Bone Deep

15

Becker resorted to chicken breasts for dinner, a quick and handy solution when pressed for time. He pounded them thin, coated them in flour, dipped them in egg white-he had dispensed with whole eggs several years ago-and then in bread crumbs. With the addition of lemon juice or olives or tomatoes or capers he could create a number of different dishes, all of them acceptable to Jack, the true test of Becker's culinary efforts.

He had worked later than usual, helping with the minute examination of the car and woods where the bodies were found, and Karen had taken Jack shopping for new sneakers as soon as she arrived from New York. They came in as Becker was wilting greens on which to place the saut6ed chicken breasts. With the addition of rice, which Jack could eat by the bowlful, it made a decent meal, quick, attractive, and most important, devoured.

"We avoided the ones with flashing lights," Karen said, brandishing a sneaker box. "But just barely. We got the ones you can inject with helium, instead."

"so now you're able to leap tall buildings, Jack?"

"I don't know until she lets me try them on," Jack said, making an unsuccessful grab for the box. Karen lifted it out of his reach.

"ItIsjust that they're so expensive," Karen said. "I don't think they're actually intended to be worn."

"Drinks," Becker said, and pointed Jack to his chore of filling his own glass with milk, putting wineglasses at the places of the adults. "When I was a boy, we couldn't afford fancy sneakers. We just tied old rocks to our feet. And happy to have them too."

"He was a boy before my time," Karen said. "When I was a boy we had advanced to wooden shoes. We saved the rocks for socks."

"These are the kind Hakeem wears," said Jack. "They're really cool."

"I demand a fashion show-after dinner," said Becker. As they ate, Karen said, "Anything interesting at work'?"

"I'll tell you about it," Becker said. By tacit agreement they never discussed work in front of Jack except in the most general terms, but Karen could tell by his tone that he had a great deal to tell her.

After the meal, with Jack in his room, he told her of the discovery of the two bodies. "What's your take on it?" she asked, when he had given her the straightforward report.

"Tee thinks McNeil did it. It's close to McNeil's house. The little mutt is obstructive, there's no question about that. He acts stupid or sullen or misleading by turns, but everything he does seems calculated to keep us from getting to an answer. I don't think he is stupid at all. I just don't see him doing it that close to his own backyard."

"How close is it?"

"I haven't walked it, but Tee says it's only a quarter of a mile through the woods. I'm going to humor Tee; we're going to check on McNeil's alibi for last night. But I don't think we'll come up with anything there. McNeil thinks Kiwasee was Johnny Appleseed. He was in Clamden a lot at night, we know that much. We found the body in his car. McNeil's theor,y is that Kiwasee came to bury his latest, ran into someone who killed him and dumped him in the grave that Kiwasee had dug for the girl. Just who that someone was and why he killed Kiwasee he doesn't say."

"Obviously someone else was in the woods."

"I think it was Johnny himself. My guess is that Kiwasee was where he was because he was on his way to McNeil's. If it was Kiwasee on the phone giving tips to Tee about McNeil's garage, then we can assume he was after McNeil for some reason. Maybe he and McNeil were in on the burglary business together. A local cop knows who's out of town, who is regularly away on certain days, just the kind of information Kiwasee would need. Maybe they were working it together and McNeil turned on him. I don't know. Anyway, my guess is that Kiwasee was sneaking up on McNeil's house, or just leaving it, and he blundered onto Johnny, who was trying to get rid of the girl's body."

"Just bad luck?"

"it makes more sense than either of the other two seenarios."

"Or than a fourth," Karen said. "That Kiwasee went there deliberately to meet his killer."

"Meaning that Kiwasee and Johnny were in on the killings of the girls together in some way?"

"It has happened. There have been serial killers who worked in teams."

"Twice, that we know of," said Becker. "The cousins in L.A. and Lutz and Ash."

Karen was silent for a moment. Lutz and Ash had come perilously close to their own lives. Karen had killed them both. Becker put his arm around her for a moment, then stepped away again.

"So, a falling out among thieves, you think," he said.

"Not really. It doesn't make much sense. Kiwasee has jumped bail for crimes committed in Clamden. He and his partner drive to the spot in the woods, in two separate cars, presumably-"

"We have found signs that another car was parked in the woods within walking distance."

"So they do this just to bury a five-day-old corpse. Together? Then they quarrel, the other one kills Kiwaseemaybe, but it's not very convincing, is it?"

