I. For six straight hours, she had driven through violent winds and unrelenting rains. And now here she was in Wells, Nevada. It was 3:00 am, Saturday morning in mid-July.

Though she and her sister had grown up not far from here, Beatrice Rose considered Wells the end of the earth. "A dirty little town with dirty buildings and dirty streets," her sister Melody had described it. "Don't forget the truckers, prostitutes, and cowboys," Beatrice had always reminded her. That was years ago, before some psycho son-of-a-bitch had murdered Melody and then, with surgical precision, removed her heart.

The image of her sister's brutal murder haunted Beatrice, and as she pulled into the pump-then-pay Texaco station, she again remembered the joy she had had felt in taking the life of her sister's killer, Frank Crawley, a man who had murdered twenty women in the past seven years. The sensation of taking of Frank Crawley's life and removing his heart had been exhilarating. Just before she'd left the room containing his corpse, she'd written in blood, on the mirror across the room from the bed, "Here lies the Thief of Hearts. May his soul rot in hell."

As she stepped from the car and to the pump, Beatrice felt that, at long last, she could begin to call it even. It gave her pleasure to imagine Frank Crawley suspended like a side-of-beef in some locker room in Hell.

At thirty-five, Beatrice was good to look at. She had a vague sense of this. Tall and thin, she had slightly kinky red hair that spun and wove itself to her shoulders, a pretty face with a long nose and occasionally pouting lips. There was her perfectly proportioned body that she pretended to conceal beneath a tattered sheer blue T-shirt. She wore tight, white shorts. Her wire-rimmed glasses made her look almost ordinary.

After twisting off the gas cap, she inserted the nozzle into the tank and squeezed. She liked to squeeze things, and now strength mixed with the tranquility that always came after an execution filled her.

Buoyed by the tired joy that always followed these killings, she glanced to the highway. Rain was still coming down in buckets--that was good, for rain cleansed everything--and the station's black tarmac glistened beneath sizzling lights.

"What I need now," she said, looking back towards the store and noticing the balding little man at the next pump, "are a pack of cigarettes, a six-pack of beer, a nice meal, and a place to sleep. That's what I need."

Her voice carried in the rain.

Puzzled, the old man smiled at Beatrice-she noticed two of his lower teeth were missing--then said, "I think I'll pass on the cigarettes and beer, honey."

Beatrice gazed at the man as she clicked the nozzle several times and topped the tank. Thin and wiry, the old guy reminded her of a buzzard. She figured he was around sixty-five, probably hadn't had sex in years. An old man is a dirty thing, she remembered reading somewhere.

"You do that, old man," she chuckled, shaking her head; "you just fuckin' do that." Just keep you fucking mitts offa me, she thought.

When she finished, she banged the nozzle back into the pump, locked her gas-cap, and strode to the store. She'd give the old buzzard an eye-full.

But the old buzzard hissed at her as she passed his car. Not looking his way, Beatrice noticed an old woman in the front passenger seat and wondered if she were dead or asleep. Has to be the old fucker's wife, she thought, adding, must be like screwing the dead.

Entering the frigid air of the store, she was hit with the aroma of coffee mixed with stale hotdogs. She could eat a hotdog about now. Perhaps because she was tired, she could almost smell Frank's blood mixed in with the slight aroma of coffee and the odor of stale ground pork. Wondering if she had completely washed him off, she examined her hands and noticed a fleck of blood on her left wrist. She walked to the back where she selected the cheapest six pack of beer she could find.

The man behind the counter was a short, balding overweight Latino, whose name label read "Luis." Forcing a smile, eyes two dull holes, Luis took her twenty dollars. After he gave her a receipt, she turned, six-pack under her right arm, and headed for the door. There was a motel across the street, and there she'd hide out for a while.

"Wasn't very nice, the way you talked that old guy," came a low voice from the row of slot machines to the left of the door.

She nearly jumped out of her skin and dropped the six-pack. When she'd entered the store, she'd glanced around the place and hadn't seen anyone besides Luis.

"Sorry," she said, not glancing toward the voice and putting her left hand on the glass door.

"That old man's my father."

