by David Wiltse
When-he crossed the Saugatuck at the base of the hill, skipping heavily across the stream from stone to stone, he could just glimpse part of his car across the road. Someone was sitting on it.
Tee paused within the last fringe of trees bordering the road and sized up the situation. McNeil was leaning back on the hood of the cruiser, his head against the windshield, his face to the sun as if basking on the beach. As Tee watched, McNeil languidly turned his face in Tee's direction, pulling his sunglasses down so they rested on his nose like a man with bifocals. He stared for a moment, then pushed the tinted glasses back to cover his eyes and returned his face to the sun. For a foolish moment Tee thought of stepping back farther into the woods and waiting it out. Instead, he came out of the trees and crossed the road to his cruiser.
"You're out early," McNeil said without turning to face Tee.
"Sit on your own car," Tee said. McNeil's cruiser was parked a few feet behind Tee's, in effect imprisoning it against the cement wall of the reservoir.
McNeil slowly swung his feet around so that he was sitting up, pointedly taking his own time to get off the hood. He looked at Tee, his eyes inscrutable behind the dark glasses.
"I was looking at the orchard again," Tee said.
"Find anything?"
There would be nothing to find. The federal and state people had combed it very finely indeed.
"I was just looking for inspiration," said Tee, careful to keep his tone even and controlled.
"I thought you might be in the orchard," McNeil said. "I went looking for you."
Tee got into the car, avoiding McNeil's gaze. The sonofabitch was taunting him. He knows something is up, Tee thought, but he can't know exactly what. Give him nothing to work with, he told himself. Offer nothing.
"What did you want me for?"
"I saw your car," McNeil said. "I thought you might be in trouble… car trouble."
"I thought Metzger was on duty." 'I'm just coming to work," said McNeil. "Thought I'd do my Samaritan number. Looks like you're all right after all… Look a little tired though, Chief You got to get more sleep." Tee detected the trace of a grin. "Not as young as you used to be. You can't get up to your old tricks."
"Thanks for your concern."
"Leave some of that for the younger guys. That's what we're here for."
"I'm glad to know what you're here for, McNeil. Sometimes I wonder. What did you find out about the missing Schrag girl?"
"Who, the all pair?" McNeil shrugged. "The Hills say she took off for New York and just never came back. There's no sign of foul play, no report of any kind from the New York cops. I figure she just got bored being a baby-sitter and took off to see America. Or went home to Germany. Who knows? These kids are like that-this isn't the first time we've seen an all pair skip out of her job around here."
"Did she have a boyfriend?"
"Mrs. Hill says no, Mr. Hill thinks she did. I figure he wanted to get into her pants and when she said no he blamed a boyfriend."
"Is that just your take on human nature, or do you have any evidence to support it?"
"Hey, Chief, the girl is twenty-five, the husband is thirty-eight. It's natural he'd want to get some off the babysitter, isn't it?"
"Not all men are like that," said Tee.
"Oh yeah?" McNeil smirked. "We must know different men, Chief."
"How many all pairs have turned up missing in the past ten years or so?
Seven? Eight?"
"Not that many. Three, four. But they're an irresponsible lot. Hell, they're young, they're looking for something or they wouldn't come here in the first place, they're a couple thousand miles from home, they're stuck in a job wiping kids' noses all day-why wouldn't they take off It's a big country, easy to disappear."
"Stay on it."
McNeil shrugged again. "Sure."
"And report to me on it."
"Sure."
"You want anything else, McNeil?"
"Not if you don't."
"Then move your car so I can get out of here and go to work."
McNeil backed up his cruiser, then pulled it parallel to Tee's and leaned out the window.
"Oh, by the way, Chief. Don't forget your blanket," he said. McNeil removed his glasses and smiled knowingly at Tee. "You dropped it in the woods just before you crossed the road."
