Into The Fire

The baby seemed to sense that something was wrong and its face wrinkled in preparation for a scream. Cooper wiggled his finger before the baby again but it was too late and the child let out an anguished cry.

The woman had slumped onto the seat, so Cooper was free to reach for the infant with both hands, but the crossbar on the car seat confused him temporarily. Suddenly horns were blaring and Cooper heard someone yell,

"Hey, asshole!

The sun had moved and traffic in front of him was already receding into the distance. The man behind him, the one with the necktie, was honking and yelling, in a great rush to move on, and Cooper realized that he was visible again. The woman moaned, her eyes fluttering open and shut and open again, and the baby screamed.

Cooper took the purse that the woman had offered him and left the car.

He ran into the woods, with the man with the necktie yelling at him, and he ran until he could hear no more sounds from the highway.

Cooper crouched behind the empty propane gas tanks that crowded the fence at the back of the restaurant. Kyle came out the back, dragging the garbage towards the dumpster. He passed the police car that was parked close to the dumpster, its front light pulsing on and off the high beam and the front door still open as if someone had arrived and jumped out in a hurry. Glancing around to see if he was observed, Kyle peered into the cop car. Cooper could almost feel the boy's temptation to slip inside the automobile, to sit where the cop sat, to speak into the radio, to fondle the shotgun clipped to the dashboard.

Kyle was grinning with nervous excitement, his freckled skin flushed.

Red on the head like the dick on a dog, Cooper thought and laughed silently.

Kyle resisted the temptation of the police car and hoisted the garbage can with some trouble into the dumpster. Cooper wanted to take the can away from Kyle and lift it with one hand, just to show him how he could do it. Instead, he hissed.

Kyle looked around, startled, as if he had heard a snake.

It took him a moment to locate Cooper, who was waving from behind the propane tanks. He hurried over, glancing back at the restaurant.

"Was it you? I figured it had to be you, but I didn't know."

"What?"

"The cops said somebody wearing one of our uniforms robbed a lady's purse in broad daylight on the highway."

"That wasn't me," Cooper said.

"Right in broad daylight. I said, Jeez, that sucker's got balls. I figured it was you."

Cooper shook his head without conviction.

"They said he was a great big guy, that's all the lady remembers. But about eight different people saw him in his uniform. He was even wearing his hat."

Cooper took the striped paper hat off his head.

"it was you, wasn't it?"

"No," Cooper said. "Are they looking for me now?"

"Of course they're looking for you, duh. What do you think the cop car is doing here?"

"You didn't tell him where I was?"

"I didn't know where you were. I just saw you right now."

"Uh-huh."

Cooper laid his hand on Kyle's shoulder.

"And I wouldn't have told him anyway, I swear," the boy said, suddenly talking much faster. "I wouldn't tell him no matter what, but I didn't tell him anyway because I didn't know."

"I didn't do it," Cooper said.

Kyle tried to back away, but Cooper's grip tightened on his shoulder.

"I knew that. I believe you. You wouldn't be that stupid."

"It wasn't stupid," Cooper said.

"I know that, it's the cops who said it was stupid, not me. I knew you wouldn't do anything stupid. We're friends, Coop. We work together. I know you."

"You don't know me."

"Well…"

"You're not my friend."

"Sure I am, sure I am."

"I've got two friends," Cooper said.

"And me. I'm your friend. You can count on me."

Kyle tried to twist his head to see if there was any activity at the back of the restaurant, but Cooper's grip continued to grow in pressure.

The boy felt tears coming to his eyes.

Cooper tried to remember who his two friends were.

"My punk," he said, not aware he was speaking aloud,'and somebody else…"

Two cops came out of the back of the restaurant, each holding a cup of coffee. Kyle started to speak, but Cooper reacted quicker, yanking the boy behind the tanks and clamping a hand on his mouth so fast that the boy's neck snapped back as if he had been hit.

When the cop car drove off, Cooper looked at the boy's struggling form as if he had just noticed it for the first time.

He removed his hand from Kyle's mouth and the boy gasped and sputtered and looked for a second as if he were going to speak again, but Cooper didn't want to hear from him, he knew the kind of thing he'd hear, so he closed his hand on the boy's throat and used that grip to beat his head against the propane tank.

The tank made a dull, hollow sound, like the biggest drum that Cooper had ever heard. When the boy stopped squirming after the fourth or fifth hit, Cooper carried him to the dumpster and tossed him in. He laughed about that as he ran through the back lots. He laughed until he reached the safety of the pines. He didn't know why, it just struck him as funny.

After his second day of walking, Cooper emerged from the woods to follow the sound of a tolling bell. He found himself on a dirt road and he walked towards the bell, drawn not only by the sound but by its promise of human community. He was tired of sleeping on the ground and talking only to squirrels and he was hungry. There was money in his pocket that he had taken from the woman's purse, so he could buy food. He had counted the money many times; he didn't think it was enough to buy a car, any kind of car, but he was certain it was enough to buy a meal.

There was also her credit card, and Cooper knew there were ways to get money and food and cars and anything you wanted with somebody else's credit card, but he had never understood how it was done. He knew his punk would know. Even if the punk didn't know something like that right away, he could sit down and figure it out, just by thinking about it.

And if that didn't work, he wasn't afraid to ask someone else.

Cooper never felt comfortable asking people questions when he didn't already know the answers. It was just asking to be ridiculed, but somehow it never bothered the punk. Swann. He had said Cooper wouldn't even remember his name, but, there, he did remember. He said it aloud,

"Swann," and found himself suddenly close to tears. Cooper shook his head, angry at himself. He didn't know what the hell that was all about, crying over a punk.

Cooper's hand hurt where the woman in the car had bitten him and it was turning a very angry looking red around the tooth marks. As he walked, he put the sore hand to his mouth and sucked on it a little, which made it feel better. The. sound of the bell kept getting louder and even though there was no way to see very far through all the trees that lined both sides of the road, he could tell he was getting closer., Suddenly there was a wider spot that spread and spread and sitting there right beside the dirt road was a one-story, one-room clapboard church. An old man stood in the yard, pulling on a bell that looked more like a dinner bell than a church chime, and a fat-faced man dressed in a shiny black suit, white shirt, and black bow tie stood by the doorway, clasping a black book to his bosom. He looked to Cooper like the preachers he had seen in Western movies, except that his skin was the color of dusty shoe leather. Cooper had also seen undertakers dressed like that, usually in the same movies. Lots of people got shot in movies like that; there was plenty of work for both the preachers and the undertakers.

Cooper's sudden appearance startled both men, and the old one missed several beats on the bell rope.

"Are you sure you're in the right place, sir?" the preacher asked as Cooper headed straight for the front door. The preacher was smiling but he didn't look very welcoming nonetheless. Cooper stopped next to the man, looking at his face and then at the interior of the church.

He towered over the minister, whose size was more lateral than vertical.

"What?"

The minister smelled of very old sweat and bourbon and some kind of perfume. Cooper wrinkled his nose in distaste and the minister moved back a step.

"You're welcome, of course," the minister said. "All sinners are welcome."

"Uh-huh," Cooper said.

"Did you walk all the way from Wycliffe?" the minister asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

"What?"

"Your uniform," the minister said. "The nearest one of them is in Wycliffe. I wonder, did you walk all the way from there, because I see you got no car."

Cooper looked at his striped shirt. He had lost the hat somewhere in the woods.

"Which way is Wycliffe?"

"That way," the minister said, pointing in the direction in which Cooper had been going before he stopped at the church.

"How far?"

"Walking or riding?"

Cooper squinted at him, suspecting a trick.

"About seven miles by car," the minister said.

"Uh-huh… Do you think I could get a job there?"

"Yes, sir, I bet you could. You already got the clothes."

Cooper debated whether to keep walking towards the restaurant in Wycliffe or to go inside the church. He poked the black book the minister clasped to his chest and the heavy man staggered back a step.

"I know what that is," Cooper said.

"Hallelujah," said the minister.

"Jesus is my friend," Cooper said, laughing slightly with pleasure at remembering who his second friend was.

He wanted to tell Swann that he had remembered a great many things. He searched his pockets until he found a postcard.

"Amen to that," said the minister.

The old man gave up on the bell and shuffled past both Cooper and the minister and into the church. He had recovered from his initial shock and now had no curiosity about the sudden appearance of the candy-striped giant at all ' "You can go on in, if you like," the minister said to Cooper. "You just about the first. The womens will be along directly."

"Womens?"

"Well, it's mostly womens, now isn't it. Womens takes to the spirit better than men. I don't know why."

"Uh-huh."

"Maybe they is just better and cleaner spirits altogether. Take away the womens and I wouldn't have hardly no congregation whatsoever."

"I like women," Cooper said.

'Bless you," said the minister and smiled with real warmth for the first time. "I know what you mean. I do know what you mean." He chuckled conspiratorially.

The minister seemed friendly and Cooper thought of telling him about the woman who had helped him with the questionnaire and then took him out in her car, but then thought he'd better not. He walked into the church instead.

Cooper sat on a bench in the third row from the front and thought about his friend Jesus and his friend Swann and realized that he knew Swann a lot better than he knew Jesus. Jesus was really Swann's friend and had become Cooper's friend, too, mainly from being talked about so much.

He stayed there when the congregation filtered in, nearly filling the church with their heavy, gaily clothed bodies, but giving him a wide berth on either side as if he emitted a repellent force field.

He liked the singing, which certainly wasn't pretty, but it was loud and enthusiastic and one of the women in front of him seemed to keep fainting and waking up and yelling something about Jesus and then fainting again. He liked that part, too, even though the preacher, who must have seen it, didn't pay any attention to it at all.

When it was all over and everyone else was leaving, Cooper started walking towards Wycliffe. No one offered him a ride. When he came at last to a postal box he took the postcard from his pocket and studied the address that carried his punk's name. He thought for a moment about writing a message but remembered Swann had said it wasn't necessary. He would know automatically that 01' Coop was thinking about him and would start praying right away. Cooper mailed the postcard, proud that he had remembered. It wasn't until he had walked several miles farther that he recalled that he was hungry.

Becker was met at the Nashville airport and driven to Springville by car. The Birmingham airport was actually about twenty-three miles closer to the prison, but the airfare was cheaper to Nashville so the Bureau travel agents had booked him that way. The agent-in-charge in Birmingham was alerted that Becker was on his way and to stand by for assistance if necessary, but inasmuch as Becker came escorted by a special agent from Nashville, the Birmingham agency was more than happy to maintain a healthy distance and let Nashville cope with it. Becker's visits had a way of turning into a lot of trouble for anyone close enough to get involved.

Nashville had complained briefly about having Becker routed through their office since his ultimate destination was really on Birmingham's turf, but there was very little real point in arguing with the pencil heads in Procurement, the department that dealt with such niceties as paying for airline tickets. The recent wave of cost accounting had made them, if not the tail that wags the dog, at least the hand that jerks the tail that yanks the whole animal around. Several expensive and disastrous operations in recent years-the most notable belonging to a sister organization, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearmsall widely publicized much to the involved bureaucrats' chagrin-had everyone pulling in his fiscal horns. The fact that ATF was subsequently nearly subsumed into the DEA, although not entirely related to the Waco fiasco, was a message not lost on anyone in the Bureau above the rank of foot soldier. Small, cheap, discreet operations had become the order of the day, ones that could reap public-relations triumphs with a minimum of expense.

Tales of the FBI thwarting kidnappers, for instance, were just the ticket. Or of serial killers rooted out and apprehended. Not only were the headlines immense in such cases, but the publicity was all positive.

And, in an increasingly accountable age, such cases were eminently cost-effective. Becker's trip, in Hatcher's estimation, was perfect for the current mood. If it was a success, those who mattered would know who had initiated the success-Hatcher would make sure they knew. And if nothing came of it, the Bureau was out only the cost of a business-class seat to Nashville and miscellaneous-but monitored-expenses. Since Becker did not even require a salary because of his medical extension status, his price was perfect for the spirit of the times.

Desiring no more involvement in a Becker investigation than his Birmingham counterpart, the Nashville agent-incharge sent his most dispensable operative to escort him.

Her name was Pegeen, a nod to her Irish heritage, which should have long since petered out but refused to die. Her great-grandfather, Sean Murphy, was the only Celt in her family tree for the last seventy-five years, and he had fathered daughters with a Danish wife. Her grandmother had married a man of German ancestry and her mother had married a man so thoroughly Americanized that he could trace six different national skeins to his present status, none of them Irish. Pegeen's father's last name was the only relic, several generations old, of a single male ancestor called Haddad, the first, last, and only Lebanese member of the family. And yet, despite the countercuffents over the years, the Gaelic stream had remained the dominant one in the minds of the women in Pegeen's family. Pegeen Haddad, with no disrespect intended towards her father or anyone else on her multifarious family tree, considered herself to be Irish.

Thanks to the determined, perhaps even pugnacious genes of Sean Murphy, Pegeen's hair was the color of a raw carrot, her eyes blue-green, and her skin, when seen in contrast to her hair, the white of a sheet of good rag writing paper.

When Becker first saw her at the airport, holding a cardboard sign bearing his name and perusing the incoming passengers as if any one of them might be concealing a bomb, he thought she was an unfortunate-looking specimen. With'her hair tucked under a baseball cap that rode too low on her head, her ears stuck out, giving her an almost goonish appearance, a sort of female version of Huck Finn, complete to the sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

She wore faded blue jeans with a rip across one knee, a red t-shirt that did nothing for her complexion, a navy blue blazer, and a pair of clunky black shoes that looked as if they had been borrowed from her father.

All in all she looked like a college kid on standby for a flight home at Thanksgiving, one of those who didn't get invited to spend the holiday with a boyfriend. The blazer was to conceal her weapon, Becker knew, since she didn't carry a purse and the jeans were too tight to hide anything bulkier than a credit card. He couldn't imagine what the baseball cap was for, except perhaps as a fashion accessory.

The ubiquitous cap, which did no one any aesthetic favors at the best of times, looked particularly incongruous on a young woman trying to masquerade as an FBI agent, he thought.

"You expecting terrorists on this flight?" he asked.

"Sir?" If he had doubted that she was an agent before, the ever-present, distinctively pronounced "sir" would have dispelled them. Drilled into them during training, it was a form of address that was used as much for distancing as for respect. The young ones were even more lethal with it than their elders because with them it carried an added heft of ageism.

The one word, diligently applied, could hurt a man concerned about aging worse than a volley of curses.

"You're checking out the passengers as if you expect them to be carrying Uzis," he said.

"Do you know anything about terrorists on this flight, sir?"

"Just joking."

"Terrorism is not a funny business."

"No. Sorry." Becker pointed to the card bearing his name. "I'm your man."

"You would be Special Agent Becker?"

"I wouldn't be if I could help it, but I am."

"Sir, I wonder if you'd oblige me with some form of identification?"

"Why? Are you going to arrest me?"

"No, sir. Just a precaution. A driver's license would be good enough if you don't have your Bureau ID."

"Do you mean anyone would seriously want to pretend to be me if they didn't have to?"

"I think a lot of people pretend a lot of things, sir."

Becker handed her his driver's license.

"Well, if you hear of any volunteers to walk around in my skin, be sure to let me know, will you?" he said.

"Something wrong with your skin?" she asked.

"It's too damned tight," he said.

She scrutinized him carefully as if looking for places where he might be bursting through his seams.

"You look fit," she said finally.

"So do you."

She studied him a moment longer, examining his comment for sexist content.

"I try," she said finally. She extended her right hand to shake while her left extended her FBI identification.

"Special Agent Haddad," she said.

"Hi."

"Do you have luggage, sir?"

Becker hefted his overnight bag. "I'm ready to go. This shouldn't take long."

"Very good. Just follow me, then, sir."

"One stop first," Becker said.

In the gift shop Becker bought a carton of cigarettes, discarded the box, and distributed the packs in his various pockets.

He opened one of the packs, stripping off the cellophane and peeling away tiny foil. He breathed deeply of the cigarettes, then offered the pack to Pegeen.

"It's the only time they smell good," he said. "Before they start to kill you."

"You're not a smoker," she said, her tone sounding more accusatory than she had wanted it to.

"Why not?"

"No stains on your hands or teeth."

"You've got quick eyes," he said. "Very good."

"Thank you, sir," she said dryly. She found herself bridling at what she took to be the condescension in his remark. They praised her too much for the little things, as if she were a child, all the older men of the Bureau.

And they all were older, even the young ones, especially the ones close to her own age. They acted in her presence as if they were veterans of the Trojan Wars who loved to impart words of wisdom earned through the ages.

As if she were not only a child, and a girl, but a project, an experiment in pedagogy. Could they possibly teach this amazing dog to talk? Could they convert this woman into a man? is what they really wanted to know, Pegeen was convinced. She told herself to calm down and not start any fights. They had a long way yet to go.

"I haven't smoked in twenty years. They're bribes.

Very small bribes."

"Cigarettes as prison currency. Yes, sir, I do know that.

Shall we go then?… If you're ready?"

When they reached the parking lot Becker asked about the cap.

"Do you always wear it?"

"It was my day off when I got the call to pick you up, but since I'm going to be a chauffeur, I might as well look the part. It's the closest I could come… You don't like it?"

"I think it looks silly enough on baseball players."

After a pause she said, "I can change it when we get to the car."

"You always wear a hat?"

"I'm very fair," she said.

"A nice quality."

"I mean my skin. I burn easily."

"I see that."

"What does that mean… sir?"

"I see that you have fair skin," Becker said carefully.

He was getting the feeling that Special Agent Haddad wasn't carrying a chip on her shoulder, she was sporting a whole brick. "I can tell that by looking at you."

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"No. Fair skin is fine with me."

"Thank you."

"I'm making no judgments on your skin, Haddad. It's not my skin."

"That's right," she said. "My skin is fair and yours is too tight."

"Did I come in the middle of something here?" Becker asked. "You haven't known me long enough to be mad at me."

She looked at him, surprised.

"I'm not mad at you, sir. I thought you were attempting to make conversation by those comments about my hat and my complexion, so I was conversing back."

"All," said Becker. "You thought I was criticizing you."

"Why would I think that, sir? As you pointed out, you hardly know me well enough to do that."

"Sorry," he said.

"Not at all. You have nothing to apologize for."

She yanked open the car door. "I'm just here to drive," she said, some of the words lost in the sound of doors opening and closing.

"Sorry to ruin your day off."

Pegeen shrugged.

"Happy in your work?" Becker asked.

"Just fine, thank you," she said. She tossed her baseball cap into the backseat and put on a soft brown felt hat with a large floppy brim that slouched over most of her face.

"Very nice," he said.

Pegeen maneuvered the Ford out of the parking lot.

"What do you call that hat?" Becker asked pleasantly.

"Ethel," Pegeen said. She laughed abruptly, as if she had caught herself by surprise.

Becker paused long enough to show he recognized the joke. "I meant the style. Does it have a name?"

"It's called a Trilby," she said.

"I like it," Becker said.

"Oh, good." Pegeen got a receipt for the parking charges, then turned towards 1-65, which would take them to Springville.

"Do you need anything before we begin? Any bladder problems to take care of?"

"Just that prostate thing, but nothing I can do about it here," Becker said.

