Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 9

The weed trimmer came back from the shop, thirty-five-dollar repair fee, and conked out after three minutes. Removing his work gloves, Eric tinkered ineffectually with the machine for a moment, but his right hand was so swollen it was as useless as the weed trimmer. He had dislocated a knuckle, or possibly broken it, while pounding the jerk-off s face, and the area around the joint was now an ugly purple. The son of a bitch, thought Eric. A syringe full of drugs, and he was going to stick me. I should have killed him. What kind of perverted thing was that? To lure someone into your car and then shoot them up with drugs? Jesus. He didn’t want to get high by himself or what? The world was full of weirdos and getting stranger every day, but the jerk-off had chosen the wrong guy when he decided to play with Eric. I should have killed him.

Eric squatted in the backyard, the weed trimmer dead and useless at his feet, while the lady of the house and her teenage daughter played at their pool. The daughter was a little young yet, not much meat on her and not enough breasts that she needed to walk around all the time with her arms crossed over her chest the way she did. She did it even when she was alone; he knew, because he had watched from secrecy. Did she think she had such prizes there that people were staring at her all the time? A bitch who was modest even when alone? Not the kind of person Eric had in mind. The mother, on the other hand, was more his idea of something to do. A little too much flesh, maybe, but it was arranged properly, and she wasn’t ashamed of it. The bitch liked to flaunt it: Eric had noticed the way she talked to him, one hip cocked to the side like that, arms akimbo with just a trace of toughness, like she was daring him. That little terry cloth jacket always open and not hiding much. She was asking for it, no doubt about that. Husband was this dried-up executive type, big wallet, no balls. Eric could tell just from the types of jobs the man didn’t do around the yard, things he left to Eric because he didn’t know how to hook up a hose.

The daughter saw Eric staring and pulled on her robe as she said something to her mother. The mother was reclining in one of those come-and-hop-me chairs and she turned her head to look at Eric, then spoke to her daughter and laughed.

Go over there and slap her across the chops, not too hard, just enough to get her attention, then pull off” those bikini briefs and show her something her dried-up husband hadn’t used in years except to yank on. That would stop her laughing; start her moaning for more, which he had, more than she could handle.

Do it in front of the kid, let her see how it’s done, then give her a turn while her mother watched. He’d get her over her modesty quick enough.

And he’d do it, too, if it weren’t for his goddamned hand. With his right hand like this he couldn’t screw the cat, much less two haughty rich bitches. That jerk-off with the needle was really beginning to cost him.

Should have killed him. Should have just kept pounding since he’d screwed up the hand anyway. A missed opportunity, just like the one with the women by the pool.

But what really burned him was the real chance he’d missed with the guy. Roger Dyce, that was his name on the driver’s license. Name, address, photo- although he didn’t look much like it now that Eric had rearranged his nose. Why hadn’t he taken his keys? Because it had been too long and Eric was out of practice. Because he was having too much fun? No, bullshit. The truth was he panicked. He hated needles, they scared the shit out of him, and he had just overreacted. Christ, he was in the guy’s pockets anyway. He took the fifty-five dollars, he might as well have taken his keys. Drive over to his address in Clamden while the creep was still lying on his front seat, clean out the place. The son of a bitch deserved it.

The women walked into the house. He loved the way the mother’s ass jiggled. Not too taut, had some cellulite, but not bad, either. She still had a few good years left in her. The daughter didn’t jiggle at all. Juiceless, that was her problem.

They’d be going upstairs now, into their separate Spanish-tiled bathrooms, take a shower, get the chlorine off. Christ, he could slip up there, do them each in the shower, the other’d never know. Give them both some juice.

He tossed the weed trimmer into the back of the wagon and felt a twinge of pain in his hand. That jerk-off. He didn’t need a key. Call the hospital tonight, ask about the condition of Mr. Dyce. If he was Still there, zip over to his house and clean it out. And if he’d checked out, well, that might be even better. Ask him what he planned to do with that syringe before kicking the shit out of him again. Maybe stick a needle in the bastard’s ass-or maybe that’s what he wanted. Either way. Make the call right after this job. No, now. Make the call now, here, use the phone.

