Sorry about the delay - - it's been a little hectic, and I've had some computer problems to go along with all the busyness. This is the Flowers chapter, in which we open up his head a little and look around.

Chapter Thirty-three: Weapon Psyche (OTHER)

Flowers drank his forth vanilla Coke and moved one of his red checkers over the financier's black, neatly stealing it and putting it beside his glass. "You don't relax very easily, do you?" Flowers asked. "Really, I'm the one who should be upset. Ecklie doesn't know anything about you, but right now, he's sitting with Gil Grissom, having forensic artists paint my picture while he describes my personality to a tee, and yet, out of the two of us, you're the one who's really bothered."

"It should also bother you that I've thought about killing you," the financier said evenly. "After all, you failed to do anything to Sara Sidle, and your failure to find Ecklie's assistant is why everyone knows that you're involved."

"I'm not worried about you killing me."

"Why not?"

"I never die in these situations," Flowers said. "I'm still alive, aren't I?" He waited until the financier moved one checker, and then he jumped. "King me."

"I think we should be playing chess."

"That's stereotypical. Talk to me about David Hodges. I'm impressed with him. He really turned the tables on us, didn't he? Forced us to kill Sanders, and then he went ahead and killed himself, giving away everyone but you. I think it's pretty neat, personally."

"Maybe I should have hired David Hodges."

"You're missing the point, though," Flowers said, and jumped two more checkers. "David Hodges wouldn't have wanted to be your assassin. He would have wanted to be a hero. And heroes always die in the end, whereas, obviously, we won't. It's always the villains that come back for the sequel, anyway. Hodges was always going to die, because he wasn't good enough for glory and he wasn't damned enough for life."

"You see yourself as damned?"

"I think I'll go to hell, yeah."

"I wouldn't have pictured you as believing in God, and then doing the things you do."

"Believing in God is what makes it interesting, sir." Flowers finished his drink. "If there were no God, there would be no sin, and everything I did would be acceptable. If there were no God, there would be no desecration. With God, the things I do take a deeper significance. They aren't just harmful, they're evil. What I did to Sanders wasn't just a crime, it was a monstrosity. And I could love any religion that would describe my actions in such meaningful words."

"Beautiful evil, Flowers?"

"It's magnificent. Killing Sara Sidle will be beautiful. I've never seen a woman so strong and so ready to be destroyed. Lizzie Zimmer was a different matter. She was always a china doll, and shattering her was just too easy. No effort. It was joyless. There was nothing left to destroy the second time around, and precious little the first time."

"And destroying Grissom?"

"Destroying Grissom will be my masterpiece. I haven't even touched him, and his life is falling apart. When I kill the girl he's too afraid to love, it will break him."

All this talk of mayhem was making him hungry, and he ordered another sandwich. The waitress smiled at him, and he gave her revealing neckline an approving look, and grinned back. She giggled, and refilled his Coke without him asking first. Her hand brushed against his, and she giggled again.

"Insipid," Flower said, when she walked away, "but I do love attention. What I was saying - - about Grissom - - have you ever seen the look on someone's face when you cross the last of their boundaries and ruin the last of their lives? When they have nothing left because you've taken everything and not even bothered to treasure it, just ended it, crushed it like a sand castle because you wanted to? Ever seen that look, when all they want to know is why you couldn't even love what they loved enough to make it worthwhile? The confusion at how pointless it all is?"

"Eloquent. I've seen my share of looks."

"I'm not surprised. And that's why we'll win, sir. Because there's no sand castles for them to take away from me, to continue the metaphor. I came from nothing. I have nothing. There's nothing in my life they could destroy that I haven't ruined already."

He had formulated this theory years ago - - he would not die, because he had no reason to be alive. He was a catastrophe waiting to happen, a crisis born and aimed in the right direction. Little League and Boy Scouts didn't make him a human being. He'd killed that from which he came, left behind dead parents and scattered report cards like leaflets on the floor of a burned house, and recreated himself in his own image, brilliant and strong, a shell with nothing inside but a clear, savage joy. And instinct. He was a surgeon, knowing where to cut either to save or to kill, and he killed, and killed, and killed. It amused him. It filled up his hollow spaces. He stole from the poor and raped the chaste and killed the people that loved their lives. He desecrated and burned and when it was done, he stood on the ashes and decided what it meant, because it had to mean something.