Pegeen turned and looked at him directly. Becker grinned in what he hoped was a winning manner.

"Special Agent Becker, we have a two-hour drive to Springville. Sir, I think it will go more smoothly for both of us if we don't try to be pleasant."

"Yikes," said Becker.

"Sir?"

"Step on it," he said.

Perhaps it was the silence, or perhaps it was the lulling of the road, but after about an hour of driving Becker thought he detected a slight easing in Agent Haddad's posture. Her knuckles, which never left the proper ten minutes-to-two position, had relaxed enough so that blood was flowing back into them.

"I hope I wasn't rude," she said without preamble.

Becker thought for a moment before answering. "No.

You could call it direct, but not rude. I'm sure I deserved that in some way. I usually do."

"It wasn't you," she said. "Not really-well, somebut mostly it was just me. I thought maybe you don't drive, but you do have a license."

"Have we just changed the topic?"

"It's just that it seems more efficient for you to rent a car to drive to Springville by yourself That would allow me to do the kind of work I'm trained for."

"How long are you in the service?"

"A year and a half."

"It doesn't surprise you that the newest agents always get the shit work, does it?"

"The youngestfemale agents do, I have noticed, yes."

"Ah," said Becker. "Double discrimination. And then you have to put up with me to boot. No wonder you're pissed off."

"I'm just a little curious why they want to take a college graduate, a woman who has passed the Bureau's rather rigorous training-you would agree it is rather rigorous, wouldn't you?"

"Rigorous," Becker said.

"I have a master's degree, for that matter. And nearly sixteen months of active service to my credit. Why would they want to make me a taxi driver for a straightforward delivery? It wastes my whole day."

"Shoots the hell out of mine, too," Becker said.

"Yes, but you're going to Springville for some purpose, presumably, not just along for the ride."

"You really don't know why they assigned an agent to drive me there?"

"No."

"What do you know about me?"

"Nothing. Should I? Did you used to be famous?"

Becker laughed.

"You're not shitting me, are you, Special Agent Had dad? You didn't bone up on my file? You didn't ask around?"

"No. Should I have?"

"So you really don't know why you're here. No wonder you're mad."

"Why am I here?"

"To keep an eye on me," Becker said.

"Why do I need to do that?"

"Because I'm the big bad wolf," Becker said.

Pegeen looked at him to see how best to read his remark.

His voice had been flat and serious, and she studied his face for any clues that he was joking. He was faintly smiling but it looked to Pegeen like a very rueful smile, an expression of deep regret.

"You don't look like one to me," she said.

"I'm wearing my sheepskin," Becker said. He turned to her and his smile widened but she thought his eyes the most mournful she had ever seen. "I told you it was too tight… And I'm about to pop out of it."

Pegeen tried to laugh, not knowing what else to do.

By the time they reached the prison Becker was sunk so deeply within himself that Pegeen wondered if he was still with her at all. She parked the car in a slot reserved for prison personnel and waited for Becker to get out.

From her vantage point behind the wheel she was too close to the prison to see much but stone. A parking lot stretched away on one side, a well-tended lawn on the other. It could have been an industrial plant, a factory, a warehouse.

"This is it, sir," Pegeen said.

Becker was slouched, staring straight ahead as if reading patterns in the stone that faced their car. His arms were crossed tightly on his chest, as if he were cold. Or something else… No longer distracted by the driving, Pegeen took a long look at his face. He seemed oblivious to her presence. There was a darkness in his facade that Pegeen knew but refused to recognize at first. She cleared her throat, moved about on her seat, hoping to bring him out of it, but he was sunk into the emotion. Eventually she had to admit that he looked like nothing else so much as frightened.

"We're here, sir," she said finally.

"I know," Becker said, still facing forward. "We've been here a long time."

Pegeen considered asking him what he meant, then decided to let it go.

"Is-uh-is everything all right?"

"I'm just scared," he said, matter-of-factly.

Pegeen did not know how to respond. She could not remember an adult male who had ever admitted to fearing anything. Instinctively she wanted to reach out to comfort him, but this was the FBI, they were both agents, they were on duty, Becker was a grown man… she touched his shoulder.

"I'm sure it will be all right," she said.

"Promise?" His tone was boyish, but with a note of humor that said he was aware of how he sounded.

Still not turning to face her, Becker took hold of the hand that rested on his shoulder.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

Becker shook his head, continuing to stare at the stones in front of them. Resisting the urge to draw him closer and comfort him with an embrace, Pegeen sat perfectly still, letting him hold her hand.

Slowly Becker seemed to change, or rather his hand seemed to change. He did not move it, there was no more pressure in his grip, no alteration in the position of his fingers or his palm, but gradually Pegeen became aware of a growing heat. It was as if he were transferring energy to his hand by just thinking about it. Or perhaps she was doing it, Pegeen thought. It was possible. It was equally possible that nothing whatsoever was happening, that she was just imagining it. He certainly gave no sign that anything was happening; he had not moved since enwrapping her hand in his.

It wasn't sexual, she was almost sure of that. Almost. But she didn't know what else it was. Well, maybe compassion, fellow feeling, something like that. Maybe he just had a higher body thermostat than most, or she did, or something about the two of them in combination caused it. All she was certain of was that she could not stop thinking about the sensation of their two hands together.

And the equal certainty that he must also be aware of it.

She tried to think what she would tell the agent-incharge if he did quiz her about her trip as Becker seemed to think he — might. Would she tell him that nothing hapned, but she sat holding hands with another agent forhow long had it been? It seemed a very long time. Pegeen remembered going to a movie with a boy in her early teens and feeling his hand resting upon her leg throughout the film. She had been so surprised, and nervous, and excited, that she had sat still as a statue for the whole feature, and he, for his part, had not moved an inch. It was only when the lights came on and the hand still did not move that Pegeen had looked to see that she had been pressing her leg against the armrest the whole time.

She stole a glance at the clock on the dashboard. On arrival, she had noted the time to include in her trip report.

She had not been holding his hand for more than a minute.

Or was he holding her hand? She had forgotten.

He turned to her at last and there was real warmth in his smile this time. He squeezed her hand, then let it go.

"Thanks," he said.

Pegeen felt her ears burning. She knew they would be fiery red, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Did you want me to accompany you or shall I wait in the car?"

" Have you ever been in one of these?" he asked.

"A prison?"

"A cage," he corrected.

"I've been to plenty of jails."

"It's not like a jail, a jail is just a holding pen, there's still hope they'll get out. This is a cage. It's different."

"As part of our training we were shown-"

"I don't mean a tour," Becker said. "Have you ever been in one after the warder leaves? When the animals are hungry and feel like turning on each other?"

"No, sir. I haven't. Have you?"

"Do you know the worst part of a place like this?"

"No, sir, I don't," she said. Continuing to call him sir seemed silly now, but she didn't know how to get out of it. Nor did she know that he would want her to. It's not as if anything happened, she reminded herself, not as if anything really passed between them. That parting squeeze of the hand had been a gesture of camaraderie, nothing more. It was even somewhat condescending, as if she needed the comfort and encouragement. She should have given him the heartening squeeze.

She had paused, expecting him to continue. When he didn't, she asked,

"What is the worst part of a place like this?"

"The smell," he said.

"The smell?"

"If you ever have a chance, smell it. Deeply. See if you can tell what it is. It will teach you something about what we keep in these cages.

And why."

He opened the door and cooler air rushed into the car.

Pegeen did not realize how warm it had become in there.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

He turned back, leaned in the open door.

"Do you remember what kills a werewolf?" he asked.

"A stake through the heart?"

"That's a vampire," Becker said, grinning. "We're talking werewolves here."

"I forgot," she said.

"That's okay," he said. "It doesn't come up that often-but when it does, it helps to know. You kill a werewolf with a silver bullet."

He continued to grin but Pegeen could find no humor in his eyes.

"So when I come out," he continued, "if you notice tufts of hair growing on my hands and face, go straight home and melt down the silverware your grandmother gave you."

He brushed her cheek very lightly with the tip of his finger as if removing a speck of dirt, then turned and walked into the prison. To Pegeen the spot where he touched her burned as if his finger were a match. She felt her ears. Like ovens, two fiery betrayers.

Pegeen remembered everything that had passed between them since Becker got off the airplane. She had registered it all without effort, without conscious thought, the way she did with any exchange, particularly with a man, and she drew it up again now and examined it, probing it for meaning, turning every word and every look in her mind to reveal facets that might hold the clues to what it really meant. It was easy enough to do, she recalled their conversations verbatim. After a moment she put her hand to her cheek once more, gently covering the spot where his finger had grazed her. Amazingly, she could still feel the fire. She held her hand against it to keep it there.

A guard led Becker to the room to be used for the inter view, then left him there while he went to fetch the prisoner. The room was not much bigger than a cell and had the same cinderblock walls, the same sickly green paint.

Instead of a bunk, there was a small table and two chairs, no window except a small opening at eye level in the door. The overhead light bulb was controlled by a switch on the outside of the room. Becker could only guess at the uses to which the room was put customarily. It was certainly not for ordinary interviews, which were conducted under strict, scrutiny with television security cameras, guards within earshot and bulletproof glass separating the prisoner and his visitor. Becker would be alone with his prisoner, free to do what he liked. Hatcher had seen to it, of course. It would have taken someone of his level to arrange this amount of privacy. Becker wondered what Hatcher thought he was going to do with the prisoner that would require this much seclusion. But he didn't spend much time on the idea, he didn't want to waste his energy on the way Hatcher's mind worked.

He stood behind the chair facing the door, trying at first to keep the awful claustrophobic dread of the prison from affecting him, then giving in to it as he would give himself to the surge of the ocean or the silence of the night. There was no point in fighting it, it was too vast, the trick was to survive it.

As always happened when he was in a prison, a spate of self-loathing overtook him. Never far from the surface, the prison smell brought out his guilt, the claustrophobia sucked it forth like a poultice. I belong here, he thought.

I should be in a cage like the rest of them, only the good fortune of my circumstances keeps me out. My impulses are the same, my needs the same as those I put in here.

It's only because I'm useful to them that they don't throw me in, too.

I've done things, been awarded citations for things that would put others on death row. Only my position as a Bureau agent has kept me out and free.

His remunerations were disturbed when the guard returned with a prisoner in tow. The guard withdrew, leaving Becker alone with the prisoner, who stood just inside the door, looking quickly at Becker, then at the room, as if seeking a means of escape.

"Hello," Becker said.

The man nodded uncertainly, continuing to look nervously around the room. Becker realized that the man half expected Becker to jump on him.

He was a small man, his long hair flowing to his shoulders like a woman's, his prison work shirt opened to his sternum. Some form of mascara and shadow had been applied to his eyes.

"Becker," Becker said. He indicated the other chair.

"I got your letter."

"You're Becker?" The man seemed genuinely surprised.

"I know, I don't look the part."

"No, no, it's… No, you're right, you're not what I expected."

"What were you hoping for, Dick Tracy?"

"He said you were… I thought you'd be… I don't know. Bigger."

"No, just life-size. Sorry."

"I didn't think you would come at all. I'm Swann."

"I know."

Swann started to offer his hand, then quickly withdrew it and sat in the chair opposite Becker. He looked up at Becker from under lowered brows.

It's meant to be either seductive or a parody of shyness, Becker thought.

"I really didn't think you would come."

"I would have said you were counting on it."

"I hoped… well, I mean, I hoped… I prayed. I prayed a great deal."

Becker smiled ruefully. "I'm not the answer to anyone's prayers, believe me."

Swann's face darkened. "I believe in prayer, Mr. Becker. I truly do believe in it. It's the only thing that's kept me sane."

"Why me?" Becker asked. "Why not just contact the FBI and tell them you have some information for them?"

"I couldn't just contact anybody. Our mail is censored, you must know that. And even if it wasn't, I couldn't risk having anybody find out what I was doing. Do you know what they do to stoolies in this place? … Even now, a meeting like this, what if they find out?",The guard thinks I'm an attorney reviewing your case for civil rights violations. I don't know what the warden has been told. If anyone finds out what we talk about, it's because you told them."

"Me? I would be killed."

"Why me, Swann? Why specifically me?"

"I heard about you."

"Heard what?"

"They talk about you in here. Lots of them seem to know you or to know about YOU. You have a rep."

"I'll bet."

"I hear you climb, you climb mountains. You're a rock climber, right?"

Becker said nothing. Swann smiled at him, knowing his information was correct.

"You'd be surprised how much they know about you."

"You a climber, Swann?"

"Well… not really. I worked with ropes a little bit, I know what's involved. That's scary work."

"Not so scary if you know the safe way. You ever try it?"

"I believe in gravity. if it tells me to go down, I go down. It was just interesting that they say that about you.

Someone who would do that, take that kind of risk for no reason. It's unusual. I don't really understand it."

"You're surrounded by risk takers in here."

Swann shivered. "I don't understand them, either.

Please don't lump me with them."

"The judge already did that. You pleaded to three counts of manslaughter and aggravated assault."

"My lawyer told me to do that. My landlady attacked me, she went crazy and just came at me, I was defending myself…

"You misunderstood me, Swann. I said the guard thinks I'm an attorney, you don't. Spare me the bullshit."

"My innocence is not bullshit to me, Mr. Becker."

"Uh-huh. Well, innocence is a relative thing. You did slit the landlady's gullet, after all. Or at least you said you did when you pleaded guilty."

"It was a horrible time, she was coming at me, I struggled with her, she tried to stab me-you don't know, you just don't know. How could you understand what it was like?"

"You'd be surprised at my imagination," Becker said.

"Why me, Swann? I can't think I have a lot of fans in here."

"Oh, they don't hate you, isn't that odd? They think they know you.

It's like-I don't know-like wolves from different packs will kill each other sometimes, they don't like each other maybe, they've got to defend their turf, but they understand each other. They understand each other better than they understand the sheep."

Becker took the open pack of cigarettes from his pocket and inhaled the scent of tobacco again. Swann's analogy linking him to the people he pursued in a commonality of understanding was too close to the bone. It was as if the prisoner had read his thoughts of only moments ago.

Becker tapped a cigarette loose, paying great attention to the work as he tried to settle his mind.

Swann accepted the cigarette gratefully and Becker shoved the whole package across the table to him.

Swann's hand covered it and it was suddenly gone.

"They say you're fair," Swann said and Becker thought briefly of Pegeen's use of the word earlier. "They say you'll treat people right if they're straight with you."

Becker laughed. "Nobody in here ever told you I was fair. But maybe they told you I was an idiot who would believe whatever you said."'

Swann laced his fingers in front of him, then studied them for a moment, pouting.

"They said you can tell," he said, his tone lower, more sincere. I 'They say you can look at a man and know if he's telling the truth. They say you can see it in his eyes."

Becker snorted. "Who am I supposed to be, the truth fairy? You can't tell anything by looking into a man's eyes. Any good liar can control his eyes. I look at his hands."

Becker chuckled as Swann predictably stopped moving his hands and folded them on the table in front of him.

Becker knew he would be unable to treat them naturally for the rest of the interview. They were strong hands, unusually large for a man Swann's size, with thick wrists.

In truth, Becker never paid much attention to a person's hands, either, but he liked making the prisoner uncomfortable. Nothing valuable was ever learned when the person being interviewed was too comfortable.

"Men don't look each other straight in the eyes, anyway, don't you know that, Swann? It makes them uncomfortable, it's an unnatural act. We look women straight in the eyes, not other men. You sure as hell must have learned it in here. If a man looks you straight in the eyes when he tells you something, it means one of two things.

Either he's lying to you or he wants to fuck you."

Swann twisted uneasily on his chair.

"I know about that part," he said.

"I imagine you do," said Becker.

"That's why I wrote to you."

"Okay."

"I want revenge on an animal."

"I didn't think it was your civic duty."

"I'm a man," Swann hissed. "A man. He called me his punk, he called me his wife-and he used me like his whore. He nearly killed me. Many times.

Many times. He threatened to snap my head off, and he would have, anyw ere else he would have. He wouldn't regret it, he wouldn't even think about it… No, that's not true, he thinks about them, all of them, he loves to think about them, brag about them, go over and over how he did it and where he did it and who they were. He kills them again, every night. Probably even in his sleep. And he'll keep doing it, there's no doubt about it. I could find a record of only two of the killings, but he talked about dozens of them. I found the two girls in the coal mine in the paper-I work in the library, I searched everything I could find, but most of them wouldn't have been in the paper-he killed migrants and fringe people, they wouldn't be in the Times and that's the only newspaper we have that goes back…":'He's killed while in here?" 'No. But he's gone, he's out. He got out three weeks ago."

"Why didn't you tell us about him when he was in here?"

"I did. Look at the dates on the letters. He was still in here… He was still with me. Living with me. Talking about them. Using me… And they cheer, did you know that, Mr. Becker? The other prisoners cheer like it's a sport. I felt like a Christian-I am a Christian-being thrown to the lions and everyone was cheering for the lion."

Revenge isn't a very Christian sentiment," Becker said.

Swann had been edging closer to Becker, leaning in across the table, propelled forward by his intensity. Now he sighed audibly and leaned back in his chair.

"I have thought of that," Swann said. "I wish my heart were without hate. I have prayed for that… But it hasn't been given."

"You can always keep praying," Becker said.

"I always do, Mr. Becker. I always pray. I think that Jesus understands me. I know he does."

"You're not that hard to understand. Even I can do it."

"But Jesus not only understands. He forgives."

"Does he forgive the man you're turning in, too? Does he forgive all those killings?"

"He might," Swann said. "I don't."

"What's his name?"

Once more, Swann looked nervously around the room.

He opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind, shaking his head.

"That doesn't seem like a lot to ask," Becker said.

"You don't understand how dangerous it is in here," Swann said. "If I give you a name, even if they don't know it, I will know it. If anybody asks me if I gave somebody up and I know I've given you his naine-I'm such a bad liar, I get so frightened-they can smell it on you, I swear some of them can smell if you're lying, if you're scared. And he may have friends still in here, I don't think so, I don't think he had any friends but me, but you can't be sure. Isn't there another way? You'll figure it out, you can look at the prison records-if you could find me you can certainly figure out who he is. Just don't make me say his name.

I've got to be able to say I didn't tell you anybody's name and believe it myself."

"So what are you giving me? What am I here for?"

"Him, I'm giving you him. Those bodies in the newspaper, the girls in the coal mine, he killed them, he admitted it to me, he bragged about it. He's never been tried for those. There are dozens of others. He'll confess to all of them, I think he would have confessed to anyone, anytime, because he's proud of all the killings. He thinks they make him a man. But nobody ever asked him, the cops never knew anything about him because he just drifts, he's done things in states that don't even know he's alive. I can tell you what to ask him."

"You're willing to testify against him? I thought you wouldn't even tell us his name."

"If I'm safe, I'll do whatever you want. You can't ask me to risk my life by testifying while I'm still in here."

"I didn't ask for anything from you, Swann, you sought me out. I was just as happy not knowing anything about this."

"You don't want to know about this? He's a killer, a serial killer, a mass murderer. I thought you would want to know. What kind of a cop are you?"

"Ex."

"Then why are you here?"

