by David Wiltse
"They think it's the timer belt," he said. "They said it would be ready by the time I got back."
"And just after you had it fixed," she said.
"Um," said Luv, trying to remember what he had told her about his absence the last time.
"I was so worried about you that night," she said. "I had a premonition-now don't laugh, I can sense these things sometimes. I had a clear feeling, very strong, even before you didn't show up, that something was wrong. I even told my daughter before I left the house that I had this funny feeling about the evening."
"You were right."
"And then when you didn't show up, the feeling got stronger and stronger. I knew someone was hurt."
"You knew that specifically?"
"I'm very sensitive in that way. I'm not always right, but usually I'm very accurate. But here's the funny thingI didn't think that it was you who was hurt. I knew you were involved in some kind of incident, or accident, but I wasn't really worried that you were hurt." Luv watched the oncoming traffic, studying faces to see if he recognized any. There were many more people who knew him than he would know personally, of course, but it was only the ones he could identify who might take it upon themselves to tell his wife where they had seen him. What he feared more than anything else was the flicker of recognition in someone else's eye.
"And then you told me that you'd hit the deer and of course I understood immediately," Denise said.
"I felt I had to stay with it," Luv said. "I couldn't just leave it there. I knew you'd be concerned, but I was certain you would understand."
"Of course, of course. You did what you had to do. I admire you for it.":,Well…" 'Most people would just keep driving."
"I couldn't bear the thought that it was suffering," said Luv. "I hate to think of anything suffering."
"You're so good, you're such a good man."
Luv touched her arm.
"Isn't it funny that I knew it had something to do with death?" she asked.
"You're an amazing woman," he said. As casually as he could, Luv twisted around to check out the cars behind him. He did not think he was being followed, it was simply old habit.
"I tried to call you," said Denise.
"What?" He was suddenly sharply alert, trying to hide his concern.
"I know I shouldn't have, but I was worried. I wouldn't have said anything, don't worry. If your wife answered, I was just going to hang up right away. If you answered, I thought I would just whisper that I loved you and then hang up. I just wanted to hear your voice to know that you were all right. That would have been okay, wouldn't it?"
"I don't think it's a good idea to call me," he said carefully. "My wife, she's so- It would take so little to make such trouble. She would take it out on the kids, of course. The children would suffer. Even if she just suspected. She's so paranoid. Even a wrong number could set her off, anything at all could set her off. I couldn't bear it if she turned on the children again. It would be so dangerous, for everybody."
"I wouldn't have actually said anything, I just miss you so much."
"I know, I know," he said sympathetically. "I miss you too." And he did, in his own way. He missed them all when he was not with them-in brief, sporadic burst seven though he might yearn to be away from them when they were in his presence.
"Sometimes I just say your name aloud, I miss you so much." She turned away from him shyly. He stroked the back of her hand where it rested on the steering wheel, longing for the sight of the motel. Sex would be particularly good tonight, he knew, because it was going to be her last time and he would take especially long. She had reached the dangerous point, she was too much in love with him, too needy, too demanding. She no longer considered his company an adventure, it was fast becoming a right. He could not have women trying to call him, even if there was no chance of her ever getting his phone number-she didn't even know his right name. The effort alone was a signal to end it. He would fuck her tonight like she'd never been fucked in her life, and then… who knew what then? It was partly up to his demon but, as he had learned in the woods with the black man, it was now also partly up to him.
"Why do you have an unlisted phone?" Denise asked, turning into the motel parking lot. "I couldn't find you in any town around here."
"We had crank calls," he said. When she turned off the ignition he lifted her hand to his face and kissed her palm, then licked slowly between her fingers. It was going to be a wonderful night, the uncertainty about the ending was so exciting.
The Cap'n had been at his very best. He had made love to her as worshipfully as if she were a goddess fallen to ground and this were to be her last act among mortals before returning to heaven, a feast of earthly, human delights that must last her an eternity, and he had allowed himself to come only when Denise had half whimpered, half laughed for mercy: "No more. God, no more." Then he allowed her to rest for a moment before reaching for ecstasy himself, reaching it with her crying out "Yes, yes!" while incredibly soaring to orgasm one final time herself.
They lay in the dark, Denise maundering on about something, Luv paying only enough attention to be alert for danger, until he felt the demon begin to claw to the surface inside him. He put his hand on her hip, lowered his mouth to her breast.
"You are incredible," she said, in awe. "I really don't think I can."
"There's something I want you to do for me," Luv said. He rolled her onto her stomach. "I need to do it this way. It may seem a little strange, but I want you to trust me. You do trust me, don't you?"
"Of course," she said. "I'll do anything you want."
"I'm going to put my hand on your neck," he said, putting his fingers in the right spot. "And I'm going to slowly squeeze while I make love to you." He slipped into her from behind and smiled when he heard her gasp with pleasure.
