She must keep fear at arm's length, Lynn told herself, despite the wild fluttering of her heart, must not give way to panic or hysteria. Otherwise her wrought-up state would warp her judgment and make her do something she'd regret.
The sensible thing to do would be to slow her pace slightly, turn and glance casually back at him, as any woman might do at dusk on a deserted street. It would not indicate that she actually thought that he was following her deliberately or with criminal intent. It would just imply slight bewilderment, a curiosity easy to understand. He wouldn't take offense and it would put an end to all doubt.
But somehow she couldn't even do that! What if she turned and saw that his eyes were fastened upon her as she feared they might be? What if she saw that they were not just the eyes of an annoyer of women, some tormented sex-starved wretch who couldn't resist making an ugly nuisance of himself—what if they were the eyes of a murderer?
What if they were the eyes of a man who had killed once and would not hesitate to kill again—a man with the murder weapon still in his possession, a man who would feel no qualms about putting a bullet in her heart if he suspected that she knew more than she did about Helen Lathrup's murder?
What if he'd found out in some way that she'd been the first to discover what he had done, and that she had been talking to the police, answering their shrewd and persistent questions all afternoon? What if he thought he'd left some damning clue, some tell-tale piece of evidence in Lathrup's office—something which had slipped Lynn's mind completely, but which might come back to her later?
She was quite sure she'd told the police everything. But how could he be expected to know that? Could he afford to let her go on living long enough for some damning memory to come back to her?
He might even be a homicidal maniac. She wasn't a child. She'd read a great many books that dealt with such horrors in a clinical, completely realistic way. One murder was just the beginning; just the igniting spark. They had to kill again and again. The first slaying made them even more dangerous, more insensately brutal and enraged. They weren't satisfied until they had vented their rage on many victims, had waded through a sea of blood.
The mental hospitals were filled with them but you never knew where you'd meet one—on the street, in a bus, sitting next to you in a crowded subway train.
"Lady, I just don't like you. All my life you've been getting in my hair. I've never set eyes on you before, but this time I'm going to wring your neck."
She saw the lighted window of a restaurant out of the corner of her eye and breathed a sigh of relief. She was almost abreast of it, but not quite—there was an empty store she'd have to pass first, as dark as a funeral parlor when the embalmer has turned out all of the lights and gone home for the night. And the footsteps seemed suddenly even closer, as if in another moment she'd be feeling his hot breath on the back of her neck.