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all the high-tech procedures that track killers. You know all that, but it neither frightens nor deters you. You prepare for that day. You welcome it.
    You’re like a film actor who understands full well that his every action and gesture will be viewed and dissected in a dark room in some not-so-distant future. This is your art. You are the director, you are the star. You disappear into your part, and watch yourself disappearing.
    After a while you exit the hotel, hail a cab, tell the driver to take you to the airport. At the rental car counter you use the second ID you’ve obtained to rent a vehicle. You pay by credit card, using the one you bought on the streets of Miami. These are simple measures, what any smart killer would do. Zigging and zagging, appearing to do one thing but doing something else.
    The Lyrca suit is folded up among the clothes in your bag. It compresses to the size of a hardback book. The weapon is still inside the manufacturer’s box, and that box is inside the paper sack from the sporting goods store in Miami where you purchased it. All perfectly legal.
    Across the desolate countryside you drive the rental car. Eventually there are signs for Broken Bow, Antlers, Heavener, Blanco. Pioneer names for redneck towns. Farmland, rolling hills, few trees. A scrubby landscape, more browns than greens. You buy gas with cash. You stop for a late lunch at a fast-food place along the highway. You studied the maps, memorized the route.
    You arrive at the small town in Oklahoma, drive through the decaying business district, swing by the white frame house where your target lives. A woman in her sixties. She should present no serious physical problems.
    You’ve studied the street names from an Internet map. Now you note the streetlights, their locations along the route you’ve chosen. You observe the trees, how densely leaved they are, picturing how much light will be cast along the path you will take. It will be brighter than you’d like, but not as bright as an open city street. The moon is new, so its glow is not a factor.
    Because it is hours before dark, you circle back to the interstate and cruise north, then pull into a Wal-Mart parking lot, slump in your seat as if napping, and watch to see if anyone pays attention to your car. If they do, you will leave. They don’t.
    When the sun sets, you drive back to the area where your victim lives. Because it is a small town, you park your rental in a location where you are least likely to be noticed, where strangers congregate. Tonight your staging spot is a country music bar called Blue Heaven. Five blocks from the target’s house.
    In the parking lot, a half-dozen pickup trucks and several family cars, a tow truck and two panel vans. It’s a popular place on this Saturday night. There was no way to know that in advance, but you’re glad it’s busy. You park beside a dark pickup truck. On the other side of your car is a Dumpster.
    From your suitcase you take out the Lycra suit.
    Wearing it on these occasions makes you strangely beautiful and free. But there is obvious danger. On only your second outing, you were stopped by a cop in an Atlanta neighborhood. It was dark, but his headlamps caught you in their flare and he pulled over and hailed you, keeping you in the blinding lights. You were wearing the suit, and you carried a butcher knife inside a paper sack.
    Your heart was seizing, but you didn’t run. You kept your voice under control and told the officer you were simply experimenting by walking around in the suit to see how it felt. A harmless prank. A dare. You pretended to be embarrassed. You were submissive. I didn’t know it was illegal, you said.
    The officer was a country boy, a know-it-all eager to show off his mastery of law. Drawling as he explained the suit itself was not the problem, it was the hood. You were in violation of Title 16, Chapter 11, Section 38 of the Georgia statutes—the anti-mask law. It was unlawful to wear a mask, hood,