Bone Deep

12

Kom played tennis with the uncontrolled energy of a natural competitor with little athletic ability. He flailed away from the back of the court, impinging on his wife's territory on every ball that came her way, trying to do the work of two. He would surge to the net, calling "Up!" to Tovah who remained on the baseline, watching him dis dainfully. When Becker or Karen lobbed the ball over him, he would race backward awkwardly with a startled yelp, all widening hips and duck-footed shamble, calling "Mine!" no matter where the ball was headed. When he lost the point, and the game, as he almost inevitably did, it did not seem to bother him in the slightest.

Sweating profusely, he pronounced it all "terrific," and looked dead keen for more.

After the first set, a massacre, they changed partners and Becker walked to Tovah's side of the net while Kom traded places with him.

Tovah watched Becker approach with the same look of disdain she had showered on her husband.

"You'll hate me," Tovah announced.

"Why would I do that?"

"I can't play," she said.

"Doesn't look to me as if you've had much opportunity yet," Becker said.

"I'll just stay out of your way," she said.

"And I'll try to stay out of yours."

"Karen is such a good player. I can't play like that."

"She's a tiger," Becker agreed. He looked across the court at his wife, already in position at net, swaying lightly on her toes, eager to get on with the game. She looked every inch an athlete, and was. It was hard to say just what Tovah looked like other than a model in a tennis outfit. She sported a wide red headband but had not yet moved enough to break a sweat, despite the heat. Becker wondered what she got out of a game like this, it certainly was not the exercise. Not that she appeared to need any. Tall and lean, she looked beautiful in whatever she wore, transforming even the worst of fashions into raiments of adornment with a mannequin's air of indifference. He realized that he was getting used to the jewelry-although it appeared that she was wearing fewer bracelets than at dinner-and the face paint, which today was an unnatural shade of pink.

"But it's a team game," Becker continued. "One strategy we might try is to avoid the stronger player and concentrate on the weaker. What do you think?":,How?" 'Hit every ball to your husband," he said.

Tovah burst into laughter, the first genuine expression of amusement he had ever seen from her.

"Wonderful," she said with relish. "Let's kill him."

Kom took Karen to see the gardens, enthusing over his flower beds and vegetables with a verve that seemed to equal his zest for tennis.

"As if he does the gardening," Tovah said, as the others moved out of earshot. "He thinks memorizing the Latin name of things makes him a gardener."

"You do the actual work, do you?" Becker asked. "We have a man who does the gardening," she said dismissively. "Stanley does the appreciating.

To me, one zucchini looks just like another."

"Well, it's good to have enthusiasms, I suppose," Becker said, feeling platitudinous.

"Oh, Stanley has his enthusiasms," she said, chuckling bitterly. "He does have his enthusiasms."

She stretched her long legs straight in front of her until she was almost sliding out of her chair.

"You think I'm awful, don't you?" she asked.

"You just need practice."

"I don't mean tennis. I couldn't care less about tennis. I mean as a person. You think I'm awful and you think Stanley is great. You think he's so open and so much fun."

"No," said Becker.

"Why not? Everyone else does."

"I mean I don't think you're awful. Stanley's fine-but so are you. You just seem-a little hard on yourself"

"She thinks I'm awful," Tovah said, tilting her head toward Stanley and Karen.

"No she doesn't. Not at all. Karen likes you."

Tovah's chest heaved in a mirthless laugh. "No she doesn't, I can tell.

A woman can tell. Your wife thinks Stanley is just so wonderful, so vulnerable, so damned all courant. He's the goddamned sensitive man they're always talking about."

Becker looked at Karen and Kom and wished they would hurry back. He was pointing out a flourishing bed of blue and purple and burgundy blossoms, kneeling in front of particular plants, cupping the floral heads with one hand, gesticulating with the other. Karen was nodding, looking interested. Becker could not tell from this distance if she was sincere or not. He watched them turn the corner and disappear around the side of the house like a man on a lifeboat regarding a ship sailing over the horizon.

"If she only knew," Tovah was saying.

"Knew what?" As so often with Tovah, Becker felt as if he was missing the most important part of the conversation, the part that would tell him what she was really talking about.

"What he's really like."

"What is he really like?"

"He's a toad," she said. "Not that you would think so. A man wouldn't think so. A man would probably think he's great, just the way you do."

"What makes him a toad?" Becker asked.

She sighed with a puff, like a tire losing air. "What makes any man a toad?"

