Blackburn picked up the pipe and shook it, listening to the rattle. He had used something similar once, so he knew that the pipe contained a stick of dynamite and a blasting cap. This was the simplest sort of pipe bomb, a bangalore torpedo. When he opened the third bunch of flowers, he found another.

His pulse was trying to break through his stitches, so he began to hurry. He unbuttoned a jacket pocket and took out the razor, dropped it, and stamped on it. He used the freed blade to slice off half of each fuse.

After rewrapping the pipes into their flower bundles, he closed the trunk and gathered up the razor's plastic shards. On the way to the Dart, he dropped them into the gutter.

He had his prescription filled at an all-night pharmacy. Then he went to his apartment, took four aspirin, and lay in bed with an ice pack on his crotch. He couldn't sleep, so he read the "Instructions to Follow After a Vasectomy" sheet over and over.

Instruction #8 said that it would take from fifteen to thirty-five ejaculations to clear the sperm from his tubes. After fifteen ejaculations, he was to bring a specimen to Responsible Reproduction for examination.

Blackburn doubted that he would remain in Kansas City long enough to do that.

The name of the woman in gray, the next Monday's Times said, had been Leslie Bonner. She had shared her apartment with her mother.

She had placed her second bomb outside the door of an obstetrician/gynecologist's office in Overland Park. It had gone off when she was twelve feet away, and her head had hit the sidewalk when she fell.

Her car had been found nearby, with another bomb in the trunk. The police were investigating to discover the source of the dynamite.

Blackburn looked at the picture of Leslie Bonner for his entire morning break.

Either she hadn't noticed that the fuse on her second bomb was shorter than the one on her first, or she had thought that it didn't matter. She had trusted the maker. She had failed to understand the consequences.

No one had saved her from herself.

Blackburn dropped the newspaper into the garbage. He worked until the end of his usual shift and left Bucky's without cleaning the grill.

At his apartment, he gathered his possessions and put them into his duffel bag. Then he lay on the bed and waited for night.

She hadn't looked like a Leslie. If anything, Blackburn would have guessed her to be a Lisa, or a Lydia. Thinking about her, he started to have an erection, but the stitches pulled at his skin and stopped it.

At eleven o'clock, he went into the bathroom and examined his incision. The swelling was gone and the stitches were dissolving, but his scrotum was still bruised. He put a new gauze pad over the wound, pulled up his jeans, and took his duffel bag out to the Dart. The weight made him ache. He wasn't supposed to carry anything heavy yet.

He drove to the east side of the city and parked a few blocks from the house of the roses. He tucked the Python into the back waistband of his jeans so that it was hidden by his jacket, then walked the rest of the way. The street was quiet, the homes dark.

The house's shades were drawn, but there was a light on inside. As Blackburn stepped onto the porch, he heard the sound of televised laughter. R. Petersen was watching David Letterman.

Blackburn took the pieces of fuse from his pocket and tied them together. He lit one end with a match, then held the knot in his left hand while he took the Python into his right. He pressed the revolver's muzzle against the doorbell button.

When the door opened, he tossed the fuse inside. R. Petersen turned toward it, and Blackburn hit him behind the ear with the Python. Petersen fell.

Blackburn went inside and closed the door as Petersen crawled across the hardwood floor toward the fuse. Blackburn stepped around him and turned up the volume on the television set.

Petersen reached the fuse and slapped at it.

Blackburn took a pillow from a chair, pressed it over Petersen's head, and fired one round through it. The fuse sputtered out by itself.

He found a roll of tens and twenties in a dresser drawer in the bedroom, and a half-grown, black-and-white mongrel pup in the kitchen. He found a box containing dynamite, blasting caps, crimpers, and fuse hidden among junk in the basement.

When he was ready to go, he carried the box outside and dumped it on the street. Then he returned to the house and lit the fuse he had looped around the living room. That done, he took the pup and left. The pup was heavier than she looked, and she squirmed. By the time Blackburn reached the Dart, he was sore and had to take aspirin.

He didn't think that the single stick of dynamite in Number Twelve's mouth would endanger the neighboring homes, but he stopped at a pay phone and called 911 anyway. He didn't know the house's exact address, but he told the dispatcher which street and block.

Then he drove north on I-35. He would dump the Dart in Des Moines, acquire another car, and go on to Chicago. He had never been there.

"Chicago sound good?" he asked the pup.

The pup gnawed on the butt of the Python and growled.

Blackburn was having trouble thinking of a good name for her. Maybe he wouldn't give her one.

VICTIMS NUMBER FOURTEEN AND FIFTEEN

The '68 Fury that Blackburn had bought in Joliet was running rough, and the dipstick was the color of road tar. What was needed, he decided, was a tune-up and an oil change. He would have to pay someone else to do it, though. He had no tools. Tools were too heavy to take along on sudden departures.

So he looked in the Greater Chicago Yellow Pages and called garages. When he had called a dozen, he picked the cheapest one and drove the Fury there on a Monday morning. He had three hundred and ten dollars in his jacket pocket. Monday was his day off from the Chi-Town Chicken Hut, so he planned to do his laundry when the car was done. With luck, he would be home before Dog peed on the carpet.

He enjoyed the drive to the garage. Chicago was cold, and the gray sky hung low. Blackburn liked it. Blue skies and sunshine made him feel as if there were no place to hide. But when everything was the color of cold flesh, he could dissolve into a wall if he had to.

Ed amp; Earl's Auto Service was a concrete-block building with two garage-bay doors. Blackburn parked the Fury in the lot out front at 8:30 A.M. and went inside through a glass door marked CUSTOMER ENTRANCE. This brought him into a waiting room that smelled of the new tires stacked along its walls. The only sound was the hum of the pop machine. No one was behind the service counter. Blackburn waited a few minutes and then went to a second glass door that led to the garage itself. Through this door he could see a car on a hydraulic lift and another car on the floor beyond it. But no people were in sight.

Blackburn pushed open the door and stepped into the garage. It stank of grease and cigarette smoke, and was warmer than the waiting room.

"Hey!" a voice called. "No customers in here!"

Blackburn looked to his left. Four men in green coveralls sat on folding chairs in the back comer. They were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Two of them looked like teenagers, with long hair and sparse mustaches. The other two were older. One was a big man with dark hair and dense beard stubble. An oval patch on his chest spelled "Ed" in red thread. The other man was shorter but heavier, with a crewcut, thick forearms, and an enormous gut. His patch said "Earl."

"I've brought my car in," Blackburn said. "I spoke to someone here on Saturday. On the phone."

Ed stood, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out on the cement floor. He was about six foot four, and solid except for a beer belly. He looked angry, but Blackburn thought that might be because of his black eyebrows.