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and this time Beatrice looked at the man. There, seated in front of the second machine was a slightly overweight middle-aged man with thinning light brown hair, thick black glasses and a toothpick in his mouth. Hair grew in patches on his face. The glasses and toothpick reminded her of Frank, and her heart skipped several beats as she reminded herself that the Thief of Hearts was dead as a fucking doornail; she'd even removed his heart.

"What'd you say?" she asked, not certain that she'd heard correctly.

"What I said was that that old man out there is my daddy. I think you hurt Daddy's feelings."

"No shit?" she said.

"It's what I said," came the reply.

Beatrice knew when someone was putting her on, and she disliked this man instantly. "I thought he was just some dumb piece of shit old man looking to get laid by something younger," she said without smiling.

The man looked squarely at her. He had beautiful, glacial blue eyes. "Hey, I think I seen you before," he said, slowly. A smile revealed a missing top tooth.

Her hand still on the door, she studied him. Definitely, she knew this man from somewhere. The position of his missing tooth, combined with the eyes, was the telling detail.

"Maybe you have," she sighed, pushing the door open slightly while keeping her eyes on him. "But I don't remember."

"You danced in one of those clubs in Vegas."

"'One of those clubs'?" She glanced back at him. "Really?"

"Titty bars. Lots of those in Vegas."

Beatrice hated assholes. This type always confused being offensive with flirting.

"I suppose there are," she calmly responded. If she'd had a steaming cup of coffee--or, better yet, a bottle of acid--she would have tossed it in his face.

"You danced alongside your sister, didn't you? Melody was her name, and she had a real nice ass. A pussy that wouldn't quit, I heard. Star was yours. I'm Mel."

Beatrice found herself imagining the thrill of mutilating the Mels of the world.

"I'm a teacher, not a dancer," she said, pushing the door all the way open and stepping over the threshold. "You're making this shit up, Mel or whatever your name is."

"Maybe," he yelled behind her, "but I doubt it. I bet my paycheck that you rode this old boy's bone several times."

Forget this asshole, she counseled herself as she walked through rain to her car; just forget him.

The old man was gone--she'd figured on that--and as she stepped into her car, she couldn't forget what Mel had said.

Beatrice did remember this man from about ten years back. Mel had been much thinner then and had not worn glasses. Moving around the front of her car to the driver's door, she remembered that while Mel could be a real charmer when you first met him, Beatrice and the other dancers had quickly written him off as a real prick.

When she pulled away from the pump, Beatrice gave one last glance toward the store. Through the large plate glass window, she could see that Mel--it had to be Mel--was still seated in front of the machines. "Fuck you, Mel," she muttered.

II. The two-story motel across the street looked like a Howard Johnson's; only it was a lot dirtier. The once white stucco was a dirty brown, an effect of windstorms. The name on the marquis was "Quick Rest." Under "Quick Rest," she read "Low rates. Cable TV and VCR in each room." Three or four cars, all with Nevada plates, were parked in the slots in front of the rooms.

The place would have to do.

In the office, she took the key from a slightly chunky young Latina named Luisa. Luisa gave her a fleeting glance and a nervous smile. She had dull holes for eyes, which meant she probably had no soul.

Beatrice smiled back, imagining how nice it would be to run her fingers through Luisa's long black hair and over her body and, finally, to taste the plump woman. Wondering if Luisa were interested, Beatrice paid for one week, and then headed to her room.

For one week, she stayed in room 107, three doors down from the office. For three days, she kept a TV news station on for most of the day. Each day, wearing the skimpiest clothes she could find, she walked down to the office to use the computer. Each day, as she logged onto the computer, she could feel Luisa's eyes on her body.

On the fourth day, shortly after noon, she read over the Internet a report from a southern Idaho newspaper. The body of Frank Crawly had been discovered. Apparently, a group of teenagers had been using several rooms at the old hotel for parties when one young couple had found the corpse. The picture on the screen showed a much younger Frank Crawley.

The smell of the decomposing corpse must have been awful, Beatrice thought to herself, logging off and glancing behind her and to the right at Luisa, whose head was down, her long hair flowing onto the counter, as if she was studying something in front of her. Beatrice was surprised it had taken this long to find the Frank, the Thief of Hearts. The Internet report had mentioned that an investigation was under way.

