I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my wool blazer, which was far too light to look 
appropriate in this quiet blizzard, and I walked and walked. "All right, damn it, you 
knew what I was, and for a moment, you made that thing look alive."
  
  I stopped dead still, staring over the traffic at the dark snow-covered woods of 
Central Park.
  
  "If it "• all connected, come for me." I was talking not to him now, or the statue, but 
to the Stalker. I simply refused to be afraid. I was just completely out of my head.
  
  And where was David? Hunting somewhere? Hunting ... as he had so loved to do as a 
mortal man in the Indian jungles, hunting, and I'd made him the hunter of his brothers 
forever.
  
  I made a decision.
  
  I was going back at once to the flat. I'd look at the damned statue, and see for myself 
that it was utterly inanimate, and then I'd do what I ought to do for Dora-that is, get 
rid of her father's corpse.
  
  It took me only moments to get back, to be going up the narrow pitch-dark back stairs 
again, and into the flat. I was past all patience with my fear, simply furious, 
humiliated and shaken, and at the same time curiously excited-as I always am by the 
unknown.
  
  Stench of his freshly dead body. Stench of wasted blood.
  
  I could hear or sense nothing else. I went into a small room which had once been an 
active kitchen and still contained the remnants of housekeeping from the time of that 
dead mortal whom the Victim had loved. Yes, just what I wanted under the sink pipes where 
mortals always shove it, a box of green plastic garbage sacks, just perfect for his 
remains.
  
  It suddenly hit me that he had chucked his murdered wife, Terry, into such a bag, I'd 
seen it, smelled it, when I was feasting on him.  Oh, hell with it. So he'd given me the 
idea.
  
  There were a few pieces of cutlery around, though nothing that would allow a surgical 
or artistic job. I took the largest of the knives, carbon-steel blade, and went into the 
living room, deliberately with out hesitation, and turned and looked at the mammoth 
statue.
  
  The halogens were still shining; bright, deliberate beams in the shadowy clutter.
  
  Statue; goat-legged angel.
  
  You idiot, Lestat.
  
  I went up to it and stood before it, looking coldly at the details.  Probably not 
seventeenth-century. Probably contemporary, executed by hand, yes, but it had the utter 
perfection of something contemporary, and the face did have the William Blake sublime 
expression-an evil, scowling, goat-legged being with the eyes of Blake's saints and 
sinners, full of innocence as well as wrath.
  
  I wanted it suddenly, would liked to have kept it, gotten it down some way to my rooms 
in New Orleans as a keepsake for practically falling down dead in fear at its feet. Cold 
and solemn it stood before me. And then I realized that all these relics might be lost if 
I didn't do something with them. As soon as his death was known, all this would be 
confiscated, that was his whole point with Dora, that this, his true wealth, would pass 
into indifferent hands.
  
  And Dora had turned her narrow little back to him and wept, a waif consumed with grief 
and horror and the worst frustration, the inability to comfort the one she most loved.
  
  I looked down. I was standing over his mangled body. He still looked fresh, wrecked, 
murdered by a slob. Black hair very soft and mussed, eyes half open. His white 
shirtsleeves were stained an evil pinkish color from the little blood that oozed out of 
the wounds I'd accidentally inflicted, crushing him. His torso was at a hideous angle in 
relation to his legs. I'd snapped his neck, and snapped his spine.
  
  Well, I'd get him out of here. I'd get rid of him, and then for a long time no one 
would know. No one would know he was dead; and the investigators couldn't pester Dora, or 
make her miserable. Then I'd think about the relics, perhaps spiriting them away for her.
  
  From his pockets I took his identification. All bogus, nothing with his real name.
  
  His real name had been Roger.
  
  I knew that from the beginning, but only Dora had called him Roger. In all his dealings 
with others, he'd had exotic aliases, with odd medieval sounds. This passport said 
Frederick Wynken. Now that amused me. Frederick Wynken.
  
  I gathered all identifying materials and put them in my pockets to be totally destroyed 
later.
  
  I went to work with the knife. I cut off both his hands, rather amazed at their 
delicacy and how well-manicured were his nails. He had loved himself so much, and with 
reason. And his head, I hacked that off, more through brute strength forcing the knife 
through ten-don and bone than any sort of real skill. I didn't bother to close his eyes. 
The stare of the dead holds so little fascination, really. It mimics nothing living. His 
mouth was soft without emotion, and cheeks smooth in death. The usual thing. These-the 
head, and the hands-I put into two separate green sacks, and then I folded up the body, 
more or less, and crammed it into the third sack.
  
  There was blood all over the carpet, which I realized was only one of many, many 
carpets layering this floor, junk-shop style, and that was too bad. But the point was, 
the body was on its way out. Its decay wouldn't bring mortals from above or below. And 
without the body, no one might ever know what had become of him .. . best for Dora, 
surely, than to have seen great glossy photographs of a scene such as I had made here.