Prayer for the Dead jb-1

by David Wiltse

  “No.”

  “What was her maiden name?”

  “Kriek.”

  “German. I knew it. Don’t misunderstand me. We’re all mongrels in this country. Do a few case studies, go back more than two generations on anybody in America, and you won’t find very many who aren’t as mixed genetically as an alleycat. All the gene pools bleed into each other here. I’ve got a grandmother from Turkey-although you’d never know it. Still, certain types hold true. Give me your genealogy and I can come up with a pretty accurate picture most of the time.”

  “And most of the time is good enough for an actuary, right?”

  Chaney paused, wondering if his profession were being insulted.

  “We deal in large numbers, if that’s what you mean. We’re not supposed to be an exact science.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “So, is there anything else you need?”

  “This information, Dyce’s list. Is there any way anyone else could have compiled it? I mean anyone with a computer and a modem?”

  “Well-if he knew the codes. You can tap into the White House bathroom these days if you know the code.”

  “But it would be difficult?”

  “Sure it would-unless you were from another insurance company.”

  “Insurance companies exchange information?”

  “All the time. We have to cross-check to fight fraud, for one thing. If somebody insures his wife for fifty thousand and she dies, that’s not a big event, but if he took out a fifty-thousand-dollar policy with ten other companies-hello. Suddenly you’re looking at a significant event. But the main reason we exchange information is that actuaries need the largest database possible to do the best job. We transfer information every day.”

  “To the same people. Or the same computers?”

  “The same computers, basically, yes. Why?”

  “Could you tell if another computer tried to get at this information?”

  “The database or this list?”

  “The list, I would think.”

  “That would be easier than protecting the whole database. Yes, I could set up an alarm that would tell me if someone tried to get into Dyce’s file.”

  “Good. Please do that and notify me immediately.”

  “Want to tell me why?”

  “Mr. Dyce is going to want to come back for his list. Maybe not right away, but sooner or later, he’s going to have to.”

  “He’d be stupid if he does.”

  “Not stupid. Not stupid at all. Helpless.”

  Tee noticed certain things. One was the remarkable resilience of a town like Clamden. In the week following the news of Dyce’s crimes and his subsequent escape, the townspeople had reacted with the predictable outcry of disgust, horror, and outrage-much of the latter directed at the police in general and Tee in particular for not somehow magically foreseeing Dyce’s plans and providing adequate protection to the citizenry. There was talk of getting a new chief, discussion of citizen patrols, an increased sale of locks and safety devices, demands for a curfew to safeguard the children, all the expected flurry of alarm of a people who had suddenly been made to feel insecure in their own homes. What surprised Tee was how quickly things returned to normal. After two weeks, people still asked him about the case and the so-called manhunt, but by then only with the casual interest of someone massaging an old wound. It took longer for the macabre jokes to die down than for the concern to subside. The citizens ultimately reacted to Dyce’s murders with the statistical optimism of someone who has been struck by lightning and emerged to tell about it. The incident was over and so unlikely to ever happen again that its occurrence unparted a sort of immunity from future occurrence.

  Another thing that Tee noticed was that not everything returned to normal. His friend Becker was changed in ways both obvious and subtle. He seemed distracted much of the time, which was understandable. He was conducting the real manhunt, after all, but there was something more fundamental: Becker had lost much of the air of unruffled calm that had always distinguished him. Minor irritants annoyed him openly, his posture and demeanor suggested a different person, a frailer, warier person than the man Tee had known since youth. It occasionally seemed to Tee as if his friend were not the hunter but the man being hunted.

  Becker’s visits to Cindi’s house also became more frequent. That, at least. Tee could understand. His friend’s car was parked on Cindi’s street most nights, but the hours were getting later and later so that Tee wondered if Becker was having trouble sleeping.

  “Is it any of your business?” Becker asked. They sat in the coffee shop, once again ignored by Janie, the waitress.

  “What did I say? All I said was, how’s it going with Cindi?”

  “And I asked if it was your business.”

  “It was polite conversation. You’re losing your sense of humor lately.”

  Becker stared at Tee. There was no malice in his look, but an unplacable, searching quality that demanded an answer and always made Tee uneasy.

  “It’s my job,” Tee continued. “Especially now. What kind of cop would I be if I didn’t notice your car when I saw it?”

  “What kind?”

  “Especially now. It’s not that I’m keeping tabs on you. I cruise, that’s what I’m supposed to do. I cruise neighborhoods, I test shop doors at night, I investigate cars that are parked where they don’t belong, and cars that are abandoned. It’s what I do. Especially now.”

  “Especially now.”

  “Now more than ever. People like to see the police going through the motions; it makes them feel comfortable.”

  “Little do they know,” said Becker.

  Tee wasn’t sure whether to laugh.

  “Or maybe you haven’t lost your sense of humor exactly,” Tee said. “Maybe it’s just got too subtle for me.”

  “Didn’t mean to disparage your fine police work.”

  “If I could just point out, I was the one who noticed something funny going on in the first place.”

  “And I’m the first to give you credit,” said Becker.

