Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 4

“ So it started when, exactly?”

Becker stopped pacing and looked out the window. He had to part the vertical blinds to see the building opposite his, where the blinds were discreetly closed. If he looked far enough to the side he could just glimpse a sorry-looking acacia sapling bound in a cement pot the size of an oil drum. Beautification was not the highest priority in the Bureau complex. The window covering was a muted purple, just about right for a remembered dream and thus appropriate for a shrink’s office, even if out of place in an FBI office. This, however, was both.

“It started with my mother. At least that’s standard theory, isn’t it? She weaned me too early, and I shall never forgive her for it.”

Gold drew a line down the margin of his notepad. “Is it me you dislike, or this process?”

“Aren’t you part of the process? Don’t I transfer my love and hostilities to you and allow you to soak them up like a saintly sponge?”

“In your case we can skip the transference if you like.” Gold drew a serpentine curve the length of the first line, intersecting it at regular intervals. “I’d rather not be the object of either your affections or your hostilities. Besides, this isn’t Freudian analysis. It isn’t primal scream therapy, either. For that matter, I’m not terribly interested in your relationship with your mother.”

“What are you interested in?” Becker asked.

“We just want to know why you felt you had to quit.”

“We?”

“They want to know. I’m supposed to find out. You’re supposed to tell me. It’s a team thing.”

“Why do they care?”

“Naivete doesn’t suit you, Mr. Becker. You’re too valuable for them to give up without an effort.”

Gold began to fill in the parabolas created by the intersecting lines.

“I retired because it was time.” Becker was pacing again.

“You’re still a relatively young man. You were in your prime, you were in heavy demand.”

“It was time for me.”

“But why?”

“You ever been shot at, Gold?”

“No.”

“Stabbed? Or even threatened? Ever have a terrorist point a gun at you, wave a grenade in your face, threaten to kill you and a hundred other people?”

“You know I haven’t. Is that supposed to justify you or put me in my puny civilian wimpish place?”

Becker felt suddenly weary and ashamed. He sat heavily on the sofa.

“I’m sorry, Gold. I didn’t mean to be attacking you personally. I’ve got nothing against you. I know you didn’t ask for this job.”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“You did? Why?”

“I thought you’d be interesting. You’re something of a legend in certain circles, you know.” Gold tapped his pen on a folder on his desk. “Your history is fascinating.”

“Glad to ease the boredom of your days.”

“Did you think therapists don’t have favorites? I haven’t been shot at, thank God, but I have sat through some of the dreariest, mind-numbing sessions that would have killed a lesser man. Your colleagues are a pretty humdrum lot, Becker.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“Are you fishing? I don’t know if you are or not since you won’t talk to me, but my instinct tells me you are. It also tells me that you quit because you’re suffering from a very rare disease in this day and age.”

“I’m supposed to ask what.”

“II would help the flow.”

“What does your instinct tell you I’m suffering from?”

“A conscience. I think you quit your particular brand of work because you had a crisis of conscience.”

Becker laughed. Gold thought it was not a pleasant sound.

“Well, thank God,” said Becker. “I was afraid you were some sort of genius who could cut right to the heart of it and find out what I was really like. But I guess we have to do it the hard way after all.”

“What’s the hard way?”

“With me stalling and covering up and misleading you every step of the way.”

“That sounds about right,” said Gold. “So why not tell me how it started?”

“That should be in my fascinating file.”

“It would be revealing if you told me when it started.”

“When I think it started. The final decision will be yours, of course.”

“Who knows you better than I?”

Becker laughed again. “Nobody.”

Gold waited, drawing horizontal bars where the serpentine line met the vertical.

“I’d been in the Bureau for about eight years,” Becker said. “Routine work for the most part, nothing to set the world on fire. I don’t think I had any particular desire to set the world on fire, for that matter. I was basically just learning the job and I don’t know that I’d shown any greater aptitude for it than anyone else. My job evaluations should be on your desk, so in this case you know more about me than I do. Have you looked at them?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“Average, I’d say. Some of them thought you were a bit brighter than average-which your test scores confirm, by the way-but no flashes of brilliance in the beginning. Just another agent.”

