first time the girl had died because the mixture wasn't diluted enough, and the second time he had to lean out of the car to throw up, and his head ached all the next day. He was getting faster with it, though he missed using his hands. They were large, fleshy clamps that he exercised with stiff-springed handgrips. He often thought that he could squeeze those grips forever as he lay on his back in bed, staring at the pictures of posed musclemen with rippling backs and chests and arms taped to the walls, scissored from the pages of Strength and Health and Strongman magazines. And across the room the cockroaches scuttled in their wire-mesh cages, mating and fighting and sleeping. At the last count there'd been over a hundred, and some immense, cannibalistic bulls that had grown to three inches long.
He'd picked this girl up on the lower end of Sunset Boulevard thirty minutes ago. At first she'd been skittish about getting in the car, but he'd flashed a well-worn fifty dollar bill—kept just for the occasion—and she'd slid in as if her ass had been greased. She didn't speak or understand English very well, but that hardly mattered to him. She was pretty in a hard, coarse way; she was also one of the few desperate women who still walked the streets these days. Too bad for her, Benefield thought, she should read the papers. He had taken her to a deserted supermarket parking lot and unzipped his trousers. When the girl had leaned forward to do what he'd asked, he'd struck, too quickly for her to scream or evade him. The chemical-soaked rag was out from under the seat and pressed tightly against the girl's face, Benefield's other hand like a vise at the back of her neck. It would be so easy, so easy, he'd thought. I could just squeeze a little bit—hardly an effort—and watch her eyes pop out of their sockets, like Bev's had. But no. That was not what the Master wanted done, was it?
Her thrashing was over in a few more seconds. He'd put the cloth away, positioned the girl so she wouldn't slide down onto the floorboard, and then drove north toward the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, the high crests that split L.A. in two. He was breathing hard with exhilaration. The girl had managed to scratch his right hand, and two lines of blood welled from the flesh. He was following the Voice of God, the holy will of his Lord and Master, and now Benefield peered into the darkness beyond the range of the headlights
Though there was no sign or road marker, the driver had made the correct turn onto Blackwood Road.
His name was Walter Benefield, and on the seat beside him, head lolling with every lurch of the car, was a twenty-year-old Chicano girl named Angela Pavion. Her eyes were half-open, the whites showing, and every once in a while she whimpered softly. Benefield wondered what she was dreaming about.
Wafting through the car's interior was a thick, almondy, slightly medicinal odor. Beneath Benefield's seat was a wadded cloth that had turned brown after being soaked in a solution of chemicals that he'd stolen from work. His eyes, behind thick, black-framed glasses, were watering slightly, though he'd rolled down the window only seconds after the girl had gone to sleep. At least this had been better than those first few times, he told himself. The first time the girl had died because the mixture wasn't diluted enough, and the second time he had to lean out of the car to throw up, and his head ached all the next day. He was getting faster with it, though he missed using his hands. They were large, fleshy clamps that he exercised with stiff-springed handgrips. He often thought that he could squeeze those grips forever as he lay on his back in bed, staring at the pictures of posed musclemen with rippling backs and chests and arms taped to the walls, scissored from the pages of Strength and Health and Strongman magazines. And across the room the cockroaches scuttled in their wire-mesh cages, mating and fighting and sleeping. At the last count there'd been over a hundred, and some immense, cannibalistic bulls that had grown to three inches long.
He'd picked this girl up on the lower end of Sunset Boulevard thirty minutes ago. At first she'd been skittish about getting in the car, but he'd flashed a well-worn fifty dollar bill—kept just for the occasion—and she'd slid in as if her ass had been greased. She didn't speak or understand English very well, but that hardly mattered to him. She was pretty in a hard, coarse way; she was also one of the few desperate women who still walked the streets these days. Too bad for her, Benefield thought, she should read the papers. He had taken her to a deserted supermarket parking lot and unzipped his trousers. When the girl had leaned forward to do what he'd asked, he'd struck, too quickly for her to scream or evade him. The chemical-soaked rag was out from under the seat and pressed tightly against the girl's face, Benefield's other hand like a vise at the back of her neck. It would be so easy, so easy, he'd thought. I could just squeeze a little bit—hardly an effort—and watch her eyes pop out of their sockets, like Bev's had. But no. That was not what the Master wanted done, was it?
Her thrashing was over in a few more seconds. He'd put the cloth away, positioned the girl so she wouldn't slide down onto the floorboard, and then drove north toward the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, the high crests that split L.A. in two. He was breathing hard with exhilaration. The girl had managed to scratch his right hand, and two lines of blood welled from the flesh. He was following the Voice of God, the holy will of his Lord and Master, and now Benefield peered into the darkness beyond the range of the headlights
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