by David Wiltse
"How did you know?"
"You're different when you're fighting it," she said, meaning the urge that she knew was driving him now. "You make love differently."
'Do I?"
"You're even more gentle than usual-and even more intense, somehow. I can't explain it, but I can feel it."
"There was nothing in my mind but making love to you-I don't want you to think it was tainted."
"I don't think that. But it's like… I don't know." She thought it was like making love with a wolf with a human heart, the beast holding its strength and instinct in check, aware what it could do with those powerful jaws, the vicious teeth, the instrument of death caressing her as gently as it would pick up a pup in that mouth. It was frightening and exciting and Karen had come over the years to want it most of all-but she did not tell him that, or any of it. "It's just different," she said.
Becker waited a moment more for her to complete the thought if she would; then he slipped out the door. She scarcely heard him leave.
He wheeled his bicycle from the garage, mounted it, and pedaled swiftly into the night. The moon was more than half full and a strong breeze pushed clouds past it, causing it to wink conspiratorially. He rode the first mile with the headlight on, keeping one eye closed so that it would not adjust to the light. When he was a few minutes away from his destination he turned off the headlight and opened the other eye.
The bike moved almost silently through the Clamden night. The whizzing of the wind in his ears was far more hear of his passage. A low, du]] than anyone else wo hiss of the tires on the asphalt was the only sound, the only sign that he had been and gone. The houses moved quickly past, some dimly lighted, some dark, but mostly he saw trees, upright stalks rushing past like pickets in a fence.
The deeper into the night he rode, the more his civilized self fell away and he became the thing he feared. It was the part he loathed most about himself-the part that gave him the greatest satisfaction. The part of him that Karen knew and didn't want to know. The part he spent his life trying to control-the part that controlled him. The part he tried to deny but could n(-ver refuse.
In his mind the houses that had seemed warm and secure now looked vulnerable and deluded in their sense of security, little more than eggshells, pathetic, contemptible defenses against the creatures of the night that dwelled both within and without them. The veneer of civilization was so thin, so useless against a real assault.
In the clearing in the trees made by the road, a shape was silhouetted against the sky at the top of a rise. Becker was approaching it, pedaling up the hill, and he saw it turn and look at him, the long, canine head turned in threequarter profile. The animal stared at Becker, watched his strange form coming at it, half wheels, half human.
It gauged his speed, his threat, sniffed the air to reaffirm what it thought it saw. Finally, with a casualness born of craft and confidence, the coyote trotted off the road, unhurried, into the surrounding darkness. Becker sped past it, glancing in the direction it had gone. There was nothing to see.
In the far distance he could see a car's headlights brightening the sky as it rounded a curve. Becker waited until he was close to the turn in the road, then pulled softly onto the shoulder on the inside of the bend so the lights would not pick him out, and walked the bike into the cover of the trees, where he watched as the car came around the corner, its lights cutting a fleeting swath through the blackness, illuminating a house, a car in a driveway, toys in a yard, then, squaring itself on the road, the pavement in front of it, a yellow line down the center gleaming dully. He did not recognize the driver, caught just a glimpse of a man, looking tired, driving by rote on the familiar way home. When the car had passed, Becker looked afterit, watching the trees and fences and stone walls being illuminated in turn, a flash of porch rail, the glint of a second-story window, and the distant canopy of leaves all taking brief turns in the spotlight before fading once more into the surrounding black.
He pedaled on until he was within a mile of his destination. He pulled off the road once more and covered the reflectors in the spokes and on the pedals and the front and back of the bike with black electrician's tape before continuing. He would not be betrayed by light now, not picked out by any headlights or flashlight beams or random lights from windows. To be seen he would have to be seen, and that by someone who was looking not only for him but directly at him. His only danger now was being silhouetted as the coyote had been, but from this point on it was all downhill, he would be below a crest all the way. Becker pushed off once more, the wind of his passing sounding to his ears like a scythe through the air.