“That’s fair… So. I was assigned to New York, working a counterfeit case, when a hostage situation developed in a bank robbery. Very bizarre situation. The cops had caught these two guys in the act, but the guys had the bank employees as hostages and they were demanding a plane to Libya. The television people found out about it and there was this freak-show atmosphere with the negotiations being held on camera and the media putting in calls to the clowns in the bank. A very wend situation. I was sent over to help Terry Dwyer who had taken over the negotiations from the local cop who had been giving away the store. This had been going on for hours, so we had time to prepare the limo that was supposed to take them to the airport. I wasn’t the only agent there, of course. There must have been a dozen of us, some of us with our badges showing, some dressed as cops, a couple in paramedics uniforms.

“The plan was to have Harper drive them since he was experienced at this, but all of us had been briefed just in case. One of the two clowns, the one who did all the talking, came out into the street and inspected the limo-this whole crowd of spectators standing behind the barricades and cheering for him like he was a hero of some kind. I think they thought he was Jesse James and not some doped-up moron who got caught with his dick in his hand. He was eating it up, of course, and playing to the crowd, so we knew he was going to make a mistake. We weren’t really worried about-Tony, his name was. It was his partner, Sal, who had us scared. A silent partner. The guy never said a word, but you could tell by his eyes he was dangerous. Stupid and scared silly, but God, was he paying attention. Tony was distracted, but Sal knew exactly where everyone was and what they were doing even if he wasn’t smart enough to know what was really going on.

“Anyway, the point is, Tony didn’t want Harper to drive. He knew that he was no good just by looking at him-you know. Harper?”

“Is he the one who looks like the loser in a headbutting competition?”

“Not the kind of man you want working undercover, unless you’re investigating a convention of hit men. So anyway, the clown who thought he had brains…”

“Tony.”

“Tony. He doesn’t want Harper and he does this eeny-meeny-miney-mo business with the rest of us. I was one of us whose badge was showing, and he picked me. Said at least he knew who I was. I didn’t even know who I was at that point, so what chance did he have? Anyway, he patted me down and patted Terry down and off we go to the airport, me driving, Tony next to me, Terry Dwyer next to him in the front seat because Terry has developed this “rapport” with him. Sal, with the eyes, is sitting behind me with an assault rifle pointing at my head as if I was going to suddenly drive him straight into the holding cell at the next precinct.

“I told him, ‘Sal, if we hit a bump and you pull the trigger, we’re all going to die.’ He just stared at me for about a minute. His eyes were as big as a deer’s and just that frightened, but boy, let me tell you, he saw things. He wasn’t like his pal, Tony. He didn’t have any illusions that he was center stage in a drama starring himself He knew he was in the middle of a police convoy on the way to the airport with about a thousand locals and feds and several SWAT teams all waiting for a chance to jump on him. Finally he pointed the gun down, but I had to keep checking him in the mirror all the way to the airport because his instincts kept telling him to hold that gun on my head and it just kept drifting up. He had great instincts. He was just too dumb to trust them.

“The plan was to take them when we got to the airport and they thought they’d made it and relaxed a bit. Dwyer was going to freeze Tony in place, which shouldn’t have been a problem because he was waving to the crowds along the way, and I was going to get the. 45 that was under the door covering-the armrest was rigged to come down and I could pull it out and take care of Sal. But halfway there, Tony got a little bit smarter. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly he tells me to stop and he opens the door and kicks Terry Dwyer onto the highway and off we go again. So much for the rapport. Maybe there weren’t enough cameramen on the highway, so Tony had a chance to remember he was in deep shit. Whatever, all of a sudden I have Tony’s shotgun in my ribs and Sal’s got the Kalashnikov right back where it belonged.

“We get to the airport, and I am driving very carefully now, believe me. I keep working on Sal, asking him to keep the AK-47 pointed away but he’s not buying it anymore, and when we hit the tarmac with all the airport lights and about a thousand more cops and the roar of the jets and the hostages in the back starting to wail because it looks like they’re going to have to escort our boys to Libya, old Sal’s discomfort level goes up about ten more notches. If I had sneezed, he would have blown my head off.”

Becker stopped abruptly and returned to the window. After staring blankly for a few moments, he turned to Gold.

“That should do it for today,” he said.

“What happened just now?” Gold asked.

Becker said, “This has been at least an hour; that’s enough for now.”

“What made you stop? What did you remember?”