"Why am I here? I'm here because some shit-faced little come got tired of being buggered every night by the ape who shared his cage and thought he'd be real clever and write secret little notes in code to me. As if I gave a shit. As if I had nothing better to do than get involved in a lovers' spat. What am I supposed to be, your trained dog, you can sic me on anyone you want?"

"Lovers' spat? He's a killer!"

"The country's full of killers. There are more of them outside the walls than in-do you think I want to hunt them all down? There are fourteen-year-old killers in every gang in every housing project in the country. There are people killing their parents and parents throwing their babies out of windows and guys driving by with Uzis and spraying a crowd and lunatics strapping bombs to themselves and wiping out the local McDonald's and there are assholes blowing people away in traffic jams. There are killings on the goddamned sports page. And I haven't even gotten to the ones who kill with a fucking motive.

What do I care if the guy who was fucking you is dusting a few? He's your problem, not mine. You work in the library? Take those scissors you used to cut out my cute little code and plant them in his intestines next time he bends you over, that's how it's done in here, haven't you figured that out? Take care of yourself, you little shit, don't try to get me to do it, I'm not your big brother."

Swann slumped in the chair, crestfallen.

"You don't believe me about him?"

"What's to believe? There's a guy in prison who's killed somebody? I have no trouble believing that. I just don't give a shit."

"You're going to betray me, aren't you?" Swann said, his face suddenly terrified. "You're going to give me to them, you're going to tell them what I've said."

"Who did you tell?" Becker asked.

"Tell what?"

"Who did you tell about your clever little scheme to get hold of me? How many did you tell?"

"I didn't tell anyone-do you think I'm crazy?"

Becker was on his feet. He jerked the front leg of Swann's chair off the floor with his foot, held the neck of the chair to keep it from falling so that Swann was on his neck, off-balance, halfway to the floor.

"Who did you confide in, who helped you, who were you whispering to about this, Swann?"

"Nobody. It was all my idea."

"You're not smart enough."

"The hell I'm not."

"You're a halfwit who got caught slicing up his landlady. How smart can you be?"

"Smarter than you think."

"That's not hard. Who taught you the binary code?"

"Nobody. I learned it in the library."

"Do some."

I 'What?"

Becker righted the chair and pushed Swann against the table so that he was pinned against his chest. Becker dropped a pen in front of Swann.

"Show me the binary code for 99."

"Now?"

"No, mail it to me, you little shit. Of course now. Do it there, do it on the table, just the way you sent it to me."

"You think I can't?"

"Do it."

"I told you, don't lump me with the rest of these people in here. I'm different."

"Uh-huh. Do the code."

Swann was silent for a moment, his hands folded in front of him.

"Do it," Becker said.

"I'm praying," Swann said. "I'm praying for Jesus to change your heart."

"Pray for him to teach you the binary code real quick."

"I don't need to pray for that, Mr. Becker. I already know the code. You want 99?"

With speed and certainty, Swann marked a series of dots on the table:

"It's not really a mystery, you know," Swann said.

"Anybody who's computer literate can do it. Does that prove I wrote the messages by myself?"

Becker sat opposite Swann once more.

"I'm going to say this very carefully," Becker said, "because I want you to hear the specifics of what I have to say and not just the emotion.

But if you have half as much sense as you seem to think you do, and if you believe any part of the stories you've heard about me, you'll realize that I mean exactly what I say. All right?"

"Of course."

"I never want to hear from you again. I do not want communication of any kind, in any form. What's more, if I receive communication from anyone else in this place, I will assume that it came from you. Is that clear?"

"That's not fair, you can't hold me responsible..

"Fuck fair. Is it clear?"

"Yes."

"Good. If you are stupid enough to disregard what I've just told you, if I ever even hear your name again, I will personally deliver you to that pack of howling hard-ons in there and I will tell them what you have done. Is that clear?"

"They would kill me."

"Is it clear?"

"Yes."

"Good."

Becker stood and shoved his chair neatly in place under the table.

"Is that all?" Swann asked.

"That's all I wanted to say."

"What about what I told you? Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"What is there to do? He's out, he's gone."

"You can find him, I can help you find him."

"How?"

"I know where he said he was going. I know where he is now."

"How?"

Swann looked around the room once more, craning his neck to see that the window in the door was empty.

"I need to be safe. I have to be safe before I can talk freely. Can you promise me I'll be safe, Mr. Becker?"

"Me? I just made my promise to you. You didn't seem to like it."

"He's a homocidal maniac. He kills people, he tortures and kills them. I can give him to you, isn't that worth something?"

"It might be to some people. What's it worth to you?"

Swann closed his eyes and clasped his hands in front of himself again.

Will you please help me, Mr. Becker?" he asked, his eyes still closed.

"I am dying in here. I don't deserve to die, Christ has forgiven me for my sins, I've served three years… if no one helps me, I will never survive until my parole. Am I so loathsome that I deserve to die in this place?" He fell to his knees in front of Becker. "Do you know what it's like in here? The monsters are fighting over me. They put their hands on you, you hate it, it disgusts you-and then you feel yourself getting aroused.

You hate yourself for it, but they won't let you just receive, they want you to participate, they want you to cooperate. They want you to make up things to do, things that will make them feel good. And you know what you do? You remember what feels good to you, you remember what you liked to have your girlfriend do to you, and you do it to them, you remember how it feels on yourself and you get excited as they're getting excited. They don't care about you, they don't even know who you are, but they still make you act as if you like it… and you get so you do.

Swann put his hands on Becker's knees and Becker stood abruptly, stepping away from the man.

"What do you want, Swann?"

"Will you at least tell someone at the FBI what I have to offer? Will you tell them you met with me and you know that I have valuable information?" He reached again for Becker's knee and again Becker stepped away.

More than anything, Becker wanted to leave. He felt the oppression of the prison clinging like a film to his skin and he wanted to run from the room and hurl himself into sunlight and water, to stand under a waterfall and have the obscenity of the prison scoured and flushed from his body. Swann's supplications held him back as surely as if the man were clinging to his leg.

"All right," he said.

"Bless you!" Swann cried. He reached for Becker's hand. Becker stepped around him and pounded on the door for the guard.

"Praise Jesus," Swann said, rising to his feet.

Swann stood next to Becker at the door, his body nearly touching Becker's. Becker could feel the heat of the other man's presence. He turned his head away.

"You've saved me," Swann said. "You've saved my life."

Swann touched Becker's arm and Becker jerked away but Swann held on to his shirt. "I can't thank you, I can never thank you."

"Stand away," Becker said. He felt the closeness of the man like a great weight pressing down on him.

Swann slid his hands down Becker's arm until he was clutching Becker's wrist. Becker tried to pull away as Swann raised his hand to kiss it.

Swann's grip was surprisingly strong and Becker could not wrest his hand free as Swann placed his lips on Becker's palm.

"No," Becker said. Swann muttered something into Becker's skin, and it sounded like more prayer, but Becker was unsure if the man was praying to Jesus or to him.

"You let go of me, damn it.

Swann was kissing Becker's hand, peppering it with little pecks of his lips, working down the length of it to the fingers. His lips touched a fingertip and opened and took one of Becker's fingers into his mouth. He rolled his eyes up to look Becker in the face.

With a cry of disgust, Becker yanked his hand away at the same time that Swann released his wrist. His knuckles flew upwards, hitting Swann in the mouth and the nose.

"I only wanted to thank you," Swann said reproachfully.

Becker did not look at him as he pounded again on the door.

Despite the blow to the face, Swann had still not backed away. He stood too close, so that Becker put a hand on his chest and pushed him back.

Swann's fingers touched Becker's hand again before Becker yanked it away.

"Keep your hands off me," Becker said.

"You didn't have to hit me," Swann said.

"Sorry," Becker muttered. He stared anxiously out the window in the door, looking for the guard. Surely he wasn't locked in here; he didn't have to stay in here any longer with this man. The air seemed heavier still, as if weighed down on him; the walls seemed unbearably close.

"I was only thanking you."

"Just keep your distance," Becker said.

"Are you frightened of me?" Swann asked softly.

There was a taunting in his voice, the first recognition by a chronic victim who suddenly realizes he has an advantage. "You seem frightened.

You don't need to be." His voice became softer, gentler with each sentence as his sense of control grew. "I'm your friend, you know. I want to be your friend."

Becker turned and looked at him for the first time since he had hit him.

Swann's face was wet with tears, and blood trickled from his nose onto his lips. He had not wiped it since Becker's blow. When he caught Becker's eye he parted his lips and smiled. His teeth were red with blood and his eyes twinkled with a sense of victory.

Pegeen stood at the guard control room, just outside the first-level cellblock, and, trying not to let the guards know what she was doing, she smelled deeply of the air. At first there was just the odor of cleaning liquid, heavily ammoniated with a scent of lemon, but as her nose grew used to that, Pegeen began to detect the deeper, pervasive smell, the true, identifying smell of the prison. It seemed to hover on the other side of the control room like a column of heat in a furnace, rising from the ground to the fourth-level cellblock, containing itself within its own shimmering,boundaries inside the vessel of the cauldron, betraying its presence only with occasional puffs just as the heat outside a furnace gives only the slightest clue of the fury of the inferno blazing within.

The stench was of sex, old sex. Sex dried and crusted and worn on the body, but with something else, a sort of grace note of emotion, a commingling of old sweat and new perspiration, both of them caused not by exercise nor heat, but by fear. The prison smelled of sex and fright.

The smell was rape.

Pegeen waited by the car for Becker's return After leaving the prison she had called a colleague in Nashville and asked what he knew about John Becker, a former agent, now on indefinite medical extension. The colleague, a fifteen-year veteran, had laughed at her naivete but seemed eager to fill her in on Becker's career as he perceived it. He hit the highlights, most of which seemed to be Bureau legend.

"One ba-aaad dude," he had concluded gleefully, bleating like a sheep.

"And you say you're with him?"

"I'm with him," she said.

"What are you doing, holding his hand?"

"Something like that," Pegeen had said, feeling herself blush.

"Well, when you get it back, check your hand for blood," he had said, laughing. "Becker never comes out of a case without blood on his hands."

Then his tone had become very serious. "Now, no shit, Pegeen, this is the straight s — tuff, okay?"

"Okay-,

"Be careful, be very careful..

"I'm just the chauffeur."

"Great. Let's hope it stays that way. What I'm telling you, kiddo, is first of all, forget his record, the man is the best. I mean the best, nobody else comes close. But things have a way of happening around him.

I'm not saying it's his fault-or maybe it is, I don't know. Just keep your eyes open and your wits about you."

"He seems nice, actually."

"Did I say he wasn't nice? He's nice." She heard his chortle of condescension distantly, as if he were trying to hide it, but not too hard. "Nice. Jesus, Pegeen, you're such a girl."

"I'm not going to respond to that."

"Now don't get upset. I don't mean it as an insult…

"Thank you so much. It's not.", 'It's just that 'nice' is what makes you a girl, thinking about people that way, assuming things like that.

Pegeen began to regret having made the call. "I don't think you're nice," she said. "That should be good for something."

"But I actually am nice."

"I'll have to refine the definition, then."

"The point is, you're like a little kid who wants to run up and pet every dog she sees. Well, some of them are pettable, and some of them bite… And some of them aren't even dogs. They can take your arm off at the shoulder; they can rip your throat out when you bend over."

Pegeen hung up the phone. What had Becker called himself A werewolf. Not the man who had needed to hold her hand before he entered the prison.

That was not a dangerous man, it was a sweet, troubled, sensitive man.

What, she wondered, would he be when he came back out? To her surprise, she felt a thrill of anticipation.

Back in the car, Becker was agitated and distracted answering Pegeen's questions only with grunts. When they returned to the highway he kept his eyes on the road, searching for something.

"There," he said finally, pointing a finger. "Pull over there."

"Where?"

"The motel."

"Why are we going to a motel?" Pegeen asked, dutifully steering into the motel courtyard.

Becker didn't answer but bolted from the car and into the office. He returned quickly, holding a key, and he strode to a motel room and entered. Pegeen followed reluctantly, puzzled. There had been no mention during training about agents darting into motel rooms in the middle of the day.

The door of the room was ajar, but Pegeen knocked first. What if he was lying naked on the bed? What if he was… She stopped trying to imagine and admitted to herself that she had no idea. She knocked again, spoke his name, then eased the door open.

She saw his shoes and socks where he had discarded them outside of the bathroom. The bathroom door was open and she heard the sound of the shower running.

She said, "Hello?" feeling foolish. She waited for several minutes, uncertain what he was doing or what she should do in response. Finally she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Would he emerge from the shower with fangs and fur like the werewolf of the movies? she wondered. Would he come out wearing a towel? Without a towel? Should she go wait in the car? Steam billowed out from the bathroom door. She decided to just sit tight and see what happened next. Whether or not he was the "baaaad dude" she had been warned to be careful of, he was a damned sight more interesting and less predictable than any of the agents at the office.

Or than any other man she knew, for that matter. The steam filled the entire motel room. Pegeen threw her feet up on the bed and relaxed into the pillow. The spot on her cheek where he had touched her still burned, but she knew that was just her imagination.

In the speckled shade of a dying fir, Cooper squatted and studied the restaurant across the highway. The tree was a victim of acid rain, and half of its needles had turned brown and sere, mottling the canopy with scrofulous patches like a dog with mange. Cooper eyed the restaurant, his fingers idly toying with the dead needles that littered the ground around him, raking them into little piles while his mind raced, trying to figure out his situation. They had given him another application, even though Cooper said he'd already filled one out in the other town, even though he was wearing the striped uniform jacket of the restaurant chain to prove he'd worked there. Still, they wanted another application, as if they didn't believe him, or were trying to trick him, trying to make him look stupid. Cooper had glanced at the application and then at the manager who handed it to him. His name tag said he was Ted. Cooper thought of saying, here Ted, here's your head, then breaking the little clerk's neck for him and stuffing the application in the hole.

Instead, he had taken the application across the street, where he could be in the shade and think what to do. Last time, of course, he had made that girl fill out the form for him. Cooper had forgotten exactly how he had made her do it, but he remembered that it worked, he had gotten the job. He remembered other things about the girl, too.

He remembered how she had let him drive her car and how she had surprised him while he was driving and then how she had taken him into the woods and surprised him some more. She had liked him, he knew that.

She told him so and she certainly acted like it, or at least as if she liked part of him. She had told him she loved the way he howled.

"Most men don't say nothing, they don't make a sound, not a sound. You just throw your head back and hoot like an Indian on the warpath. That's a nice thing, Coop. Men aren't usually very good at enjoying themselves.

He remembered that he had howled a lot in the woods, maybe exaggerating it a little bit for her sake. She laughed every time he did, but not a mean laugh; she wasn't making fun of him.

He wished he could see her now. He would trick her into filling out the application again and this time, afterward, when they got in her car, maybe he'd surprise her.

There was something about her he had forgotten, he knew that, something important. He lifted a pile of dead needles in his hand and let them out like grains of sand.

They sparkled like shards of copper when the sunlight hit them, like a lively shining living stream of copper, but lying on the ground, in the shade once more, they were as dull and drab as dirt. A few of the needles were stuck in his hand, pasted there by perspiration. Cooper brushed them off, dried his hand on his pants, then rubbed the sweat from his forehead, wetting it again. It was very hot, even in the shade.

Mayvis, that was her name. Cooper stood up, pleased with himself for recalling it. Her name was Mayvis and she had written it down for him so he could remember it.

Cooper looked in his wallet; he remembered she had tucked the paper with her name on it in his wallet, which had disturbed him at first-he didn't like people handling his personal property-but she kept talking to him the whole time, explaining that he could call her anytime he wanted to have some more fun or if he needed anything at all.

"You can even call if you just want to talk," she said, then laughed-he wasn't sure if he liked that particular laugh-"but I don't guess you'd want to do that. Hell, I don't care, just call if you want to howl into the phone.

'Course, if you want me to make you howl, that's even better."

"Uh-huh," Cooper had said.

"Are you going to remember me at all, Cooper?"

"Sure," he said.

"I'll bet. If you do, you'll be one of the first. Anyway, here," and she had tucked the paper with her name on it into his wallet and slipped the wallet back into his pocket, pausing back there long enough to give him a squeeze.

"Ooohhh," she said, pretending that just touching him made her shiver.

Cooper found the paper in the little plastic pouch where some people carried pictures. Mayvis Tway, it said, then underneath it, a telephone number. Cooper left the shade and crossed to the restaurant to make a phone call.

"I'll be goddamned," she said. "Sure I remember you.

I never thought I'd hear from you again, though."

"You said to call you," Cooper said.

"I know I did, honey, but not everybody pays real close attention to what I say the way you do. They're mostly shitheads."

"Uh-huh," Cooper said. "Shitheads."

"This going to be kind of a one-sided conversation, ain't it?" she asked and Cooper did not answer because he wasn't sure what she meant.

"Well, where the hell are you?" she asked, her voice tinkling into his ear. She was pleased to hear from him, just as she had said she would be. Cooper decided he liked her.

"I'm at the restaurant," he said.

"Which one?… The one where I found you?"

"Yeah. But not there."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm at the one in…" He struggled to remember the name of the town that the preacher had told him. "Wycliffe," he said at last.

.,sugar, that's sixty miles from here. How'd you get over to Wycliffe?"

"I walked," he said.

"Walked? You couldn'ta walked all the way to Wycliffe."

Cooper didn't answer.

"Well, never mind," she said. "What did you want?"

"You said to call," Cooper said.

"Well, that was nice of you."

She sounded like she was going to hang up. Cooper hated the telephone.

"They give me another paper," Cooper said.

"What do you mean, honey?"

He struggled to say it right.

"Let's have some fun," he said.

She laughed again, sounding the way she did when she was with him in person. "Well, why didn't you say so?

Do you want me to come get you?":'Uh-huh," he said.

'In Wycliffe?"

"Uh-huh."

"It'll take me an hour, you know. You think you can wait that long for Mayvis?"

"Uh-huh."

"I don't want you to think this means I don't have an active social life now," she said. "Wouldn't want you to take me for granted or anything."

She laughed again, so merrily that Cooper laughed too.

"Now, tell me again, what's your name?"

"Cooper."

"That's right," she said. "And, Cooper… you're which one? The one that howls?"

Cooper howled into the phone. She was still laughing when she hung up.

It's not that I'm hard up, Mayvis said to herself, I'm just sentimental.

She told herself a lot of shit like that, and amused herself most times with it. It had taken her more than an hour to get to Wycliffe and she wasn't sure that Cooper would be there when she finally arrived. She wasn't sure he had been there in the first place-he might have been playing a trick on her. They did that often enough, taking advantage of her good nature and her willingness to go halfway to accommodate a man.

Cooper, if she remembered him clearly, didn't seem the type for cruel jokes, but you could never be sure with a man, cruelty was always just a scratch or two under the surface.

She didn't recall ever driving sixty miles for a man before, at least not for one with whom she had no relationship other than one rather active and sweaty afternoon, but she'd done dumber things for sex, there was no question about that; even if Cooper turned out not to be there, she'd engaged in wilder goose chases and had exposed herself to greater humiliation just to get laid. She did have that little problem of wanting it. Wanting it a lot. Often. And with new partners, if partnership was the right concept for the way most men went about it. It seemed a pretty solitary pursuit for most of them, something they did for themselves with Mayvis just happening to be conveniently in the way.