Thrusting into her, he began the slow pressure on her neck, then stopped abruptly, his erection withering. "What's wrong?" Denise asked.
"Nothing," Luv said, pulling away from her.
"What is it? You can do it. I trust you."
"I didn't want to hurt you," said Luv.
"You wouldn't hurt me, you would never hurt me, I know that," she said, rubbing his chest.
Luv rose from the bed and hurried to the bathroom, closing the door.
"Are you all right?" she called.
In the tiny bathroom, Luv stared at himself in the mirror, shaken by his own stupidity. He had been about to kill her when he had suddenly remembered that he did not have his car with him, he did not have his equipment. If he took her car he had no adequate way to clean it, no way to dismemher her, no way to transport her. He could not believe he had been guilty of such a lapse of good sense. He prided himself on being smarter than his adversaries and yet he had been about to act as stupidly as any impulse killer. He had very nearly let his emotions get the better of him.
You're a fool, he told himself A careless, humbling fool, and you're beginning to make mistakes. You were nearly caught in the Caprice-because you went back to help! Idiotic. You didn't even know they were onto the Caprice in the first place. It had to have been because of that incident with the moron Metzger in the woods during the aborted burial of Inge's body. A cop came that close, your car was exposed, and you assumed nothing would happen. Stupid. Now this. You are in peril because of your own behavior, he chided himself. It's nothing they've done, it's never anything that cops do, it's only what people leave behind, the clues they give, the traces they're too stupid to hide. As he heard Denise moving on the other side of the door, coming toward the bathroom, his attitude began to change. There was another side to it, he told himself.
"Are you okay?" she asked diffidently. He could tell she had her ear to the door, imagining him in a heap on the floor, collapsed and overfucked.
"I'm fine," he said, turning on the tap to give her a noise to concentrate on. "In fact, I'm great." And he was, he knew he was. He was Cap'n Luv, not some ordinary skirtchasing philanderer. He was the best. And he was not
a blood-crazed psychopath, cutting and slashing random victims. Cap'n Luv killed without pain and left no trail, no bodies, no crime. There had been a flood, that was all. A freak of nature. A fucking fluke. And now, even at the height of his anger with himself, he realized that what had just happened with Denise was not a mistake but a great triumph. Luv had been in the grip of his demon, the mania was fully upon him-and he had resisted. He had won. He had shown that he was truly in charge, Luv was in command, not a mania, not some outer force, not some raving bit of subconscious, but Cap'n Luv. Luv was the king, even of himself. He was exultant, for he now knew in a way he had never fully realized before that he was the complete master.
Of himself, of others. Of his destiny. Of the destiny of others. From here on, the world would be what he made of it.
Luv smiled at himself in the mirror, approving heartily, admiring. His smile broadened until he began to laugh, and he watched his reflection as he did so, monitoring himself even at the height of his gaiety.
Denise began to chuckle in sympathy and he suddenly swept open the door, took her in his arms and whirled her around the room, filling the space with his booming laughter. "The best!" he cried. "The best."
"No, you're the best," Denise laughed, her feet off the floor as he twirled her. He did not argue.
AT ONE A.M. Tee's alarm sounded, again hissing static from a station that was never quite tuned in. He rose and made his way toward the door, where he stopped by the foot of the bed, looking at Marge's shape in the gloom. She was on her side, her back turned to him as they lay in bed, one pillow under her head, one over it, and a third clasped to her chest and stomach like a doll. In good times it was a pose that amused Tee but now it was suggestive of pain, as if she clutched the third pillow with the desperate valor of a cancer victim seeking an anodyne. He was her pain, of course, and did not know what to do about it that would not make it worse.
He had denied having an affair, denied it vigorously and vociferously, denied it to the point where he thought any reasonable person would have to believe him, denied it to the point where he nearly believed it himself The only alternative seemed to be to admit it, but he was convinced that that way lay disaster. There was hope in sticking with his claim of innocence, none in confessing to guilt. He had seen men succumb to unwavering suspicion, men on whom Tee and the police had no evidence beyond a bone-deep certainty that they knew what they knew.
Unaware of the genuinely protective nature of the criminal code's presumption of innocence, of the difficult, sometimes impossible task of proving guilt without substantial evidence, they had confessed because Tee or some other inquisitor had simply waved aside excuses and alibis and continued to bear down, to bore in with the hard finger of blame.
Had they held on longer, Tee knew, they would have remained free, but they saw relief in confession, as if the balm of forgiveness would be given them if they but bared their conscience at last. Sniveling and snotty-nosed, they finally gave in. High school boys confessing to acts of vandalism, bleary-eyed drunks admitting to a variety of stupid, larcenous, violent, self-destructive adventures, the occasional true criminal acknowledging his miscreant ambitions.