After a pause, Becker said, “I saw Sal’s eyes. In my mind, I saw them very clearly. Clearer than yours. I haven’t had any reason to study yours.”

“And?”

“You know the most distinctive thing about his eyes? It wasn’t that they were scared or concentrated or dangerous. They were trusting. They didn’t trust me, or the situation, but you could see that this was the kind of guy who would normally trust people, things, life. He trusted his nitwit friend, Tony. He trusted in the ability of the assault rifle to intimidate me and everybody else. It wasn’t that he expected events to take an orderly progression; he’d been on the short end all his life, but even on that end, there were things you could trust. You could trust that might makes right, for instance. You could trust that a man with a weapon in his ribs and an automatic rifle point-blank to his head is not the man who is going to try anything to harm you… Once a man trusts you, once he thinks he knows what you’re going to do, he’s yours.”

Becker started toward the door.

“What did you do?” Gold asked.

“It’s in your file.”

“The file just says you shot him.”

“That’s all I did.”

“But why?”

“Why? He was in the act of committing a felony with a deadly weapon. He was kidnapping eight American citizens, he was…”

“But why you?” Gold interrupted.

“I was supposed to.”

“If Dwyer had been with you to take care of Tony. But even then you had contingency plans; there were snipers all over the place. The copilot was an armed agent, so was one of the stewardesses…”

“That’s not all in the file. You did a little research.”

“I told you, I wanted the assignment. Why did you go ahead with it? You could have just let them get out of the limo, and no one would have blamed you. Why did you do it?”

Becker grinned at him from the doorway. “You’re going to have to work harder than that,” he said and left the room. He eased the door closed behind him.

Dyce was startled to find the man lying in his living room. His mind had been so filled with his encounter with Helen that he had forgotten about the presence of the man. Even his resolve while shopping that he would not do this again had slipped his mind. The girl-woman-he did not know what to call her, how to think of her. She was probably not as young as he thought; women weren’t for some years. It was only when they reached their forties that women began to look their age and men looked younger. But there was something so trusting and simple about her character that he suspected some part of her would always remain a girl.

And she liked him, she clearly liked him. He was no expert, but he could see that. He wasn’t entirely certain how it made him feel to have her respond to him so unambiguously, but he was certain he hadn’t misread her feelings at least. There had been mistakes in the past. Dyce had allowed himself to become infatuated with girls who did not reciprocate, girls who ultimately weren’t worthy. Such episodes always left him feeling ashamed of himself for being so gullible, and renewed his resolve to remain alone. But he was not mistaken about Helen, that much was certain. She had remembered his name, she had thought about him-she had told him that!

Working in a state of distraction as he thought about his meeting with the girl, Dyce prepared himself for what he had to do. It was time, in any event, whether he had resolved to stop or not, whether he now had new interests or not. The man had been dead for three days, and it was time to get rid of him. His coloring had begun to change and the odor, despite repeated washings, was getting hard to ignore.

Dyce lit the incense that he had placed in saucers around the room. He did not like the smell of incense, but it was more effective than the modern deodorizers and Dyce didn’t approve of using aerosols anyway because of the ozone layer. The incense, however, added smoke to the already-murky aspect of the room and gave the whole proceedings an oriental feel which he thought was inappropriate. It would take several days to air out the house after he was done, which meant removing the soundproofing from the windows, a step that made Dyce nervous even when there was nothing to hide. Disposal had always been a problem.

The man’s body was surprisingly heavy in comparison to his ethereal appearance. He should have weighed no more than a ghost, but his body seemed to struggle against Dyce’s strength as he carried it to the bathroom, as if it wanted to remain in the place where it had spent the last ten days, alive and dead, or as if the body was resisting the final insult that awaited it in the bathtub.

Setting the showerhead to a fine spray, Dyce adjusted the pressure so that the body was enveloped in a lukewarm mist. The trick was to make the water warm enough to aid in the dissolution of liquids but not so hot that it would bum Dyce, who would be working in the mist. With the water running, Dyce filled his thirty-gallon, restaurant-sized stock pot halfway and turned the stove burner to high flame. If his tuning was accurate, the water would be aboil by the time he needed it.