She had to do something about her sexual habits, of course, she knew that. She had promised she would, promised her friends and her parents and even herself. She should start going to those meetings again, but frankly, what no one had ever explained to her satisfaction was why it was okay for all the men to fuck everything they possibly could and nobody telling them they needed help, and why it wasn't okay for her to do the same. If nothing else, it was a kind of interesting activity. You met all kinds of people that way. If she acted coy and waited until the men made a move on her, first of all the shy ones never would and consequently she would only get to meet the aggressive ones, which would drastically reduce her experience. Mayvis saw no reason to limit herself to just one kind of man. She had tried being faithful to just one man, tried pretty hard for a while, but it just hadn't worked out for her.

She was too gregarious. She was too friendly. He became too boring. The truth was, it wasn't really the sex Mayvis was after, it was the attention. And in seeking the attention she had also become addicted to the excitement. All of this had been explained to her in the group her parents had sent her to. She wasn't really having fun at all with all those men, they told her. She was se eking something which she could never find from strangers, and in the process she was exposing herself to great dangers. One didn't have to be a genius to know what those dangers were, but Mayvis was getting a thrill out of her own peril, they had explained. The people at the meetings had been very educational, they had loved explaining things, they knew so much jargon that it was as if they didn't even have to think about what they said, they just kept repeating key phrases, expecting her to agree with them. After a while it had seemed easier to agree than to argue.

Roger, one of the men in the group, spent part of every meeting talking about how his sexual fantasies had ruined his life. He read pornography, he confessed. He sought women other than his wife. He masturbated daily.

Although he announced his failings in the prescribed manner, bewailing his misery and praising his higher power for allowing him to attend the meetings and take charge of his life, he always sounded a little proud to Mayvis.

Roger sounded as if he were determined to make his sexual hyperfunction a bit more hyper than anyone else's. At the last meeting she had attended, Mayvis had called him on it.

"If pounding your pud makes you so unhappy, why don't you just quit it?" she asked.

He had smirked at her with the superiority born of true understanding.

"And why don't you quit balling guys you pick up in convenience stores?" he demanded.

"Because it doesn't make me unhappy," she said. "I like it."

"You are in denial," he said. They always said that to anyone who didn't agree with them.

"Maybe," Mayvis replied. "But I'm not whacking off in gas station toilets."

He managed to look pained and smug at the same time.

After the meeting, when Mayvis apologized for her comments, Roger asked if she wanted to sleep with him to see what she had been missing. She had not been back to the meetings since.

She wasn't certain that she would recognize him-there had been an awful lot of faces to remember-but when she saw him standing outside the restaurant, looking like a tree with muscles, she remembered, all right.

He was standing there holding a piece of paper in his huge hand.

He was wearing a candy-striped uniform jacket that looked as if it had been slept in for weeks. His face and arms were covered with dust and streaked with sweat trails. He looked at Mayvis as if he really had walked the sixty miles from Hazard.

It's come to this, she thought. I'm picking up goons.

I'm sleeping with halfwits. Maybe I should go back to those meetings after all. I could sleep with the jerk-off Roger, who isn't very nice but changes his clothes once a week.

Then Cooper saw her and smiled hugely and she remembered that he really was kind of cute, in a mammoth sort of way, the way a bear can be cute.

Mayvis consoled herself with the thought that if nothing else, she could spot the loonies, the really dangerous ones, from a mile off. Cooper looked menacing because of his size-his great size was also part of his attractionbut she knew from experience that he was as malleable as mud.

She knew how to handle him.

Cooper didn't volunteer why he had left Hazard and walked sixty miles to find the same job again, and Mayvis didn't ask. In all honesty, she didn't care. She wasn't planning to adopt the big guy-she doubted very much that she would ever see him again after today-or that she would want to. She had just been so touched that he had called. Men in Hazard seldom called her; only strangers did. Men who had been given her name or read it scrawled on a wall somewhere, they called. She knew why they were calling, of course. Sometimes, if she felt like it, she went out with them, but she always made them take her somewhere first, out to eat or to a movie, somewhere they would be seen with her. It was the price she made them pay for calling her. If she selected them, that was different-no charge, and the front seat of the car was good enough.

She wasn't about to make Cooper take her out to dinner, however, even assuming he could pay for it in the first place. She didn't particularly want to be seen with him, not even in a town where no one knew her. She wasn't going to do anything with him, either, not even in her car, until he got cleaned up.

"Now pay attention this time," she said, filling out the application.

"Next time you'll be able to do it for yourself."

"You do it," Cooper said.

"I am doing it, but I'm not always going to be around for you."

"I'll call you," Cooper said.

"Listen, sugar, I'm not your traveling secretary. Just watch and learn."

"Let me drive," Cooper said. Mayvis was still behind the wheel, resting the application form on the horn button.

"Just hold on."

"Let me," Cooper said.

He reached across the seat and lifted and dragged her to the passenger side, then slid behind the wheel himself.

The speed and ease with which he accomplished it startled Mayvis. She had never been handled with such strength.

"Hey, now, listen. You go on in that washroom and clean up first."

"No."

"I mean it. You don't clean up, that's it, I'm going home." She returned her attention to the application, deliberately not looking at him. If you acted as if you expected to be obeyed, you usually got your way, she had found. When they were horny, they'd do whatever you said. It was only afterward that they got difficult. She could feel him staring at her but she kept her eyes on the paper.

"Go on now, honey, while I finish this for you. Then you can drive, okay?" She patted his leg for encouragement, still averting her eyes.

Cooper took hold of her wrist. She turned to look at him for the first time. His eyes were flat and expressionless. Big and brown but unreadable, like the eyes in a mask. Mayvis realized suddenly that she was very frightened.

She tried very gently to pull her hand away; she didn't want to make it a contest of strength.

"The sooner you go, the sooner you'll get to drive," she said. He kept looking at her, nothing showing in his face. Mayvis smiled as friendly as she could make it, while her eyes flicked rapidly around her. They were in a fast-food-restaurant parking lot, for God's sake. There were people everywhere. Nothing could happen here, she thought. Relax, relax and talk to him. "You want me to finish your application, don't you, honI can't do that with just one hand."

She waited, looking for some flicker of recognition in his eyes. They looked like two buttons sewn on a doll's face. For the first time she realized how stupid the man was. She had thought he was reticent, like most men she knew, uncommunicative and clearly a little slow, but not really stupid. She had assumed he had a reading disability which accounted for his application problems, not that he was too dumb to understand the words.:'Coop?" she said softly.

'What?"

"Why don't you let go of my arm now?"

Cooper looked down at her arm as if seeing it for the first time, as if puzzled to find it clasped in his hand. He studied it for a moment.

"Did you want to let it go, hon?" Mayvis asked.

Cooper released her and she pulled her arm back slowly, as calmly as she could.

"Wasn't you going to wash up now, Coop?"

"Huh?"

"Remember, you said you was going to go into the washroom in there and clean up so we could take a ride together. With you driving. And here, sugar, you can give them the application form, too. All done up good so you'll get that job again."

"Okay," Cooper said. He got out of the car, and Mayvis breathed deeply in relief, but then he reached back in and took the keys from the ignition.

She watched him walk across the parking lot, the keys dangling from his massive hand. Her instinct was to run, to abandon the car, give it up, and run to safety, wherever that might be. There was no denying her fear, she had been flat scared there for a minute, and if a man made you feel like that, then get the hell away from him.

Then reason took over. First of all, nothing had happened, she told herself. She had handled him, controlled him very easily, as a matter of fact, once she realized the situation. He was stupid, not dangerous.

Secondly, she wasn't about to give up her car. For what? It wasn't the first time a man had held on to her too long. She trusted him a whole lot more where she could see and control him than she did driving her car around alone. If nothing else, he was apt to get lost. Was she so scared that she was going to give a man a possession worth thousands of dollars and just walk away? Nothing could scare her that much. The idea of calling the police came to her and was dismissed in a second. She knew how the police would treat her. With her reputation, they would assume the worst, always. It was like a hooker calling rape. Who would believe her? And about what? He held my wrist?

I was scared? What's a cop going to do for me? Haven't you already fucked this man, Mayvis? they would ask.

Now he can't touch your arm? It wouldn't be any better reporting a stolen car to them, either. It would just be giving them an opportunity for all the dirty-minded comments they could come up with. It would be even worse back home in Hazard. She had slept with two of the cops on the force there, and three others were mad at her that hadn't done her, too. She could just see herself call the cops.

Cooper returned to the car and they drove off. The front of his face had been splashed with water, but Mayvis could still see the dust on his neck and his ears. His wrists were speckled like a dirt patch after a brief shower.

"I'm going fast," he said when they hit the highway.

"Well, slow down," she said.

He turned to face her, looking away from the road entirely.

"Come on," he said. "I'm going fast."

When Mayvis didn't move he grabbed her hair and yanked her face into his lap. She got the idea then.

Cooper howled and pulled the car off the road onto an access path not much wider than the car. Pine boughs whipped at the windshield, and dust rose up behind them in a reddish-brown cloud.:'Now put your foot here," Cooper said.

"What?"

"Put your foot here and play with yourself like before," he said. He grabbed her leg and dropped it into his lap. "Put your hand in your shirt," he said.

"Coop, let's just give it a rest for a minute, okay?"

"Put your hand in your shirt," he said, reaching for her arm. He slapped her hand against her breast to remind her of what to do. "Like last time," he said.

"It doesn't have to be just like last time," she said.

"Let's be spontaneous."

"Do it like last time," Cooper said.

He pulled the car off the path and onto a ridge of weeds and scrub brush.

She put her hand under her blouse, moving slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on his.

"Now, listen, honey, I think you forgot something about last time that was different."

"No," he said.

"Yes, you did. Don't you remember what was different last time?… I told you what to do last time. Remember?

That way you didn't have to think about it, you just got all the fun."

"Then we got out," Cooper said as if he didn't hear her. Grabbing the foot that rested in his crotch, Cooper got out of the car and dragged Mayvis across the seat and stood her up. "In there," he said, pointing to the woods.

He held her by the arm and walked into the woods.

Mayvis told herself to stay calm. All she had to do was try to repeat the sequence of their last time together and everything would be all right. Nothing was going to happen to her that hadn't happened before.

In a wider opening among the trees Cooper pushed her down and undid his belt while standing over her.

"Like last time," he said.

"Sugar, I don't really recall exactly-"

"No," Cooper said, shaking his head impatiently. "Not like that." He maneuvered her until he had her where he wanted her then entered her with a grunt.

"I could kill you," he said, his breath coming faster.

"No, sugar."

"I could pop your head right off."

He put his hand on her throat, but it was no good with her looking at him. He didn't like anybody looking at him, even though she had done so last time. But last time was different because it was so surprising; this time he could have his way. Cooper turned her over and pulled her back to him to take her the way he had taken the punk.

"No, sugar," she said. "Not that way. That will hurt.

No, sugar."

"Time for your nightlies," he said.

Cooper pulled her back firmly against him and drove into her. She screamed and Cooper smiled, expecting to hear the encouraging calls from the other prisoners, but the only sounds were made by Mayvis.

"No!" she cried. She was wriggling, trying to get free, and her motions excited Cooper. He put his hand around her throat and squeezed.

"I could pull your head right off," he said. "I've done it before." he kept screaming and Cooper tightened his grip until he could no longer hear her cries, and when she fell silent he began to fill the woods with his own noises.

He thought he heard the chorus of approval echoing through the trees, the cons yelling and growling in appreciation of Old Coop. The punk was just lying there and Cooper gave him a push with his foot to get him away.

The punk groaned but didn't move. Cooper thought of just kicking the shit out of him, just for the fun of it. But then a squirrel moved in one of the trees and Cooper watched it for a moment, fascinated by the way it moved around and around the trunk of the tree, always so nervous and skittery as if it were looking over its shoulder all the time.

After a time Cooper realized something was missing and he put his arm around-the punk's waist and pulled him to his knees.

"Let us pray," Cooper said. The punk hung limply in his arm, so Cooper slapped him on the head. "Let us pray," he said again, prompting him.

"Sweet Jesus…" the punk whispered.

The punk's hair was longer and the freckles were gone and Cooper realized it was the woman, not the punk, but he had known that all along, of course he had. There was nothing wrong with pretending, he assured himself.

But he wished it was Swann. He could tell Cooper what to do now. Swann had been a bitch sometimes, but he was Cooper's bitch and he always came around for him in the end. And he seldom cried afterward. This bitch better not cry, either. Cooper hated a crying woman worse than anything.

Cooper rested his back against a tree and pulled Mayvis back onto his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair.:'Tell me you love me," he said.

'I love you," Mayvis said.

'I love you too, Swann," Cooper said. But it didn't sound right and it didn't feel right and Cooper felt an anger growing. He didn't want this woman on his chest, he didn't want her saying she loved him.

He continued to run his fingers through her hair because it felt good even though a rage was building in his throat, and gradually her body relaxed against his. Cooper watched the squirrel and a blue jay that seemed to be scolding it. When the bird finally shut up, Cooper became aware of a sound closer to him. Very softly, as if she knew she shouldn't do it, the woman was crying.

She turned her face to him suddenly, rising off his chest.

"You hurt me," she said. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Cooper's rage was too great to contain any longer-he felt it bursting from his throat into his head so that he was filled with it, his eyes, his ears, his skull filled with rage. I'm going to kill her, Cooper thought. There seemed no other way to quell his anger.

When they returned to the Nashville airport, Becker and Pegeen were met by an airline official who asked them to follow her. The official led them to a door marked personnel only, unlocked the door, and ushered them in, then quietly withdrew, leaving Becker and Pegeen to confront their greeting committee. Hatcher was the first to his feet, all smiles and cordiality, as if he had just happened to run into them by chance.

"John, how good to see you," he said, and then, as if knowing better, he did not try to shake hands but turned instead to Pegeen. "Special Agent Haddad? I'm Associate Director Hatcher. Pegeen, isn't it? Nice to meet you."

Pegeen winced involuntarily at Hatcher's name, or, more specifically, at his title, which he pronounced with great clarity. She noted the other man and the angrylooking woman behind Hatcher, but there was no doubt that he was the power in the room.

"How do you do, sir," she managed haltingly- but Hatcher had already turned from her, his interest no longer more than a social twitch.

The other man rose from his seat behind the conference table. Pegeen thought he looked too soft to be an agent.

She was right.

"Hello, John," the man said.

"Gold."

"It's been a while."

"That was the idea," Becker said. "To make it as long as possible." Then to Pegeen he said, "My shrink.

Or rather one of the Bureau's shrinks, the one who specializes in me."

Gold shook Pegeen's hand and murmured his name so diffidently that Pegeen wasn't sure if it was Murray, Maury, or Mary. Becker walked to the woman and kissed her. She 'seemed to accept the kiss without qualms but she did not bother to rise from her seat. She kept her eyes fixed on Pegeen, and Pegeen knew she was in trouble.

"This is Assistant Director Crist," Becker explained to Pegeen. "I call her Karen because I live with her."

The woman nodded coolly at Pegeen, and Pegeen understood the reason for the woman's hostility. She sensed the small sense of betrayal as unwarranted and irrelevant. He had no reason to tell me he was married or living with someone or anything else, she thought, we were just working. I didn't mention my marital situation with him, either. But then I had nothing of any interest to mention. He did, but he didn't so much as hint at it. And what did that indicate? Pegeen warned herself to pay attention to the business at hand. She had heard of Karen Crist, of course. There were very few women in the Bureau who outranked her, and none had risen so far so fast; all of the younger women in the organization watched her every move with fascination and inspiration.

But she was not only a phenom and a role model, Pegeen realized. She was also a jealous woman. Which meant a potentially dangerous one. Pegeen resolved to walk very lightly.

"I just thought we'd take this opportunity to see how things went,"

Hatcher said.

"What opportunity is that?" Becker asked. "The fact that we all happen to be here in the Nashville airport?

You're right, that is a pretty good opportunity."

Hatcher leaned back in his chair, the smile still fixed on his face. He was prepared to let the others run the meeting, had instructed them to do so if Becker was resistant to Hatcher's methods.

Karen leaned forward slightly. "What happened in the meeting with Swann, John?"

Becker scanned the three across the table from him very carefully before speaking. Pegeen thought he had the look of a hunted animal who was deciding which of his pursuers to attack first.

He decided on Gold.

"What's going on, Gold?"

"Well…" Gold looked at Hatcher, then Karen. He shrugged. "I'm here basically to talk to you in case you… in case you want to talk to me."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"Well..

"We listened to the meeting, John," Karen said.

"You had the prison room bugged?"

Hatcher, still smiling, studied his fingernails.

"That decision was taken," Karen said.

"And I wonder who took it?" Becker asked. Hatcher did not look up. "A new low, Hatcher."

"There are some things about the meeting we'd like you to explain,"

Karen said.

Becker ignored her, directing himself to Hatcher. "Not because you taped me without letting me know," he said.

"Because you're making my wife run this interrogations "I didn't know you were married," Hatcher said.

"Congratulations."

"We're not…" Karen said.

"I call her my wife," Becker said.

"I have no problem running this interview," Karen said. "If you feel uncomfortable, John, then-"

"You don't refer to agent Becker as your husband, do you?" Hatcher asked blandly.

"No," she said.

"You see why I was confused," Hatcher said, lifting his hands slightly as if to show they were sparkling clean.

"Apologies all around."

"None necessary, sir," Karen said. She turned to Becker. "We had a wire in the prison interview room.

We didn't have a camera. Some of the conversation seems rather ambivalent and we thought it best to clarify any ambiguities."

"You sound rather hostile to the man Swann," Gold prompted. "Was there something going on that we couldn't pick up on tape?"

Becker glared at Gold. Pegeen could see the psychologist visibly wilt under the stare.

"Perhaps we'd better talk about it in private," Gold said.

"Was, there a delay coming back from Springville?" Karen asked.

"You had a stopwatch on me, too?"

"Perhaps Agent Haddad can help us out here," Hatcher said, his smile widening. He arched his eyebrows in silent question.

"We, uh, did make an unscheduled stop, sir."

"Oh, really?"

Pegeen glanced at Becker for a clue on how to proceed.

He kept his eyes boring holes into Hatcher. For his part, the Associate Director seemed unaware of anything but Pegeen.

You don't lie to an Associate Director, Pegeen thought.

Whatever else you do, don't be that stupid. Then here goes your career.

"We stopped at the Hi-Ho Motel," she said, feeling as if she had just walked into the room and put her foot in a cow turd. She had their attention now.

"The Hi-Ho Motel," Karen repeated without inflection.

"It's a-uh-motor lodge. Just outside of Springville."

"I wanted to take a shower," Becker said.

"I understand," Hatcher said.

"No, you don't."

"And what did you do while Agent Becker took a shower?" Hatcher asked.

"I waited for him, sir."

"Where?" Karen asked.

Since I'm already dead, this will bury me, Pegeen thought.

"Pardon me?"

" 'Where did you wait,' I think is what Assistant Director Crist is asking," Hatcher volunteered.