"Not very. I can see coming back to Clamden for some reason of the blood, love, hate, revenge-even money. But for a burial? Why here? The only reason to do it here is because it's convenient, because you know the territory, because you feel reasonably safe, maybe you know where the police go at night and where they don't…

"Another plus for Tee's theory that McNeil did it."

"I know. But you don't drive to Clamden from Bridgeport in a stolen car with a corpse in the trunk just to bury it. And why risk two of you for a burial? In separate cars. I don't see it."

"Maybe the burial was part of the excitement."

Becker shook his head. "The excitement is the killing," he said categorically. "The killing and the anticipation. Maybe in Johnny's case there's some pleasure in the dissection as well. But disposing of the body is just an inconvenience.

"You're sure?"

Becker sighed wearily. It was the certainty of his knowledge that drained him. Born not of research or years of pursuing serial killers, but of bone-deep understanding. "I'm sure," he said flatly.

Karen did not argue. There were areas of Becker's expertise where he was not to be questioned. She understood and avoided them when she could, aware of an incipient empathy within herself that she feared to encourage by associating too closely with Becker's own.

Jack bounded into, the room with his own fanfare. "Ta da!" He leapt high, landed with his arms spread wide, one foot perched on its heel.

The new sneakers gleamed.

"What do you think?":'Fantastic," said Becker.

'You ought to feel them. It's like you can fly."

"I remember the feeling well. I used to get that feeling with a new pair of Keds."

"Keds, " Jack said, horrified.

"That's all we had then, we were deprived." 'I thought you wore rocks."

"That was for dress-up," said Becker. To Karen, he said, "He looks the very epitome of inner-city youth, doesn't he?"

"Makes a mother proud. I tried to interest him in a pair of oxblood wing tips, but he was having none of itJack! "

Jack was rubbing the sole of one sneaker vigorously atop the instep of the other. "I can't go to school with them all shiny," he said, continuing to grind off the sheen.

"Do you know how much those cost?"

"You told me often enough."

"Now your mother will have to arrest someone extra just to pay for those shoes."

"It's not funny, John. How is he going to learn respect for his belongings."

"It's called 'distressing,' " said Becker. "If he did it to furniture, you'd think it was very fashionable."

"He does do it to the furniture. Look at the sofa."

"Here's where you tactfully withdraw," Becker said to Jack. The boy slipped quickly out of the living room.

"A boy has to be free to loll around," Becker continued.

"He can loll on the floor."

"On the floor it's just rolling, not lolling."

"I don't care what it is, he's got to learn more responsibility toward property. I know how that sounds, by the way, so don't remind me that I'm turning into my mother… What is it?"

Becker had disengaged from the conversation abruptly, staring into space.

"Distressing," he said. "Those marks on the bones of the girls that Johnny killed. The ones we thought might be a signature or a talisman of some kind?"

"You couldn't figure out how they got on the bone during the dissection."

"What if Johnny put them there deliberately like distress marks on furniture?"

"To make the bones look older?"

"No. Not older. To make his work look clumsier."

"I don't follow you."

"It worked-halfway anyway. Kom thought the job was sloppy. But that's when we just showed him the one bone. Grone thought it was very skillfully done, seeing those marks so uniformly applied."

"Take me through it," Karen said.

"He cuts the girl into pieces; then, probably as an afterthought, he decides to confuse the issue just in case the bones are ever found-an event he didn't really anticipate-so he takes a couple of swipes at the exposed joint to make it look like sloppy work. We know he had to do it after the job was done, there was no other way to get the marks where they were during the boning process. It's not anything he takes too seriously, he doesn't think it will ever matter, but he's a careful man, a methodical man, so he does it on a couple of more bones. Same way, slash, slash. It looks good enough, he keeps doing it, it becomes part of his pattern and after a while he doesn't even think about it, he just does it with each bone when he's cut it free."

"Like somebody on an assembly line. A pieceworker if that isn't too horrible to say."

"Yes, something like that. Debone, slash, slash, toss it aside into the trash bag. He thinks he's making his work look awkward, but he doesn't realize that by doing it all the time, every time, he's creating just the opposite impression. Those are the only marks on the bones. It's never a slip of the knife, it's always the slash in the same place. If you saw just one body, maybe you'd think it was the work of a butcher.

But if you found all seven bodies..

"And the new girl?"

"Grone will have a report for us tomorrow. We might know who she is by then too."

"Will you ask Stanley to come into the city for a look too? Grone won't mind."

"Sure he will."