When Dyce returned to the bathroom with his knives, the mascara was running down the man’s cheeks and coloring the stream of water that swirled down the drain. In the brighter light of the bathroom, the lipstick on the man looked harsh and cheap and shameful, as if he were a transvestite who had been caught in mid-transformation, frozen forever in his gender confusion. Dyce felt a moment’s disgust as he regarded the man. He was not worthy, after all. Dyce had been wasting his time admiring the beauty of the man. He felt momentarily soiled and ashamed, as if he had just discovered he had made love to a harlot with a virgin’s mask. You are better than this, he told himself. You deserve better for yourself, and you must stop acting this way.

He undressed, kneeled, and leaned into the shower’s spray. Droplets formed immediately and dripped from the blade of the chefs knife. Filled with resolve to make this the last time, to change his life and live in a better, purer, more self-sufficient way, Dyce set to work.

Helen was frantic. She knew she shouldn’t do it, she knew it was precisely the kind of thing that drove men away, but she couldn’t help herself She actually said it to herself, I can not help myself, as if it were permission. She liked to think of herself as someone who was swept along by irresistible forces, a victim of her own tempestuous emotions. The winds of compulsion blew and raged and she was cast helplessly before them, rudder broken, the sails of her spirit swollen to the ripping point by the great force of her wild passions.

At the same time she knew perfectly well that it was this same compulsive behavior that frightened men away. In her sober moments she yearned for some measure of self-control that would keep her from hurling herself off cliffs of impulse, into the arms of strangers. But when the turmoil of passion gripped her, she forgave herself everything. She felt she must continue to throw her heart until someone caught it.

She had found his house with no problem but she hesitated at the door, trying to calm herself a bit, at least. Sometimes when she felt this way, it was all she could do to breathe, and her body would quiver with excitement. Surely, surely, the world could sense the urgency and rightness of what she did when it sent such strong vibrations to her.

There were no lights coming from the house, but his car was in the garage so he must be home. She did not know much about him, but she was certain Mr. Dyce was not the kind of man to be off with friends on a week night.

Glancing at the other houses on the block, she confirmed that it was not too late to call. The whole row of houses, each with its little lawn and full front porch, was lighted brightly, almost festively. Greenish pictures jerked and shifted on television screens and bulbs shone from upstairs bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms. People moved openly and in silhouette behind screens, and at the end of the block two children were still at play, yelling at each other in the night.

It was a family neighborhood, a sane place, secure, not affluent, exactly, but certainly comfortable. A strange location, perhaps, for a single man, but a sign that he valued the right things in life. For a moment, Helen wondered if maybe Mr. Dyce had a family after all, if the lights were out because he and Mrs. Dyce were making love, if even a family of children, in-laws, pets awaited on the other side of the door. He didn’t seem to be connected to anyone. He had not mentioned anyone at the coffee shop when she had given him the opportunity; he had all the earmarks of a lonely man. Helen could not believe that she had misjudged him so completely. His compassion was real; there was no mistaking that, and she would rely on that if nothing else. If she had made an error in coming here, at least his compassion would keep her from suffering too much for it. She knew she could count on him.

She rang the bell, waited, then rang it again too soon, unable to stop herself There was not a sound from the house, and she decided that the bell did not work. A large iron knocker was in the middle of the door, a decorative relic from a pre-electronic time. She opened the screen door and lifted the knocker and let it fall against its metallic stump. That was not loud enough, so she rapped it several more times, holding it in her hand.

Nervously, Helen watched the neighboring houses to see if there was any response to the knocking, which seemed to clang like a shovel slammed against a car. She could hear nothing from within the house, even with her ear pressed against the door. It occurred to her that Dyce might be injured, he might be lying on the floor, unable to respond, the victim of a stroke, a heart attack. She could almost see him groping toward her with outstretched hand, mouthing her name and a cry for help.

Helen tried the door knob. He would want to know she was here. He would not want to miss her because he couldn’t hear. Perhaps he was listening to music with earphones on. What sort of music? she wondered. The knob twisted in her hand, but the door did not budge.

Her hand was still on the knob when the door opened suddenly and without a sound of warning. Dyce stood there in a bathrobe, blinking at her, looking startled.