"In the motel room, sir… it seemed best." Her ears It tinged with fire. Betrayed by her complexion again.

"I understand," Hatcher said, nodding.

"That was my assignment," Pegeen said, making matters worse, she realized.

"What was?" asked Karen.

"To keep an eye on Agent Becker."

"You were assigned to drive him," Karen said.

"I was also told to assist, him with anything he needed," Pegeen said.

"Did you feel he needed assistance in the shower?" Hatcher asked. He's enjoying it, Pegeen realized. He likes seeing me squirm. "Not specifically the shower, sir, no."

"I told her to come in," Becker said. "Leave her alone-she doesn't have anything to do with it."

"Why did you think he needed assistance?" Gold said.

His tone was genuinely sympathetic, and Pegeen liked him immediately.

"Was he upset?"

"Yeah, I was upset," Becker said. "She did the right thing, I was upset and she wanted to make sure I was all right."

"I understand," said Hatcher.

"You don't have a clue," said Becker.

"What were you upset about?" Karen asked.

"I was upset that I was working for Hatcher," Becker said. "I'd sworn to myself, never again, but there I was, sitting in prison with a sick little puppy licking my hand, and I felt so dirty I couldn't stand it, so I took a shower.

Now, if you don't leave Agent Haddad out of this, Hatcher, I won't tell you what you want to know. Do you understand that?"

Hatcher turned to Pegeen, smiling, if possible, even more insincerely than before.

"I think that will be all for now. And thank you so much."

Pegeen felt all of their eyes on her back as she walked out of the room, but she thought she could distinguish those of Karen Crist. They were the ones with the daggers on the end.

Gold cleared his throat, but it was Hatcher who spoke.

"So, John. You have your way; you have what you asked for. I wonder now if you could tell us what it is you think I want to know."

"You heard the tapes, what do you think?"

"I wasn't there, John. I didn't see the man."

"Why not go there? He'll be happy to see you. I don't think he gets nearly enough visitors."

"But I don't need to go, John. You've already gone, you're the expert in this particular area, so you tell me.

Are we on to the killer of those girls in the coal mine?

Can this man Swann help us find him?"

"If you give him what he wants, this man Swann will help you find Jimmy Hoffa."

"You recommend that we work with him, then?"

"I recommend that you work with him. I don't want anything else to do with him."

"You seem to have had an-uncomfortable@xperience. I regret that. I had hoped you might like to come back to work full time."

Before Becker could retort, Karen interrupted. "We just want you to assess Swann as a source, John. It's important."

"Why?"

In the silence, Karen and Hatcher exchanged glances.

Gold moved uncomfortably in his chair.

"Well, naturally, some of us don't share your view of the importance of murder that you expressed to Mr. Swann. What was it? Everyone is killing everyone else, so what do a few more matter? That's a paraphrase, of course. A very curious attitude for a law officer, John, although I know you will hasten to tell me that you are no longer an officer. Nonetheless, this man Cooper seems to have murdered a good many people and may be about to do many more, and I for one would like to stop him."

"Cooper is the cellmate?"

"Darnell Cooper," Karen said. "He did five years of hard time for assault with intent, never requested parole, wouldn't have got it if he had, got out three weeks ago.

Never showed up to meet with the parole officer."

"Gone?"

"Without a trace so far. But we haven't been looking very long."

"Just since my meeting with Swann, or did you have a head start?"

"Just since your meeting."

Becker nodded. "Well, good luck to you."

"Thank you, John," said Hatcher. "You've been most cooperative, as always-in your own way. I have matters to tend to, so I'll leave you now, but I'm sure you'll have things to discuss with Dr. Gold and Assistant Deputy Crist… Actually, Deputy Crist, if you could accompany me for just a moment. You have more access to Agent Becker than the rest of us, and I expect there are one or two things you'll want to clear up with him, but if you'll just come with me now… So nice to see you again, John."

Becker leaned over in his chair and studied the floor after Hatcher and Karen had gone.

"What is it?" Gold asked.

"I'm looking to see if he leaves an actual slime trail."

"He's my superior, John. Karen's too, which is more to the point. What do you accomplish by treating him that way?"

"It gets some of the venom out. Isn't that what you shrinks like us to do? Ventilate the venom?"

"It makes Karen's job a good deal harder. If you won't behave when she's in the room-"

"When will I behave? Is that the rest of that sentence?

Karen's a big girl, Gold. She's far better at the politics of all this than you or me. And can you imagine — what would happen if I were nice and docile and, God help me, polite to Hatcher if she were around? Do you know what that would do for her? It would make Hatcher think she was my keeper. He'd have her there every time anybody talked to me, he'd have her supervising my every move. And when I did rebel, and we both know I would before long, it would look like her failure. She's a lot better off if I make it clear to Hatcher that she can't control me either."

"It's an interesting approach. You maintain your freedom, Karen maintains hers. Does Karen see it that way, too?"

"Why are you here, Gold?"

"I was told to come, John. By Hatcher directly."

"Before or after you listened to the tapes?"

"After."

"Why? What's so important about this case?"

"You know they don't tell me-I'm just a shrink. I don't deal with casework. I'm just here for you because of our relationship."

"What does that mean?"

"In case you needed to talk to me. You did sound rather upset on the tape."

"So Hatcher hurried you to Nashville to check on my state of mind? Just out of the goodness of his heart?"

"I don't know about the goodness of his heart. You're very valuable to him."

"Do you want to talk, John? About the interview?"

"Not particularly."

"But then you never particularly want to talk to me, do you?"

Becker laughed. "You've noticed?"

"You've dropped a hint here and there… Swann got to you some way, didn't he?"

"The place got to me. The situation. Him, too, maybe.

I felt-I felt like I couldn't get away."

Gold nodded. "I don't know what it's like. I've never had to go into a prison."

"Keep it that way."

"Yes, please God… What sort of a man is he?"

"Small."

"You know what I mean."

"But you don't. Listen, Gold, don't ask me to appraise anybody in prison. They play a role the whole time they're there, all of them, every single one. They don't dare to let their guard down or let the mask slip for a second. One wrong word, one sideways glance, and someone will see it, because believe me, everyone is watching. Everywhere.

There's nothing but eyes, all around you. You know how vultures work?

They don't come down to see a healthy animal walking along-they don't waste their energy. If you're crossing a desert, it doesn't matter if you're actually dying-if you can act like a healthy human, they won't come near you. But if you limp or stumble or wilt, they'll see it from miles away. The important thing in prison is to be what they expect you to be. You'll find your role in the first week, and you'd better play it to the hilt or you're a goner. So don't expect to get a true picture of any con. He's playing a part."

Gold was silent for a moment. Not for the first time he wondered about his wisdom in electing to work with men with whom he had little affinity, who labored under dangers with which he was unfamiliar. Every one of them knew more about peril and fear and overcoming anxiety than he would ever know, no matter how long he listened to them. And Becker, of course, for all the time they had spent together, knew demons and devils and shades of hell that Gold was grateful he had never even dreamed of. And yet, even though they seemed to have nothing in common, Gold felt an affection for Becker that transcended the doctor/patient relationship. He thought Becker liked him, too.

"Did it come back to you at the interview, John?"

"Did what come back?"

"The… feeling you get sometimes. What we've worked on."

"Is that what we've been working on, Gold? That oldtime feeling?"

"It did, didn't it? You wanted to hurt him, didn't you?

Isn't that what upset you? Isn't that what the shower was about-he brought back that feeling? Or rather, the prison did, the circumstances, the claustrophobia…"

"Wrong on two counts, but otherwise, dead-on."

"Which two?"

"One, the interview, the claustrophobia, whatever it was-it didn't bring the feeling back, because the feeling was never really gone, is never really gone. You should attend more twelve-step programs, Gold. You'd realize that old habits don't go away, they just get under control."

"And?"

"Wrong on count two. I didn't have the feeling that I wanted to hurt him … I had the feeling that I wanted to kill him… But you knew that, didn't you?"

"Yes, I knew," said Gold.

Becker twisted a corner of his mouth ironically. "So nice to be understood," he said.

Karen wrapped herself in silence for half the flight to New York, burying her face in files and typing memos on her laptop computer.

Becker was grateful for the interlude of peace. He knew that in time he would have to account for his stop in the motel with Pegeen. Karen was not suspicious, nor had he ever given her cause to be, but trust beyond a certain point veered toward indifference, and he knew that Karen was not indifferent to him. She had based her career on a mastery of details, and she would want to know all the particulars of his motel visit when she got around to asking.

Becker pretended to sleep and then slept. Karen woke him as they approached New York.

"You'll be pleased to know that Hatcher has taken you off the case."

"Oh?"

"That's what you wanted, isn't it? That's why you behaved that way with Swann."

"What way?"

"Hitting him."

"I didn't hit him."

"He says you did. He requested medical treatment after you left."

"The little shit."

"No doubt. But he is also considering a lawsuit. I don't think he'll go,through with it-Hatcher will mollify him one way or another."

"Why is he so involved, Karen? What does Hatcher want with this case?

It can't do him any particular good, can it? He's operating on too lofty a scale to benefit from the capture of one man."

"If you're a black hole of ambition like Hatcher, ultimately you suck in everything to your benefit, but in this case it wasn't very hard. One of those two girls who was found in the coal mine-her uncle was Quincy Beggs."

"Never heard of him."

"No one else had when his niece disappeared-what, ten years ago? As a result, he ran on a fiercely aggressive law-and-order platform and got elected as a congressman from West Virginia."

"I've still never heard of him."

"But Hatcher has. Now four-term Congressman Beggs is on the Oversight Committee, the congressional committee that deals with our budget and, not indirectly, some of our top-level promotions. You have heard of that onehaven't you?"

"So Hatcher has a chance to deliver to Beggs the man who killed his niece. No wonder he's so involved."

"Just thought you'd be pleased to know you're off the hook," Karen said.

"And you're still on it."

Karen shrugged.

"I really am sorry," he said.

"I'll manage."

"I'm sorry you have to."

Karen returned her attention to the computer. Becker put his hand on her arm. "It really was just a shower…

"I believe that. I do."

"Good… Nothing went on at all. She's just an agent."

Karen smiled patiently. "The sorry thing is, you probably believe that, too… Men..

"What does that mean?"

"Something 'went on' with her whether you noticed it or not. I saw the way she looked at you. And she knows I saw it."

"There wasn't anything special in the way she looked at me or the way I looked at her or the way Hatcher looked at you or any combination thereof," Becker said.

Karen shook her head patronizingly. "John, you're a very sweet man in your special way, but you don't understand women at all."

"I was there, Karen. Nothing happened, nothing was said, nothing was intimated. I did nothing to lead her on, she did nothing to lead me on.

I bent over backwards to treat her like another agent. I wouldn't have made a man sit in the car-"

"You really don't get it, do you?":'There's nothing to get." 'You didn't take a shower because you have a fetish for cleanliness. You took a shower because you felt deeply soiled by your encounter with Swann, isn't that right?":'Yes." 'And you let her see that about you. You showed her how vulnerable you are underneath the super agent exterior. Don't you realize how attractive that is, John? If you share your vulnerabilities with a woman, that is intimacy. To her, you had a very intimate moment together. Not because she was in the next room when you took a shower, but because you allowed her to know you needed it in the first place."

"It doesn't really work that way, does it?" Becker asked.

"It worked with me," she said. She took his hand and held it until they landed.

Nahir Patel had reached the fourth chapter of The Satanic Verses when the battered Oldsmobile pulled into the station. Nahir didn't consider himself much of a Muslim. His mother had dragged him to Episcopal Sunday school until he was in his mid-teens and was able to mount an effective rebellion, and his father seemed to have no religion whatsoever beyond an abhorrence of pork sausage. As a family they attended a mosque-which required a trip to Memphis-only when relatives visited. Nahir himself had drifted into a vague belief in an essentially indifferent creator to whom one applied for relief in emergencies but otherwise ignored. With mild variations, he discovered, it was the basic American concept of the deity, based primarily on convenience, with no thought required. Best of all, it was a maintenance-free credo, plastic enough to cover a variety of permutations-he knew one girl who thought God was revealing herself through the anim ' alswhile demanding absolutely nothing of the believer. Islam, on the other hand, had some rigorous requirements, the hardest one being, for Patel, belief.

However, thoroughly non-Muslim though he was, Patel could not help feeling an illicit, not to say mildly dangerous thrill when reading the work of a man condemned to death for heresy by a large segment of Islam.

It seemed akin to deliberately walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror just to prove one was not superstitious. Rationally, there was no danger, yet one did not take such unnecessary chances without the sense of tempting retribution.

A man seemingly larger than the car itself got out of the Oldsmobile and puzzled for a moment at the gas pump. Nahir watched him with half an eye, wondering briefly that there were some people in this day and age who still did not understand that one must pay before receiving the gasoline. The instructions were written large, but somehow some people never managed to see them.

The big man stuck the hose in his tank and squeezed and looked at the pump and squeezed some more.

Nahir returned to his book. He had been working — the five-to-midnight shift for six months now and had seen all manner of dummies in that time. They all caught on eventually and came to visit him in his Plexiglas booth.

He had a microphone at his disposal if he had wanted to help the customer, but he chose not to use it. He would be off duty shortly and he wanted to read a bit more. At home, he kept the book out of sight, not wanting to risk stirring up any atavistic orthodoxy in either parent. He thought they were enlightened-for parents-but there seemed no reason to press the point. He had time enough to read while on the job, after all.

The big man had finally noticed Nahir in the booth.

"I want gas," he said.

Duh, thought Nahir. No kidding. Although schooled in politeness at home, he found that the insulation of the booth led one towards a degree of insolence that only absolute security could nurture. No one could touch him in his little booth. The glass was even bulletproof. There seemed little need for civility when the worst that could happen as a result of rudeness was a dirty look and a nasty remark. What were they going to do, drive away without gas? A few did, but if any had ever reported him to the manager, he had never heard about it.

"You have to pay me first," Nahir said, making no effort to conceal his contempt.

The man seemed bewildered by the statement.

"I want gas," the man said, I and then, as if clarifying things, he added, "for my car.'

Nahir made a big display of seeing the car for the first time. "Oh, for your car! Why didn't you say so?"

The man nodded. "Gas for my car."

Nahir could not believe this moron.

"Pay first," he said. He turned back to his book. Let the goon figure it out, or not.

The man scowled at him. "I don't like that," he said.

Nahir sighed deeply and looked away from his book, letting the man know how tired he was of the whole conversation. He turned the microphone on so that his words were issued into the night.

"You don't like what? Paying? Sorry, chief, that's the way the system works. Pay now, gas later."

"I don't like the way you talk to me," the man said.

Nahir leaned his face right against the glass, grinning contemptuously.

'I'm not here to talk to you. I'm here to throw a switch that allows you to pump gas, after you pay for it. Got it?

Too hard? You. Money. Give me. I. Gas. Give you."

"I could kill you," the man said.

Nahir smirked.

"Ooo," he said. "Oooo."

The man smashed his fist into the Plexiglas in front of Nahir's face.

Nahir jerked back, startled, and the man struck the glass shield again and again, hitting it with the power of a club.

"Hey," Nahir cried. "Hey, calm down." He looked out into the night for help. The station was lighted in the unreal sodium light, but outside that oasis was a desert of blackness.

The man kicked the cage in the metal siding below the glass. Nahir heard the thuds as if he were on the inside of a drum. People had hit the glass before, but no one had ever attacked the metal. He did not know how strong it was; he hoped it was strong enough, they wouldn't have built it that way if it wasn't strong enough, would they?

The man was hurling his whole body at the shack now, slamming with his back and shoulders with his full weight behind the blows. The booth groaned and shuddered. Nahir thought he heard the whine of bolts giving way. He was being attacked by a hurricane of rage, and the storm had worked its way to the door of the booth. The door was held by a dead bolt, but that was secured only by screws. The door bucked and crashed as the man alternately yanked on the handle, then threw himself against it. Nahir could picture the screws popping and the giant catapulting into the booth.

"I'll give you gas," Nahir shouted. "Please stop! I'll give you gas.

Fill it up, fill it up!"

It was not until Nahir remembered to use the microphone and his voice reverberated through the empty Chattanooga night that the man seemed to hear him.

"Free gas!" Nahir shouted, crying with fear now.

"Free gas!"

The giant stopped and nodded once as if he found the notion reasonable, then returned to his car and turned on the nozzle. He watched the pump rather than Nahir.

With the giant looking away, Nahir dialed 911 and whispered frantically for help. The huge moron returned to the booth and Nahir quickly hung up.

"No charge, no charge," Nahir said, waving the man away.

"I want some money," the man said. His voice was perfectly calm, as if it were the most ordinary request.

"Yes, sir, how much would you like?"

Oh, no, I confused him, Nahir thought. The giant was actually considering sums.

"Why don't I give you all of it?" Nahir asked.

"Yes." The man nodded.

Nahir opened the cash drawer and took out half the money. It occurred to him that he could pocket the rest and report all of it as stolen. The giant was certainly too dumb to know the difference. Nahir was proud of himself for recovering his wits so quickly despite the incredible stress. He had turned a bad situation into something positive for himself.

He put the giant's share of the money into the revolving drawer and slid it out.

"That's all I have," Nahir said.

"That's okay. Thank you."

"No, I thank you." For a moment Nahir thought the comment was too much, that the moron might react again, but he walked to his car and started it up. "Y'all come back now, you hear?" ahir said, doing his best cracker twang.

Nahir waggled his fingers in a parody of a wave, then froze as he realized the man had put the car in reverse and was driving backwards straight at the booth, and very fast.

Cooper thought he had to do something about the Oldsmobile. The rear end was badly smashed after driving over the snooty clerk at the gas station, and it sounded as if it was scraping against the tire. He could steal one from somebody else, but not this late at night, not unless he got real lucky and saw someone just getting into or out of a car. He had never learned how to steal a car without a key. Somebody had tried to explain it to him once, but Cooper found it confusing and far too much trouble when all you really had to do was take somebody's key away from him. He decided to wait until morning when lots of people were getting in and out of cars, then he would drive back to that Dairy Queen where he had seen that girl. She was a cute little girl with her hair all braided like that. She didn't look anything like Mayvis, but she smiled when she took his order and seemed real helpful.

He wondered if he couldn't get her to help him the way Mayvis did and then maybe she'd do some of the other things Mayvis did for him. He had already found a good place in the woods where he could take her.

The Reverend Tommy was more agitated than usual when he finally returned to the trailer after the show and the increasingly extended meeting with fans and converts that succeeded the revival meeting itself He should — never have let Aural do any actual healing. Now that she helped him out by laying on hands, the people could not get enough of her.

"Did you see her tonight?" Rae did not need to be told that he was referring to Aural.

"During the show? Of course."

"No, not during the show. Afterwards-did you see her afterwards?"

"No, darling, I hurried back here to get ready for you."

Rae was wearing a new magenta teddy and she touched it with both hands, hoping for a reaction. She didn't think the color was the best for her complexion, but Aural had helped her to find one that was cut long enough to hide the thickest part of her thighs and it was available only in magenta.

"Well, you won't believe what she's up to now," he said, paying no notice to her lingerie.

