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appeared. Jeff swallowed hard as he read: "Mr. Ferris, please see me in my campus office sometime Thursday afternoon."
    Busted.
     

 
CHAPTER 3
     
    Cheryl's gut lurched ominously as she walked into the BSC lobby. As long as it only rumbles, she thought. Trapped in the women's room wouldn't be a good first-day impression.
    She didn't exactly understand her misgivings. Both interviews had gone well, and Doug had extended the job offer quickly enough. She certainly seemed to hit it off with her new boss. Maybe that was the problem. She didn't want to hit it off too well. She knew how her looks affected men. On the job, it irked her. Off the job, she never found the time for it to matter.
    Replaying the interviews in her mind, she decided that neither Doug nor his all-male staff had seriously questioned her. Everyone had concentrated on selling BioSciCorp. Why were they so eager to hire her? Not that she didn't need the job...
    Doug stood when she knocked on the jamb of his open office door. He towered over her. Six foot two, she guessed, and maybe 195 pounds. His black hair was thick and a bit unruly, with a touch of gray at the temples. He had nice eyes, she thought. Gray or very pale blue? She couldn't decide. A warm smile.
    And I'm questioning his reasons for hiring me?
    Well into the welcome-aboard orientation, Cheryl worked up the nerve to ask him about the softball interview questions. Doug took a bulging folder from a stack on his desk. He flipped through it, theatrically plopping several thick papers onto the blotter. They were dog-eared from use and thickly annotated with highlighting marker and scribbles in the margins.
    Clearly, he wasn't going to explain. Cheryl took a paper, a reprint from the Proceedings in Neural Computing, from the top of the stack; she had written it. She checked all the articles he had selected. She had authored or coauthored every one. Doug, it seemed, had pored over every one of her professional articles and papers. Their well-worn condition made clear an interest in her work long predating her recent job feeler. So much for a good first-day impression. "You're right, of course," she said. "These say everything you need to know about my capabilities. I apologize for being so touchy."
    Doug studied her frankly, a twinkle in his eye. "I can say with absolute conviction that I admire you solely for your mind."
    It annoyed her that in some unliberated recess of her mind she took umbrage at his jest.
     
    Like noontime most weekdays, the condominium was largely empty. The first moans that drifted through the stairwells and down the hallways went unremarked. The moaning grew gradually louder, more insistent, and began making its presence known throughout the building. A mother blushed for her totally oblivious three-year-old, and turned up her TV. The mail carrier in the foyer smiled at the same imagined lust. Len Robertson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service who was working the second shift that week, pulled his out-and-about wife's pillow over his head, hoping to fall back asleep.
    The moans grew louder and somehow unhappy. There was a hint of wildness, and then of pain, under the inarticulate whimpering. Embarrassed, the mother swept up her son and carried him, screaming in protest, on a suddenly urgent errand. Robertson threw off the blanket in disgust and donned his robe. He met the equally puzzled postal worker in the hall.
    Robertson was about to suggest calling the police when the ambiguous moaning became an anguished scream. His memory coughed up a name. Jeffrey Dahmer: the cannibal killer in Milwaukee who tortured and murdered people in his apartment. Was it too late for the police? Robertson ran to his apartment for the handgun in his nightstand. "Call nine-one-one," he shouted, not waiting to see whether the letter carrier obeyed.
    "No, no, noooo !!" Screaming filled the hall. But from which floor? Robertson burst through a fire door into the stairwell, where noise