“Oh, Mr. Dyce,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I hate to bother you but I was so unhappy, I just started thinking about my poor mother again and I couldn’t stop and it was driving me crazy and I knew you would understand…”

She brushed past him and into the house before he spoke. He reached out as if to stop her, then relented. She knew he would want to see her. She waited for him in the little foyer just inside the door. From where she stood she could see into the living room and a portion of the kitchen and her eyes roved curiously as she spoke.

“I just had to come. I knew I shouldn’t, but then I said to myself, Mr. Dyce will understand, he has been through it…”

He still had not spoken. His hair was wet and plastered to his forehead and his face dripped water into the bathrobe. There was something perplexed about his expression, as if he could not believe she was there-or worse, did not remember her.

“I got you out of the shower,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, breaking his silence for the first time. “Yes, I was in the shower.”

“I knew you were here but just couldn’t hear me,” said Helen. The shower was running in the background and she could hear water boiling and a lid clattering in the kitchen. The shower explained why he hadn’t heard her, but the house seemed alive with noise and Helen wondered why she had heard none of it from the porch.

“What do you want?”

“I had to see you. I just didn’t know where else to turn, I didn’t know who else to go to, this is a lovely house…”

She entered the living room and swept the panorama with a little turn of admiration. “Oh,” she said. “It’s so nice. You’ve done this so nice. And it’s so much bigger than my place. Look at those curtains. It’s unusual for a man to have curtains, I mean, such nice, big ones like that. I mean, men tend to just live with what they have, don’t they, but floral curtains- someone must have put a lot of thought into that, I bet.”

Dyce moved to the other side of her so that he was standing between her and the hall leading to the bathroom. He could not imagine what was going on with her or why she was here. What did she mean about his curtains?

“It’s lovely, it really is. And what is that you’re burning? Incense? Is that incense?”

She leaned over one of the saucers and waved the fumes to her nose.

“I never really knew what incense smelled like. That’s such a nice touch, it really is, Mr. Dyce. You’ve done everything up so nicely.”

She ran a finger across the table draped with white silk.

“Did you have help?”

“What?” Dyce asked dully. His mind was racing with priorities, possibilities, and necessities. Nothing she said made any sense to him.

“Did you have help decorating at all?” Helen swept an arm around the room. Dyce followed it, trying to imagine what she saw.

“It looks like a woman’s touch.”

“I don’t know what… what did you want?”

“I just had to see you tonight. I’m sorry, I would have called, but you only had your address on your checks, not your phone number. I just felt so awful. I know we don’t know each other very long, but I feel that I know you. Am I wrong? I feel I can talk to you in a way I can’t to anybody else. There’s something between us. I know it, I just know it.”

She stopped speaking abruptly and stood in the middle of the room, trembling. She had said it. This was the moment: He would either laugh at her or throw her out, or, worst of all, treat her with pity.

Dyce’s expression was still one of confusion, but she noticed his chest was heaving as if he were reacting with strong emotion-or struggling to control himself.

“Would you like me to go now?” she asked at last.

“I don’t think I can let you go,” he said.

“Oh, Mr. Dyce!” She took a step toward him, then stopped herself It was better to let them make the first move, if they could ever be coaxed into making it. But he cared, he clearly cared!

“I’ll wait here if you want to turn off the shower,” she said, seating herself in the overstuffed chair that she knew must be “his.”

“Yes,” said Dyce. “The shower.” He left the room, then came back almost immediately. He gave Helen a very peculiar smile.

“Don’t go away,” he said and for the first time that night there was animation in his voice.

“I won’t.”

“Because I think we have to talk,” said Dyce.

She smiled at him, then lowered her eyes. When she looked up, he had gone. Realizing the chair was a mistake because it would not allow him to sit beside her, Helen transferred to the sofa. Like all the other furniture in the room, it was heavy and old, as if it had come from a different age. She sank into it and caught a whiff of mildew. The living room itself was the dumpiest thing she had ever seen, Helen thought. The curtains looked as if they’d been made by hand by somebody’s grandmother. There was practically no light in the room, and what was that thing with the white silk on it, some kind of altar? And the smell! No wonder he was burning incense, although she wondered if that might not go with the altar in some way, too. She hoped he wasn’t religious in some obsessional way. She could deal with it if he was because she had been that way for a time herself She understood it, but the memory of her days in the commune still rankled, and she didn’t want to be reminded if she could help it. God was all right; it was the people that troubled Helen.

