Page 18

None of this was personal.

Well, that wasn’t true. It was all personal, but none of the victims were chosen because of a personal connection. The real problem wasn’t due to any one person after all. It was the entire culture. The entire industry. In some ways, the killer’s victims were victims of the industry before they ever fell prey to the killer’s poison.

That didn’t mean they weren’t guilty. The toxic culture in which they swam was toxic due to their actions and the actions of others like them. So while none of the specific people the killer chose were chosen because of a personal vendetta against them, their deaths were all the killer’s personal revenge against the system they represented.

This victim was the closest to being personal because of who he was and not simply because of the industry he represented.

Samuel Klein, restaurateur and retired executive chef of the premier steakhouse on the Eastern Seaboard, now renowned for his Perfect Bites podcast, lifted his wineglass and swirled the dark liquid in the glass before sipping.

The killer had to laugh. Swirling wine in a wineglass was a foolish thing that those who didn’t understand wine did to make themselves appear smarter than they were. As with many things, it only exemplified their foolishness.

The idea was to aerate the wine and enhance the flavor before drinking. It was pointless. Wine took time to develop. A few seconds of swirling would accomplish nothing. In a fine restaurant, those wines which required aeration would be decanted hours before dinner to allow the flavors to develop before they reached the table. The killer doubted very seriously such a step had been taken here.

Klein sipped the wine and didn’t do the one thing that actually could have impacted the flavor, namely slurping. That would aerate the wine properly. While it wouldn’t actually change the wine itself, it would mist the liquid and carry it to every part of Klein’s palate, allowing him to experience the full spectrum of flavor the wine offered.

Klein didn’t do that because Klein was a fraud. He acted as though he was a great chef, but he was nothing more than a charlatan. Others had developed his menu and brought him success. He had capitalized off of their ingenuity. Meanwhile those who were truly ingenious, truly unique, truly special , suffered ridicule and derision. It wasn’t fair.

So, looking at Klein sipping wine improperly moments before the killer's poison would finally take his life felt more satisfying than it did with the others. It wasn't personal. Not quite.

But when the first beads of sweat appeared on Klein’s face, the killer smiled with a very personal feeling of triumph. When Klein began to convulse, the killer had to cough into his napkin so no one would hear him laugh.