After Tee recovered the blanket and returned it to the trunk, he took out his map of Clamden and traced all the alternate routes from McNeil's house to police headquarters. None of them went past the reservoir. Tee could think of several possible reasons why McNeil was making such a detour. One, he knew about Tee and his liaison and wanted to make sure that Tee understood that he knew. Two, McNeil had chanced by by coincidence because he was going to work, but not from home-he had spent the night somewhere else. Three, McNeil had come by to look at the orchard himself. But whatever might have caused McNeil to come to the crime scene, it was not duty, it was not diligence. Tee allowed himself to pursue that train of thought as he drove to headquarters. The problem of what he was to do with Mrs. Leigh was put aside to be dealt with later. Kom HANDLED the bones that Becker gave him with the nonchalance of a baton twirler getting the feel of his instrument.
Grone, the criminologist, already aggrieved that Becker had called in a civilian doctor, watched with alarm from his desk, fearing that evidence was about to fall on the floor. Kom held the bones together, turned and twisted them to look at the other side, then artfully placed them in their proper alignment again.
"Bad cutting," said Kom, moving down the line of "Becker's beauties," matching bone to bone. "Either bad technique or bad nerves. I told you before, John, when you showed me the first one, it's sloppy work, he's cut every one of them."
"But how?" Becker asked. "How would you manage to cut both sides of the joint when the bones are that close together? If you have the knife in there, angled one way, and you hit bone, you'd have to pull it out, angle it the other way, and go back into the joint to cut the other bone. And he did it every time. He doesn't seem to learn very fast. "
Kom put a pair of bones together and used a pen from his pocket to simulate a knife. "I see what you mean. I hadn't thought of it that way… People do develop methods of things though, don't they? I mean, this guy isn't in training for anything, is he? Let's say that he does it the way you suggested the first time. It's not graceful, but it works. He gets away with it. Maybe he just keeps on doing it that way because it seems to be successful."
Becker stared at the bones under Kom's pen.
"Or," Kom said, pausing as the idea took shape ii,,N mind, "maybe he went in this way." Kom pushed the pen straight between the bones from the side. "Maybe he just kind of wedged his knife in, you know, like he was making a thrust rather than a cut. That way his knife could cut both bones, both sides of the joint, simultaneously."
Kom looked to Becker for a response, smiling, proud of his insight.
"Are we talking about a two-sided knife?" Becker asked. "It would need a cutting edge on both sides of the blade to do that, wouldn't it?"
" There are knives like that, aren't there? Throwing knives, those kung fu things, they're double-bladed, aren't they?"
Grone chortled mockingly and Kom looked at him, hurt.
"Well, I'm not an expert on knives," he said. "It's just a thought, John, you know. Maybe I should limit myself to my expertise."
"No, keep thinking. I'm interested."
"Well, forget the bad cutting. My question is, why did he cut them into pieces in the first place?"
Grone shook his head in disgust and turned back to his work.
Becker looked at Kom curiously. "I'm assuming it's to get them to fit into the trash bags." ' 'Well, if I were doing it," Kom said, "I wouldn't go to all the trouble of quartering them like this. That takes time, that's a good deal of work. Look, the girls are dead when he does this, right?"
"I hope to God."
"So why not just bend them into any shape you want? You've seen gymnast
s, contortionists in the circus, whatever, who can cross their ankles behind their heads, right? The only reason we can't do that is because it hurts, our muscles are too tight. Well, it won't hurt a corpse, and if you can't force the legs-I'm sorry. Is this too ghoulish?"
"Go on."
"Because it sounds pretty unfeeling. I mean, these were girls, they were somebody's daughter, people loved them…"
"It's not ghoulish, it's helpful. Go ahead."
"Well… if I had trouble forcing the legs behind the head, all it would take would be a couple of cuts here and here." Kom sliced his hand across the back of his leg. "Through the hamstring and the gluteus.