That afternoon, as she was relaxing in her room and pouring through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dallowy, Luisa came to her room. Without even knocking, Luisa entered, and Beatrice was ready for her. Not saying a word, the women undressed each other. In bed, Luisa proved to be quiet but extremely gentle and affectionate, and when she awoke in the morning Beatrice found herself craving the other woman's body.

It was on the afternoon of the seventh day that Luisa tried to start anything approaching a conversation.

"What you think of that shit up in Boise?" Luisa asked in broken English.

"What shit?" Beatrice asked, feigning innocence. They lay next to each other in bed, sweating even though the air was on full blast and watching Judge Judy lay into another nitwit.

"That guy they found."

"What guy?" Beatrice rolled onto her side, kissed Luisa on the cheek, and wrapped her arm around her. Luisa turned and put her mouth on Beatrice's.

Thinking, Luisa drew slightly away. "The guy, you know. The fucker kills people and takes their heart." Her breath was warm.

"Thief of Hearts?" Beatrice asked in a husky voice.

"Yes. Si. This is what they call him. Thief of Hearts."

The memory thrilled Beatrice, and she felt warmth running up her back and between her legs. Rubbing a hand under Luisa's navel, she asked, "Cops find the killer?"

"Fuckin' cops don't got a clue," Luisa said, warming to Beatrice's touch. "They never do."

"You're right there," Beatrice answered, slowly approaching mild ecstasy.

III. Later that night, thinking of Luisa, Beatrice lay on her firm double bed, the TV turned to one of the movie channels. Outside, the wind howled. A hot dry wind, like this one, almost always meant rain.

She had just cracked open the first can of the six-pack she had purchased an hour before when she heard a knocking on the door. It was light at first but, when she didn't get up to answer right away, heavier and heavier.

Beatrice glanced at her watch. It said 11:12.

"Who is it?" she yelled.

The knocking continued, and behind the knocking she could hear a low throaty singing.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," she murmured, thinking, A drunk trucker, a drunk cowboy.

"Hold your horses!" she shouted.

She eased herself off the bed and, beer can in hand, made her way to the door.

Of course, it wasn't a cowboy; it wasn't a trucker. It was Mel. She recognized him immediately--and with great loathing. He wore a red flannel shirt and brown work boots.

"Hey ya, Star," he said, grinning hugely. The toothpick dangled in his mouth. He reeked of alcohol.

"How many times I gotta tell you? I'm not Star," she responded coldly. "I'm Beatrice, I'm tired, and so why don't you leave me the fuck alone?"

When he didn't say anything, Beatrice set to close the door.

"You hurt my daddy's feelings," the man chuckled, swaying slightly.

"Wasn't your daddy, dumb shit."

"How you know?"

"Because I know. I wasn't born yesterday."

She was in no mood for this.

"Can I come in?" he whined.

"No. You don't go away, I'll call the manager."

"Your girlfriend? You do that," he said, spitting out his toothpick.

When she tried to close the door, he put a meaty hand out and blocked it.

"Look," she said. "I'm tired. Maybe some other night. I'll be here tomorrow night," she lied.

"Oh, all right," he said with forced resignation. He took his hand away from the door, but when she tried to slam it he stepped forward and blocked it with his right foot.

"Jesus Christ, Mel," she sighed. "You don't want to do this. You really don't want to fuck with me." She remembered the knives in her suitcase, which she had left in the bathroom.

"Sure do," he almost yodeled. The wind raised wisps of hair on his head.

Taking a sip from of her beer, she turned sideways from him and thought. Then she looked at him.

"Got a family, you sorry-ass loser?" she asked. She tried to sound flirtatiously vulgar.

"Nope. Old lady left seven years ago. Kids, too."

"Still in Vegas, you miserable fucker?" Her heart pounded. Men like Mel preferred woman who talked to them like that.

"Trailer in Pahrump. It's a little town...."

"Oh, yeah, I know Pahrump," she said, forcing friendliness into her voice.

He paused.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well, what?" She smiled.

"Well, can I come in?"

She opened the door all the way, stood back, and let him enter. When he closed the door behind her, he said, "Now this is what I call service?"

"I guess," she responded, trying to make her voice purr. "You oughta know, you pile of crap."

She moved closer to him and asked, "Think you can handle me?"

"Sure," he said. He glanced at the TV. "What's on?"

"Some Schwarzenneger movie."

"Want me to bring in some more beer?"