"Tell him it's my idea."

"He'll still mind."

"But he'll have sense enough to keep it to himself. Take Stanley, will you?" Becker groaned. "Do I have to take Tovah, too?"

"Tovah is not an expert in that kind of bones."

"What if he wants to have a little heart-to-heart talk again afterwards?"

"You listened to Tee, didn't you?"

"Tee was desperate. He's got his neck in a noose."

"Stanley's desperate too. You were able to help Tee, weren't you?"

"Did I give you that impression? I don't think I helped him at all. How can I help hiw.? He wants to be thirty again. He wants to fall in love and rescue women and feel something again. There's no way I can help him with any of that. All I can do is try to keep him under control when it comes to dealing with McNeil, who might well try to blackmail him, and that's all he wants me to do for him. I don't know what the hell Stanley wants from me."

"He wants some emotional intimacy, if that's not too trite."

"Do I have to be emotionally intimate with everybody who comes along, whether I like it or not? Do I have some kind of obligation there?"

"Do you have that many coming along? If so, you're not telling me about it."

"I'd just like to have something to say about whether I'm on the other end of intimate exchanges or not, that's all. I don't like to have it dumped in my lap like a spilled drink. Stanley's like having a cup of cocoa poured on you, all warm and sweet and sticky."

"Maybe what Stanley needs is not a male friend," Karen offered. "Maybe he needs a woman."

"What is the appeal of the guy?"

"What makes you afraid of him?"

Becker threw his hands in the air. "I'll take him, I'll take him."

"You don't have to." Becker laughed and took Karen in his arms. The embrace turned serious and after a few minutes they sat together on the sofa and made love to each other in a gentle, prefatory way, touching through their clothes. Sweetly, teasingly, they drove each other wild with desire until Jack came in to say good night. They looked at him in parental innocence, beaming with smiles.

Becker rose from bed at t, o a.m., moving silently as he gathered his clothes in his hand and eased toward the bedroom door. Karen lay on her side, facing away from him. She had not moved but he could tell by her breathing that she had awakened. "Be careful," she said, her voice still hoarse with sleep. "Yes. Go back to sleep."

"You're sure you have to go?" Becker stood for a long moment in the dark, his shirt and pants in his hand. "I have to," he said finally.

She rolled over to face him. Her face was a pale shape without features in the darkness. "I knew you would tonight," she said.

"How did you know?"

"You're different when you're fighting it," she said, meaning the urge that she knew was driving him now. "You make love differently."

'Do I?"

"You're even more gentle than usual-and even more intense, somehow. I can't explain it, but I can feel it."

"There was nothing in my mind but making love to you-I don't want you to think it was tainted."

"I don't think that. But it's like… I don't know." She thought it was like making love with a wolf with a human heart, the beast holding its strength and instinct in check, aware what it could do with those powerful jaws, the vicious teeth, the instrument of death caressing her as gently as it would pick up a pup in that mouth. It was frightening and exciting and Karen had come over the years to want it most of all-but she did not tell him that, or any of it. "It's just different," she said.

Becker waited a moment more for her to complete the thought if she would; then he slipped out the door. She scarcely heard him leave.

He wheeled his bicycle from the garage, mounted it, and pedaled swiftly into the night. The moon was more than half full and a strong breeze pushed clouds past it, causing it to wink conspiratorially. He rode the first mile with the headlight on, keeping one eye closed so that it would not adjust to the light. When he was a few minutes away from his destination he turned off the headlight and opened the other eye.

The bike moved almost silently through the Clamden night. The whizzing of the wind in his ears was far more hear of his passage. A low, du]] than anyone else wo hiss of the tires on the asphalt was the only sound, the only sign that he had been and gone. The houses moved quickly past, some dimly lighted, some dark, but mostly he saw trees, upright stalks rushing past like pickets in a fence.

The deeper into the night he rode, the more his civilized self fell away and he became the thing he feared. It was the part he loathed most about himself-the part that gave him the greatest satisfaction. The part of him that Karen knew and didn't want to know. The part he spent his life trying to control-the part that controlled him. The part he tried to deny but could n(-ver refuse.

In his mind the houses that had seemed warm and secure now looked vulnerable and deluded in their sense of security, little more than eggshells, pathetic, contemptible defenses against the creatures of the night that dwelled both within and without them. The veneer of civilization was so thin, so useless against a real assault.