Becker was not sure he knew the answer, but he felt a fool for asking.

As Karen and Kom stepped around the corner of the house, Kom stopped abruptly and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial level.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"About what?"

"How are they getting on?"

Karen looked at him in some bewilderment. "Who?"

Kom paused, a range of emotions crossing his features. His face settled into an expression of sadness and resignation.

"You know, don't you?" he asked. "John told you?… About Tovah?"

"He-uh-he said you had a good talk."

Kom smiled, but his eyes remained sad. "He did tell you. God, that's terrific that you talk like that. That he feels he can tell you something like that. I envy him. I'd give anything to be able to talk to someone as freely as that. I sometimes I feel like I'm dying with all the things I want to say, all the feelings I want to share… We're not meant to live our lives alone, are we? Isn't sharing what makes it all worth-I'm sorry." He broke off, with emotion cracking his voice.

Kom turned away from her, hiding his face. Karen touched his shoulder and his head sagged.

"You're here to play tennis," he said, his back still turned to her.

"What is it?" she asked softly. "I don't really know what's going on."

"I didn't invite you here to burden you with my problems," he muttered, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Karen stepped around him and took his chin in her fingers as if he were a child. Slowly she raised his face until he was looking at her. His eyes were moist and he avoided her gaze in embarrassment.

"Now what is it?" she asked. She felt as if she were talking to her son, Jack, but she knew that the problem could not be so easily solved as it could with a child. "Tell me."

"Tovah has been-unfaithful. Several times, with different men. I should leave her. If I had any courage, any self-respect, I would just walk away from her… but I can't."

"No," said Karen softly, without meaning.

"You don't know what it's like," he said, lifting his eyes to hers for the first time. "I can't describe the pain. It kills me, it kills me every time. Do you know who she has her affairs with? My friends. Only my friends. So that it will ruin the friendship, I think… What else can I think? Does she do it to kill me, is that what she wants to do?"

"No, I'm sure not," said Karen, but she was sure of nothing. She had been taken completely by surprise by his sudden candid outpouring.

"Why else would she be doing it with my friends? My friendly! A woman wouldn't understand how hard it is for a man to make any real friends.

You do it so easily."

"I know it's hard for men."

"Do you? Not for John, He's the kind of man other men m like. The kind they want to be. But me-look at me. I'm not the kind of man other men want to go have a beer with. There's something about me, I've never known what it is exactly. I talk too much, maybe. I'm too emotional, I don't know, but there's something, they know it, men sense it. Do you know Yiddish? I'm a nebbish, I'm a softy. The way John plays tennis, my God, like he's made out of spring steel. That's what men want to be around, that's who they want to be. Me, I'm, well, I'm what their fathers prayed they wouldn't grow up to be. I'm not gay, I don't mean that, but I'm the kid you never chose to be on your team…"

"Stanley, you're a very successful man, you're bright you're doing extremely well, you've got a beautiful home. Professionally…"

Kom put his hand on her arm to silence her, smiling wanly. "Thank you, Karen. That's sweet, but you know what I mean. There are some things from your youth you never get over completely. I've certainly tried, I've had the therapy, I've had more therapy than Freud, I've made myself over as much as possible, but hell, you saw me on the tennis court. I'm ridiculous."

"Athletic ability has nothing to do with anyone's worth."

"It's not athletic ability. It's a quality, a toughness. It's something to do with character, too. It's-I don't have it, whatever it is. Look, that isn't the point. I can live with it, all I'm trying to say is that it's hard for me to make friends with other men, I mean close friends, and when I do, I don't want to lose them. She knows that, and yet she takes them away. She makes it impossible for the friendship to continue..

He walked away from her again, shaking his head, overcome with his frustration. "She kills me two ways when she does this," he said. "I feel-unmanned, the way any husband would. Castrated. I can't seem to please my wife, I can't keep her from wanting other men. And then she adds to it by taking away my friends. She leaves me with no one to talk to. No one. I should be able to talk to my wife. I love my wife, I do, despite everything. But I can't talk to her anymore. She's the one I need to talk to most and I can't talk to her, that's the irony. And then I can't talk to my friends, either, because she's made that impossible too."

"Stanley, why do you put up with it?"

"I wonder if you'd understand."

"I think so-if you want to trust me with it."

"I do trust you, Karen. I didn't realize that, but I guess I must trust you instinctively because I'm telling you all this. Is it all right with you? I don't want you to feel… I don't want to involve you if you don't want to get mixed up in all this."