Sever those and you could make the leg do whatever you want. Then just bend the arms double so the hand is on the shoulder. I mean, that would fit into a trash bag, wouldn't it? It's a whole lot simpler, it seems to me. Why go to the trouble to hack-I'm sorry. This is your kind of work, not mine. I'm wrong, aren't I? I'm missing something?"
"No," Becker said. "I think I am." He held out his hand. "Well done, Stanley."
Grinning eagerly, Kom pumped Becker's hand. "You mean it? That was helpful?"
"It was of heuristic value," Becker said. "I don't know that it taught me anything specific, but it gave me a new slant on things, it helped me to learn."
"Terrific," Kom said, beaming. He turned to face Grone, who watched from behind his desk. "Terrific." Grone managed a feeble smile.
"Terrific," he said.
Kom turned back to Becker, rocking onto his toes with new energy. "So, John. Can I take you to lunch?"
They ate sushi at Becker's suggestion. Kom agreed to the menu immediately but showed a hesitancy when the food arrived. Becker noticed that he studied a package of fish and rice carefully before gamely putting it in his mouth.
"Tell me, John, do you ever think you'd like to switch careers? I mean, I know it isn't very practical, you get into a thing so deep, all those years, all that training you've got invested-but do you ever feel kind of trapped?"
"Often and severely," Becker said.
"Really? It's not just me?"
Becker toyed with his chopsticks. "I've actually tried to get out of the Bureau. I was out, as far as you can get out. I have-I have a special talent. They didn't want to lose it. Ultimately, I didn't want to lose it either. It's what I do best, even if I sometimes hate it while I'm doing it."
"I've heard stories," Kom said cautiously. "You never know what to believe…"
"I've heard the stories too," said Becker. "Overheard them anyway. Some of them. How I'm supposed to have some kind of sixth sense about serial killers, how I can spot them on the street as if they have an aura that only I can see… It's not true, of course."
"Of course not." Kom waited for more as Becker poured himself tea, then held the cup in his hand as if testing it for warmth.
"I just understand them better than most other agents," Becker said at last. He did not look at Kom but kept his eyes fixed on the back of a patron two tables away.
Kom nodded, encouraging without speaking.
"I have a better sense of what they feel," Becker continued. "Most people don't allow themselves to make the empathic jump. They think that people like Johnny are monsters."
Becker paused and Kom continued to nod encourage ment. Becker glanced at him, then away again.
"What they do is monstrous," Becker said. "But the people who do these things, they're people. They aren't werewolves, they aren't beasts that live in the woods and come into the village to feed. They're people who most of the time are normal enough, they have normal concernshow to pay the rent, how to get ahead at work, whether to buy a new car or go one more year with the old one. Many of them have families, wives, children, girlfriends. They have their own reasons for the crimes they commit, they aren't reasons others might understand, but they make an internal logic for the killers."
"I guess I never thought of it that way, but of course, they have to live in a community, they can't have horns showing on their head."
"Successful serial killers are not madmen in the normal sense, although their actions during the killings may or may not be insane. Remember, they get away with it. Sometimes for a long, long time. Sometimes forever. We don't catch them all. We don't even know about them all.
They're clever, they have to be. We found out about Johnny just because of a fluke."
"What do you mean, their actions during the killings may or may not be insane?" Kom asked. "Wouldn't you have to be crazy to kill people like that? Again and again?"
Becker looked directly at Kom. "No, Stanley. You'd just have to like it. "
Kom shivered elaborately. "Sounds crazy to me."
Becker turned away and grasped his chopsticks again. "Maybe you haven't thought about it enough. Or maybe you've just been lucky where life has placed you." Becker resumed eating and they sat in silence for a moment.
"You've-you've killed some of them, haven't you?… I'm sorry, John, that's rude. That's personal…"
Becker smiled ruefully. "I'm told by a variety of therapists that it's good for me to talk about it. Don't worry Stanley, you'd be abnormal if you didn't mention it eventually… Yes, I've killed some of them."
Kom nodded, provisionally.
"Is there more to the question?" Becker asked.