"Got some next to the bed." She pointed. "Drink all you want."

She walked up to him, put her arms around him, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "But, fuck that, let's not do beer. Maybe later."

"Later?"

She nodded. She knew only a few motel rooms were occupied, and certainly not those right next to hers.

She nodded toward the bed. "Get in and get that tool ready, big boy."

"Just like that?" he asked.

"Just like that. For old time's sake."

"So you were the dancer."

"Of course I was, dumb shit."

As he began to unbutton his shirt, she pulled her sweater off. She was wearing nothing underneath.

"You look good, babe," he said, removing his pants.

"Thanks." She looked at the bulge through his underpants.

"Look," she said, "let me go into the bathroom and tidy up for you." She watched him get naked.

"Star, honey," he said, "I'll take you any way I can get you."

She looked at him. "Nice cock," she said, stepping forward and taking it in her right hand.

When he was rock-hard, she released him, turned and walked to the bathroom.

When she returned, naked, he was watching TV. She couldn't have asked for more. Holding the knife behind her, pointed down, keeping her body angled so he couldn't see the weapon, she slipped between the sheets.

Lying so their shoulders touched, she held the knife with her left hand. He turned towards her, and she let him kiss her on the mouth. When he pulled down the sheet so he could suck one of her nipples, she turned toward him and stuck the knife into his gut, right up to the hilt.

She'd done this before. The entering knife made a familiar sucking sound.

Staring into his bulging eyes, she acted as if she were waiting for him to say something.

For several minutes, he lay on his side, staring at her, blinking, changing color. She smelled the blood, knew that her arms, her stomach, and her breasts were likely covered in it. She didn’t mind the blood.

She smiled and sat up in bed. He wouldn't have the strength left to grab her.

"Goddamn you," he choked, life pouring from him.

She almost felt sorry for this one. This one was truly stupid.

She watched as the poor son-of-a-bitch began trembling. Until he expired, he wouldn't stop shaking.

He babbled something again as blood dabbled the corner of his mouth. She couldn't make sense of the words.

"You poor stupid son-of-a-bitch," she finally said.

The moment had come, and in that instant Mel was gone.

IV. It was one in the afternoon when she pulled into a Shell station in St. George, Utah. Exhausted, she knew that as soon as she filled her tank she'd have to drive east and find a place to stay. It was already a clear, hot day, and she could drive until midnight if it didn't rain.

She had thought about the dilemma all the way down through the Nevada desert. Stupidly, Beatrice had signed her name to the register of the motel in Wages. And while she had not written her real name or her correct address, she had given her license plate. The license plate would lead authorities to the DMV in Las Vegas, and they'd find out that the William Parsons it was registered to was her next-door neighbor. George would be questioned.

But, then aqain, she assured herself as she listened to the gas hiss into the tank that it was likely neither Luisa nor Luis would give much of a description. Luisa would probably play dumb if she wasn’t too upset by the amount of blood. When Beatrice had left, showered for the trip, the blood had soaked into the bed, ruined the blanket and sheets, dabbled the walls, and even spotted the floor.

"Guess it all depends," she tiredly muttered as she leaned back against the car and, having set the handle, waited for the tank to fill. Eyes closed, she said it again: "It all fucking depends."

"Depends upon what?" The gentle voice came from the other side of the pump. She opened her eyes with a start. Thirty seconds before, she'd been alone on this pump.

"I dunno," she said, looking at him. He was a man of medium height, with a long nose, sad eyes, and a funny smile. "Upon finding a place to stay, I guess," Beatrice added. "Know any good places?"

Instinctively, she knew there'd be no trouble, and when he said, "Well, you can stay with me and my wife," she knew he was a man she could trust. This one didn’t want her pussy.

"You don't know me," she said, clicking the pump handle to top off the tank.

"You don't know me, either."

"I'm Beatrice." She nodded.

"Tom." He smiled. "Tom Khempis. Named after a fourteenth or fifteenth century Christian mystic."

"Wonderful," she laughed. "Everyone needs a name like that. You a mystic?"

"Sometimes."

She nodded. Beatrice had read about mystics and occasionally talked about them with her students.

"Shouldn't travel alone, Beatrice."

"Why not?" It seemed a reasonable thing to ask.

"There was a murder up in Boise a week ago."