"I think I already am mixed up-because of John."

"I guess that's true. I'm lucky it's you, though, aren't I? You're very sympathetic, you have a way of listening, I don't feel I'm being judged.

I feel I can talk to you like a friend. "

"Of course you can. I am your friend. So is John."

Kom smiled ruefully. "For the moment. I hope… I have to trust them together, you do understand that, don't you? I can't stand there and watch over her every minute. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If she betrays me, she betrays me. But I can't spend my life as a policeman-I don't mean that personally."

"I know. Ultimately, you have to trust the people you love, or you can't keep loving them."

"It doesn't bother you then, their being together, knowing that Tovah has a-well-a crush on John?"

"John's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

"But can he take care of Tovah?" Kom laughed bitterly "Why do you put up with it, Stanley?" Karen asked again. "I wonder if you can understand," he said again. They had moved to the front porch. Kom sat on the secondlowest step and took her hand in his. She was left with noplace to sit except the step below him. She sat looking up at him and he continued to hold her hand absently, as if he was not aware he had it.

"I keep thinking I can save it, the marriage," he said. "I keep thinking that if I stick with it just a little longer, if I try a little harder, if I make some more compromises, if I keep trying to make myself into what she wantsmaybe, finally, I can do it. Maybe we'll make it. We've been together for ten years. I was lucky to win her, so lucky to get her to marry me, I can't tell you. Looking the way she does, she could have had anybody, anybody. I think she chose me because I'm a doctor.

Because of what I do, not who I am."

" No, no…"

"I think so. I'm afraid so." He held Karen's hand and rubbed it gently but idly between thumb and finger, as if it were a stone or stick, a talisman to give him strength. "She thought I had power. A medical degree means that to some people, it's authority, it's power, it's position-but it's illusory. She wanted real power, masculine power. I have the power to cure-some things, some limited things. Mostly I have the power to pay the bills. What she wants is the kind of power that can kick down a door to get to her, then hold on to her as he swings through the jungle on a vine."

"There is no such person."

"John could do it.

Karen paused. "But he wouldn't. Anyway, that's not what a woman wants."

"That's not what you want, Karen. It's what Tovah wants. It's what I can't give her. But I'm not giving up. If this marriage fails, it will not be because I haven't given it every last ounce of my energy and my will and my love… But it's so hard… and it's so lonely."

Karen squeezed his hand for sympathy. He lifted it to his lips and kissed her palm. Instinctively, she reached up with her free hand to touch his face.

At that moment, Becker and Tovah walked around the side of the house.

"Cute," said Tovah. "Real cute."

Becker looked at the tableau with perplexity.

"I know," Tovah said. "Don't tell me. She was bitten by a snake and you're sucking out the poison."

Karen withdrew her hands from Kom. "We were talking," she said.

"Well, sure, he's good at that," said Tovah. She indicated Becker with a dismissive toss of her head. "This one should be so good."

"He is," Karen said defensively. Her tone toward Tovah crackled with scarcely disguised hostility, and Tovah's voice was similarly charged.

"Must be a hidden talent." Tovah turned abruptly and patted Becker's cheek, causing him to recoil reflexively. "I'm only teasing, don't mind me… Ooh, jumpy."

A beeper sounded and Kom withdrew an electronic pager from his pocket and glanced at the LED readout.

"Excuse me, I have to make a call," he said, vanishing quickly into the house.

"What else is new?" Tovah asked. "He's always dashing off to make calls, dashing off to the hospital. Never marry a doctor, Karen."

"I'll keep the husband I have, thanks."

Tovah eyed Becker speculatively.

"Yes, good idea," said Tovah. "He seems eminently stable.

Becker guffawed. "Stable?"

"He is-in his own way. Sane, stable, loyal, all the good things."

"Dogs are loyal," Tovah said. "Men are merely between affairs, whether they know it or not."

Kom returned to the front door holding a portable phone. "It's for you, John."

"Tracked you down," said Tee's voice in Becker's ear. "That's because of my superior sleuthing abilities. Discussing bones again, are you?"

"Playing tennis."

"With Dr. Kom? Why not spend an afternoon tripping old ladies at a crosswalk? That would be about as fair a match."

"We don't have a crosswalk in Clamden," Becker said. "We were playing doubles."

"With the lady wives? The plot thickens. How come you never ask me to play tennis?… Listen, can you spare a minute from your social life?

