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eBook Category: Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: The media calls him Bloody-Shoes. Midwife Joanna Michaels follows the case intently. Murder by murder she sees a terrifying pattern emerge ... moment by moment she begins to understand the gruesome bond that ties the mad killer to his doomed victims. And now, she knows that she too is vulnerable ... alone. Afraid. Caught in a deadly never ending nightmare, she must shun every shadow, watch every step, for somewhere, his scalpel is waiting...

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Avon, 1997
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002

7 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [886 KB], eReader (PDB) [296 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [284 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [254 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [238 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [291 KB], hiebook (KML) [659 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [320 KB], iSilo (PDB) [234 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [292 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [328 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [389 KB]
Words: 87000
Reading time: 248-348 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

CENTER>Prologue

Sarah's gray head rocked on her long, ribbed neck as her unthinking fingers tapped computer code in through the terminal keyboard. The motion, an unconscious habit, signified her wonder at how much the matchmaking game had changed since her mother had played it for sixty years.

Her mother still played matchmaker, when it came to Sarah's and Sarah's brother's and sister's children. Grandparents had a right to try, she and her mother agreed. Especially when the grandchildren showed little interest in matchmaking for themselves--at least not with anything permanent in mind.

Sarah could not, would not, make matches for her own three daughters. She wouldn't dream of trying, though at fifty-seven she felt vaguely unfulfilled, with no signs of marriage on any of their rich horizons. The thought that even her youngest daughter already made more money at her profession than Sarah did after thirty years as office manager (and now administrative assistant) to the company president, did not comfort her one iota. All her daughters' money could not buy Sarah any grandchildren.

Still, she would not want her daughters to come here to her matchmaking service simply so she could have grandchildren. She was glad they had chosen not to, even though that meant Sarah might waste the rest of her life, nodding and bobbing over this keyboard. There, as dusk gathered threatening shadows close around Sarah's thin shoulders, she might go on bringing immortality to others, only go to her own grave knowing with an awful final ache that, for her, this was the end of the line...

...Forever.

Sad as that was, she disagreed with her daughters, who thought that the type of matchmaking she did on The Service's computers was wrong or even immoral. If people wanted to be mated through a data bank, that was their business. As far as she was concerned, though, a man or woman was more than just a list of physical and mental and emotional traits you wanted to pass along to your children. A couple--lovers and parents--had to be forged through synergy, that magical force that made one plus one equal more than two.

Human matchmakers sensed things about people, had hunches. Her mother did.

"Look at the eyes," her mother used to say. "The eyes can't lie. And watch out for flashy smiles."

Her mother had common sense and intuition.

But computers had neither sense nor intuition.

Artificial intelligence? Impossible! No matter what scientists said, the old rule about data entry prevailed: GIGO...Garbage In; Garbage Out.

She worried that the people who offered data about themselves might furnish her with garbage based on a vested interest that no one knew they had.

Human matchmakers could believe garbage, too. Even her mother--one of the best--had been fooled once or twice by a clever con man's lies. But that could happen even when a couple came together without a matchmaker's help: men lied about themselves; deception always accompanied courting. Women batted eyes concealing their wariness. They had learned how to play the game face to face, as couples should play it.

But, faceless computers effaced the bold outlines of lies. Belief in their electronic genius imparted an aura of truth to their output, and few women--or men, for that matter--ever questioned a computer printout's honesty. The portfolio Sarah prepared from the facts she keyed into her machine, stood in for the man himself, spoke for him, did all the courting and convincing for him. Some, she knew, would be lies whispered into ever so willing, ever more desperate ears.

And of the women who pored over the portfolio pages, one or more would buy it all, would choose the "him" it portrayed as the perfect one for herself. Though Sarah, who had seen his eyes and his smiles, knew he might not be.

Sarah worked this Friday night after hours, as a favor to her boss, Ansel Harrington, who had asked her to stay and catch up on the week's work. Portfolio demand had exploded as more and more women in their mid-to-late thirties abandoned hope, afraid that the old patterns of courtship and marriage would re-surge too late for them. Sarah could use some help.