"Well… no. Not really."
"How did it feel?"
"No, John, really. I'm acting like a voyeur or something. This is a painful subject for you. I apologize."
Becker paused, then sighed audibly. "I understand them, Stanley."
After a silence Kom said, "Thank you for telling me that, John. I know it wasn't easy. I think… I think I should tell you something."
"It's not a trade-off," Becker said.
"No, no, you should know it. We're going to be friends and you should know… Tovah… First, we both had a great time with you and Karen at dinner the other day."
"We did too."
"Did you really? That's terrific, thanks, that means a good deal to me, and Tovah will be very happy to hear it."
"I think Karen called her the next day and thanked her."
"Well, yeah, sure, but… see, Tovah… I feel a little disloyal talking about her this way."
Becker grinned. "You haven't said anything about her yet. "
"Tovah… gets these infatuations. That's the best thing to call them. They don't last too long, they're like crushes, like a teenager."
Becker tried to imagine Tovah Kom with a crush on anyone, losing control of herself, abandoning her bitterness. He couldn't manage to see it.
"That's all right, there's nothing wrong with that," Kom said. He did not sound convinced. "As long as everyone knows that's all it is." Kom looked at Becker and touched him on the arm, holding his attention.
"They don't last long.
"Uh-huh," said Becker. He did not know what he was supposed to do with such unlikely information.
"I mean, I understand, she's a beautiful woman, a very exciting woman … a lonely woman in some ways, you know what a doctor's hours are like, it's hard to plan things, I might have to leave whenever the phone rings, half the time I'm at the hospital, I do rounds, I have operations, there are emergencies…
"Uh-huh."
"I'm saying I understand, John."
"I have pretty strange hours myself. So does Karen sometimes, although with Jack, one of us is always around…"
"I'm not encouraging anything, but if it happens, it happens. It won't last long. I won't hold it against you, she's beautiful. I just want to get it on the table."
"You're beginning to lose me, Stanley."
"Oh, come on, John. You must have sensed it. It was like a cloud hanging over the dining table. Tovah's crazy about you."
Becker fought not to choke on his raw fish.
Kom was shaking his head, studying the tabletop.
"It's so embarrassing," said Kom.
"I couldn't believe it," Becker said. He noticed that Karen had fallen deathl
y silent. "I don't believe it. When I was alone with her, she talked about her husband, he's the one she's infatuated with."
Karen lay in bed, a book open on her stomach. She stared at Becker coldly.
"How did you take this news?"
"What do you mean? I was stunned, I didn't know what to say. It was almost like he was pimping for her, but he was so-he was so humiliated.
I thought he was going to cry.
"Then he believes it's true, even if you say you don't."
"I don't say I don't believe, I don't believe it."
"Maybe you're not the best judge."
"I'm telling you, it's ridiculous… Don't just stare at me like that, you make me feel guilty. I haven't done a thing. I'm telling you this story, aren't I?"
"Yes, you're telling me, you get full marks for telling me."
"What don't I get full marks for?"
"For having other women be attracted to you."
"I'm telling you, she's not."
"And I'm telling you, John, that unless the woman has been in deep freeze for several weeks, she probably is. Most women would be."
"Oh, for Pete's sake. Just because you think I'm Clint Eastwood or something…"
"No, precisely because you are not Clint Eastwood. You are sane, you are stable, you're good-looking, you have a sense of humor, you like women, and you are real. You're not a movie star, you're somebody right within arm's reach, you are making an effort to become increasingly open and vulnerable-what's not to like?"
"There are a lot of people who would argue I'm not sane, for one thing."
"And you're honest, I should have added that. I don't blame Tovah. I feel sorry for Stanley, but I don't blame her. "
"Great, you don't blame her, Stanley says he doesn't blame me…"
"I would kill her," Karen said. "But I wouldn't blame her. I would blame you-but you I wouldn't kill. I might maim you in some permanently crippling way.