Eric rang the front doorbell. Hell yes, do the wife in the kitchen while calling the hospital. The girl hears the moaning, starts downstairs, wrapped in a towel, Eric does her on the carpeted stairs. Make the call, fuck the bitches, then clean out Dyce’s house. That would be a pretty good day for a one-handed man.

Helen had taken the keys from his trousers while he slept. She wasn’t sure he would have given them if she’d asked; he seemed very secretive about his house. Helen had not been there since that first time, not that she wanted to go particularly; she didn’t like the place, but still it was odd that he’d never suggested it. But then Roger was odd in a number of ways.

She had brought all the cleaning equipment she owned with her except a vacuum cleaner. Everyone had a vacuum cleaner, whether they used it or not.

Other than that, she had come prepared; there was no telling what supplies he had on hand.

The smell was so bad she could detect it on the porch. Why had she not noticed it from outside that first night? She was surprised the neighbors didn’t complain. Inside, it was even stronger.

A mouse had died under her refrigerator once and Helen had not been able to move the appliance to get the corpse. This house smelled like that, sickeningly sweet. Disgusting. No one should live like this. In a way, Helen thought, it reflected badly on her. She was not doing much of a job domesticating Roger if she allowed him to come home to this kind of thing.

She put her cleaning supplies in the kitchen and looked around. It was as good a place to start as any. Oddly, the sink was clean. The huge restaurant pot that she had last seen covered with cooking scum was scrubbed spotless.

She turned on the tap and the drain belched once, emitting a blast of putrid air before the water backed up and filled the sink. Helen had dealt with clogged drains before; one learned things living alone or else paid an arm and a leg to every repairman in town. She found his tools in a bottom drawer, including a plumber’s wrench. Surprisingly, the wrench was not rusted shut. It had been oiled and maintained, and the bolt on the sink trap had marks on it as if it had been opened frequently. He must have had trouble with the sink before. It surprised her that Dyce had dealt with the problem himself, however. He didn’t seem the handy type.

Helen turned off the water, placed her bucket under the trap to catch the spill, and began to work. Dyce had stored nothing in the cabinet under the sink except a heavy cleaver. Helen removed the cleaver and felt the flooring give spongily. She tapped it. It sounded hollow. There was obviously a space under the bottom of the cabinet. The kind of place a small animal could get trapped and die, perhaps.

The linoleum covering came off in one piece. The flooring seemed solid, but when Helen touched it, the boards moved slightly, as if they were not nailed down. One of them had a recess where a knot had been. Helen put her finger in the recess and pulled up on the board. It came out easily and underneath it she saw the first bone.

Steadying himself against the bed, Dyce drew on his pants and slipped his feet into his shoes. He stuck the socks into his pocket to be put on when he had more time to do it one-handed. His blood on the shirt had dried to an orange-brown. He buttoned it as quickly as he could, the unpracticed left hand fumbling and skipping some buttons. Shrugging on the jacket, Dyce stood and waited for the dizziness to pass.

A nurse glanced at him on the way down in the elevator, took in his bloody shirt, his stubbled cheeks with four-days’ growth of beard, his bruised face, and thought whatever she thought but said nothing. Dyce could not worry what people thought of him now; he could only get away from this place as quickly as he could manage.

A security guard glanced at him and then away; the fat lady behind the information counter didn’t even deign to look at him.

The sun surprised him and left him blinking. For some reason he had thought it was raining and cold. There were no keys in his pocket, no money in his wallet, and he didn’t know where his car was. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t use the car in any event since they would soon be looking for it. As soon as the calm one, Becker, began to think. There was only one reason to ask his mother’s maiden name. They knew something: They had sensed his pattern, perhaps not all, but some, and some was too much. In days, or minutes, Becker would be back. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they weren’t going to put it together, perhaps Dyce was safe, but it was a chance he couldn’t take.

