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oblivion.
     
     

    Two
     
     
     
    He watched her for weeks from the shadowy interior of his parked car. She worked the late shift at Laguna Liquor Mart.
    That she was to be his victim was a happenstance. He had entered the store to buy a bottle of Chivas Regal to take with him to the beach in Galveston. To drink alone. To get drunk. There had been six serial murders within a year in Houston, none of them committed by him. He knew the modus operandi thanks to the thoroughness of the two Houston newspapers and television camera teams. Beheading with a sharp knife and, recently, since the killer was stepping up the viciousness of the attacks, a severing of the body limbs, taking them away from the scene of the crime. But knowing the method and what was expected of him so that he might copy the killer did not provide a likely victim or a fail-safe plan to get away with murder. Therefore, the Chivas.
    He took the bottle from a display shelf and walked to the counter. There she was. Waiting to ring up the order, smiling her pretty Hispanic smile, totaling his purchase on the cash register, handing him the change.
    He took in the white blouse she wore, the size of her breasts, the sweep of hair from the sides of her face, held back with a metal barrette at the top of her head. Loose, curly tendrils trailed close to her ears, whispering past silver-shell earrings that seemed molded and pressed into finely shaped earlobes. Small, delicate hands, the color of creamy coffee, lifted the bottle and set it gently into a brown paper bag. She wore three rings. A plain silver band on her right hand, a gold ring with a yellow stone, and a gold nugget ring on her left. One of her front teeth was turned slightly so that it hooked her top lip when she smiled. Her lower lip was full and, without lipstick, red as cranberry. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties. Lively, courteous, conscientious. She was his.
    He could not explain, were he asked, how he knew it must be her. These things just came to him. The timing was right. He felt pressed to find someone. All the victims thus far had been around her age, pretty like her, dark complexioned, working class. One of the other six had also been Hispanic. Perfect.
    Hurrying out to his car after that first meeting, gleeful and no longer requiring the quart of alcohol, he drove off the parking lot and across the street to a closed-strip shopping center. He backed into a space in front of Pilgrim's Dry Cleaning and waited. He could see the front of the Liquor Mart, and was not so far away he could not recognize the cashier.
    He followed her home. He came back late the next night to the liquor store. And as many nights as he could afterward. Memorizing her walk, which shoulder she carried her purse on, how long it took her to unlock the car door when she left after closing.
    She was always alone. She always parked her car at the right end of the building in the last slot, or if it was unavailable, as close to the store front as possible. She came to work five days a week at four in the afternoon and stayed until closing at midnight. The manager locked up and left an hour later.
    He obsessed about the clerk, wondering who lived with her. There were two other cars in the drive at her house when she returned home between midnight and one each working night. An old Caddy with a busted left taillight, and a cherry-red Chevy truck with a black tool box mounted below the back window. She might have a boyfriend. She might have two. He fantasized a ménage à trois.
    He wondered what kind of lingerie she wore, what she slept in, who her friends were. He imagined her life and, imagining, fell in love with her. You could not kill what you did not love.
    Tonight was the night. He knew her as well as he was going to at this distance. At twelve midnight he parked in front of the dry-cleaning store. He watched the front of the Laguna Liquor Mart, his pulse hammering in his throat, his palms beginning to sweat. He wore