  “I stress your finely developed sense of paranoia in my report.”

  “You might try to spread the word a little broader. People in town think we’re a bunch of half-wits.”

  “We?”

  “Like we should have known some insurance salesman was inviting the boys in for a while and then boiling them up?”

  “Notice a certain lack of local respect, do you. Tee? A chief is not without honor except in his own community. They all see what a fine job you’re doing now, though. Cruising and noting my comings and goings. That should make them feel better.”

  “I just asked how you were getting along… Look, are you pissed at me about something?”

  “Pissed at you? Why would I be? You’re the one who gave me my current occupation.”

  “You didn’t have to do it. How did I know what it would turn into?”

  “You are the one who presented me with your nephew’s wife and baby, aren’t you?”

  “Present you? What’s that? She happened to be around, I thought she could be helpful. Who twisted your arm to get into it? Did anybody pressure you in any way…”

  “Forget it. Tee, it’s not your fault. I’m not in a very good mood, that’s all. I haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “Because of this thing?”

  “My dreams keep me awake.”

  “You can’t dream if you’re not asleep in the first place.”

  Becker gave him that questioning look again, almost as if he were hopeful of discovering a new troth.

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Look… you don’t have to stay on it. If it’s getting to you, just quit. It’s not your job anymore, you gave it up once already.”

  “Just give it up?” Becker grinned.

  Tee shrugged. “Let Dyce go. They’ll find him or they won’t. In any case, he won’t come back here.”

  “Won’t he?”


  “Why would he?”

  “ ‘Cause this is where he gets his kicks?”

  “Come on, John. He can buy a cauldron anywhere. All this guy needs is a house and a stove.”

  “Not quite. He needs his tranquilizer, PMBL. We don’t know what his source is, but it’s certainly not over the counter.”

  “His source doesn’t have to be around here, does it? It could be any pharmacy outlet in the country.”

  “Could be. Could be he drives halfway across the country to get his supply. Could be he gets it through the mail, but I doubt it. He’s been very careful. But even supposing he does get it from somewhere else, there’s still something else he needs from here.”

  “I’ll bite. What does he need from here he can’t get anywhere else?”

  “His victims. He’s got them selected already. He’s gone to a lot of trouble and time to locate them, and he’s used a lot of expensive hardware to do it.”

  “Your famous list.”

  “His list, not mine.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t have a list.”

  “Christ, I get the point. It’s just a manner of speaking.” Tee waved for Janie, then sighed.

  “Why can’t he just make up a new list. All right, not just. I suppose it’s complicated, but still, why not do it the safe way? Why come back here? They sell insurance in Utah, don’t they?”

  “He could make up another list. Maybe he’s doing it now, in which case we won’t catch him, not now, maybe not ever. But I don’t think he is. He doesn’t have the time.”

  “Time? He’s got all the time in the world. What’s he got to do in such a hurry?”

  “Kill.”

  “Come on, John. What is he, Dracula? He’s got to hurry up to kill? If I was doing it, I’d take all the time I needed and set it up right.”

  “That’s because you’d be doing it logically-but then you’re not doing it in the first place. And why aren’t you?”

  “Why aren’t I what? Boiling bones?”

  “It’s a real question.”

  “Because why should I?”

  “That’s the point. You’ve got no reason to. You have no need to. And I don’t mean killing, exactly. I think that’s incidental. That’s probably just a way of dealing with the disposal problem. When I say kill I mean a whole complex of emotional reactions involved with whatever it is he does to these men before he gets rid of them. Whatever that compulsion is, I don’t think it can wait. It has to be fed, and it has to be fed a very special diet. It happens the diet he knows about is around here. Which is why I think he’ll be back.”

  Tee felt an inward shudder at the off-hand phrase “disposal problem.” There was something eerily detached, yet at the same time intensely personal about Becker’s manner when he discussed Dyce that made Tee increasingly uneasy.

  The two men sat in silence for a while, Becker lost in his thoughts and Tee studying his friend with concern.

  Becker finally broke the silence.

  “We’re getting along fine,” he said.

  “None of my business,” said Tee.

  “She’s a nice woman… Too young for me.”

  “I wasn’t prying…”

  “She keeps me from dreaming.”

  “Look, John…”

  “Or at least from sleeping.” Becker smiled humorlessly before raising his hand slightly above his shoulder. Janie, the waitress, came to the table with a pot of coffee in hand.

  “So what is it with you and Janie?” Becker asked after the waitress had withdrawn. “She ignores you because you made a pass at her, or because you didn’t make a pass at her?”

  “I remind you I’m a married man.”

  “Oh. Pardon me.”

  “Also a gentleman. Naturally I cannot discuss these things. My lips are sealed.”

  “In other words, you made a pass at her, she refused you, you made an ass of yourself, and she hasn’t spoken to you since.”

  “Not quite. She wanted to play with my gun.”

  Becker laughed. “A consummation devoutly to be wished, I would have thought.”

  Tee leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “I’m serious. She wanted to fondle the goddamn. 38.”

  “Confusing symbol with substance.”