"What is it?" Rae asked cautiously. Tommy expected Rae to share his outrage over Aural's ever-rising stature, but Rae not only liked Aural, she was becoming increasingly indebted to her for her tips on how to make Tommy her sex slave. His bondage was a long way from complete, but Rae felt she was making progress. He hadn't noticed the teddy yet, but he might later when he took it off her.

"She was standing on a box, " Tommy said. "Can you believe that? A goddamned box."

"She was standing on a box?"

"Don't you get it? The box makes her taller, taller than anybody. There she is, her head above everyone's, her goddamned little face shining like she's an angel. She does enough of that onstage. The last thing I need is for her to be carrying a box around so everyone can gawk at her offstage, too."

"You think it was her box?"

"Of course it was her box, Rae. You normally see any boxes outside the tent after a show? Boxes don't just grow out of the ground, they don't just materialize. She put it there, she planted the damned thing so she'd be taller than me."

"Maybe someone brought it for her? One of her fans?"

"None of my fans come equipped with boxes, do they, Rae? That just isn't the kind of thing people bring with them to a show. We're not crating oranges here, you know. How come you take her side, how come you're always defending her?"

"I'm not defending her, Tommy. She certainly shouldn't have brought a box, that's for sure."

"You're on her side, ain't you?"

" 'Course not…"

"Why not? Everybody's on the side of the angel-hahhah, some pun. You might's well team up with her, too."

"I'm on your side, darling." Rae fumbled with his belt with one hand while rubbing him with the other. "For Christ's sake, lay off, Rae.

Can't you see I'm upset here? I'm too mad to fuck."

I 'I'm just trying to comfort you, Tommy."

Rae continued to work on his belt. Aural had told her of the value of discreet insistence. Any healthy man, according to Aural, could be diverted from just about anything else in life by his erect organ if a woman went about It in the right way.

"Well, I've got a little surprise coming for our sweet angel-face,"

Tommy said. He allowed Rae to pull his pants to his ankles, scarcely noticing. "She's going to have a visitor pretty soon."

"Who's that, honey?"

"let's just say he ain't her biggest fan," Tommy said, laughing. "You might call him her anti-fan."

Rae slipped her hand down the back of the Reverend Tommy'.s shorts with a conviction taught to her by Aural.

It was not a move she would ever have thought of making on her own. She wiggled her finger a few times. That got Tommy's attention.

"Whoa!" he said, but he didn't mean stop. As it turned out, Tommy wasn't too mad to fuck after all.

The next morning, after the Reverend had gone out and she and Aural were sharing coffee in her trailer, Rae told her what Tommy had said about her anti-fan. Aural had shrugged.

"What is that suppose to mean?"

"He said it like it was the anti-Christ or something," Rae explained.

"He's sicking the devil on me, is that it'? The man's been preaching too long-he's beginning to believe it himself."

"it didn't sound good, Aural," Rae said. "He laughed when he said it, but he wasn't joking. I think he's up to something. You best be careful."

"My anti-fan? Sugar, I don't know what that means, but unless it's got a couple of heads, I'm not too worried." Aural patted her boot, and when Rae wrinkled her brow in puzzlement, Aural showed her the knife for the first time. She pulled it loose from the Velcro strip and held it in her palm.

"Honey, what is that for?" Rae asked, shocked.

"Whatever is necessary," Aural said. "You can imagine."

"Well, no, I can't."

"What world have you been living in?" Aural demanded. "You mean to say you don't carry anything to defend yourself with?"

"Defend myself from what?"

"Well, the Reverend Tommy, for starters."

"Honey, the Reverend and I are getting on real well, thanks to you."

"Sure-now. That don't never last. What do you expect to do if he takes it into his mind to beat on you?"

Rae paused, considering her loyalties in the matter. It was not a fierce struggle. "He has done that from time to time. But only when he was upset."

"Figures. And what did you do about it?"

"What was I supposed to do?"

"There's lots of options. What did you do, Rae?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Just let him beat on you?"

"I asked him to stop."

"Rae, in my opinion doing nothing is not an option."

She held up the knife. "This is an option."

"I couldn't."

"He don't have to know that. Make him wonder. You never know, it might just add a little spice."

"He's so much stronger..

"He's got to sleep sometimes, don't he? Just remind him about the lady who cut her husband's dick off and threw it in the vacant lot."

"She didn't."

"Bless her heart, she did. It was all over the papers and teevee. You didn't see that? It just naturally perked up every woman I know. I tell you what, the good Reverend has heard about it even if you ain't. You can just bet them old boys is whispering to each other all across the country, 'Guard your pecker at night-and for God's sake don't get 'em mad!"

"

Rae tittered. "Aural, you sure do have your very own outlook on life."

"I know men," Aural said. She returned the knife to her boot and closed the Velcro strap over it. "Bring on this anti-fan. If he has balls, I know how to deal with him.

Cooper awoke to barking. A savage-looking dog, part Doberman, part mutt, stood just outside the car door, feet planted solidly as if to give full purchase for barks, as if the sheer volume of its noise would send it scooting across the ground like a loose cannon if it didn't brace itself. The dog retreated a step when Cooper's head appeared in the window, then held its ground once more and unleashed a fresh volley of yaps.

It took Cooper a moment to realize where he was and what was going on.

Last night he had parked the car in the lot behind the Dairy Queen so he would be there as soon as the girl showed up. The dog had found him and taken offense at his presence-they always did. Cooper didn't trust animals and they returned the sentiment, dogs in particular. They howled at him as if he were an invading wolf come for the sheep in their care, following him on the street, snarling and barking, sometimes lunging at his leg. Cooper had seen other people calm strange dogs with a word, watched with amazement as they knelt before the snapping beasts and offered a hand to smell and then petted them as easily as if the preceding frenzy of aversion had just been a charade. Cooper could not believe it, it was as if they had something magic to say to the dogs that Cooper could never hear. People had told him that dogs could hear things that humans couldn't, and he wondered if some people knew how to speak in that language. Whatever the trick, Cooper didn't know it and the dogs knew he didn't know it. He would yell at them to leave him alone if they got too close, and when that didn't work, he would kick at them. Sometimes, when the dogs were large and unusually insistent, he would run from them, but that never worked as it seemed to make them all the more furious at him.

Cooper was hungry and he wanted some breakfast but he was afraid to get out of the car as long as the dog was there. He lay back down on the seat, hiding, but the animal continued to bark and bark. It took a long time for Cooper to realize he could just drive away.

In the late afternoon Cooper returned to the Dairy Queen and parked in the same spot where he had spent the night. The dog started barking as soon as he got out of the car, but this time the sound was distant and Cooper realized the dog was fenced-in now in some neighboring yard.

The girl was working behind the counter, and Cooper waited until she was finished with her customer, standing by the video games and pretending to play. Two animated characters on the screen were kicking and punching each other and although they fell down, neither seemed to get hurt. That did not accord with Cooper's experience of violence. When he hit someone they got hurt, they didn't bounce up again. They stayed down and begged him to stop and sometimes they cried. The characters in the video game wore bandanas on their heads the way a lot of brothers did in Springville, but the characters weren't brothers.

Cooper couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be.

When the girl was free, Cooper stepped up to the counter.

She smiled at him, a real friendly smile, showing her gums.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"I need help," Cooper said. He knew she was just asking about his order, but he hoped she could help him anyway.

Yes, sir?"

He stood there for a moment, not certain what it was he wanted to say to her.

"I have a car," he said at last.

She blinked but she didn't stop smiling.

"Can I take your order, sir?"

"I want you to come in my car," Cooper said.

"Pardon me?"

"Come in my car."

The girl looked at him curiously, tilting her head to one side like a bird. "Sir, I'm working. Did you want to place' an order?"

Cooper did not know how to explain what he needed.

He knew he was doing it wrong, but he couldn't think of a better way.

"I want to show you something," he said. "In the car."

The girl turned around, looking for someone.

"Dwayne? Could you come out here. This gentleman needs some help."

Cooper shook his head. Now she had it all wrong. He didn't need anything from anyone named Dwayne. He needed help from her. He needed her.

"Just come on," he said. He reached over the counter and took hold of her arm and when she started to protest he grabbed her other arm and lifted her over the counter.

"Dwayne! Help!"

Dwayne came running from the kitchen, took one look at the size of the man who had hold of Sybil, and stopped in his tracks. He let them go out the door before he called for the police.

But the police were already there. A cop stood next to Mayvis's Oldsmobile, peering inside. He straightened up when he saw Cooper advancing towards him, half carrying and half dragging a girl.

"Is this your car, sir?" the cop asked, trying to figure out just what was going on between the man and the girl.

He was always reluctant to involve himself in domestic disputes, but this one seemed awfully one-sided.

The man kept coming straight at him, not slowing down at all, holding the girl with just one arm now.

"You can't drive around with your rear end like that," the cop said, knowing even as he said it that he was too late to help himself.

Cooper grabbed the cop's neck and pushed his head into the side of the car. He did it twice more until the cop went limp and then he kicked him once for good measure as he fell.

The girl was kneeling over the fallen policeman, making wailing noises and Cooper got into the car and was about to leave when he remembered why he was there in the first place. He grabbed the girl and yanked her into the car and drove off.

Pegeen made the call hoping Deputy Crist would be away from her desk, too busy to talk, out of communication, anything but there so that Pegeen would not have to speak to her directly. If she wasn't around, Pegeen could fax the information and be done with it. She remembered the baleful stare which Karen had given her at their last encounter and had no illusions that the other woman would have forgotten who she was. She was the nitwit who had sat around in the motel bedroom while the Deputy Director's man took an unscheduled, spontaneous, and poorly explained shower in the other room.

No one believed in the innocence of the occasion and Pegeen didn't blame them, but the men who knew of it were assuming the guilt was Becker's.

Karen Crist, however, blamed Pegeen, and she did so because she saw the guilt in Pegeen's face. You couldn't hide that from another woman, although men, God knows, were as clueless as stumps about such things.

It's not that I actually did anything, Pegeen thought defensively, it's not that anything actually happened I didn't even towel him off. He came out of the bathroom fully dressed and we left. But of course the facts were beside the point in Karen Crist's mind-it was what Pegeen felt about John Becker that mattered, and Pegeen knew that. And agreed. She was just as guilty in her own mind as she was in Crist's. The difference was that in her own mind being guilty didn't make her bad.

To her dismay, the Bureau in New York put her call straight through.

"Director Crist, this is Special Agent Pegeen Haddad from the Nashville office."

Yes.

She remembers me all right, Pegeen thought. Thank God it's not a television phone. "There's been a development in the Darnell Cooper case, and we have instructions to keep you posted personally..

"Yes."

Like talking point-blank to a glacier. All that came back was a blast of cold air.

"We have a report of a stolen car. The suspect was working at a fast-food restaurant under the name of Darnell Cooper. He was also wanted for questioning about a purse snatching that took place on the highway three days earlier. He's also suspected of being involved in a robbery and assault with a motor vehicle at a service station."

"Yes?"

"He is also believed to have been involved in an assault on a police officer and the abduction of a young woman just outside of Chattanooga."

"Not exactly covering his tracks. Where is he now?"

"Local and state police are in pursuit, but he has eluded them so far."

Pegeen could not remember ever saying I eluded" aloud before. Get any stiffer and you'll be catatonic, kid.

"Kidnapping is a federal offense," Pegeen said, having trouble believing that she was hearing herself correctly.

"It falls under our jurisdiction."

She probably didn't know that, Pegeen, you halfwit.

Good of you to enlighten her, she'll appreciate it.:'I see," Karen said.

'So we're entering the case directly," Pegeen continued. She could feel the waves of hostility pouring through the phone and straight into her ear.

"Good. Was there anything else?"

"Well…" How about if I drive a spike through my head, will that make you happy? Pegeen thought. "No."

Pegeen felt that she should say something more, but she didn't know what it should be. It didn't seem that an agent in her position should be the one to terminate a conversation with an assistant deputy director, however.

Surely that prerogative belonged to the senior agent.

Karen did not oblige her, however, and the silence between them grew and expanded uncomfortably and the longer it stretched the more it seemed to fill with the unspoken. Becker. Pegeen had sat silently with a mute telephone to her ear before, but only with boys, only with romantic interests when the silence had been filled with unspeakable longing, never with another woman. An FBI agent, her superior, a tough-assed careerist federal officer.

It gave her the creeps.

Pegeen cleared her throat discreetly.

"One thing," Karen said.

"Yes?"

"Watch your ass."

The phone line went dead and Pegeen replaced the receiver as if it were something unclean. Watch my ass?

Meaning, be careful in your pursuit of Cooper? Or meaning, stay away from my man or I'll feed your giblets to the cats? Was this the way an assistant deputy director normally spoke to other agents? Watch my ass?

I won't have to, Pegeen thought. She'll be watching it for me.

It was only later, as she replayed the conversation in her mind for the hundredth time while driving towards Chattanooga, that her own thought about driving a spike through her head reminded her of Becker's comment about how to kill a werewolf. Why had he referred to himself like that?

Did he really think of himself that way?

Why did he perceive himself as a bad man when Pegeen could see so clearly that he wasn't? The man needed help and understanding, and it was obvious he wasn't going to get it from Crist, the frost queen. Some men were salvageable and some were not. She had pretty well come to the conclusion that Eddie, the man she was seeingsort of-fell into the category of irretrievable junk goods.

After six months he had proved to be as receptive to improvements as a shack made of wet cardboard. There was simply very little adjusting the structure could handle.

Also, Eddie had broken up with her twice already. She wasn't entirely certain that they weren't broken up right at the moment. Eddy was nonattentive as he was at the best of times, it was hard to tell.

It might be time to give up on Eddie, she thought. There were times when a girl wanted to feel that she was free to explore other opportunities.

Karen Crist couldn't hate her that much without some good reason.

The girl was worse than useless to him. Every time he took his hand from her mouth she started crying again, and the crying soon built into wailing, no matter how many times he told her to shut up. When Cooper asked her to help him, all she did was wail some more, so he hit her because he didn't know what else to do. He hurt his knuckle on her head, hurt it badly and he had to drive with that hand pressed against his lips while she continued to cry, moaning now along with it. It was driving him crazy.

She made so much noise that he didn't,hear the police sirens as soon as he usually would have and he almost didn't make the turn into the woods in time. The police went speeding past the access road, and Cooper drove as far as he could on the rutted path until it seemed to stop of its own accord at the base of a hill where two small streams joined together.

Cooper could hear sirens u ulating in the distance as the cop car bounced on the narrow path. He grabbed the girl with his left hand because one knuckle on his right was now hugely swollen and very painful. She clung to the steering wheel, howling, and Cooper was forced to squeeze her throat until she let go. She was still after that and he tossed her over his shoulder and started up the hill. Her silence was such a relief.

The hill was steep and Cooper's knuckle throbbed painfully with every step. Running down the other side was even worse, as each step jolted his legs and ran straight through his arm. The terrain changed on the far side of the hill and the clay soil of the woods gave way to a sandy loam that grew wetter with each step. He had gone only a few hundred yards before his shoes sank up to his ankles in muck, and each stride was accompanied by a loud sucking sound.

Cooper was well into the swamp before he realized that he could no longer hear the sirens behind him. He paused, listening to hear if he was being pursued, but it took him several moments before he could hear anything over his strained breathing. After a time he could discern voices, several people, yelling at each other, but they were too far away for him to make out what they were saying.

He continued, using the voices as a guide, heading away from them.

Otherwise there was nothing to serve as a landmark, no way to tell where to go, just funny-looking trees and weird grass that looked solid but wasn't.

Sometimes his legs sunk as deep as his calves and sometimes they barely dipped below the surface at all and there was no way to tell which it would be ahead of time.

He sucked on his knuckle as he trudged ahead, trying to remember what someone had told him once about telling direction by the sun. He could find the sun all right, but he didn't understand what it was supposed to be telling him. He decided the best thing would be to just head straight for it. He changed his course, veering towards the sun, and noticed that he was walking straight into the shadows. They were drawn as straight as lines, like arrows showing him the way. Cooper realized he had discovered the secret. He would simply follow the shadows and the sun would take him away from his pursuers and towards safety.

His shoes had been sucked off by the mud long since and when he lifted his knuckle to his mouth he noticed that his entire right hand was blown up to twice its size.

It hurt anywhere he touched it and it even pained him when he waved it in the air to aid his balance. He stumbled crossing a small pond and fell to one knee and the girl's body slid off his shoulder and into the water. Cooper was surprised to see her; he had forgotten about her, forgotten the added weight on his back. He studied her for a moment, trying to remember why he had brought her with him. He had wanted her to help him, but he couldn't see how she could help him now.

She wasn't so pretty now with her face and hair wet and muddy and the big, darkening bruise on the side of her forehead. One eye was swollen shut with a lump that reminded Cooper of his own hand. She was the reason he hurt himself, he realized with sudden anger. It was her fault that he couldn't use his hand. It was her fault that the police were chasing him. He ought to kill her, he ought to yank her head right off.

He ought to push her under the water and leave her there, stick her head right down into the mud with her feet in the air like a fence post.

He reached for her throat with both hands before he realized what he was doing, and the pain in his right hand was so great that he dropped to his knees again. He cradled his bad hand across his chest and rocked back and forth, moaning. In the distance, but closer than before, he heard the voices calling to each other. Cooper lurched to his feet and marched in the direction the shadows showed him.

The shadows had grown very long when Cooper slumped down at the base of a tree. He was exhausted from fighting against the muck all day and very hungry.

He tried to remember the last time he had eaten and he couldn't. The swelling from his hand had increased and the skin looked so tight he was afraid it would just pop open all by itself. Any motion of his arm burned like fire now and he had to walk with his left hand clamping his right arm against his body as if he were holding himself together. As a result, his balance was bad and he fell often. He was covered with mud and his body itched from head to toe.

He was miserable now, but he hadn't been happy since he left prison. He missed his punk, who took care of him whenever he hurt himself or didn't feel well. The punk was as good as a nurse, fluttering around and feeling Cooper's forehead for a fever and giving him rubdowns and making sure he was warm enough, and then telling him stories and talking to him for hours, which was something no nurse would ever do. He never had to worry about his meals in prison, either. He knew when they were and they were always there when they were supposed to be. The servers always made sure that Old Coop got an extra-large helping, too. Everybody took care of him in prison, in one way or another, and everybody knew him.

He hated it on the outside, Cooper realized. It wasn't home, it wasn't anything like home. The only good thing he could remember since he got out was the time in the car with the girl but then she even went and spoiled that the second time by acting like she didn't know what to do.

The punk always knew what he was supposed to do, and he always did it right or else Cooper kicked his ass.

People on the outside never seemed to do anything right, whether he kicked their ass or not.

He thought again of the punk. Swann, that was his name. The punk would be pleased that Cooper remembered. If they sent him back to Springville, he would want to have the punk in his cell again. Those things could be arranged. Cooper knew how to do it. If someone else was living with Swann, Cooper would kick his ass until he gave the punk back to Cooper.

The punk belonged with Cooper. He would be happy to see Cooper again, there was no doubt about that, and they would have a lot to tell each other after Cooper's visit to the outside.

He couldn't walk any faster than he was going, but no matter how fast he went, the voices seemed to get closer.

