Prayer for the Dead (28 page)

A clerk from the hardware store was standing in the store’s doorway. He nodded and smiled politely at Dyce.

Dyce took the time to pause. “How are you today?” he asked. “Looks like a good one, doesn’t it?”

The clerk glanced up at the sky. The cheekbones are perfect, Dyce thought. And the nose, sharp and raw as a chip of flint. The eyes were wrong, but they’d be closed.

“High time we had a good day,” the clerk said. Even the mouth was right, with the same taut lips as his father’s. Dyce felt the stirring within and wondered that it could strike him even now, even when he should be fleeing and sated. In a way the death of the agent may have been only a tease, he realized, not a resolution. He may have served only to whet Dyce’s appetite. Or perhaps to combine two appetites into one larger, all-encompassing, insatiable one. He felt like a man who had lived his life on a diet of brown rice and has just had his first taste of ice cream.

“Well, have a good one,” Dyce said. He felt the clerk watching him as he forced himself to walk casually toward his Valiant and slid behind the wheel.

Perhaps we’ll meet again, Dyce thought to himself He adjusted his rearview mirror and saw that the clerk was, indeed, watching him. Not with any great interest—there was little else to look at on the street— but watching him nonetheless. We may well meet again, he thought. We shouldn’t, but we may.

Driving well within the speed limit, Dyce left Waverly and headed north toward Minnot.

“We stopped calling it sexual perversion a few years ago,” Gold said. “Too judgmental. Paraphilia sounds more scientific, anyway.”

“As if there were science involved,” said Becker.

“We have our professional image to maintain,” said Gold wryly. “Otherwise, we could just call everybody loony and be done with it. Being scientists, how ever, we like to sort our loonies into categories and give them names.”

“You’ve loosened your sphincter muscles a bit since we began,” said Becker.

“That’s the effect you have on me. You’re so comforting to talk to.”

Becker laughed.

“Is this a new tack? Shrink as wit and good guy? Shrink as pal?”

“Shrink as human, maybe. Since I can’t impress you with my credentials or my vast learning, I might as well try my menschlichkeit.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Great, then let’s get on with it. What do you need to know about paraphilia?”

“How does it happen?”

Gold shrugged. “I don’t know how specific I can be, but which particular variety? There are an awful lot and some of them have yet to be identified, like the insects in the Amazon basin.”

“Dyce’s variety. I think he has to make himself look like a corpse to get aroused. And I think he likes to look at other corpses. I don’t know if he does anything to them or not, but I’m pretty sure he sits there looking at them. Probably in the dark. And not just any corpse or he could get a job at a mortuary. They have to look a certain way.”

“That’s what the mother’s maiden name is all about?”

“I think it’s a start. If you like redheads with green eyes and freckles, it’s not a bad idea to start with -people with Irish names. He wants Scandinavians, or people who look that way. So he starts with people whose mothers were of Scandinavian descent. He’s got access to thousands of names anyway and this way he’s not going on a random search; he knows where they live, where they work. It’s easy enough for him to get a look at them and see if they’re what he’s after.”

“Why doesn’t he find someone who looks right in the first place?”

“Because it’s difficult and dangerous. If he sees somebody in a line in a supermarket, how is he going to find out enough about the guy’s patterns to abduct him? Follow him home? Hope his wallet falls out of his pocket so he can get an address? Strike up a conversation and have witnesses see him? It’s not as if he’s just trying to pick somebody up; he’s selecting a victim, and he’s very careful about it.”

“Why does he use the mother’s name? Why not the victim’s own name?”

“I’m not sure. There’s always the fact that you can’t be sure the father is really the father, but I suspect it’s to avoid creating an obvious pattern. I think he’s been at this a long time, and the only way he’s gotten away with it is by making it appear that nothing at all is happening.”

“Any idea why your boy likes Scandinavians?”

“His father was Norwegian is all I know. His mother was Jewish, but she died shortly after he was born anyway.”

Becker paused and Gold studied the ceiling for a moment.

