a half miles away from his house, shuddering violently despite the oppressive heat of the day. If his mother only had any idea that Timmy’s murder had been captured on videotape, as well, one that hadn’t been destroyed …
He shuddered again, even harder this time. The proposition was just too frightening to even think about.
Sweat poured in rivers down his back and plastered his too-thick polo shirt against his skin like a freshly applied Band Aid as Nicholas rode his bicycle through the strip-mall. Wiping away a thick sheen of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his right hand, he flung away the excess moisture to the ground with a quick flick of his right wrist, cursing the oppressive summer weather. To put it mildly, the summer of 1977 was an extremely hot one in Chicago, hot enough to kill all the old people around the city who either couldn’t afford air conditioning in their high-rise apartment buildings or just didn’t know how to go about asking for it in the right way. The heat that permeated The Windy City that summer between the hours of two and four p.m. was the kind of heat that made people very angry with one another for no particular reason at all. The kind of heat that made them want to hurt each other. Badly. Years later, Nicholas would learn that it was the same blazing summer the ‘Son of Sam’ had chosen to terrorise New York City eight hundred miles to the east, selecting so many long-haired brunette victims that young women sporting dark tresses all around the Big Apple had eventually begun dying their hair blonde and demanding severe pageboys from their stylists in a terrified – and futile – attempt to avoid David Berkowitz’s unwanted advances. Despite all the elaborate precautions that had been taken, however, the Son of Sam would shoot and kill six people with his .44-calibre hand-cannon and wound seven more before his reign of terror finally came to an abrupt end when he’d received a parking ticket on the night of one of his many horrific crimes.
Nicholas shook his head in disgust at the pure amateurish nature of the pudgy-faced killer’s mistake as he passed by a bakery emanating smells delicious enough to make his stomach grumble, reminding him that he hadn’t yet eaten that day. Honest to Christ, though, a fucking parking ticket? How moronic could one person be? And the fact that David Berkowitz would later blame his violent attacks on orders from a neighbour’s barking dog would one day make Nicholas laugh. Some people blamed barking dogs for the adults they grew up to become. Not Nicholas, though. Not even close. He’d blame his mother. And why in the hell shouldn’t he? It was a much more natural way of processing the events of your life when you looked at things with an honest eye. And wasn’t that what it was all about when everything had been said and done? Looking at things honestly?
Goddamn right, it was.
In any event, here Nicholas was, finally ready to become a man. And what was the one thing all men needed?
Why, a woman, of course.
Nicholas finally came to a stop thirty seconds later and hopped off his ten-speed next to a rusted-out bike rack in front of Miller’s Hardware Store before glancing to his right. Thirty yards away, Claire Bishop was smoking marijuana cigarettes with a small collection of her friends behind a McDonald’s dumpster on the south side of the strip-mall, just like she always did around this time of day. Fucking drug addict.
Pulling up his shirt in the front in order to let in some air, Nicholas smiled to himself despite the disgust he felt inside for the girl’s smoking habit. He’d been watching Claire Bishop for months now, and after a great deal of planning on his part, he’d finally decided she’d be the one. The first one, at least. After that, who knew? He’d just need to wait and see where life took him from there.
Behind the dumpster, Claire took a healthy hit of a joint and blew out a huge cloud of smoke before giggling happily and passing it along to one of her friends. Even through the haze, it was easy to see just how pretty she was. Her long brown hair hung freely over her soft shoulders (the hands-down style at the time since nobody had yet heard of David Berkowitz or the preferred physical makeup of his