I've got some business to discuss." Becker glanced at the three other people who stood by pretending not to listen to his conversation. Karen and Tovah looked as if they might start pulling hair at any moment and Kom was trying so hard to appear innocent that it seemed to Becker as if he had just been caught with his dick in his hand.

"That sounds like a very good idea," Becker said into the phone. "Where should I meet you?"

"I'm in the street outside the house. I have red and blue balls on top of my car that I can make go round and round. "

"The top of your car is a funny place to keep them,"

Becker said. "What if it rains? You're sure you need Karen, too? One of us should stay here if we can."

"Did I say anything about needing Karen? She's always welcome but-"

"You're absolutely sure I can't deal with it myself?"

"What are you doing, talking for public consumption now?"

"That's right."

"Tell the Koms to eat my shorts."

Becker put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to Karen. "I'm afraid he needs both of us. Sorry."

"Oh," said Karen, feigning disappointment.

Becker looked at Kom, then Tovah. "Sorry. Work."

"Of course, of course," said Kom. "I understand, it happens all the time."

"Be right there," Becker said into the phone.

"I'm so sorry," said Karen, already moving back around the house. "We had such a good time."

"It's this business," Becker said, throwing his hands up and shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of annoyed resignation. "When you have to go…"

"I know, I know," said Kom. He wrung Becker's hand enthusiastically.

"It was terrific. It's a pleasure just to watch you play, just to watch you move around the court. You move like a panther. Doesn't he, Tovah?"

"What?"

"Doesn't he move like a panther?"

She eyed Becker again with the same speculative look, as if sizing him up. "I've never been with a panther," she said. "I don't know that much about them."

Kom took Karen's hand and held it momentarily with both of his. "And you move like a deer."

"Doesn't one of those eat the other?" Tovah asked.

Kom ignored his wife. He fixed Karen with a meaningful look. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Anytime."

"We'll have to do it again," said Kom, beaming and waving.

As they drove away, Becker slumped down in his seat and sighed.

They sat together in Tee's living room and he unfolded his suspicions about McNeil. "That's why I wanted to talk to you somewhere I know we won't be overheard. Certainly not at the station. I don't know that McNeil has any real friends there, but there are always people who'd love to spread the word. I have nothing really to go on, I know that."

Tee's wife emerged from the kitchen and offered soft drinks, returned to the kitchen, came out again with the drinks, retreated once more. After fifteen minutes she reemerged and offered cookies.

"Marge, it's business," said Tee. "We don't have social dealings with them, apparently." Karen glanced at Becker, lifting an eyebrow. To Marge, she said, "I'd love something, Marge, thank you."

"You look like you never eat cookies," Marge said.

"I could eat a box at a time."

"How do you keep that figure? Doesn't she have a lovely figure, Tee?"

"The woman is an associate deputy director of the FBI, I never look at her figure. She doesn't have a figure. To me she's a stick of wood, a shield, like any other cop."

"Isn't he a jerk?" Marge said sweetly.

"It would be an insult to view her as a hot babe, isn't that right, Karen?" Tee asked. To Marge, Karen said, "Yes, he is. But a very nice one."

Marge stood behind her husband, leaned down and put her chin on his head, her hands on his chest. "Oh, nice, sure. If you like that kind of thing in a man."

"I am not a jerk. I am the chief of police. The chief mind you."

"Chief jerk," Marge said affectionately. "How do you manage to keep looking that way, Karen?"

"Anxiety. It keeps the metabolism high."

"Living with Becker will do that to you," said Tee.

"At work I'm surrounded by men…"

"And they're all jerks. Got it. Still, there must be more to it. I have to live with Tee and I'm still putting on weight."

"You look fine," said Karen.

"Well, you won't find me running around in a tennis skirt. The chief here wouldn't allow it." She patted Tee's head with a trace of asperity, just hard enough to make him blink, then returned to the kitchen. Tee pointed his thumb in the direction of her retreat. "That must have been the wife," he said.

Ginny passed through the room, pulling her long blond hair into a ponytail. "You know Mr. and Mrs. Becker, Ginny. Say hello."

Ginny stopped and flashed a dazzling smile. "Hello," she said, managing to infuse the single word with warmth and sincerity. She paused just long enough to hear their return greetings before continuing on her way.

"She's really beautiful, Tee," Karen said.

"Yeah," he replied, glowing with pride. "And she's a good kid, too."

"The only thing wrong with her is she's too old for Jack," Becker said.