He turned and walked away from the hospital, going down a long hill to the main road below. He didn’t know where he was going, but then neither did anyone else. The main thing now was not his destination, but his escape.

“You’ll replace this?” Tee asked, detaching the police seal from the front door. “I mean, of course you will. How long you going to be?”

Becker had never seen him so agitated.

“I’m not going to hurt anything, you know that.”

“I know that.”

“If you don’t feel comfortable about this. Tee, you don’t have to let me in.”

“I know you won’t hurt anything. I know you know what you’re doing. I know when the state boys show up in the morning, they’ll never know I let you in.” He paused. “Right?”

“Tee, the house is sealed by the order of the state police, but it’s in your jurisdiction, too. You can break the seal if you want to.”

“I know this.” Tee remembered Captain Drooden, who had slapped the seal on the door only hours before. Hard-nosed bastard. Threatened to remove Tee’s gonads if he so much as breathed on the house before Drooden’s full forensic team could arrive from a murder scene in Greenwich.

“But you still have a problem with this?”

“I don’t have a problem with it. Quit saying I have a problem. I’m not afraid of Drooden, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“1 wasn’t thinking that. You fear no man.”

“It’s those damned brown uniforms the states wear. Makes them act mean. Drooden doesn’t scare me… What are you going to do in there?”

“Nothing.”

Tee eased the door open but stayed on the porch. He had no desire to go in again; once had been enough. Even now the house was virtually untouched since he and Becker had responded to Helen’s panicked telephone call. Just what damage she had done, he couldn’t say, but he and Becker had touched nothing, even though Becker had prowled like a dog on the scent. The smell of the place was too much for Tee, but Becker had not been bothered and had squatted beneath the sink for fifteen minutes, just staring at the skeletons as if he expected them to stir and speak at any moment. When Becker finally rose, it was to tell Tee to call the forensic people in Hartford, taking the case immediately out of Tee’s hands. Tee had not even considered arguing.

“If you’re not going to do anything, why go in? Or is that a silly question?”

“After Drooden’s men get finished, the place will be sterile. They will have lifted all the fingerprints and sought out all the hairs and fibers, and that’s great, they need to do that, but there won’t be any spirit left. A crime scene feels like a museum after the forensic snails get through with it. It looks the same, but it’s a re-creation.”

“Spirit? Jesus Christ, what are you talking about? You’re not into that kind of thing, are you, John? You’re not talking psychic shit here, are you?”

“I’d prefer not to be talking at all. Tee, if you’d just step aside and then get out of here.”

“Okay, you’re the expert-but what are you going to do?”

“Just sit there for a couple hours.”

Tee shivered. “A couple hours?”

“More or less. It’s nothing mystical, Tee. It’s just an exercise in imagination, but it helps me to be on the scene.”

“What are you imagining?”

“We don’t have to do it. Drooden will probably find out all you need with his microscopes and tweezers.”

“Okay, okay. Go. Enjoy yourself” Tee stood aside as Becker switched on his flashlight and stepped into the house. “And you’ll remember to put the seal back?”

“Go find Dyce.”

“We’re looking. He’s walking wounded, how far can he get? We’ll have him in no time.”

But Becker was already concentrating on the house. He didn’t seem to notice as Tee closed the door.

Thank God, Tee thought, that I’m just a Clamden cop. An exercise in imagination? Sitting in a house for a couple hours where we’ve found God knows how many bodies under the floorboards? What kind of imaginings could that inspire?

Tee looked up and down the block as he walked to his car. Lights were on, televisions playing. The excitement of the afternoon with cop cars and flashing sirens was over, and the good citizens had already stopped thinking about the commotion in the Dyce house, whatever it was. He wished he could do the same. Traffic violations and the occasional breaking and entering were all he aspired to. He didn’t want any part of communing with goddamned spirits, and the spirit of a mass murderer at that.