“Well—in general, paraphilias are caused by some sort of psychic trauma that occurs when a child is between the ages of about three and eight. That’s when the pattern is set in the mind—a lovemap, some call it, but I’m not crazy about the term. It sounds too much like pop psychology, although it’s meant very seriously. Anyway, something happens to the child to derail the normal erotic drive. It could be child abuse—it frequently is—or the loss of a parent or sibling. It could be as simple as severe sexual repression in a family’s attitudes so that the child finds a way of expressing his desire by masking it. Spankers, mild sadists, people who can only have sex if it’s seen as punishment. It could take the form of a fetish that substitutes for forbidden lust—rubber suits, feather, silk garments. Or it can be caused by very complicated circumstances and find expressions that are bizarre in the extreme. There are men who kill their partners after sex as a form of atonement. You probably know about those.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Professionally, I mean. Does any of this help at all? Or even tell you anything you didn’t already know?”

“Not really.”

“Sometimes it helps just to hear
it
said aloud,” said Gold.

“Maybe.”

“And how about you?”

“What about me?” Becker asked.

“Any closer to telling me about
your
traumas? It’s all for the same price, as long as you’re here.”

“Is there any hope for curing somebody like Dyce? If you could find out what has caused him to be this way, could you undo it?”

Gold studied Becker for a long moment.

“Truth?”

“No, lie to me.”

“No, there’s not much hope. We could keep him drugged, which would probably prevent him from doing it again, whatever it is he does. But to change him fundamentally? He’s a very, very sick puppy. This isn’t neurosis we’re talking about. My profession isn’t too bad with neurosis; we can cure it, or help it, or mask it. But psychosis? No. He’s probably that way for life.”

“The wiring is twisted.”

“In the brain, you mean? Yes. Things are hooked up wrong. Some conditions are just because of chemical unbalance, we think. Bipolar manic depression, definitely. Schizophrenia, probably. In time we should be able to control those conditions completely with a pill. I don’t mean drug them; I mean treat them specifically as we can do with hypertension or diabetes. But psychosis is different. You’re right—it’s in the permanent wiring by the time they’re adults, and we’re just not able to tinker with the wiring in the brain. Not yet.”

“So there’s no hope.”

“For Dyce. There’s hope for you.”

“I’m not talking about me,” said Becker.

“That’s all you’ve talked about since I’ve met you,” said Gold.

They sat in silence for a long time.

“Tell me about people who enjoy killing,” Becker said at last.

The flight to Minnot was like a half-hour roller-coaster ride—a good twenty-nine minutes longer than necessary for anyone but a teenager. Or perhaps someone who’s had his stomach surgically removed. Tee thought. It was certainly more than he needed; he got the point on the first dip and didn’t need any further reminder of the frailty of the aircraft, the whimsical nature of air currents, or the delicacy of his own inner ear.

“It’s summer,” the pilot yelled over the sound of the engine after the plane had regained altitude only to be sucked downward abruptly once more. “The sun heats up the ground, the air rises, and you get these wind shear kind of things.”

Wind shear was a word Tee associated with airline disasters. He reached forward to brace himself, but there was nothing to hold onto in the tiny aircraft. Agent Reynolds had shooed him onto the plane with assurances that it was perfectly safe—and also the only thing immediately available. The pilot/meteorologist appeared to Tee to be sixteen and wild-eyed. He likes being bucketed up, down and sideways, Tee moaned to himself. The kid is up here for the sport.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said the pilot. He grinned at Tee’s discomfort, revealing a large gap between his front teeth, a condition Tee had always associated with stupidity. “Don’t fly much, do you?”

“Only in real airplanes that give peanuts,” Tee said. He couldn’t decide what to do with his eyes. Looking out made him dizzy and if he looked at the instrument panel, all the whirring dials and flashing numbers alarmed him. The plane tilted sideways and groaned loudly.

“How about you?” Tee asked. “Do you fly much?”

The pilot laughed. He thinks I’m joking, thought Tee.

“It’s just the summer,” the pilot said again. “It’s not dangerous. Except during landing.”

Tee decided his best bet was to close his eyes and pretend to be asleep. If that didn’t work, he would try to throw up in the pilot’s direction so he could get a little satisfaction before the adolescent killed them both.