Becker did not anticipate that anyone was watching for him. He did not even expect to encounter anyone. Nor was it caution or training. He moved silent and all but invisible because he liked it, liked the feeling of cutting through the night like a blade, needed the deeply furtive and threatening sensation of being in the dark while others slept, of living with danger. Of being dangerous. Of being deadly.
There was something lupine in his nature, a heavy, uncivilizable part of himself that could be wrapped in the disguises demanded by his culture, trained to sing and dance and wear lace if the occasion required, but never truly tamed. A part of him that needed to be alone in the dark to mirror the black, unexamined corner of his soul. Becker did not know if all men shared this part of themselves, but he knew that some did. The ones who worked at night, the ones he hunted, the ones he understood far too well for his own peace of mind.
He entered the woods at the base of the hill, close to where the other car had been parked on the night of Kiwasee's death. Pulling the bike out of sight and laying it on the ground, Becker began the climb toward the grave, moving quietly, pausing every few yards to listen without the distraction of his own movement.
He had not gone far before he realized that he was not alone. He crouched instinctively, lowering his silhouette, his eyes scanning the darkness in front of him.
The gibbous moon was partially obscured by scudding clouds, and shapes within the forest leapt suddenly into high relief when the moon was clear, vanished into the general gloom when it was hidden. Becker crouched, waiting. He had not seen anything, or if he had, it had not registered consciously. He was aware only of a sensation, as real and undirected as the rising of hair on the back of his neck. Something was there, and close. And whatever it was, it was watching him, standing as motionless as he, and as patient.
The clouds parted, the breeze shifted the leaves into a slightly different pattern, the moonlight shone through where it had been dark before, and suddenly Becker saw it. A pair of points, gleaming green, directed straight at him. Already still, Becker froze, his muscles locked with a primal fear that took several seconds to drain away. The coyote was less than ten yards away, its head again cocked in three-quarter profile. Its mouth was open, the lips curled back to show long teeth glowing dimly. An owl lay motionless between the coyote's paws, the reason the coyote had not fled on Becker's approach, and, still gripped in the owl's talons, a rabbit, its body twitching. Becker imagined the lightning-fast chain of events that must have taken place in silence as he walked up the hill, the swooping lunge of the owl intent on its prey, the almost simultaneous leap of the coyote upon the owl. A double murder in the night, he thought ironically, in silence, close by, and he was unaware of either. If he had happened along half a minute later there would be only a feather or two, some drops of blood, a torn tuft of rabbit hair, and later, elsewhere, fieshiess bones working slowly into the soil. Men or beasts, it's all around us, Becker thought, but only a few of us know it, only a few of us acknowledge the need for blood and the quivering body of the prey within our grasp. Only a few of us pursue it while the rest of the world slumbers in false security, as helpless as the rabbit. Only a few of us like Johnny. Like me. The coyote was only following its nature. Like Johnny. Like me.
Becker stared squarely at the small wolf and the animal returned his gaze unflinchingly. These were not the eyes of a d
og, there was no mistaking them for anything belonging to man. There was a wild quality to them-not anger, not ferocity, but a cool, unapologetic, matter-of-fact murderousness. The coyote killed for a living and the toll of so much death showed in his eyes as an indifference to anything of less than mortal consequence. Becker felt as if he were looking back into time and deep into the history of his race when men competed with the wolf for the kill and the carrion, a time before the day when man had turned his need for death upon himself and converted hunting to murder. The coyote was honest in his blood lust, and unashamed. Only men tried to disguise their need for it. Some of us anyway, Becker thought. Some of us hide it. Some of us get paid for it-and still try to hide it.
The coyote finally turned and loped off in its unhurried way, the wings of the owl dragging on the ground, the rabbit, now still, trailing in the death grip of the owl's talons.