In the clearing in the trees made by the road, a shape was silhouetted against the sky at the top of a rise. Becker was approaching it, pedaling up the hill, and he saw it turn and look at him, the long, canine head turned in threequarter profile. The animal stared at Becker, watched his strange form coming at it, half wheels, half human.

It gauged his speed, his threat, sniffed the air to reaffirm what it thought it saw. Finally, with a casualness born of craft and confidence, the coyote trotted off the road, unhurried, into the surrounding darkness. Becker sped past it, glancing in the direction it had gone. There was nothing to see.

In the far distance he could see a car's headlights brightening the sky as it rounded a curve. Becker waited until he was close to the turn in the road, then pulled softly onto the shoulder on the inside of the bend so the lights would not pick him out, and walked the bike into the cover of the trees, where he watched as the car came around the corner, its lights cutting a fleeting swath through the blackness, illuminating a house, a car in a driveway, toys in a yard, then, squaring itself on the road, the pavement in front of it, a yellow line down the center gleaming dully. He did not recognize the driver, caught just a glimpse of a man, looking tired, driving by rote on the familiar way home. When the car had passed, Becker looked afterit, watching the trees and fences and stone walls being illuminated in turn, a flash of porch rail, the glint of a second-story window, and the distant canopy of leaves all taking brief turns in the spotlight before fading once more into the surrounding black.

He pedaled on until he was within a mile of his destination. He pulled off the road once more and covered the reflectors in the spokes and on the pedals and the front and back of the bike with black electrician's tape before continuing. He would not be betrayed by light now, not picked out by any headlights or flashlight beams or random lights from windows. To be seen he would have to be seen, and that by someone who was looking not only for him but directly at him. His only danger now was being silhouetted as the coyote had been, but from this point on it was all downhill, he would be below a crest all the way. Becker pushed off once more, the wind of his passing sounding to his ears like a scythe through the air.

Becker did not anticipate that anyone was watching for him. He did not even expect to encounter anyone. Nor was it caution or training. He moved silent and all but invisible because he liked it, liked the feeling of cutting through the night like a blade, needed the deeply furtive and threatening sensation of being in the dark while others slept, of living with danger. Of being dangerous. Of being deadly.

There was something lupine in his nature, a heavy, uncivilizable part of himself that could be wrapped in the disguises demanded by his culture, trained to sing and dance and wear lace if the occasion required, but never truly tamed. A part of him that needed to be alone in the dark to mirror the black, unexamined corner of his soul. Becker did not know if all men shared this part of themselves, but he knew that some did. The ones who worked at night, the ones he hunted, the ones he understood far too well for his own peace of mind.

He entered the woods at the base of the hill, close to where the other car had been parked on the night of Kiwasee's death. Pulling the bike out of sight and laying it on the ground, Becker began the climb toward the grave, moving quietly, pausing every few yards to listen without the distraction of his own movement.

He had not gone far before he realized that he was not alone. He crouched instinctively, lowering his silhouette, his eyes scanning the darkness in front of him.

The gibbous moon was partially obscured by scudding clouds, and shapes within the forest leapt suddenly into high relief when the moon was clear, vanished into the general gloom when it was hidden. Becker crouched, waiting. He had not seen anything, or if he had, it had not registered consciously. He was aware only of a sensation, as real and undirected as the rising of hair on the back of his neck. Something was there, and close. And whatever it was, it was watching him, standing as motionless as he, and as patient.

The clouds parted, the breeze shifted the leaves into a slightly different pattern, the moonlight shone through where it had been dark before, and suddenly Becker saw it. A pair of points, gleaming green, directed straight at him. Already still, Becker froze, his muscles locked with a primal fear that took several seconds to drain away. The coyote was less than ten yards away, its head again cocked in three-quarter profile. Its mouth was open, the lips curled back to show long teeth glowing dimly. An owl lay motionless between the coyote's paws, the reason the coyote had not fled on Becker's approach, and, still gripped in the owl's talons, a rabbit, its body twitching. Becker imagined the lightning-fast chain of events that must have taken place in silence as he walked up the hill, the swooping lunge of the owl intent on its prey, the almost simultaneous leap of the coyote upon the owl. A double murder in the night, he thought ironically, in silence, close by, and he was unaware of either. If he had happened along half a minute later there would be only a feather or two, some drops of blood, a torn tuft of rabbit hair, and later, elsewhere, fieshiess bones working slowly into the soil. Men or beasts, it's all around us, Becker thought, but only a few of us know it, only a few of us acknowledge the need for blood and the quivering body of the prey within our grasp. Only a few of us pursue it while the rest of the world slumbers in false security, as helpless as the rabbit. Only a few of us like Johnny. Like me. The coyote was only following its nature. Like Johnny. Like me.

