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children. The Milan family, resting comfortably the other side of the bed and breakfast, had come in from North Carolina on their way to the sights and sounds of the nation’s capitol, the museums and government houses. They were the picture perfect family; models for a portrait of pleasant. Norman Rockwell models for current day. And indeed they were damn pleasant. Pleasant to the tenth power. Pleasant and whole and happy and healthy and together, and all those outward characteristics others see and admire and resent at once as they can’t, for whatever reason, achieve. A perfectly typical father and mother, well dressed in yuppie attire down to their khakis, their children perfectly coffered and groomed and dressed as well, all four of them in some magical bubble Rae could not hope to ever achieve for Nia. Tonight’s flub proved a perfect example of this. How to fathom the way of an unhappy teen. How to fathom the way of things in this strange, odd, mysterious world.
     
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    Once abed, Rae felt the aloneness of being alone. In a world filled with pairings, people who held hands and joined dreams, Rae knew all too well she had no one in her adult personal life to fill a void she felt. At times the loneliness and the void receded, allowing her peace. At other times, it bubbled to the surface, a cauldron of sadness. And reading the latest bestselling ‘heal thyself’ opus, The Secret of Secrets, suggested by her best friend, Etta Pace, hadn’t helped.
     
    Etta—who often enjoyed a few weeks to a month of peace before her next trauma or turmoil—had shared her copy of the book. Dr. Geoffrey Caine’s voice had not helped one whit. In fact, she gagged on paragraphs filled with clichés and repeated saccharine-filled lines she believed about as insightful and useful as re-runs of TV’s Brady Bunch. What could Etta have been thinking when she forced the book on Rae, repeatedly insisting, “Take it, take it! You need it, and you’ll love it. Chicken Soup for the Soul kinda thing.”
     
    Frankly, the book did not live up to the standard of Chicken Soup. She placed the thin volume on the nightstand, schooched into her favored sleeping position, and attempting sleep, she instead wound up staring at the overhead fan as it whirred round; frrr-rump, frrr-rump to each cycle of its whirring life. Rae gave thought to the electrical current that acted as its lifeblood, and this led to thoughts of the spilling of human blood by this maniac in Charleston, West Virginia.
     
    She wondered if the killer might be a degenerate inbred creature, a prurient, despicable unwashed
     
    uneducated backwoods ignorant who could only ‘get off’ by playing God, holding life in one hand, death in the other. Else an equally sickening character, one who wanted to be a headline, hoping to join the infamous ranks of Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dalhmer, and that like. Else a mindless killing machine like Leather Face in the Texas Chainsaw Murder flicks?
     
    Sleep continued to elude Rae. Her mind raced with a curious search for patterns, connectitons and relationships she’d sought in the murder books, now safely tucked away in a bureau drawer yet in her mind. Each victim had owned a pet or two. Each had frequented the dog park somewhere in Charleston. Each had to use a vet. Each had to utilize the services of places like Petland. These crossings might not, to the casual observer, have a great deal of
     
    connectedness or importance, but to a trained law enforcement officer, these links screamed for investigation. She made a mental note to pursue whether or not Charleston authorities and-or Charleston FBI had exhausted such possibilities.
     
    Suppose the vet was a nutcase. Or the clerk at Petland who groomed each victim’s dog while keeping book on the human clients? Learning who was married and who was single. Suppose the handsome, smiling, friendly neighbor at the dog park had a lot more on his mind than allowing