He made his way to the site of Kiwasee's death battle and stood there a long time in the dark before wading through the water to the grave. Once more he stood for a long time, feeling as much as thinking, letting his senses work, trying to put himself into Johnny's mind. Entering his soul was not that difficult, feeling the way he felt was not the problem. Becker tried to make himself think the way Johnny thought.
After a time Becker left the crime scene and walked toward McNeil's house, which was one hill and a valley away. He came to the edge of the woods and halted, surveying McNeil's house and yard. It took him a moment to recognize a four-legged shape as a sawhorse, even Ion er to define the formless side of the house that appeared 9 to undulate in the breeze. He realized finally that it was a builder's tarpaulin, sucking and flapping leisurely in the wind.
The house was dark but a light shone feebly in the garage. The light moved, a shadow blocked it, projecting a distorted shape onto the lawn; then the light came through again.
Becker eased out of the woods, traveling in a running crouch until he gained the side of the garage. As he moved toward the window, the light inside continued its gyrations. It was a muted, furtive light, pointed downward, Becker thought, as someone sought to hide it from view.
Becker stepped well back from the window so that he would not be easily visible in the outer darkness, and peered into the garage. Tee stood by a workbench, a pen light in his mouth, wearing gardening gloves. As Becker watched, his friend opened a small chest and took out an X-Acto knife. Tee's eyes flicked guiltily around the interior of the garage before he carefully wiped the knife with a cloth andreplaced it in the chest. Tee glanced around nervously again, the penlight in his mouth moving with his eyes, then stopping abruptly at the window. Becker saw Tee's startled reaction flash past his eyes, then subside, and realized that he had not seen Becker but his own reflection in the glass.
I was going to do that for you, Becker thought. It would have been better if I had, you don't need it on your conscience or affecting your investigation of McNeil. That's what friends are for.
Tee started out of the garage and then stopped, his attention caught by something in the corner by the overhead door. Becker watched as the chief of police approached a roll of carpet standing upright against the wall. Partially tucked within the roll, as if hastily hidden there, was an object that shone dully in the beam from the penlight. Tee studied the part that protruded from the roll for a moment, then gently pulled it out in his gloved hands, as if it were fragile. His head was briefly out of synchronization with his hands, and the penlight beam danced across the side wall of the garage, revealing a motley of bicycles without wheels, garden tools, a straight-backed chair with the caning used for its seat dangling beneath it like the roots of an aerial plant.
When Tee squared his head with his hands again, Becker saw him holding a figurine of elegantly blown glass. Tee puzzled over it, leaned his head in close to scrutinize the figurine, as if reading something, and then, shaking his head in bewilderment, held it away from himself again.
Finally he replaced it, tucking it back within the roll of carpet so that only the top of the figurine was visible. From Becker's vantage point it had looked like a sports figure, a golfer or possibly a batter, and the tip of the golf club or bat stuck out of the rug, reflecting the last of Tee's flashlight beam like a raindrop.
Becker followed Tee into the night as the big man made his way clumsily down the dirt road, through a stretch of trees, and into his car, which was parked just off the asphalt. Only when Tee's taillights had vanished around a bend in the road and Becker was certain that his friend was safe and undetected did he return to his bicycle and make his way home through the darkness. He could have turned his headlight on but he preferred to glide through the night unseen, whether stealth was required or not.
16
Grone said hello to Becker but made little effort to be polite to Kom, whose presence insulted him. Kom seemed not to notice, greeting Grone as enthusiastically as if they were old friends, then turning his attention to the body parts arranged on the table. They were still chilled from storage in the cooler.
"They're the same marks," Kom said to Becker. "I see what you mean." He picked up an upper arm, turned it to examine both ends. "Two little slashes, almost parallel, on both ends of the humerus. Same on the left arm. Slashes on the ulna, too. Again on both ends of the femur and on the exposed ends of both tibiae… Seems pretty obvious now, I don't know why we didn't see it in the beginning. It's certainly not caused by his technique."