Thinking of Dyce lying on his hospital bed twelve hours ago. Tee still could not picture the innocuous, defeated little guy killing anyone, much less eight or more. It had almost seemed to Tee that they were after the wrong man, that the skeletons had been inherited or had crawled in there on their own to die. Any explanation seemed more likely than thinking it was the man with his face punched in on the hospital bed, the guy with the girlfriend who thought she was his mother-crime in Clamden had not prepared him for this. Everybody cheated a little bit, everybody drove too fast and lied on his taxes, and the sons of the privileged were just as apt to get into drugs as the children of the poor-maybe more likely depending on the price of the drug-but when it came to actual crime, in Tee’s experience that was still done by criminals. The kind who started out bad and stayed bad, and they were easy to recognize. Tee knew who they were and where they worked and where they lived. He wanted his monsters to wear horns and spit fire and felt no remorse about not recognizing the man for what he was, but Becker was furious, berating himself during the whole frantic search of the hospital and the neighborhood and the town.

“I knew,” Becker had said. “I knew but I didn’t say so.”

“Knew? How could you know?”

“I knew.”

“Did you have any proof? Did you even know his crime? What could you have done even if you did know?”

“I knew, and he realized it, and I didn’t act and he did, and that’s why he’s gone.”

“We’ll get him,” Tee had said, wondering how. This was not an isolated town in Nebraska. He could not throw up roadblocks and seal off the city. Given a car and a fifteen minute head start, Dyce could be in any of three adjoining towns or a few miles from Hartford. Given an hour of lead time, he could have vanished as completely as a rat down a sewer. As far as they knew, he had had at least three hours’ head start.

The mess would only get worse, he realized. Tomorrow there would be the press and the Hartford television people, and after that probably the national television as well. Mass murder was good for a minute or two on the evening news. But the actual police-work was already in other hands. Drooden was a bastard and deserved all the trouble he could get. Wherever Dyce was now. Tee was glad it was no longer Clamden.

As he drove off he realized that he could see no light coming from the Dyce house.

Standing in the bedroom, Becker played the beam of the flashlight slowly over the heavy oaken furniture, the thick drapes, the simple, almost monastic bed. Clearly not a room where Dyce spent any time; there were no comforts, no books by the bedside, no television. Becker held the beam on the silver-backed hair brushes atop the dresser. Old, like the furniture. None of it was rare enough to be antique; it was just old. Either he had a taste for it, or he had inherited it, but in either case, it was a link to the past. And what keeps you in the past, Becker wondered. What happened then? Or is still happening? Whatever it was, it would not be in the bedroom.

Becker went cursorily through the kitchen again, but that was simply a workplace, a room in which to butcher and boil and bury, a place of grisly utility, but not the place to catch the spirit of the man.

Dyce dwelt in the living room: Becker could feel it. It was the only room in the house where anyone had actually lived. Was it the room in which they had died? Like all the windows, these were covered and sealed with soundproofing material. That meant there was noise, that meant they were alive when he brought them here. Anesthetic in the syringe, the syringe in the car. So he drugged them when he took them, brought them into the house drugged. The garage was at the back of the house. Becker returned to the kitchen and looked into the backyard, playing the light on the garage and then the driveway. If he parked in the right spot, it was no more than four steps to the kitchen door. The house shielded him from the view of the neighbors on one side, the car on the other. Four steps in the dark of night and into the house with a body, drugged and helpless, into the house, into the kitchen. If he killed them then, while they were still unconscious, there was no need for soundproofing.

But he wouldn’t do it then, Becker knew. There was no sense to it. More to the point, there was no joy to it. Drug them in the car, drag them into the house, and chop them up? Why? What would he get out of it? He was getting something out of it. He’d killed many times; he wouldn’t take the risk if it offered him nothing in return.

