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.Within sixty seconds she stops moving.Unconscious, not dead, the killer hopes.He has never used ether before and is unsure of the dosage.His first thought was chloroform.He has seen it used in movies and on television a thousand times, but while searching the Internet for a chloroform supplier, he stumbled upon an article about diethyl ether.According to his research, doctors began using ether as a general anesthetic in the mid-1800s, nearly two decades before the Civil War.Modern medical practitioners, particularly in Western countries, have long since replaced ether, which is highly flammable, with safer anesthetic agents, but developing countries still use it because of its reliability, its low cost, and its high therapeutic index—the margin of safety between an effective dose and a lethal one.Currently, ether is used mainly as a laboratory cleaning solvent and by hophead kids for a cheap high, and to some extent, by homeopathic healers and alternative-medicine types.The killer found a homeopathic medical supplier on the Internet that sells ether.Although the supplier doesn’t sell to individuals, it was simple enough to set up a corporate account for a bogus homeopathic store with a Mid-City address.He bought the pint of ether for twenty dollars and had it delivered to his door by UPS.His captive is small: five feet three inches, perhaps 115 pounds.He selected her partly because of her size—he knew he was going to have to carry her—and partly for who she is and what she has done.She is a thirty-two-year-old civilian employee of the New Orleans Police Department Crime Laboratory whose husband filed for divorce last year.In his lawsuit, the husband said his wife had been unfaithful to him.She had moved out of their marital home and was shacked up with a policeman.The couple has two children, whom the cheating wife has left in the custody of her cuckolded husband.Capturing her was fairly simple, though the killer was nervous at first.There was nothing to picking up a prostitute on the street.That was easy.Even getting a woman to open her door to a well-dressed stranger in the middle of the afternoon hadn’t been difficult.But snatching a woman late at night from her home and taking her with you, that was a challenge.But with God’s help, he met that challenge.The killer waited until the boyfriend drove away, probably for work, in his black Ford Crown Victoria that looked very much like an unmarked police car.After the woman went to bed, he used a foot-long screwdriver to pry open the back door.He worked quickly and made no attempt at stealth.Then he concealed himself in the den and waited.Within seconds, the woman stumbled out from her bedroom to investigate the noise of the break-in, wearing nothing but pajamas and carrying a small pistol.As she passed him, the killer jammed the stun gun into her neck and pressed the trigger.Then he trussed her up and threw her into the trunk of his Honda.Since he knows nothing about guns and has no need for them, he left the pistol on the floor where it had fallen.At Mazant and Burgundy, the killer lifts the unconscious woman out of the trunk and lays her across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.Standing at the back door, already straining under the weight, he stoops to retrieve his gym bag, then unlocks the door and steps inside the dark building.The door opens onto a small foyer tucked beneath a wooden staircase.Beyond the foyer is a large open room.Straight across is a kitchen and a bathroom.Diagonally across, to the killer’s right, is an open doorway leading to a second room, almost as large as the first.On the other side of that room is the front door.There is no furniture.Last year, the killer saw a flyer advertising the building for rent for two thousand dollars a month.With two big open rooms on the ground floor and living space upstairs, including bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small galley kitchen, the flyer billed the property as ideal for a pair of artist’s studios
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