Page 41 of The Accomplice
Binoculars.
He seemed to tilt his head.
‘Believe it or not, I’m looking at him right now,’ said Bloch, staring at the face in the window.
Lake moved forward, his nose an inch from the window. His breath misting the glass.
The man in the loft lowered the binoculars, turned away.
And ran.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SANDMAN
He lowered the compact binoculars, blinked, then brought them to his eyes again.
Gabriel Lake was in Lilian Parker’s apartment with the investigator, Melissa Bloch. The photographer at theNew York Posthad taken a photograph of them coming out of Delaney’s building last night along with Eddie Flynn.
Nothing to worry about, he thought. He turned his attention to the apartment next door, and Teresa Vasquez. Teresa was in her early twenties and worked when she could. She had a part-time position at the New York Public Library working weekends. During the week she fried chicken at Popeyes.
She had left her apartment that morning, accompanied by two FBI agents, to get some groceries and the morning paper before returning home. That had been useful as it allowed him to observe her protection detail. There were two agents in a car on the street, outside her building. They took charge of her at the front door from two agents who had escorted her downstairs from her apartment. The agents in the car were in their thirties, both in street clothes – blue jeans and dark hoodies. The two agents in her apartment were in suits. One younger with dark hair and a veteran with gray hair.
This was a sweet deal for the protection detail. No one was going to walk into a crowded fast-food joint, jump over the counter and shoot Teresa in the head. Similarly, the New York Public Library was a reasonably secure building, with metal detectors and security screening at the entrance. The danger points were getting Teresa from her apartment to her workplace, and then back again.
He would wait for an opportunity.
One would come. It was only a question of when.
He was good at waiting. He had practice. For years he had suffered with insomnia. Once he lay in bed, in the dark, his mind wandered over every possible terrible thing that might happen to him or his family. It had begun when he was around seven years old. He would get up once his parents had gone to bed and get into his closet. Sitting on the floor of the closet, surrounded by clothes hanging from the rail, he would read fairytales with a flashlight.
He read until it was almost dawn, then crept back into bed and fell asleep, exhausted. This pattern continued until he was too big to sit in the closet, and so he stayed in bed to read. The tales he came back to again and again were those involving sleep. It was a part of so many stories –Hansel and Gretel,Sleeping Beauty,Snow White,Goldilocks and the Three Bears, ThePrincess and the Peaand more. And then there were the stories of a figure who visited children who would not go to sleep – the Boogey Man, Wee Willie Winky, Ole Luk-Oie. These tales were there to encourage children to stay in bed. The Sandman, who would sprinkle his dust in your eyes and make you fall asleep, that was his favorite.
These stories, he knew, did not make him a killer. That was in him already. He fantasized about killing the family cat for years and would attempt to hurt it whenever he got the chance to do so unobserved. The cat, Lucy, always managed to get away unscathed. It hated him before he ever hurled a kitchen knife at it. Perhaps it sensed his nature when others could not. It would hiss at him and arch its back whenever he walked into a room. The cat feared him. To him, this was natural. He knew he should be feared. He learned not to question his impulses. There was no explanation required. A shark doesn’t need to explain itself. It is a shark.
Hewas a killer.
And that summer night on Coney Island beach when he first came across a woman, drunk and asleep on the sand, he realized his true calling and gave in to his nature. The sensations he felt that night still echoed through his memory and even his very limbs. His body physically shook with power.
And afterwards, he went back to his special place and put the woman’s eyes in a little tin box, lay down on the floor and slept like he had been awake for a hundred years. Nothing changed that feeling that came with a kill. Not even when he met Carrie. The sensation of seeing her for the first time, talking to her, stroking the small hairs on the back of her hand. She was the first woman he had been close to who he did not want to kill, merely to possess. But what surprised him most was his desire to be possessed by her. For Carrie to call him her man, her partner, her husband.
She was the one. His true love. And he would tear this city apart to save her.
He told himself it wasn’t too late. If he could rescue her from this nightmare, then she would be his forever. No one would stand in his way. And if they did, he would teach them what fear really felt like.
The FBI were afraid of him. He remembered the sweet smell of it on Delaney’s skin.
The two plainclothes agents in the unmarked sedan were fearful too. Not so the young, nonchalant protection officer who was now standing in the apartment belonging to Teresa Vasquez. The easy-going officer sat on her couch and readCosmopolitanwhile Teresa fixed coffee for him and his older, wiser partner.
Movement to his left caught his attention. He lowered the binoculars, and saw Lake standing in Lilian Parker’s apartment, his face against the glass.
Lake was looking straight at him.
For the first time in years, the Sandman felt a mild chill over his body. A cool tingling sensation at the bottom of his spine that worked its way up, sending gooseflesh over the back of his neck – his hair standing up.
Fear.
A very old feeling. Not one that had touched him for decades.
