Remo was a man of average height and weight. The only thing outwardly unusual about him were his wrists, which were thicker than a normal man's by far. Most women found his face-with its high cheekbones and deep-set eyes-appealing, although even they would have described it as vaguely cruel.

No one saw the cruelty on Remo Williams's face this day, for no one saw the face of Remo Williams. He slipped up the sidewalk, past crowds and reporters and police without raising a single eyebrow. Avoiding the front of the building and the gaggle of press still crammed beyond the parking lot, Remo slipped around the back.

Even though it was broad daylight, the police at the rear of the building didn't see the thin man slip between them. Their eyes always seemed to be where Remo wasn't. The uniformed men milled about anxiously, guns drawn.

Remo found a caged window in the alley near a Dumpster. The metal mesh popped in silence. He lifted the window and slipped soundlessly inside without a single living eye tracking his movements.

He found himself in the downstairs ladies' room. There were two bodies in the bathroom. One was near the sink; another had been sitting in a stall. The woman near the sink had lived for a time after she'd been shot. She had crawled on her side to the wall, only to die near a trash can. The blue tiled floor was streaked with congealing blood. The other woman had been luckier. A shotgun blast through the flimsy stall door had delivered her a speedier, if grislier, end.

Face steeling, Remo slipped from the room. Another body in the hallway. The man wore a suit with no jacket. The back of his white shirt was stained red. Papers that had been so important in the last moments before his violent death were now scattered on the drab green carpet around his prone body. Unlike the women, the man hadn't been felled by a shotgun blast. This one was a bullet, not a shell. The newscast had mentioned this. According to eyewitnesses, the killer carried an arsenal.