"Nampa," she said without thinking.

"Nampa?"

She continued. "It's outside of Nampa where they found the guy. The Thief of Hearts they called him."

He nodded. "And then another according to the TV this morning."

Her veins ran cold. She got the impression that this man somehow new all about her. "Yeah? Pretty terrible, huh?"

"Up in Wells. Figured you'd know."

She cradled the nozzle on the pump, screwed the gas cap back on, and shut the small door to the tank. "Know what?" She turned to face him.

"Some guy's body found in a motel bed. Hands and feet missing."

Her body tensed like a fist. She didn't know why she'd cut off Mel's hands and feet. It has seemed appropriate at the time.

"World's pretty fucked up," she observed. "Someone's gotta do something. Maybe it’s up to you mystics."

He nodded.

Overhead, the sun blazed in a clear sky. It was over ninety degrees.

She was walking around to the driver's side to get her purse when he said, "I got a church about ten miles north of the city. My house is behind the church."

She stopped ten feet from the door and looked at him. "You a pastor."

"Some people say so."

"You're sure it's ok I stay with you?" she asked, glancing overhead at the sun.

"Elizabeth and I always welcome guests," he said.

"All right," she said. "You're on. How long did you say I could stay?"

He was closing the lid to the gas tank and didn't look up when he said. "I didn't. You can stay as long as you want, but it'd be nice if you were out in two weeks."

"Perfect." She turned and walked into the store.

After they had both paid, she followed him. The drive took her to a small church, wooden cross stuck in the ground out front. Behind the church, up against a red stone cliff, stood a one-story brick house.

V. A beautiful woman with long blond hair, Elizabeth had treated her like an old friend. Over a dinner of roast pork, mashed potatoes, and carrots, she told Beatrice how she and Tom had met at a university in Southern California. Later that evening, as the three of them sat in the front yard, Elizabeth had gone on and on about the visions of the sixteenth century Spanish mystic St. Teresa. Dreaming of Luisa's flesh, Beatrice had pretended to be fascinated, once observing, "I wish God would give me a vision."

Now it was around midnight, and Beatrice lay in bed in a small room just off the kitchen, thinking about Mel and wondering what this killing had to do with St. Teresa, Thomas a Khempis, Jesus Christ, or anyone else. She didn't really care for the pastor and his wife, who slept in the room next to hers; they were clinging people who centered their lives around shit like the Sermon on the Mount. Such people, she thought, are better of dead in today's world. Notions of murdering them in their sleep, of stringing their entrails around the house, struck her as amusing yet somehow misguided.

She'd read about forty pages of Jane Austen’s Emma before turning off her lamp, and now the full moon seemed to float just outside the window, shedding unnatural light into the room. Across the room, just over the TV, hung a reproduction of da Vinci's Last Supper, and that made her think of her grandmother, whose house in Wells had been full of Jesus reproductions. The very thought of the Son of Man, sitting in judgment of her, made her blood run cold. It had never occurred to her that, upon her own death, she might come under some kind of judgment.

From somewhere nearby, a coyote howled and, on this summer night, she felt chilled to the core of her dark soul. She wondered what Jesus would think of coyotes.

Maybe I'll just stop killing altogether, she thought to herself. Certainly, the occasionally obsessive desire to take the life of some man who struck her as an asshole had occasionally sapped her ability and desire to teach high school honors English over the years; she wondered if her obsession had somehow, over the years, made her less the human.

She knew, however, that her nature, her instincts were against it. She wouldn’t stop killing, God Almighty notwithstanding. Certainly, she thought to herself, Pastor Tom would have attributed her almost insatiable desire to kill, her love of the dark rush the extinction of human life gave her, to humanity’s own fallen, marginally depraved nature.

Her eyelids grew heavy, and wondering if, just this once, she should pray, she imagined that an angel was hovering nearby. When she opened her eyes, a kind of glow filled the air just beyond the foot of her bed. Thinking that she hadn't seen an angel since childhood, she realized that the so-called vision had been the effect of the moonlight. "Stupid," she upbraided herself, "stupid. There are no angels."

Yet, as the warmth of sleep began to take her, she remembered her grandmother telling her and Melody once that angels traveled sometimes on moonbeams. She and her sister had loved and believed in these stories.