She hated to leave the office after dark, and with Daylight Savings Time ending the day after tomorrow, even a normal work day's end would find her scurrying down their office suite corridor, nervously searching the shadows in darkened doorways. On Monday she'd ask Ansel to find her an assistant.

Meanwhile, dusk settled outside and crept into the room through the office's eastern windows. Only a dim square of light from the unoccupied adjacent front office, a bright fluorescent patch from the swing-arm lamp on her desk, and the wavering blue glow of her computer screen kept the shadows at bay from her work center. She typed in the codes for physical features of the man preferred by the woman requesting a portfolio: eyes, brown; hair, curly and black; height, six-foot even; frame, medium. Mental features: I.Q., 135 or better; education, college graduate; socially well integrated and stable; no personal history of addictive behavior or drug use; no history of arrests or commitments to mental hospitals.

How would they know this was all true? Again, this question left Sarah uneasy. So many men who came in to apply for the program fit this description. She always looked into their eyes for a moment.

Most men's eyes twinkled shyly, as though they were somewhat embarrassed at their boldness. Some had the far-away intelligent gaze of a man contemplating a significant commitment he couldn't easily withdraw from. Sarah liked these men, didn't hesitate to send them on to The Harrington Service's counselor for screening.

But others' eyes wavered and ducked her scrutiny. And others' burned like coals that wouldn't take much prodding to burst into uncontrolled flame. She breathed a nervous sigh, worried that one of the men fitting the description this woman had called for would have eyes like that.

Probably not. The counselor screened most of the bad ones out, to Sarah's relief. But not all of them; some passed the psychological tests designed by Dr. Ansel Harrington to protect his clients from one another and themselves.

Still Sarah doubted these tests. She'd have gone strictly by the eyes to decide. She wished the women themselves had a chance to look into those eyes before they were exposed. But that was forbidden under the strict code of ethics that bound The Harrington Service. All that the women knew, all they apparently cared to know, was the eye color.

She sighed and shuddered and shifted in the pool of light that remained in the darkening room. The slight click of the keyboard under her fingers, the squeak of her chair back as she adjusted her position, and the dwindling muffled chatter of vehicles passing on Market Street five stories below, masked the stealthy approach of footsteps toward the outer office door.

She typed in the information required by The Service...Family medical history: No known genetic illnesses; no senility last two generations; no suicides; no mental illnesses. Family social history as requested by the client: No special requirements. Religion: No preference...

A siren wailed outside, as she fed the final data into the computer. It faded away, and was followed by others as she saved and reviewed the data against the form she had entered it from. She attributed her rising disquiet to the sirens' melancholy wail as it floated back from the east.

She discovered an error in her data entry, corrected it and saved it again. Now she only had to feed in the print command, and the computer would retrieve from its files the information on at least three men fitting the profile requested; and the printer would spit out their portfolios. She would place the portfolios in the locked library, and on Monday morning, dispatch them in confidence to the woman who'd asked for them. Who she was, she'd learn from the coded information in another computer file.

At her finger's touch of the print key, the printer behind a noise abatement screen whined and clattered to life. She sat back and pushed backward her chair. Then she froze.

In the dim lit doorway stood a man. He took three steps forward. She knew by the way he held his hands that he was going to kill her.

As the printer chattered away, he approached. When he left the blinding back-light of the doorway, she could see his eyes. Rage and pain seethed behind them, as she'd known from the first time she'd seen him. And she knew who he was, but...Oh God...in her fear, she could not remember his name.

She knew what he wanted; she had to warn them he was after them for some crazy reason even Sarah didn't know.

But...Oh, God...as his shadow rose between them, she couldn't remember his name. Then her unthinking fingers, with a keystroke, called up her portfolio program. She began to type in the data for physical features: eyes, code 3; hair, code 2; height, code 7...

He stood over her. The printer stilled as her heart did. Not enough data in yet, she hit the save key. In an instant the program disappeared from the computer screen.

A metallic gleam flashed before her eyes as she looked up at him for the last time. His code 3 eyes glinted as he brought the knife down at her throat. She did not feel it slash her carotid artery; the blood fled too quickly from her brain.

Still she had time enough to realize, with one awful gripping pang, that this was the end of the line...

...Forever.