Tee did not believe that confession was good for the soul. He believed it represented the point of no return. Say you did, and there was no going back to the time when you did not. He would hang on as long as he had to and if necessary lie himself into his grave. Marge had not moved a muscle since he had awakened, and he knew that she was tense and alert. She had lain like that for the past two nights, no tossing and turning like someone trying to sleep, but catatonically stiff, as if she were listening for a pin drop in the outer rooms. Hostility radiated from her rigid body like heat from a stove; Tee was afraid to touch her for fear of pulling back his hand seared to the bone.
"I'm going to call McNeil," he said. "You can listen in if you want to."
She did not stir, did not make a sound, lay there like a corpse in rigor.
"You're welcome to listen to every word," he said. "I'm just going to see if he's home. That's all it is."
It was worse than talking to a wall; one had no expectation of response from a wall.
"I'd make the call from in here, but…" He shrugged, aware that she could not see his gesture. He did not know why he didn't make the call from the bedroom.
"Are you coming? I know you're awake."
She still did not move. Tee gave himself permission to leave, still easing quietly out the door, maintaining her charade that she was asleep.
Ginny's door was closed. Tee considered opening it, giving himself another glimpse of his sleeping angel, something to lighten his heart in the gloom that had prevailed for the past several days. With infinite care he turned her doorknob, and found it locked, a puzzling development. As far as he knew, Ginny did not lock her door, had not done so since a screaming argument with her mother over a year ago. Tee had gone to his daughter to comfort her and found the door secured against him. Enraged at being suddenly sealed off from her, he had threatened to remove the door entirely if it was ever locked again, and to his knowledge, it had not been. In return he had sworn to respect her privacy by always knocking and awaiting a response before entering.
This had presented no problem, since she was always glad to see him, even if she gave him only fleeting attention because of the telephone glued to her ear.
There was no light coming from under the door, no sound emerging from the room. Tee decided that it was not the hour or the occasion to press the issue.
In the kitchen he waited a few moments to hear if Marge was coming, before closing the door and picking up the phone. He let it ring fifteen times before hanging up.
Moving now with a sense of urgency, Tee returned to the bedroom and dressed. Marge did not move at all although he was making no effort to be quiet.
"I'm going out," he said, pulling on his shoes. "McNeil wasn't home."
He looked at the heavy utility belt atop his dresser and debated whether he wanted it-the gun went with the belt. If he had the gun, there was a chance he might use it. After a hesitation he strapped the belt around his waist and left the house.
Metzger sounded startled to receive a call, and Tee wondered ifhe he had been asleep.
"What are you doing up, Chief?"
"I'm looking for McNeil," said Tee. "Have you seen him?"
"Tonight?"
"Yes, tonight. Since you've been on duty."
"No, but I wasn't really looking for him."
"You'd recognize McNeil, wouldn't you, Metzger? You wouldn't have to be looking for him especially in order to see him, would you?"
"No sir. I haven't seen him at all. Have you tried calling him?"
"Give me some credit."
"Yes sir. Do you want me to drive by his house?"
"Do you think he might be in the backyard, studying the moon?"
"The moon?"
"Just let me know if you see him, all right? Don't stop him, don't talk to him, don't follow him, just let me know. Will you do that, Metzger?"
"You bet… How come, sir?"
"Personal reasons, all right? And don't mention to him, or t o anybody else, that I was looking for him, understand?"
"Yes sir."
"Metzger, you do know his private car, don't you? You'll recognize it if you see it."
"Sure thing, you bet, Chief." Tee returned the speaker to the dashboard of his cruiser. It's because we don't pay them enough, he reflected, thinking of Metzger. If we could just get the town to raise their salaries, maybe we could attract better men.
It seemed a futile exercise, trolling the midnight streets of Clamden in search of McNeil. There were 195 miles of road in the town-even assuming he was in the town and not in one of the five other communities that bordered itand yet Tee felt that he had to do something, try something, stir things up. The fine-grained sifting of the FBI was probably efficient in the long run, creating evidence from fibers and sloughed-off flakes of skin, but Tee needed to stop him
now. This was his town, the victims were his people, under his custody, and the problem-for Tee-was immediate. The FBI and the state police might compile all of their bits and scraps into an impressive pile of evidence that would ultimately convict, but Tee needed action to stop Johnny first. There were times when he could not understand how Becker could function within such a painstaking organization. His friend was bold and decisive, intuitive and quick. In all things quick, lightning-fast as his own honed reflexes. Tee wondered how he could tolerate the plodding ways of the Bureau.
Becker had seemed greatly distracted for the last several days and would not tell Tee why, but he had lost all sympathy with Tee's theory that McNeil was Johnny Appleseed, or indeed that McNeil merited any further investigation whatever, which made Tee all the more determined to pursue his suspicions-his conviction, reallyon his own.
Despite having scorned Metzger's suggestion, Tee swung by McNeil's house first, going to see… what, he did not know-McNeil coming perhaps, McNeil going, McNeil in any activity.