At the sight of Megan, Louis Cicala felt aroused. The sensation startled him. It was the first time he had had an erection since he had both his testicles secretly removed to control his pedophilia. Sitting up straighter in the leather-upholstered seat of the royal jade Olds, he loosened his red tie and the starched collar of his white button-down Oxford shirt. The violins of Bach's Brandenburg concertos sang from all four speakers. As he turned down the volume on the Olds' CD player, his heart pounded with desire.

After eluding reporters five days ago at his home in New York City, an easy thing to do given his elaborate disguise and skills as a mimic, he'd flown from LaGuardia Airport straight to Madison, Wisconsin, where he'd rented an Olds, using a fake name. His Lincolnesque sideburns and beard were fake also. He was now Thomas Anderson, a traveling collector of rare books.

Sunlight flashed from the metallic trim on the door as Megan let it swing shut behind her. She was leaving a brick building of North Star Psychological Associates on Franklin Avenue, one of the main strips traversing Minneapolis.

Louis watched Megan walk down the steps. She hesitated a moment on the bottom step, then turned right and walked away from him. He ogled the unself-conscious swing of her slim hips and the way her red-and-black Amanda Smith knit dress revealed her curves. The little girl of twenty-two years ago had developed a magnificent body, Louis thought with a lascivious glint in his eyes. He wondered how she'd look without that leather attaché case over her shoulder and with her long blond hair blowing free rather than being confined by that tortoise shell barrette.

Glancing up at the shiny building he smiled as he pinpointed the psychologist's room he'd entered the night before and bugged. He had listened nervously as the psychologist probed into the dark recesses of Megan's mind. He was glad this was only her first psychotherapy session. He was determined to make it her last. 

He didn't want secrets coming out about her buried past. Newspapers and magazines were full of articles about men thrown in jail because of testimony "recovered" during therapy. As a judge he had upheld such testimony. How ironic it would be, then, if charges of child sexual abuse were to be his downfall. He couldn't let that happen. Not now, when in a mere two weeks he would realize his grand ambition - confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Megan threw her attaché case into the back seat of the red Pontiac Formula and climbed in behind the wheel. She pulled onto Franklin Avenue and headed toward Hennepin. Louis followed, letting two cars get in between his Olds and her Pontiac. She stopped at the red light on Hennepin, then went straight past Burch's Pharmacy and Becky's Cafeteria and down the hill to Lake of the Isles. Louis cruised slowly around the lake, keeping her red car just within sight.

It was a glorious spring day, rippled blue skies and unseasonably warm. Minnesotans who'd suffered through the long winter with its blizzards, bundled up against forty-below wind chills, were out in full force. Cyclists and rollerbladers whizzed past on the neatly manicured bike paths circling the lake. Joggers on the paved footpath closer to the lake, clutching their Walkmans, occasionally had to dodge fluttering flocks of geese and ducks. Winter white skin was being exposed to the hot sun for the first time since October and many a skin was sun-burned.

Louis watched as Megan signaled a right-turn. She pulled into a long driveway that led up to a stone mansion, partially covered with ivy. It's wrought-iron window frames and heavy arched front door gave it a classic European look. It had been built in the early 1920s by a flour-milling tycoon whose father had opened a mill near St. Anthony Falls in 1887.

Not too shabby, Louis thought to himself. She certainly married well.

He passed the house and took his first right onto a small street that runs along the canal leading to Cedar Lake. He parked along the curb, then quickly walked back toward Lake of the Isles.

When he caught sight of Megan again, she was walking up the cobbled front walk. She got down on her right knee and threw open her slender arms. A little boy of four, his sandy curls bouncing as he ran, raced across the springy manicured lawn and threw himself into her arms. She hugged him, kissed his cheek, then admired the Pokemon coloring book he was eagerly holding up for her to see.

Hand-in-hand, mother and child walked back to the house, where the middle-aged babysitter with a florid face stood in the doorway, watching and smiling.

"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

A little girl of six, her bone-straight hair flying around her cherubic face, ran past the sitter, down the steps and into her mother's arms.

Louis walked along the bike path, trying not to stare. At a distance of nearly fifty yards he had to strain to make out the details of the children. They followed their mother inside. The heavy mahogany front door with the solid brass doorknob closed. A few minutes later, the babysitter drove away in an old white Toyota Celica.

Louis sat down on a wooden park bench next to an overflowing trash can, lit a Marlboro, and waited. Dusk descended and shadows lengthened. The heavy traffic of joggers, bikers and rollerbladers slowed to a trickle and then virtually stopped. The streetlights came on, growing brighter and brighter as evening deepened into night.

Louis watched the lights go on in various rooms of the house and tried to guess where Megan was, what she was doing. First the kitchen. Then the upstairs bathroom. Then the rooms in the upper left, probably the children's rooms.

Louis saw no sign of the husband.

He checked his watch. It was 8:25 p.m.

He reached into his pocket for another Marlboro. He sat there for several more minutes, watching shadows pass back and forth before the upstairs windows, quietly smoking, and going over his plan to silence Megan.

Chapter Two

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