Impatiently she got to her feet and made a circuit of the living room. A little light would do wonders, she decided. Preferably sunlight. The cobwebs on the ceiling caught her attention. She wondered if smoke from the incense turned them that black. At least he seemed to be clean in his personal hygiene. Had he decided to finish his shower? The water was still running. How long could it take to turn it off?

Pausing by the foyer entrance, Helen thought of extinguishing the fire under the rattling pot on the stove. What could require such a violent, prolonged boiling? Was that the source of the stench? It was all she could do to keep herself from going into the kitchen and taking charge.

The bathroom was filled with mist and the mirror was filmed over so that Dyce could not see his reflection. He wanted to know how he looked, what she might have seen. His brain was careening; he could not think clearly what to do. How much did she know? Did she know anything? Why was she here, could he believe her reasons, was there something else, what had he left visible in the living room? And if she did see anything, what conclusions could she reach? It all seemed an impossible maze. He needed time to think.

After a few minutes, Dyce remembered to turn off the shower. He pulled the shower curtain closed, put down the toilet seat, and sat on the toilet. The mist settled on his cool skin and soon rivulets of water ran down his face and his naked legs, but he did not notice.

It did not occur to him to kill her. Dyce did not think of himself as such a person. He was not a man of violence. The things he did with the men were not done from malice or panic or ill will of any sort. He did them because they needed to be done, but that was only one small segment of his life and certainly not the dominant part of his personality. That was not the way he lived his life, for heaven’s sake. It was not the way he would solve his problems. He would have thought less of himself if he did.

Helen could contain herself no longer. The noise from the pan lid in the kitchen was driving her crazy and was probably dangerous. Fires could get started that way. She was doing him a service. Helen went into the kitchen. It was the largest pot she had ever seen in a home.

Fire had blackened the aluminum halfway up the sides, and the carbon was thick enough to scrape off with the edge of a spoon. Two burners were going at high flame underneath the pot, and scum and foam were pushing at the lid and oozing from underneath it. The bubbles of scum came out rhythmically, like gulps or gasps for air that were cut short by the weight of the lid bearing down again. Some of the foam would drift down the side of the pot to meet the flames and then vanish in an angry sizzle of steam as the fire emitted momentary sparks of yellow and green. The smell of it was horrible.

Helen reached for the burner but turned, frightened, as she realized someone was behind her.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You frightened me!”

“Don’t turn it off,” Dyce said.

“It’s boiling over. It will be ruined.”

“It won’t be ruined,” he said.

“What on earth are you making?”

Dyce took her by the hand and led her from the kitchen.

“It’s not important,” he said. He preceded her to the couch, still holding her hand, then sat, pulling her gently down beside him. His manner had changed dramatically. For the only time since Helen had known him, he appeared to be in charge of things. She definitely felt he was in charge of her. Wonderfully, masterfully in control.

“I was just trying to help,” she said.

“I understand,” he said calmly. He sat facing her, one leg draped over the other and resting on the floor. Helen realized that he had put on pajama bottoms. but his torso was still bare beneath the robe. The skin of his chest was smooth and hairless.

“Tell me what brought you here,” he said.

Helen pulled her knees up under her. She felt so comfortable with him when he spoke to her like this. So secure. She was his, if only he knew it. Helen was glad the lights were dim because she had applied the purple eye shadow during her frantic phase and she thought she might have overdone it.

“I wondered at first if you knew who I was,” she said. “I mean, seeing me out of context, sort of Without my uniform.” She was wearing her robin’s egg blue blouse with the scoop neck that accentuated her cleavage. She could see his eyes wander to the edge of the neckline. She leaned forward, revealing just a bit more of her flesh.

“I knew you… Helen. My mind was elsewhere for a while, that’s all.”

“I understand,” she said. “You weren’t expecting me.”

“In a way, I think I was,” he said.

His arm was resting atop the back of the sofa. With a show of pushing the hair from her face, Helen moved her own arm to the sofa back and let her hand come to rest inches from his fingertips.

“I’ve been thinking about this afternoon, so much,” she said. “So much.”

Dyce moved his fingers the few inches until they touched the tips of hers. Helen could feel the electricity of it. She gasped slightly, then laughed nervously.

Dyce smiled at her again with that peculiar smile. His eyes were alive with a life of their own.