"You think you could retard her aging by a few years? Or maybe we could speed up Jack."

"Hey, please," said Karen. "I'm in no hurry for Jack to grow up-"

" 'And become a jerk,' is the end of that sentence," said Becker.

"I was going to say, 'and leave me." But now that you mention it…"

"To return to safer ground," Becker said, "you were saying you've tried to find this Kiawa?"

"Kiwasee. Tyrone Abdul Kiwasee. He's out on bail and he's done a bunk.

The Bridgeport cops are looking for him, but meanwhile, he's gone."

"You're fairly sure it was him on the telephone?" Karen asked.

"Not positive. But he was the last black I had anything to do with who also had dealings with McNeil."

"We'll get you a caller-ID phone," said Karen. "He'll probably call back, he'll want to know if you found whatever it is he thought you ought to find in the garage."

"You think he'll call back, then?"

"He'll call," Becker said. "He called to make trouble in the first place. If he wanted to be a crime buster, he would have told you what to look for and where. He wants to pull your chain a little bit before he's through."

"You think it's all just bullshit? That there's nothing in McNeil's garage, and it's just my imagination about the knife?"

Becker looked to Karen, who shrugged. "We could run tests on the knife, Tee, but it's a real long shot. I suppose it's still possible to match blood or tissue traces with DNA samples from the bone, if they can get any decent samples from the bone at this point-"

"If he hasn't cleaned the knife as thoroughly as you think he has."

"It looked clean as a whistle to me..

"But it might look different under a microscope."

"But right now it's inadmissible evidence," said Karen. "It was taken during an illegal search."

"It wasn't taken," said Tee. "I was going to take it, but then I heard a noise and… I took off. I just got the hell out of there."

"Not a bad idea."

"For the wrong reason. I felt creepy. There was something strange in the air there. Maybe just because I don't approve of McNeil in the first place, I don't know. Probably the whole thing is my imagination-all of the little things can be explained away, they wouldn't amount to a pinch of shit if we were talking about somebody besides McNeil."

"There are a couple of things that aren't your imagination, Tee," Karen said. "One is the phone call from Kiwasee, or whoever it was. The other is the skeletons of six young women. Those are far too real."

"Something occurs to me," said Becker. "You were looking at this X-Acto knife that you think could have been used to cut up the bodies, then you heard a noise and decided-wisely, I think-to get the hell out of there."

"Right."

"Does that mean your fingerprints are on what could be the murder weapon?"

Tee stared at Becker for a moment. "Oh, shit Chrice," he said.

Late in the afternoon Metzger loaded his dog in the car and returned to the nature preserve. He started with Sandy on a long leash but within a few yards the dog was already tangled around a tree trunk, so he released it and the dog bolted happily into the woods. Metzger walked toward the place where he had fallen the previous night, Sandy roaming in a large, active circle around him. The dog found the hole before he did. Metzger came upon Sandy sniffing excitedly around the edges of the excavation. There was nothing eerie or otherworldly about it in daylight. A human being had been digging a hole. Footprints were pressed into the loose dirt piled beside the hole, the sharp marks of the shovel were still visible on the sheer sides. The digger had encountered a large rock-Metzger could see a slash of white through the dirt where the shovel had hit stone. He could see where the digger had squatted, his butt leaving an impression in the dirt, and where another weight, broader, lighter, and smoother, had flattened the soil but left no trace of its identity.

The dog continued to sniff excitedly, tracing a path around the hole.

Metzger snapped on a shorter hand leash, then said, "Find, Sandy. Find."

The dog circumnavigated the hole in a larger circle, and moved off through the trees, nose to the ground.

After several minutes and as many sidetracks, the dog stopped by the roadside, roaming round in a small circle, its nose always fixed by one point. The ground litter had been matted down and Metzger could see the distinct impression of heel prints where they had pressed through the litter and dug into the dirt. He stood there, trying to see what the man would have seen-the road, a driveway, and the upper story of a house visible through the leaves just across the road. The chimney of another house farther east. He stood here at night, Metzger thought. He would have seen house lights if any were on. He tried to remember if any had been on when he drove by, but could not recall. He would have seen me though, he thought. He would have seen me drive by, one way and then the other. Metzger imagined the man, crouched by the road, hidden by the trees and the darkness of the night, watching the cop car cruise by.

Was he laughing at me? Metzger wondered. He felt angry, and a little shamed by his own incompetence.