He was in all the newspapers, by God.
It was exciting, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
He couldn't make out why. Maybe it was different in a big town? Because there'd been others-he thought back, vaguely, to the others. He remembered a girl, a pretty girl, who had fought him and said, "Please." There had been that guy, Dago some kind, he'd been pretty high and hadn't fought him. And a while before that, another woman. He didn't remember where that had been, but in the country somewhere.
Not much fuss made about them. But of course he hadn't stayed around. Maybe there had been at that. He got out his knife and looked at it. He was proud of the knife. He had made it himself, back at Marlett's old farm workshop. Out of a piece of old iron he'd made it, in his spare time, and Jesus, he'd sweated blood over setting them teeth in it, like a saw. It was a good knife. It had made him somebody important.
He was in all the papers. When he'd heard some guys talking about it, in that bar last night, he'd gone out and bought a paper, and managed to spell out what it said. Some of the long words were hard, but he could read most of it. Right on the front page, it had been. Him! The Slasher, they called him. He liked that. He liked the new, exciting feeling of being important.
It was a thing he hadn't expected, hadn't reckoned on at all. He liked looking at the blood, but it was a personal, temporary thing. In a vague way he'd known that if they caught him they'd kill him-the law-just like he'd killed.
He didn't mind. No. His life hadn't been so good a thing to him that he minded. Ever since the fire in the school, back there when he was just a kid…
But now-now he was so important to millions of people!-he would mind. He thought back to the best one, the kid. Oh, Jesus God, he had liked that one, the feel of doing it. The kid, the damned little Mex kid, calling him sir. It had been all there ahead of him, the whole bit-his whole life, sex and fun and liquor and money-why the hell should he have it, when I never had nothing? I took it away from him, he thought. Like God or something.
Important. Hell, the whole state was talking about him, thinking about him. Just because…
He wouldn't have minded, a couple of days ago. Now, he thought furiously, delightedly, he'd like to do a lot more before that happened. Really show them-pay them all back, the whole world, for what they'd done to him. So he minded, now. He was thinking about that now. They'd be looking. Every man's hand against…
But it had always been that way.
He thought, and he made a plan. So they wouldn't find him.
He'd stayed in a lot worse places.
He hadn't much to pick up, in the room. He still had the money he'd saved on that job up north, a lot of money, nearly four hundred bucks. He put the bottle of bourbon into his pocket; and the cigarettes, the paper bag full of doughnuts, the extra shirt and sweater went into the little canvas bag.
He went out of his room, down the hall, and out the back door. Four houses up, along the little alley there, was Los Angeles Street. He walked up it to Temple, and on his way he passed the massive rectangular bulk of the Police Facilities Building, but he didn't know what it was.
As he walked up Temple a plainclothes detective was talking to the landlady in the house he had just left. "He had such a scarred face? What name did he give you?"