So he kept them alive for a while. That’s why he needed the soundproofing, that’s why there was anesthetic in the syringe and not poison.

Becker returned to the living room. And he kept them alive in here. Where he lived.

Switching on the lights for a moment, squinting against the sudden brightness, Becker studied the room. There was only one place where Dyce would have sat. He turned off the lights and sat in the overstuffed chair. It was easier in the dark.

He had told Tee that it was an exercise in imagination, but that was not how Becker thought of it. He had to study his quarry’s lair the way an anthropologist would study the cave paintings of early man. Those paintings went a long way toward explaining the man behind them. Becker hoped to learn as much about Dyce by sitting in his living room and absorbing his presence. He sat in the dark in Dyce’s chair and breathed the air Dyce had breathed. He let the atmosphere sink in. He unleashed his mind and set it free to wander the room, the house, to seek out Dyce and inhabit his soul.

Sitting in the chair, looking straight ahead, Becker turned on the flashlight. It did not hit the screen of the television set. Why would he align the chair so he could not watch the television without twisting his head-unless he didn’t watch TV. When he sat here and rehashed what he did, dreamed what ghoulish fantasies he needed, what did he look at? The light fell on nothing but space from the chair clear across the room to the wall.

With the lights on, Becker studied the room again. A sawhorse sat under the bookshelf People used saw-horses for table legs sometimes, but one sawhorse in a room full of heavy oaken furniture? Why a piece of makeshift furniture in a room already overcrowded, and why just one? What good was one sawhorse? Probing with the beam of his flashlight, Becker looked for another support. The sofa arm was the only other surface of the same height in the room.

There were marks on the floor where the sawhorse had been placed with weight on it. The scratches in the wood were small and only in one spot. Becker put the sawhorse on the scratches and judged the distance to the sofa arm. At eye level, on the wall above the sawhorse, was a mark on the wallpaper, a black horizontal line where something had dug into the wallpaper, the deep, regular mark of something heavy pressing over a period of time. The only structure in the room of the right length was the bookshelf Removing the books, Becker placed the bottom shelf against the mark on the wall. The shelf leaned against the wall at an angle of about ten degrees off the vertical, not quite upright, but close. Easing the shelf horizontally, it fit neatly across the sawhorse and the arm of the sofa.

Becker returned to the chair and looked straight away, then directed the beam the way his gaze fell. The beam hit the bookshelf about a foot away from the sofa arm. Where the head would be, thought Becker. He saw Dyce sitting in his chair, watching his victims. You sat and watched them. How long? How did they die? Were you watching the death? Is that what you needed? You liked to see them die, didn’t you? And in what manner did they die? Slowly? Of course, slowly. That’s why you brought them home. To watch them die. The forensic people would figure out how. Probably. But how was not what really interested Becker. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know what Dyce saw when he saw men dying slowly. He wanted to know what pleasure it gave him, what he thought it meant. There was a wire crossed there, some permanent glitch in the circuitry of the brain. Becker wanted-no, not wanted. Needed. Becker needed to see with Dyce’s eyes and feel with Dyce’s heart-without becoming Dyce. Tee had called it psychic shit. A psychologist might call it extreme empathy. Becker did not have a name for it; he just did it. He did not think of it as anything mystical. It was more a matter of reasoning by analogy. I line my faulty wiring up next to his, Becker thought, and see if any current jumps the gap.

Eric circled the house twice, sizing it up. There were no lights on as he had anticipated. He had called the hospital from the rich bitch’s house and had been told that Mr. Dyce was not scheduled for release for several days. Eric had pretended he was Dyce’s brother, just in case they had trouble giving out the information; he was prepared to be snooty with them if they got that way with him, but there had been no problem. Mr. Dyce, they had said, was still under observation.