He had tried to protest, but Reynolds had hustled him to the airport and onto the plane before he had much of a chance to think up a good excuse. Not that there was ever a very good excuse for a law officer to ignore a direct request by the FBI, but some kind of demurrer seemed in order if only to establish his independence. The fact was, he didn’t have any excuse; he could be spared at any time and the department would function pretty much the same. It was actually rather exciting to be invited in on the last of the chase for Dyce—it was the feeing of being commanded that he objected to.

They circled once over a surprisingly flat area of ground that appeared suddenly amidst the surrounding wooded hills as if a giant foot had landed there while striding past. Luxuriant crops covered the area, and along one side was a green strip, distinguishable from the rest of the land only by a windsock at one end and a white streak of powdered lunestone that had been laid down the center. The windsock stood straight out from its pole.

“Kind of tricky here,” the pilot said before nosing the plane into a steep decline that Tee would have thought was a power dive rather than a runway approach.

The young pilot brought the plane down as if the grassy airstrip at Minnot were a diving board and he were taking a few preliminary bounces to test the spring.

“Not bad, huh?” The pilot flashed the gap between his teeth at Tee.

I knew he was a teenager, thought Tee. He wants a grade.

“Pretty good, I’d say,” said the pilot. He taxied to the end of the runway and stopped. “You don’t mind walking to the terminal, do you? I have to take up a glider now and it’s right here.”

Tee saw a goateed man and his pretty daughter standing next to an engineless aircraft a few yards away. The girl looked to be about the age of the pilot, which meant she was too young for Tee. But not too young to appreciate.

“Where is it?” Tee asked.

“Right there.” The pilot pointed at the glider.

“I mean the terminal.”

“Oh. Well, we call it a terminal.” The pilot nodded toward a building alongside the field, equidistant between the two ends. Tee had thought it was a refreshment shack.

Tee staggered briefly as he got out of the plane and clutched at the wing for support, hoping the pretty girl had not noticed.

“Great day for it, isn’t it?” asked the man with the goatee.

The girl smiled shyly. The flash of her perfect white teeth transformed her from pretty to a ravishing beauty and Tee felt his knees weaken, no longer sure if it was airsickness or the lust, longing, and bittersweet sense of loss that beset him several times a day when he saw loveliness that was forbidden him. More and more beauty was denied him every year, an unrelenting calculus that depressed him when he paused to think about it.

He had not been entirely wrong about the terminal being a refreshment shack. The proprietor, dispatcher, air-traffic controller, and owner of the field was stocking one of three candy dispensers as he explained that a car had been left at Tee’s disposal along with directions to find Hatcher and he, the owner, would explain it all to Tee just as soon as he got the machine loaded and ready to go. Tee assumed the vending machines provided more of an income than the airstrip.

Standing outside the shack, waiting for his car. Tee saw Dyce drive by. The road was no more than ten yards from where Tee stood, and for perhaps a second he and Dyce looked directly into each other’s eyes before the car passed. It wasn’t much and the man’s appearance was greatly changed by his beard, but Tee recognized the eyes of the man who had looked up at him from the hospital bed, the eyes that had locked with Becker’s in that peculiar, semi-seductive confrontation. He was convinced he had seen the shock of recognition in Dyce’s eyes just now, which meant that there was no time to lose in pursuit.

Dyce’s car did not change speed and Tee could not see him moving his head to look back in the mirror, but he knew it was Dyce. As startled as Tee, no doubt, but too cool to give himself away. It was a game that Tee had to play, as well, and he made himself walk slowly back to the terminal as long as he was in Dyce’s line of vision. He wasted no time once in the terminal, lifting the proprietor by the armpits and propelling him to the board with keys dangling from hooks.

“Call the police—no, give me the keys
first
—and have them get in touch with Hatcher of the FBI. Hatcher, he’s in Waverly. Got it?”

Tee was already sprinting toward the waiting Toyota. “Tell him I’m following Dyce, going that way.” He jabbed his finger in the direction Dyce had taken, then leaped into the Toyota.

Within two minutes Tee caught up to the Valiant that was still driving within the speed limit. The roads through this flat section were long and straight, with few turnoffs, and if the Valiant had been trying to elude pursuit, it would have had to speed, but the car was fairly dawdling along.