  “Whatever that means. Stop grinning. She wanted to stroke it. Weird.”

  Becker laughed, glancing at Janie.

  “Don’t look at her, for Christ’s sake. And stop laughing. I’m not sure it’s funny. You shouldn’t laugh at her.”

  “I’m laughing at you,” said Becker. “The horny chief finally gets the girl in his cruiser and all she wants is his hardware.”

  “She’s looking at us,” Tee hissed. “Stop it. Act natural.”

  Becker tossed his head back and laughed aloud.

  “Ah, Tee,” he said. “If I could act natural… If I knew what the hell that was.” Becker stuffed a napkin in his mouth and shook with laughter. At least it sounded like laughter, but Tee thought his eyes looked enormously sad.

  Becker found Cindi in her basement, hanging from the ceiling like a three-toed sloth pondering its next move.

  “Comfortable?” he asked.

  She was dangling from a horizontal I beam running across the ceiling joists, clinging to the half-inch flange of the beam with the heels of each boot and the first knuckle of her fingers. Becker had seen her work out on the beam before, and also on the exposed pipes which she had reinforced with U-bolts and wire, converting her cellar to a kind of adult jungle gym.

  She tipped her head all the way backward to see him as he came down the stairs, making her look a bit like a slain deer being carted away on shoulder poles.

  “Hello, Becker,” she said coolly.

  Becker removed his jacket and sat on one of the old packing mats that Cindi had lifted somehow from a moving van. They were not there for padding in case she ever fell-as far as he could tell, she never fell- but for insulation against the cold cement of the floor when she did her loosening exercises. The basement was totally unfinished; except for the beam and the pipe reinforcements, it was unimproved in any way.

  “There’s something oriental about this room,” Becker said. “You know, spare and clean, but somehow evocative of-of-what would you call the essence of this room? Indoor plumbing?”

  Cindi released the beam with her feet and swung down to hang by her fingertips. Her feet were a foot off the floor. She walked hand over hand to one end of the beam, then worked her way backwards. After repeating this procession three times, she swung one foot onto the beam again and let go with one hand so she hung by one heel and the opposite hand. She let the free arm and leg dangle as she stared at Becker.

  He had removed his shoes and was slowly stretching his thigh muscles on the mats.

  “Keep your clothes on,” she said.

  Becker looked up at her and grinned. “That sounds like a promising invitation.”

  “You’ve got the wrong day,” she said. Cindi switched arms and heels and let the others dangle, still staring at Becker.

  “It’s like having a conversation with a gibbon,” he said. “ ‘Course, I’ve always liked doing that.”

  “You’re thinking it’s Thursday,” she said. “You’re confused. It’s Saturday. Our date was for last Thursday.”

  “I was in Washington. Talking to my shrink again.”

  “What about?”

  “Partly about why I wasn’t with you.”

  “I hope he offered a better explanation than you have.”

  “He doesn’t explain things. He asks questions.”

  “Did he ask you why you didn’t call me to tell me you weren’t going to show up? Did he ask you why you’ve been avoiding me generally?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  “I don’t want to be an imposition on you, Becker. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I don’t like being used like a port of convenience, either.”

  “I understand.�
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  “If you don’t want to come around, don’t come around. But don’t come around at all.”

  Becker looked at his feet. Cindi began a series of pull-ups on her heels and the fingers of one hand. She’s stronger than I am, Becker thought. And wiser.

  “You going to say anything?” she asked finally. Becker wished that she would give some sign of exertion, at least. She didn’t appear to be even breathing hard.

  “I’ve never been any good talking to angry women,” he said.

  “If you always act the way you do with me, you must have had lots of practice.”

  “I told you I was no good for you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “You wanted to sleep with me.”

  “I still do.”

  “Look, Becker, I like you, you’re an interesting man, but basically I don’t like the way you want to treat me. I’ve got better things to do. So do you, apparently.”

  Becker sighed. “I don’t have anything better to do than you.”

  “Well, you’re right about that,” she said. She dropped to the floor and began doing push-ups on her fingertips, her spine rigid as a plank. Becker watched the muscles in her shoulders work under the spandex. He resisted an urge to grab her buttocks.

  “I mean to say I’m worth something, you understand?” she continued. “You’ve got nothing better going in your life than me. You just happen to be too stupid to appreciate it.”

  “I do appreciate it,” Becker said. “I already said so. You’re the best thing I’ve got going.”

  “I’m young and I’m smart and I’ve got a good heart.”

  She rolled onto her back and lifted first one leg and then the other and hooked them behind her neck. Sweat finally broke forth, bursting like a sudden freshet on her skin.

  “In fact, I’ve got a great heart,” she said. “I’m a damned nice person. Better than you are.”

  “A lot better,” Becker agreed.

  “A lot better,” she said. Her voice finally showed some sign of her exertions. “Plus you’re too old for me.”

  “I warned you about that, too,” he said.

  “No, you didn’t. I didn’t need you to tell me. All I have to do is look at you. You’re too old for me, Becker. And you’re not nice enough, and generally you’re not worthy.”