So Eric had come to observe Mr. Dyce’s house for him. He parked his station wagon three blocks away, up against the curb, nowhere near a hydrant, as safe and legal as could be. No reason for anyone to notice his car, no excuse for any cruising cop to ticket it. In his early days he had been caught that way when some property-owning asshole had thought Eric’s car was blocking his driveway and called a cop. Eric had come tiptoeing back to the car with a pillowcase full of goodies on his back and a portable TV under his arm just as the police cruiser pulled up to write out a citation.

But that was years ago and time had taught Eric the virtues of caution. He walked the route once, just strolling casually, to check out the presence of any dogs. There was a barker about a block from the car, but he could easily avoid it on the way back. The block that held Dyce’s house was as clean of canines as a cat convention.

He went in the back way, cutting across a neighbor’s garden and through a hedge. The night had turned cloudy and the entrance through the hedge took a little finding, but then Eric was in Dyce’s backyard and it was clear sailing. The garage shielded him on one side. Eric pulled on the ski mask and his work gloves. The only skin showing was around his eyes. In this light, if anyone was going to see him, they’d have to be pointing a flashlight right at him.

There was some kind of material blocking the window-what was this, some kind of anti-burglar device? God, the shit people tried. They just didn’t have a clue, but it gave easily enough on the second shove and Eric hoisted himself into a bedroom. Hauling himself in put strain on the knuckle and made him wince.

The room was a disappointment. No jewels, no cash, no hidden stash, not even a lousy TV. The guy lived like a monk except for the fancy hairbrushes that might be worth something. He stripped a pillowcase from the bed and tossed the hairbrushes in it. Some wardrobe; the guy must have bought his suits at Sears. Nothing in the pockets, nothing in the linings, no little secrets tucked in the toes of the shoes.

Eric paused at the bedroom door as he became aware for the first time of the odor. Christ, it smelled like a backed-up septic tank. He began to question the wisdom of his decision. Why was he putting his balls on the line to rip off the house of some geek who didn’t own anything and lived with a dead cat? He hadn’t fucked the bitch and her daughter, either. He could still imagine taking the kid on the stairs. He should have, get her dripping from the shower, yank off the towel, make her happy. It got him hot just thinking about it now. Why didn’t he? All these goddamned lost opportunities. Instead, he was in this dingy house, afraid to breathe the ah, with two old-fashioned hairbrushes in the bag. For a moment he contemplated giving it up and going home; it wasn’t worth the chance. Then he realized, hell, he was here anyway, what did he have to lose? Might as well see what’s on the other side of the bedroom door.

Eric was down before he knew it. There was a knee on his chest, another knee on his balls, on his balls, for Christ’s sake, and pushing down, a hand on his throat and something very hard pressing against his forehead. Both arms were underneath him and felt as if they might break but that was the least of his problems. It was the hard thing pressing into his head that scared him the most. He knew what that was, he had felt that before.

The ski mask had moved in the fall and Eric’s eyes were covered.

“Don’t shoot,” he croaked. “Please, God, don’t shoot.”

All he could hear was breathing, and most of it was his. If the guy pushed the gun any harder it would go right through the bone.

“I’m not fighting. You got me, don’t shoot. Christ, don’t shoot.”

The hand at his throat ripped away the ski mask and Eric blinked and blinked as the beam of a flashlight hit him in the eyes.

The man moved the pistol and pressed it just above the bridge of Eric’s nose. He could smell the oil on the metal.

Eric tried to speak but could only whimper. The look on the man’s face scared him worse than the. 38.

He’s going to do it, Eric thought. He’s going to pull that trigger. He wants to.

The man’s eyes were wide, his lips pulled back from his teeth. The gun began to dance a little tattoo on the bone of Eric’s forehead, as if the man had the shakes.

Eric squeezed his eyes shut. Please, God, he thought. Don’t let this son of a bitch kill me just because he can’t control his muscles. But he knew that wouldn’t be the reason. The man was fighting with himself not to do it. The desire in his eyes was terrifying. He wants to blow me away, Eric thought. He doesn’t even know me and he wants to put a bullet in my skull.