over Frank or if the authorities suspected any connection between the boy's murder and his nightly cab rides between the homes of his aunt and mother.
Two days later, the boy's murder was front-page news. I read with interest as the police said they had no suspects, but were tracking down every possible lead. Details of the killing were sketchy. Officially, the police refused to comment on the condition of the boy's body, though rumors flew rampantly, and his mother went on record as saying her son's killer was a very sick person.
And she was right.
For one week, this wasMadison 's top story, attracting voluminous coverage in the newspapers and on television, but as leads dried up, the media seemed to lose interest.
Then, one week later, a twenty-year-old technical school coed was found, naked, mutilated, her body rumored to have been drained of blood.
Chapter 11
The Inevitability of Hunger
I feel like you're jerking my chain about these blood-drained bodies laying around. What was it? Two women? I feel like you're gonna tell me vampires did it. Did you start to wonder that?
No, sir, I did not. Even killer vampires fear exposure and do not leave bodies laying about, not when it is so easy to dispose of corpses. Your serial killers, however, they prefer leaving their victims where they can be found, their way of sending a message to the rest of humanity that they are superior.
So? Didn't you wanna do something about this, regardless of who was doing the killing?
Again, no. This was an affair for the local constabulary.
A bit cold, Farkus.
No, just pragmatic. My main concern was what it always is, that hunger comes.
Hunger comes? Whaddaya mean by that?
You wanted to know what there was to do in the wake of this sad episode, what there was to do with an entire city tensed and on guard. Hunger comes, that is all I can say.
Nothing is more sure, more certain. The hunger comes with the inevitability of the rising sun, its spidery tendrils climbing up and down my spine, plucking a symphony on my nerve endings.
A thousand years ago, the hunger would come daily. Now, one fairly small feeding each week is adequate. It's a weekly event, something to be planned for, but nothing of any great consequence; the act itself takes maybe a minute, while the planning, in a highly public, well populated city, merely consists of deciding which end of State Street to search for sustenance. Certainly, my existence is not comparable to that of say, a shark, which constantly searches for food. However, these two murders in close succession changed the casual nature of my feeding.
My night off usually meant an excursion to State Street, but on a fairly warm night in early-April, I found this artery silent, the usual coursing corpuscles absent from the street, evidently somewhere they perceived as more safe.
Of course, the street was not completely devoid of people, but they traveled in packs, seeking protection in their numbers. Several pairs of police officers paced the sidewalks on foot. Other constables drove up and down in their cruisers.
For the first time since arriving inMadison , my solitary presence onState Street felt conspicuous. A tingle made my whole body shudder, not that the hunger had really asserted itself, just a suggestion that it might if there was no one to be found walking without a companion.
A bold newspaper headline caught my attention from the inside of a vending box:
"Madison Mangler Makes More Malevolent Mayhem."
I dropped coins into the slot and removed the newspaper - the last one actually, the display copy - and began reading. There was a maniac on the loose, the newspaper asserted, even though the authorities strongly stated their unwillingness to link those two killings with each other, let alone with the similar killing a few months before. The authorities called it a "copy-cat crime," saying they had no evidence whatsoever that these crimes were related. Still, it seemed the media had chosen to vociferously insist otherwise. These nameless, faceless maniacs known as serial killers seemed all the rage in America, and Madison's media acted almost like Wisconsin's capitol needed its own homicidal maniac just to put their city on the map.
As I stood reading, a rather undistinguished student passed, stopped and attempted to read the headline over my shoulder. I turned, and our eyes met for a mere instant before he continued walking, a decided alacrity to his step. As I watched his gait, a police car moved closer, slowed to