Death Match

FOURTEEN

Lash rose from his bed and went to the door, opened it, and walked toward the living room. The curtains of the picture window were thrown wide. Beyond, moonlight daubed the creamy breakers with a pale blue phosphorescence. The furniture was illuminated with the half-light of a Magritte painting. He sat down on the leather couch and hunched forward, arms resting on his knees, gaze still on the sea.

Earlier, as Vogel had directed him through a series of nondescript hallways and out a side door onto Fifty-fifth Street, he had been aware primarily of rage. He had walked in a red fog to his parking garage, conducting gel still drying on his scalp, throwing away the exit literature Vogel apologetically pressed into his hands. But as the evening wore on — as he’d eaten a light supper; checked his phone messages; conferred with Kline, the psychologist who was covering his practice — the anger ebbed, leaving an emptiness in its place. And when at last he could put off going to bed no longer, the emptiness began to give way to something else again.

And as he sat staring out at the sea, Dr. Alicto’s words came back yet again. You saw some terrible things. But they ran off your back. They didn’t affect your work or yourself.

Lash closed his eyes, unable to shake the lingering sense of disbelief. Going into Eden that morning, he had anticipated a great many things. But the one thing he had not anticipated was rejection. True, he’d gone through it simply as an exercise: the monochromatic Vogel; the annoying, faintly alarming Dr. Alicto — they had not known the real reason he was there. But that didn’t ease his failure. And now he’d come away from the process, not with clearer insight into the Wilners or the Thorpes, but with Dr. Alicto’s low, mellifluous voice buzzing in his head.

Sometimes, people don’t address the terrible things they see. They bury them in a deep place. And they come to live in a constant state of darkness…

During his years of analyzing and treating others, Lash had carefully abstained from directing that same searching light upon himself: from thinking about what drove him forward or held him back; about his motivations, good or bad. And yet now, here in the dark, those were the only thoughts coming into his head.

Was there any particular assignment in your prior job that precipitated your decision to leave? Some error or lapse of judgment on your part? Something that spilled over into your private life?

Lash stood up and made his way down the hall to his bathroom. He flicked on the light, opened the cupboard beneath the sink, and knelt down. There, under the extra bottles of shampoo and the blister-packs of razor blades, was a child’s shoe box. He reached for it, removed the cover. The little box was half full of small white tablets: Seconal, appropriated for him by a sympathetic fellow-agent years before, during a raid on a money launderer’s townhouse. When he’d moved to this house, he’d meant to flush them down the toilet. Somehow, he never had. And the sleeping pills had sat there, inhabiting the dark space beneath the sink, almost forgotten. They were three years old, but Lash was fairly certain they hadn’t expired. He grabbed a handful, held them in his palm, stared at them.

And then he dropped them back into the box and replaced it inside the cupboard. That would return him to the bad days, to the months just before — and just after — he left the Bureau. It was a place he did not ever want to revisit.

He rose and washed his hands, raising his face to the mirror as he did so.

Since he’d moved here, gone into private practice, sleep had returned. He could give up this case tomorrow, get back to his regular round of consultations. He could sleep well again.

And yet, somehow, he knew he could not do that. Because even now, as he looked in the mirror, he could see the ghostly outline of Lewis Thorpe, looking back at him through the wash of videotape: always, always, asking the same question…

… Why?

Lash dried his hands. Then he went back to his bedroom, lay down again, and waited — not for sleep, because sleep would not be coming — but simply for the morning.