He thought he could see higher ground in the distance.

Maybe that meant he would get out of this swamp and onto dry ground again. Then he could steal a car and get away from them that way. He didn't understand how they could all walk so much faster than he could, but he didn't think they could drive any faster.

As he got closer he could see that it really was a hill and it looked as dry as he could ever hope for. Cooper drove himself even faster until each breath rasped and tore at his lungs. Just at the base of the hill he tripped, his feet unaccustomed to solid ground. Instinctively he threw his arms put to stop his fall and the impact on his bad hand was so painful he could not keep from screaming. He felt bone grate against bone in his knuckle and heard it, too.

It was the sound of it that made him pass out.

When he came to, he heard voices closing in on him, then heard one of them, a woman's voice, calling to the others. Her voice was very close, so close he could reach out and touch her. Cooper kept his eyes squeezed shut, thinking maybe he wouldn't be seen if he just lay where he was.

"Don't move, you sack of shit," the woman's voice said. She sounded really pissed off and scared, too. "I'll blow you fucking away if you move, Cooper."

He was so surprised to hear his name that he opened his eyes. A young woman with funny red hair was standing over him, pointing a gun at him with both hands. She wore a jacket that said FBI in big letters. A radio on her belt crackled and an anxious voice said, "Just hold him there, Haddad. Don't try anything else, just keep him in place."

"I want Swann," Cooper said. He started to shift his weight so he could sit up and he realized that the woman had put handcuffs around his ankles.

The woman kicked his bad hand with her toe and he screamed again and slumped backwards.

"Don't fuck with me," said Pegeen. "Where's the girl?"

Cooper didn't know what she meant so he said nothing.

She nudged his hand again and he yelped like a dog.

"I asked you where's the girl. Unless you want me to do a dance on that paw of yours, tell me where she is."

She didn't look mean, Cooper thought. She looked like she was trying to pretend she was bigger than she was, but sure acted mean.

"I'm going to count to five," Pegeen said, "then I'm going to stand on your hand. You understand me, Cooper?":'Yes," said Cooper.

'Where's the girl?"

"What girl?"

" Sybil Benish. The kid you took into the swamp with you, asshole."

"She left me," Cooper said.

"What did you do to her? Did you hurt her?… Answer me! Did you hurt her?"

Cooper stared at Pegeen, uncomprehending. Had he hurt the girl? He didn't think so; he didn't remember hurting her. He was the one who was hurt.

"One." 'If I tell you, can I live with Swann?"

"Two."

She lifted one foot and held it over his bad hand. Cooper tried to move it away, but it was like a deadweight at the end of his limb and the entire arm seemed to have stopped working. He put his good hand in the air over the injured one to shield it.

"Where is she?"

"She fell off, I left her back there where I was," Cooper said.

"Three," she said.

I told you," Cooper pleaded, but she stamped her'foot onto his hand anyway.

When Cooper came to again there was a swarm of men in FBI jackets running over the hill towards him. The girl still hovered over him, looking enraged and ready to hurt him some more.

As the men converged around him, Cooper was crying, "Get her away from me," and trying to climb up the slope on his ass.

Hatcher met Quincy Beggs at the Congressman's home, where the politician was hosting an informal dinner — for twelve would-be campaign contributors. Ten florid-faced men and two highly lacquered women greeted Hatcher courteously, all professing delight at meeting such a highly placed FBI agent, and with few exceptions feigning an interest they did not have. Hatcher's arrival was unannounced-indeed his invitation to such an event would have been inappropriate both socially and ethically-and after the social amenities had been observed, Beggs wasted no time in escorting Hatcher to his study.

"I would have waited until business hours," Hatcher said, "but I felt you would appreciate hearing right away."

He could in fact have simply told Beggs his news on the telephone, but Hatcher knew the importance of the personal appearance at the right time. Good news delivered over the telephone seems to come from out of the blue. Good news delivered in person comes from the messenger.

Hatcher would be there to share in the triumph, Hatcher would be there to modestly deny the credit, Hatcher would be recognized as the source of the blessing, not the telephone, not the impersonal machinery of the Bureau.

"I'm sure you did the right thing," said Beggs. "Just a few of my constituents. Do them good to see that I actually work for a living."

Beggs laughed. Hatcher managed a limp smile.

Beggs stuck a cigar the length of a pencil into his mouth and waggled it back and forth with his tongue. He no longer smoked them, but still used them as theatrical props. The Congressman felt they gave him a manly appearance.

"So? What's up?"

Hatcher gestured to a chair. "May I?"

"Good heavens, 'course, man, sit, sit. Don't know where I put my manners."

Hatcher carefully sat and arranged one leg over the other, tending to the crease in his trousers. There was an art to delivering good news, and it took a bit of time and preparation. Just as one did not do it over the telephone, so one did not blurt it out and have done with it, If one was seated, one became a part of the event. The auditors could not dismiss a seated man with a quick handshake and a pat on the back the way they might get rid of a standing courier before rushing off to celebrate with those they cared about. Courtesy demanded that someone seated be treated with deliberation and attention. A standing man was a messenger. A seated man was an equal.

Beggs rolled the cigar impatiently. He didn't like Hatcher, he didn't know anyone who did, but this was Washington and personal tastes were always subordinate to other considerations. The quid pro quo was observed, no matter how little personal regard was involved in the transaction, compromise being the currency without which the political process would be bankrupt. No matter how clumsy a performer Hatcher might be, nor how transparent his motives, it had to be granted that he handled the proper steps, honored the rituals, played the game according to the universally recognized rules. Advancement was a matter of accruing favors owed and then cashing them in, and grace and subtlety were ultimately nothing more than frills. What mattered was whether or not you could deliver the goods, and an outright enemy with his arms full of gifts was more welcome than an empty-handed friend. Not that Hatcher was Beggs' enemy, of course.

Beggs didn't care that much about him.

"You will recall that we had a conversation some while ago concerning a possible lead in a. case that touched you personally?" Hatcher began.

"I do indeed."

"And I undertook to make that investigation a matter for my personal-ah-consideration."

"Which I did appreciate, let me tell you."

"Only too happy to help where I can," said Hatcher.

What a phoady, thought Beggs. Obsequious and smug at the same time.

He'll go far.

Hatcher continued. "Naturally I couldn't neglect my other duties, but whenever possible I made the case my own. I flew to Nashville to personally debrief the agents, for instance."

"Certainly appreciate your efforts," said Beggs.

"One likes to think one played a part, but of course all credit goes to the Bureau itself. Many dedicated men and women, each doing their bit."

You made your point-I owe you! Beggs wanted to thunder. Get the hell on with it. Instead, he removed the cigar from his mouth and studied the end of it as if it were actually lighted.

"Fantastic organization," said Beggs.

"Those of us who are entrusted with the responsibility strive very hard to keep it that way," said Hatcher. He, too, studied Beggs' cigar as if to discern the mystery of the nonexistent ash.

"We all owe you a debt of gratitude," said Beggs.

"And I, for one, am a man who honors my debts." There, it's said aloud, let's get on with it.

Hatcher managed a watery smile, casting his eyes to the floor, too modest to speak. Momentarily.

Beggs cleared his throat before replacing the cigar in his mouth, signaling that the preliminaries were over.

"I'm happy to be able to report some good news," Hatcher responded on cue. "Excellent news, most excellent."

"What!" Beggs said curtly. The man was more longwinded than an Alabama senator.

"We have apprehended the man who abducted your niece."

"Good God! You've caught him?"

"Yes, sir."

"After all these years, you've actually caught him?"

"Yes, sir, I'm happy to be able to say that we have him in custody."

"Christ, that's wonderful! Do you know how many votes that's worth?"

"I knew you would be gratified."

"Gratified, shit. I'm a — s good as reelected, man! Can I announce this? I mean, is it all wrapped up?"

"I thought perhaps a joint announcement. You and I together..

"Of course, of course-but I mean, is it a done deal?

You actually have him in custody and you can keep him?

We're not going to have some civil libertarian lawyer getting him out on a technicality?"

"Naturally he has to be tried in a court of law..

"I'm not going to wait three years for a goddamned verdict and have him get off on insanity or some such shit. Hatcher, I'm asking you, is this wrapped up? Can I go public? We… can we go public?"

"Yes, sir," said Hatcher. "Not only do we have the perpetrator in custody, the man has confessed."

"Beautiful," said Beggs.

"Did you wish to contact the girl's parents, or shall we?"

"The girl's parents?"

"The parents of the deceased," said Hatcher. "Your niece."

The dead girl had been the daughter of Beggs' wife's brother, an unemployed mine worker who had deserted the girl and her mother when the girl was six years old.

Beggs had played up his relationship at the time of her disappearance because it gave him a vehicle of public sympathy and outrage that he rode all the way to elective office. He had not heard from the girl's mother in years.

His wife's brother continued to apply for handouts on a regular basis.

"You do that," Beggs said. "You deserve the credit."

Hatcher launched into another round of modest demurral, but neither man paid much attention to it. Both of them were looking forward to the press conference, and beyond.

Becker had prepared a cassoulet, a French casserole dish that called for beans, tomatoes, onions, celery, wine, salt pork, duck drippings, lean pork, lamb, garlic or Polish sausage, and either roast duck or canned, preserved goose.

Improvising to meet the nature of his larder, Becker omitted the salt pork, duck drippings, pork, lamb and duck or goose and substituted hot Italian sausage. He then doubled up on the beans and threw in a package of spinach because it seemed the thing to do. Having brewed the mess for a couple of hours, he sampled it as Jack entered the kitchen.

"Soccer cleats outside the door, for the hundred thousandth time,"

Becker said, pulling the wooden spoon gingerly towards him, blowing away the steam.

"Sorry, I forgot," said Jack. The boy sat and removed his soccer shoes and left them directly in the middle of the kitchen door. It was a talent that Becker had noted before. School bags, shoes, clothing-all sloughed off Jack's body when he entered the house as freely as if it were so much dried skin, but somehow the pattern was not random. Things did not just lie where they fell. With an inevitability that promised design, every item ended up where it would be most surely in the way.

Shoes were never in the corner, the school bag never behind a chair.

Everything was placed, or tossed, or shrugged off, squarely in the middle of the busiest pathway. Doorways seemed to be a favorite, but the hallways got their share of detritus, too. When Jack was home, it was impossible to walk a straight route to anywhere else in the house.

Becker decided the beans were passable if one were just tasting, better if the consumer was hungry. He hoped that Karen was ravenous.

"What's for dinner? I'm starving," Jack announced.

"Jack, old pal, you're in luck. I've got just the meal for you."

"What is it?" Jack asked suspiciously.

"Ask not what it is. Ask what it is not." Becker made a great show of inhaling the aromas from the pot. He knew that the best he could do was lure Jack into one exploratory taste. If the boy didn't like it at first blush, no amount of cajoling or threatening would make him eat more.

Becker cooked for himself and Karen. Jack appeared to live on plain spaghetti and peanut butter sandwiches, yet had the energy of ten men and was growing like a patch of kudzu.

"What it is not?"

"The recipe called for duck droppings," Becker said.

"Gab!"

"Well, it's French."

"Gross."

"The problem was, I couldn't find any duck droppings.

You don't feel like running over to Scribner's park and getting some, do you?"

"That's disgusting… Where's Scribner's park?"

"That's the official name of the town pond where you swim all summer."

Becker and Jack opened their mouths and eyes cartoon wide, stared at each other for a second, then screamed. It was a well-practiced routine that drove Karen crazy but pleased the two of them.

"So I had to be creative," Becker continued. "Since I didn't have any duck droppings, I paid a visit to Emily."

Emily was Jack's rabbit. "Bunny droppings make a pretty good substitute.

Want to try some, Jack?"

Becker advanced on the boy with the spoon.

Karen entered her house with Gold to find Becker and her son screaming at each other.

"They do that," she explained to Gold.

"A lot?"

"Too much," she said. To Becker she said, "Look what I brought you."

"Ah," said Becker. Karen thought he was suddenly holding the spoon as if it were a weapon.

"Jack, say hello to Dr. Gold," she said and Jack dutifully held out his hand to be shaken and muttered "hello."

The boy waited uncomfortably as Gold made a fuss over him, his size, his age, his grand appearance, then, when the adults had turned their attentions from him, he slipped away.

"You're looking well, John," Gold said.

Becker regarded Karen questioningly.

"I just brought him," Karen said. "I have no comment, no further part in this. I'll leave you two to it," Karen said, easing out the door.

"Oh, no," Becker said. "You brought him, you deal with him."

"I can't," Karen said. "If you don't want to talk to him, fine, but you'll have to drive him to the train station yourself. I'm tired."

"I can't really talk in front of Karen," Gold said.

"Why not? She's with the Bureau, she's got a higher clearance for any classified than I do-if I have any clearance left at all. I don't have any secrets from her."

"No, but I do," Gold said.

Bowing elaborately, Karen withdrew.

"I think it's best that Karen not be involved in this conversation at this point," Gold said. "It's best for her, that is."

"Are you trying to seduce me with mysteries, Gold? I've got beans to cook."

"I like beans."

"Why didn't you just call me if you wanted some advice? "

"Because there's some material I want you to look at… And it's not a conversation I want anyone to overhear. For that matter, I don't want any mail going back and forth between us that someone might log in. This is just a social visit as far as anyone else is concerned. Including Karen. I just asked her for a ride."

"But we're not exactly social friends, are we?"

"Would you prefer it as a doctor-patient visit?"

"You make house calls now?"

"Under certain circumstances."

"Why didn't you just get in your car and drive out here yourself, why bring Karen into it at all?"

"One, I don't have a car. I live in New York-who needs a car?"

"Try again."

"I was hoping that if I came in under Karen's auspices you'd at least give me a hearing."

"Well, there you go, finally. Confession is good for the soul, right, Doc?"

"I'm sneaking around like this because Hatcher would have my ass if he knew about it. If he knew what I was about to do, he would probably consider it highly disloyal."

"I realize I'm being suckered-but I'm all ears," said Becker. "Anyone disloyal to Hatcher has earned my attention."

"I know that," Gold said, "but I didn't just say it for effect."

Gold placed a pocket tape recorder on the table and positioned two minicassettes beside it.

"You know they caught this man Cooper, the cellmate of the prisoner who wrote to you and warned you about him."

"Yeah."

"The Behavioral Sciences people are having a field day with him. He's told them about killings that go back years.

We're going to have local cops cleaning up their records all over the place. The Bureau's national crime statistics are going to go down. I mean, this person is a one-man crime wave. He's stuffed bodies in culverts and tossed them out of moving cars and left them for dead right and left, mostly marginal types, migrant workers, drifters, the kind of people who wind up dead in the parking lot of some roadside tavern in Tennessee and are never investigated very heavily."

"So you've got him-what's the problem?"

"As far as the Behavioral people are concerned, no problem at all.

They're delighted to talk to him and to adjust their profile of serial killers. And of course Director Hatcher has been able to deliver the guy who kidnapped and killed the niece of Congressman Beggs. Cooper has become a sort of Golden Boy amongst villains."

"As long as Hatcher is pleased."

"Everybody is pleased. Cooper is talking like a guest on 'Oprah." He can't say enough bad things about himself.

He's a little vague on the details, sometimes, but he's sure as hell willing. Prompt him a bit and he can remember most of it, at least enough to fry himself several dozen times over."

"You've been in on the questioning?"

"John, everybody's been in on the questioning. This is the prize bull, they're walking him around the ring for everyone to have a look. I mean, there's a cachet involved in being in on it; if you get a chance to watch it, you take it. Cooper's like tickets to the Super Bowl. You can't pass them up even if you don't like football. I was invited to watch an interrogation session. Somebody thought it would improve my understanding, I guess, give me more insight into what our agents have to deal with, something like that. I was just pleased someone thought I was important enough to invite."

"He confessed to the two girls in the coal mine?"

"Absolutely. Told us where he snatched them and when and how he tortured them with cigarettes and matches until they finally died. That was a revelation in itself They only found skeletal remains of the girls and no indication of how they died. They found a number of cigarettes and candle wax on the site but assumed they were being used just so the girls, or someone, could see.

He had a lot of details like that, stuff that only the killer would have known."

"So Hatcher has an easy conviction, gets national headlines-and you know that somehow they'll be his headlines-and gets in tight with the head of the Oversight Committee, all at the same time. Gosh, I'm glad you paid me this visit, Gold. Just what I need to hear."

"John, I'm not on the law enforcement side of things, you know that. I spend my time trying to help you agents adjust to what you have to deal with. Once in a while I make a contribution to a psychological profile of some unknown perp. You tell me I'm usually wrong with those."

"Only in the important details."

"Thank you. So I'm no expert on the criminal mind, granted. But I'm not an idiot, either. I know a deeply violent, dangerous man when I see one, and Cooper is a deeply violent, dangerous man. A very stupid man, too.

Plus he's got a system of values that he picked up from being in and out of penal institutions from the age of fifteen on. He makes my blood run cold. He uses his strength-and the guy's as big as a gorilla-to get his way. He's got a frustration level of practically zero, cross him and he'll throw you through a window because he can't figure out a better way. Of all the guys I've heard about in the years I've been in the Bureau, this one is at the head of my list of people I wouldn't want to be stuck in a blind alley with. His violence quotient is enormous.

He even dreams about pulling people's heads off. I mean literally pulling their heads off their shoulders."

Becker sat quietly, listening attentively while keeping his eyes on the tape recorder. He knew that Gold had not yet come to the point. He also knew that when he did, Becker was not going to like it.

"There are a lot of very nasty men I wouldn't put on that dark alley list, by the way. Dyce, the one who took men home and drained their blood because he liked to look at corpses..

"I remember Dyce," Becker said almost inaudibly. He had captured Dyce himself and come within a breath of killing him. Becker's restraint was considered by Gold to be a signal mark of improvement. Becker was far less certain.

"Of course you do. I'm sorry if that's a painful allusion, but my point is, I wouldn't be afraid to be in a dark alley with Dyce. I wouldn't feel comfortable about it, mind, but I wouldn't feel in immediate danger because Dyce was not randomly violent. He was basically a very passive man. When he acted out his awful fantasies, he did it with a purpose, he didn't just lash out at the nearest male. He had something very specific in mind. So do all serial killers… Am I right about that?"

Becker nodded slowly.

"If you saw Dyce on the street, you wouldn't even notice him. If you saw Cooper coming, believe me, you'd step aside to get out of his way."

"Just play the tape," Becker said.

"Right. Cut to the chase."

"With respect, Gold, I don't need a primer on serial killers."

"Sorry. I need to convince myself, I think. It helps to hear my arguments aloud. Not that they're arguments. I just don't quite understand."

"Play it."

"Right. Okay, this is what I consider the relevant part of the session I sat in on. He's already told us what and when and where about the girls in the coal mine, very specific as I said. The voice you recognize is mine. I only asked the one question. They looked pretty annoyed that I spoke at all."

Becker nodded and Gold started the recorder. A deep voice came from the machine. Even in this form and despite the masculine timbre, there was a quality of childishness in the speaker that came through clearly "I took her into the cave so we could be alone," Cooper said.

"Why did you want to be alone with her, Darnell?"