If there were no God, he was dancing on the grave of the world for nothing. Flowers preferred to believe in divine retribution. It would give him something to look forward to. If not, he was pointless. A random blip on the radar, a genetic mistake, a chemical accident. God meant that he had lost his soul. God provided an explanation.

And so hell was there, but he wouldn't see it. He stood above the crust of the earth and didn't die, just went on living despite the guilt that should eat away at him, but didn't. Despite the atrocities, he lived and laughed and drank Coke and played checkers just like everyone else. And the waitress was smiling at him from across the diner.

"Was there every anything in your life?"

"Psychoanalysis of me would be pointless, all due respect. I was never beaten, I was never abused, I was never spoiled. I was loved in all the appropriate ways and punished in all the right moments. I have no medical problems, no nightmares, no lingering regrets. I do what I do and then I move on."

"Someone born and made for destruction," the financier mused, sipping at his drink. "A weapon waiting for the right hand."

He felt smooth, felt polished. The financier's weapon, crafted and pointed, thrown into the chaos to create order in a series of orchestrated death. Nothing that lived could be so beautiful. Greg Sanders was just a case in point. No man still walking around could have created so much attention as the still figure, cruciform, bleeding slowly and still dying when the nails went into his hands. Life was short but death was forever, and Flowers was sure that meant that death was more powerful.

Flowers closed his eyes.

"Whose hand it is doesn't matter, sir," he said, almost in a whisper. "I just need - -"

That was weakness, and he had told himself long ago never to show weakness. Not even to someone like the financier, or especially to someone like the financier. After all, the financier used. He killed and used, and if Grissom's collapse would be Flower's masterpiece, it would still have been the financier's idea. All he had been ready to say was that he only needed any hand, to point and guide and tell him, make him, show him, show him what to wreck and what to ruin. All he had meant to say was that although he could destroy well enough on his own, he was made to be someone's gun, someone's knife, someone's instrument of death.

The financier had been the one to find him, the one to drag him out of bars in Atlanta with the smells of cigarette smoke and hashish, had been the one to show the thick wad of bills, and the one to say, "I am going to show you what to do."

It was like the hand of God had touched Matthew Flowers on the shoulder. He had been a missile in need of a target, and now he was pointed and ready, racing for the finish line.

This doesn't stop until it's over, he thought, his mouth thick with the old tastes of blood and want. This doesn't stop until everything Gil Grissom loves is dead. Nuclear fallout. No survivors. This is the reason for my existence. I'm ready.

"What do you need?"

He wouldn't. He couldn't. He was nothing, so he needed nothing. Needs were something that could be taken away and used to destroy him. He wouldn't allow that. He had to be immune from destruction. If he told the financier how much he needed the target, then there would be something that could make him die, in the end.

I am nothing. I need nothing. Blank space. A weapon in a waiting hand.

"An opportunity," he said, with a sunshine-bright smile from ear to ear. "All I need is some sheep's clothing to get my hands on Sara Sidle." He stood before the financier could answer, and added, "You know where to find me when you get an idea."

There was nothing to take away from him. He was a series of empty spaces. Weapons didn't have souls.

The waitress smiled at him, and he looked at her hungrily, drinking her in with his eyes. She was pretty enough in a way that was something between Lizzie's cheap, Dresden-doll prettiness and Sara Sidle's strong, impenetrable beauty. Her hair was too platinum to be real, and her glossy nails were just a fraction of an inch too long, and Flowers imagined blue cuticles underneath the bubblegum pink paint.

You're a corpse waiting to happen, he thought.

"Have a nice night, sir," she said, in her candy-coated voice. It matched her uniform, all sugary stripes and cheerful daisy pins.

"Oh yeah," Flowers said, "you too."