"You'll find it in my report," Grone said to Becker. "Along with everything else you need to know."
Becker touched Grone's arm, trying to placate him. "I know it." He glanced at Kom, who was absorbed in a study of the torso. "Politics,"
Becker whispered to Grone. "Nothing personal."
"It must be hard to determine the cause of death when a body is decaying like this," Kom said.
"Not at all," said Grone brusquely. "Really? Not my field, of course.
You guys do great work… What did she die of? I don't see any gross wounds."
"It's all in my report," Grone said, again addressin himself to Becker.
"Humor him," Becker said under his breath. "I'll explain later." He hoped he would not have to explain. Grone would not be sympathetic to the idea that Kom was allowed to handle his corpse because Associate Deputy Director Karen Crist wanted him to be Becker's friend.
Grone stood and extended his outstretched fingers toward Becker's neck.
"Strangled her." He pressed his thumb and fingers against either side of Becker's neck, applying a slight pressure. "Cut off the blood to her brain."
Kom touched the corpse's neck with his gloved finger. "Did he crush the windpipe?"
Grone continued to address Becker, lifting his eyebrows to display his impatience with Kom's remarks. "He didn't suffocate her, he just killed her brain. The body followed."
"Can that be done? Just with the hand?" Kom asked incredulously.
"Apparently," Becker said quickly, forestalling something nastier welling up in Grone. "Actually, it's not that uncommon. It's a known technique, let's put it that way."
"They teach you guys that? In the Bureau?" Kom had taken to referring to the FBI as the Bureau in emulation of Karen and Becker.
"It's not easily done with an adult," Becker said. "The victim just has to move his neck a little to start the blood flow again. Under most circumstances it wouldn't work."
"How do you walk around with all that kind of thing inside you, John? I mean the… I don't know what I mean."
Grone rolled his eyes and turned away.
"Yeah, well," Becker said, letting the words serve for an answer.
"Was she in pain, do you suppose?" Kom asked, troubled.
"Can't feel good," Grone offered. "But a lot better than the way some people go. It probably doesn't hurt at all. It would be the fear that would be the problem."
"Do you think they knew what he was doing to them? Surely not."
"Why not?" Grone asked impatiently. "He was killing them. Why wouldn't they
know it?"
"I would think… I don't know. I just hate to think they knew what was going on. I hate to think they suffered,"
"That doesn't mean Johnny hates it," Grone said. "He probably enjoys the fear." He looked to Becker for confirmation. Becker looked away, giving him no satisfaction. "Did you manage to get a good photo?" Becker asked.
"Passable, I suppose. There's only so much you can do with a body that far gone."
"Why do you need a photo?" Kom asked.
"For identification," Becker said. "We can't ask people to come look at a dismembered corpse and expect them to make a sensible response. They'd be too horrified, they wouldn't be able to look at it. If we can get a decent photo we use that, otherwise we'll have an artist give a rendering of what she probably looked like when alive."
Kom studied the body again for a moment. "I wonder what she did look like. Pretty, do you think?"
"Her parents thought so," Becker said.
Later, as they left Grone's domain, Kom said, "Doesn't it bother you, John? How can you look at bodies like that without letting it get to you?"
"It bothers me."
"I would never know it from looking at you."
Becker grinned ironically. "Stanley, there are a great many things you'd never know from looking at me. I have my little secrets. One of them is that I don't like looking at corpses with their limbs hacked off. I do it because it's useful and I've learned to do it without losing my lunch, but I don't like it."
"I didn't mean to imply that you liked it."
"I noticed that you managed to look."
"I'm a doctor."
"You don't doctor corpses, do you? You took a good look, you showed a real interest."
"I've offended you, John. I'm sorry."
"My reactions to things are pretty normal, Stanley, despite what you've heard. Putrid flesh makes me want to vomit. Mutilations make me wince.
Sharp instruments cut me. I sound like Shylock, don't I? Hath not a cop tears?"