Becker did not recognize the voice of the interrogator.

"So I could hurt her," Cooper said.

"You could hurt her anywhere. Why did you take her into the cave?"

"So I could hurt her for a long time," Cooper said.

There was a pause, and then Becker recognized Gold's voice.

"What did it feel like when she died?"

"What did it feel like?" Becker could almost see the shrug of shoulders implicit in Cooper's tone. "I didn't care. She didn't mean anything to me."

"Do you like to hurt people, Darnell?" another voice asked.

"Yeah," said Cooper.

"Does it excite you to hurt other people?"

"Sometimes."

"Tell us how you feel when you hurt someone."

"I feel good."

"Do you feel better when you hurt men, or women?"

"Yeah," said Cooper.

There was a puzzled silence@ "Do you like to hurt men more than you like hurting women?"

"I like it all," said Cooper. "I like to pull their heads off."

"Why do you like to pull their heads off, Darnell?":'Don't call me Darnell." 'What would you like me to call you?"

"Call me Coop."

"All right, Coop. Why do you like to pull their heads off?"

"You could call me ol' Coop. I like that."

"Tell us about pulling their heads off."

"That's how strong I am."

Becker switched off the machine. Gold let him sit in silence for a time.

"What did he do when he was released?" Becker asked at last.

"He raped a young woman, stole her car. Tried to drive the car over a filling station attendant, kidnapped another young woman, battered a local cop pretty good, hit the young woman in the head a couple of times, tried to strangle her, left her in a swamp."

"Did he kill either one of the women?"

"No. But he thinks he did. He left them for dead, let's put it that way." '-'What did they say? Were they conscious or unconscious when he left them?"

"The first one, the one whose car he stole, said she played dead and he lost interest in her. The second one was really unconscious. She had severe bruising on her throat and some damage to her neck. It looks as if he really did try to pull her head off."

Becker rose and turned off the heat under the pot of beans.

"So what do you want from me?" he asked.

"I don't understand the disparity… You heard it, right?"

"Let me get Karen," Becker said. "I don't want to have to go through it twice."

"Are you sure you want her in on it?"

"How else? Do you think I'm the Lone Ranger-I'm going to go riding in by myself? I don't have the authority to do anything on my own, even if I wanted to, which I emphatically do not."

Becker summoned Jack and Karen and the adults ate beans while Jack dined on spaghetti with butter and broccoli. Jack was excused from the table and Becker served coffee.

"We could go into the living room," Karen said.

"We'll stay here," Becker said, closing the kitchen door. "I don't want Jack to hear any of this."

"Meaning I'm to be let in on the big secret?" Karen asked.

"Don't be too happy about it," Becker said. "You're not going to like it."

"Somehow I guessed that. Okay, let's hear it."

Becker looked at Gold, offering him the chance to speak first.

"I'm not the expert," Gold said defensively. "I just thought I noticed something odd and came for advice. I haven't reached any conclusions myself"

"My ball, is it?" Becker asked.

"I'm really just a spectator here," Gold said.

"Could we drop the sports analogy?" Karen asked.

"John, just say it."

"Gold tells me that this Cooper is confessing to being responsible for half the national crime statistics. Has any of it checked out yet?"

"Some," Karen said cautiously. "There are a couple of unexplained deaths of migrant workers about ten years ago that match up pretty well with his story. There was a vicious assault on a homosexual in Spartanburg several years ago that was listed as an attempted murder. The man didn't actually die, but we can see why Cooper thought he did-that matches his story. There were the two girls in the coal mine. He had his facts right on those."

"Anything else?"

"We're still checking. Most of them were quite a while ago. He's been in prison for the last five years. Why? Do you think there are more?"

"How did the migrant workers die?"

"One of them was stabbed. Disemboweled, according to the report. The other's head was bashed in with a blunt instrument, probably a rock, the autopsy said."

"And the homosexual who wasn't killed? What happened to him?" John asked.

"He was beaten-kicked and beaten with fists and feet, I gather. He did not volunteer any information, said he didn't remember what happened."

"And where were these things done, the workers and the homosexual?"

"Where were they done?"

"in a mine, in a basement, a closet, an abandoned warehouse?"

Karen paused. "No," she said warily. "The homosexual was in a parking lot behind a bar. One of the migrant workers was apparently killed in an orchard but then dragged to a culvert. The other was found in an open field.

There was no suggestion in the report that he had been moved."

"And what's on his sheet? What was he doing time for? I "Armed robbery, assault with intent. His crimes were all violent, if that's what you're after. It is, isn't it?"

"Looking strange, Karen?" John asked her.

"So why would a man whose history is all open violence take two girls to a coal mine and torture them to death? Is that the thrust of all this?

It has occurred to us, you know. We are not completely blind just because we're actively involved in law enforcement," she said.

"That inconsistency didn't trouble anybody?"

"Trouble? No. We noticed it. It's unusual for a serial killer to be impulsively violent as well-but it's not unknown. Harris Breitbart killed three police officers in New Jersey."

"Not until they came to arrest him. After he had been discovered."

"So? He doesn't fit the mold perfectly. We're constantly changing the profile, you know that."

"What's the average intelligence.of a serial killer?"

Karen looked to Gold, deferring.

"Usually higher than average," Gold said.

"It has to be or they wouldn't survive long enough to kill repeatedly.

If they kill once and get caught, they're a murderer. If they're smart enough to stay loose and do it repeatedly, they're a serial killer.

Ergo, they're smarter.

At least that's the assumption, correct?" Becker said.

"Correct," said Karen. "And Cooper is stupid. But you don't have to be a genius to go into an abandoned mine if you're in West Virginia. There are tons of them.

If you leave a body there, it's not going to be found for a long time, whether you did it by planning or just dumb luck. It's not as if he did anything clever, he just did it in the right place."

"So then so far he's inconsistent and lucky."

"Apparently. What are you driving at, John? Do you think he couldn't be both?"

"Somebody could be. I'm not sure Cooper could."

"Look, we're not dealing in theory here. If we were, I'd agree, all right. It's not likely that a man who steals cars and drives them around for several days and assaults cops and gets in fights in bars is also going to slip away into the dark with young women and torture them for a week at a time. In theory. But we know he stole the car, raped a woman, snatched another in broad daylight with several witnesses, tried to drive the car over a gas station attendant. We know those things, they arr facts, not theory," Karen said.

"I'm not questioning that side of him-the stupidly violent side has been his whole life."

"You're not questioning the girls in the mine? That's the strongest part of his story. He remembers that better than any of the other things he did. Those we can verify a lot more concretely than the migrants or the homosexual or any of the other claims. He's got the details only he could know."

"Except for one."

Karen sighed. "Go ahead."

"He knew what he did and he knew when he did it and he knew how he did it-"

"And he knew why he did it," Karen interjected. "He likes to hurt people. You accept that, don't you?"

"Yes, he even knew why he did it. What he didn't know was what it felt like."

"Wrong," said Karen. "I've seen the transcripts. He said it felt good.

Hurting those women made him feel good. That's not terribly articulate, I grant you, but it's good enough for me. You have to consider the source."

"I realize it's good enough for you," John said. "It's good enough for practically anybody, I imagine. You've got enough on Cooper that you could get a conviction in any court in the land… But Gold played me a tape of Cooper's confession… I don't think he did the girls."

"Why are you doing this, John?" She turned to Gold.

"Is this what you came for? What's the matter with you two? You think he's a von Munchausen, is that it? You think he's claiming he killed more people than he did?

We know that's possible. We'll find out, and maybe he killed only half of what he claims, or maybe a third, or maybe only two. But we know the two he did kill. We know."

"You 'know' because he told you," Gold said.

"He didn't make up that confession," Karen said angrily.

"No, he didn't. I agree. But it isn't true, either."

"Why not? Just tell me why in the hell not! What have you two geniuses spotted that nobody else could see?"

Gold put his hands in the air as if submitting. "I didn't spot anything.

I just didn't quite understand."

"What? What don't you understand?"

"Gold asked Cooper one question," Becker said. "He asked him what he felt when the girls died. Cooper said he didn't care."

"He obviously doesn't."

"No," Becker said. His voice had become sad. "Cooper was answering the question as honestly as he could think to do. He doesn't care when he kills someone because that's not why he does it. Men who are that violent are not concerned with the death of their victim, they just want to get rid of them because they are thwarting them in some way. Cooper didn't even bother to find out if half his corpses were even dead. He claimed the homosexual and the woman he raped and the girl he left in the swamp were all dead, and none of them were. He wasn't concerned about their deaths, he just wanted done with them."

"And that's exactly how he reacted to the girls in the coal mine."

"Yes. But that is not the reaction of a man who dragged them in there and tortured them for days and days. That required planning. He had to have light, he had to have food and water, he had to have the right clothes because it's cold that far underground, he had to have restraints of some kind to keep the girls there while he slept… he had to have cigarettes. I'm saying he planned it, kept at it for days, because, as he said, he liked it. It made him feel good. But the best part of the whole thing for a man who is obsessed enough to do it in the first place is not the torture… it's the death. The actual dying is the final payoff, the largest orgasm of all. 'I didn't care' is an impossible response."

Karen looked to Gold for confirmation, but the psychologist kept his eyes on the table. She did not question Becker on his conviction. There were things that he understood that few others did, and she did not want to know the basis of that understanding. She had glimpsed such knowledge and turned away.

"Cooper wasn't lying," Becker continued. "He answered the question the best way he knew how. But he didn't have a better answer because he didn't have the experience." @'Maybe it wasn't a great thing for him. Maybe he thought it would be but it wasn't," Karen said.

"He says he did it twice," Becker said.

"You can't mean he's making it all up."

"He's not making it up," Becker said. "I suspect he believes he actually did it."

"He believes it… but he didn't do it?"

"That's my guess."

"Why in hell would he believe he did it?"

Becker poured himself another cup of coffee.

"I'd just be speculating on that."

"As opposed to what you've been doing? John, with all due respect, you listened to a tape of the confessionand you know that is unauthorized, even having such a tape, don't you, Dr. Gold? — you listened to a tape, you thought about it for what, five minutes? And now you want to overturn the best arrest since Ted Bundy because… well, because it doesn't sound right to you."

"I'm not overturning the arrest. You can put Cooper away for the rest of his life for what you got. But you won't have the guy who killed the girls in the coal mine… But I think we can find him."

"Where? If it's not Cooper, who the hell is it?"

"Cooper got his story from someone. We know he didn't read about it.

That means someone told him.

Someone who knew the details."

"Who?"

"The guy who's had his ear for the past three years, I would imagine.

His cellmate. My friendly correspondent.

Swann."

"You're saying Swann told Cooper about it and Cooper thought he did it?"

"I imagine it was a bit more complicated, but something like that, yes.

Chimed in, Gold. Could it be done?"

"I'm not sure what… are you talking about hypnosis, something like that?" Gold asked.

"Hypnosis, brainwashing, I don't know what you'd call it. Two men are together in a cell for three years. Could one take on the memories of the other?"

"To the extent that he believes those memories are his own?" Gold paused, looked back and forth from Karen to Becker. Finally he shrugged.

"I don't know. If one of them is trying to make that happen, if the other is suggestible enough, if the conditions are right… I don't know. Why not, sure, yes, possible. Things have been done in POW camps by the North Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Chinese-not memory changes, that I know of, but certainly major shifts in value systems, personality makeup, that sort of thing. I mean, it seems to me that something like what you're suggesting could occur, but I'm not saying it did.

"A fine professional waffle," Becker said. "Still, it's good enough for me."

"Well, it's not nearly good enough for me!" Karen said, anger rising in her voice. "Hatcher has already delivered this Cooper to Congressman Beggs as a triumph of FBI persistence and overall brilliance-not to mention Hatcher's own genius, I'm sure-and Beggs has touted it to his constituents as a personal victory in his war on crime. You want me-I assume that's why you invited me to join in on your jerk-off session-you want me to waltz in to Hatcher and say, 'Sorry, but you have to call the whole thing off. Just go tell Congressman Beggs that you made a mistake-not only that, not only that, but tell him the reason I know he made a mistake is that former agent John Becker, one of Hatcher's favorite people, has listened to five minutes' worth of an unauthorized tape that was apparently pirated by a Bureau psychologist-or worse, a completely illegal tape made by the good doctor himself, and don't tell me which, because right now I'm in no mood to find out, and he brought this tape to my home, my home where he played it in private to John Becker, who decided that Cooper, who has already confessed in detail to killing the two girls, is not really lying because he does believe he did it, but still isn't telling the truth because he didn't really do it, he just was talked into thinking he did by his cellmate. Or so John Becker more or less sort of believes." Is that what you want me to do?"

"That's the gist of it," Becker said.

"John, I like my job. I worked real hard to get as high as I've gotten and I was beginning to think I might get even higher, eventually, if I didn't screw up too badly.

You have personal problems with the work. I understand that, I appreciate that, but I don't. I want to keep the job, I want to continue to be able to function as efficiently as possible. I have a son to support, college expenses to prepare for-"

"I give you the information for what it's worth, Karen.

What you do with it is up to you. The morality at the higher reaches of bureaucracy eludes me, I admit it, I have no experience at that height, I get nosebleeds..

"Information? Information? You haven't given me any information, John.

You've given me speculation. You've given me imagination. Those are fine qualities, John, assuming you want me to get tossed out on my ass."

"Maybe I should go into the other room," Gold suggested. He was of the mind that when two people who lived together began calling each other by their first names too frequently, it was time for visitors to depart.

Neither of the other two appeared to have heard him.

"I did not want to demean your contribution, Dr. Gold," Karen said.

"This is extracurricular work for you and I appreciate very much that you care enough to make the special effort."

"It was my curiosity more than anything," Gold said.

"I understand," she said. "And what you and John have come up with, even though it's only a hypothesis, is troubling to me. Very troubling."

"Not irretrievable, though," Becker said. "Both Cooper and Swann are available as much as we want them.

Send the Behavioral Sciences boys to talk to Swann, let them figure it out."

"That's what's troubling," Karen said. "We no longer have Swann."

"He's in Springville-get him transferred to our custody."

"No, John, that's what I'm saying. He isn't in Springville anymore. He's gone-he's out-he's been released."

"Released? How?"

"That was his bargain with Hatcher, his price for cooperating in the capture of Cooper."

"He said he wanted safety."

"He would never have been safe in the prison system, we all knew that.

So did he. Hatcher got his sentence commuted. He was released from prison the day we caught Cooper."

"Cooperate how?" Becker asked.

"He knew where Cooper was."

"How?"

"Apparently Cooper was sending him postcards.

Swann refused to tell us where to look unless Hatcher worked on a commutation of his sentence." Karen shrugged. "Hatcher gets what he goes after. We got the postcards, Swann got his commutation."

"That little shit is free?"

"And vanished. He was supposed to meet with a parole officer three days ago and never showed up. We don't have a clue where he is."

"So Hatcher not only caught the wrong man, he let the real killer loose," Becker said gleefully. "I wonder how Congressman Beggs will react to that bit of news?"

The crowd was so big, so boisterous, so agitated with anticipation that Tommy entertained thoughts of investing in a bigger tent. The whole swing through Kentucky had been like this, the audiences swelling every performance as word of the show spread before them from one town to the next like the bow wave of a ship so that when the Reverend Tommy R.

Walker's Gospel and Healing Meeting arrived, the residents had already been buoyed upwards with excitement. Tonight, though, looked like the best ever. The entire audience nearly swooned en masse when Aural did her solo piece-he was going to miss certain things about her, no question, even the Apostolic Choir of the Holy Ghost sounded better when she joined in. Oh, he'd lose a few from the audience when Aural was gone, but he'd keep most of them, he was sure of that. It was still his show, after all. If only just. And soon it would be all his again, only bigger and better.

Tommy whipped into the healing segment with unusual vigor, curing with great zest, as if nothing could be more fun. They were lined up with their ailments like he was giving away free money, and he worked his miracles quick as he could shout Hallelujah and Praise Jesus. The deacon and the choir were kept so busy catching cascading bodies that they actually worked up a sweat for a change. It was nice for Tommy not to be the only one bathed in perspiration.

He had cured a gallbladder and healed a kidney stone and pushed a lung tumor clean out of a man like it was nothing more than a chip on his shoulder when one of the overheated supplicants grabbed him. The man seized Tommy by the biceps and pulled him close so that their faces were practically touching. His breath was hot and smelled of mint and Tommy blinked as he puffed it into his eyes with every word.

"I've done terrible things," the man said, his voice low and whispery.

"I've done things no man should do."

The man held Tommy so firmly that there was no way the Reverend could free himself short of kicking the man off him. He was small and thin, but he clasped Tommy's arms with all the strength of a man in the grip of conviction. His nose was so close to Tommy's own that the minister had to turn his face and look at him sideways.

Tommy thought he was probably insane, and then he thought of assassination.

"My soul ain't clean," the man said. "I've been places no man should have to go, and Jesus knows I'm sorry, but I can't help it, I just can't help it, I get these thoughts, they won't leave me, they force me to do it."

The deacon had hurried over and was trying to pull the man off Tommy, but he clung like fury.

"You got to cure my heart," the man was saying.

"You got to cleanse me."

"I'm going to do it, too, if you just let loose," Tommy said.

"Thoughts that would drive a man crazy," the man said, his eyes widening.

"Let go of me, son, and I'll heal that heart in no time," Tommy said, trying to smile. The man was pushing himself harder into Tommy the more the deacon tried to pull him off "Only Jesus understands," the man was saying.

"I understand you, son. Now let me go and we'll get the holy power of Jesus working for us."

"You don't understand me," the man said, grasping Tommy even tighter.

"You don't. No one can."

Then the voice of the angel. "I understand you," and a tone so sweet, so manifestly full of patient understanding, of bone-deep sincerity, that the man eased up his grip and turned to look Aural in the face.

"Do you?"

She was standing right next to him. She put her fingers on his arm, that dainty hand coming out of the folds of the robe like soft magic. That half-smile, that goddamned suggestion of holiness and sainthood that Tommy couldn't duplicate no matter how he tried, moved her lips and Tommy watched as it worked its wonders again. The man looked into her face transfixed, the mania and desperation seeping away like a long sigh.

"Only a woman can truly understand a man," Aural said, although Tommy wasn't sure he actually heard the words over the din of the congregation, which was more excited than ever by the new development.

They were shouting at the man to release the Reverend and praying and praising Jesus and generally talking amongst themselves, every voice trying to be louder than the other. But the man heard Aural well enough, and when she told him to unloose Tommy, the man did it, and when she told him, sweet as a mother's kiss, to go back to the audience, he did that, too. She said if he was still troubled after the show she'd talk to him some more and he acted like it was a pure blessing from a saint herself.

Another triumph for the bitch, Tommy thought. Now they think she can calm the berserk and make the insane see reason. Throw away the Thorazine, Aural's here.

Meanwhile Tommy looks like a fool. His own sell Can't even get hisself loose from one small loony. Needs a woman to save him. Might as well give it up right now, change the name to the Aural McKesson Miracle Show, and hand her the business.

Tommy was in a state that night, and even the new variation that Aural had told Rae about, where she did what was called the butterfly, was able to distract him for only so long. Afterwards he was just as riled as ever.