Becker stared squarely at the small wolf and the animal returned his gaze unflinchingly. These were not the eyes of a dog, there was no mistaking them for anything belonging to man. There was a wild quality to them-not anger, not ferocity, but a cool, unapologetic, matter-of-fact murderousness. The coyote killed for a living and the toll of so much death showed in his eyes as an indifference to anything of less than mortal consequence. Becker felt as if he were looking back into time and deep into the history of his race when men competed with the wolf for the kill and the carrion, a time before the day when man had turned his need for death upon himself and converted hunting to murder. The coyote was honest in his blood lust, and unashamed. Only men tried to disguise their need for it. Some of us anyway, Becker thought. Some of us hide it. Some of us get paid for it-and still try to hide it.

The coyote finally turned and loped off in its unhurried way, the wings of the owl dragging on the ground, the rabbit, now still, trailing in the death grip of the owl's talons.

He made his way to the site of Kiwasee's death battle and stood there a long time in the dark before wading through the water to the grave. Once more he stood for a long time, feeling as much as thinking, letting his senses work, trying to put himself into Johnny's mind. Entering his soul was not that difficult, feeling the way he felt was not the problem. Becker tried to make himself think the way Johnny thought.

After a time Becker left the crime scene and walked toward McNeil's house, which was one hill and a valley away. He came to the edge of the woods and halted, surveying McNeil's house and yard. It took him a moment to recognize a four-legged shape as a sawhorse, even Ion er to define the formless side of the house that appeared 9 to undulate in the breeze. He realized finally that it was a builder's tarpaulin, sucking and flapping leisurely in the wind.

The house was dark but a light shone feebly in the garage. The light moved, a shadow blocked it, projecting a distorted shape onto the lawn; then the light came through again.

Becker eased out of the woods, traveling in a running crouch until he gained the side of the garage. As he moved toward the window, the light inside continued its gyrations. It was a muted, furtive light, pointed downward, Becker thought, as someone sought to hide it from view.

Becker stepped well back from the window so that he would not be easily visible in the outer darkness, and peered into the garage. Tee stood by a workbench, a pen light in his mouth, wearing gardening gloves. As Becker watched, his friend opened a small chest and took out an X-Acto knife. Tee's eyes flicked guiltily around the interior of the garage before he carefully wiped the knife with a cloth andreplaced it in the chest. Tee glanced around nervously again, the penlight in his mouth moving with his eyes, then stopping abruptly at the window. Becker saw Tee's startled reaction flash past his eyes, then subside, and realized that he had not seen Becker but his own reflection in the glass.

I was going to do that for you, Becker thought. It would have been better if I had, you don't need it on your conscience or affecting your investigation of McNeil. That's what friends are for.

Tee started out of the garage and then stopped, his attention caught by something in the corner by the overhead door. Becker watched as the chief of police approached a roll of carpet standing upright against the wall. Partially tucked within the roll, as if hastily hidden there, was an object that shone dully in the beam from the penlight. Tee studied the part that protruded from the roll for a moment, then gently pulled it out in his gloved hands, as if it were fragile. His head was briefly out of synchronization with his hands, and the penlight beam danced across the side wall of the garage, revealing a motley of bicycles without wheels, garden tools, a straight-backed chair with the caning used for its seat dangling beneath it like the roots of an aerial plant.

When Tee squared his head with his hands again, Becker saw him holding a figurine of elegantly blown glass. Tee puzzled over it, leaned his head in close to scrutinize the figurine, as if reading something, and then, shaking his head in bewilderment, held it away from himself again.

Finally he replaced it, tucking it back within the roll of carpet so that only the top of the figurine was visible. From Becker's vantage point it had looked like a sports figure, a golfer or possibly a batter, and the tip of the golf club or bat stuck out of the rug, reflecting the last of Tee's flashlight beam like a raindrop.

Becker followed Tee into the night as the big man made his way clumsily down the dirt road, through a stretch of trees, and into his car, which was parked just off the asphalt. Only when Tee's taillights had vanished around a bend in the road and Becker was certain that his friend was safe and undetected did he return to his bicycle and make his way home through the darkness. He could have turned his headlight on but he preferred to glide through the night unseen, whether stealth was required or not.