Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 15

Becker found Nate Cohen’s grave and stood before it like a mendicant before a shrine, his hands folded at his waist. Agent Reynolds, watching Becker through binoculars, wondered if he was praying. His head was bowed and he had the look of a man who had come to stay for a while.

Hatcher had told Reynolds that Becker would be there, if not today then the next, and the Duck had been right. “Donald” was usually right, Reynolds had to admit that. It was not a job in which a man could make decisions and hope to do better than be right most of the time. The problem with Hatcher was that when he was wrong he could never admit it; there was always someone else to blame. That someone else was invariably one of the agents under his command. What Hatcher didn’t seem to grasp was that his men would hold his mistakes against him far less if he didn’t shirk the responsibility for them. Apparently, Hatcher’s superiors viewed things differently because the man held on to his job while the agents under him got transferred or held back from promotion. Hatcher was not a hard leader to follow; he made no extraordinary demands-but he was impossible to forgive. That was one of the things Reynolds most admired about Becker. He had never forgiven the Duck and was as vocal about it as Pavarotti with a paying audience. The man told Hatcher to his face what he thought of him while the other agents could only choke back their laughter and sit on their hands to keep from applauding.

Which made Reynolds feel a bit dishonest about what he had to do next, but then Becker wasn’t really even a member of the Bureau now. just some sort of quasi for-the-case temporary agent, and Hatcher was still the man who made out the performance evaluations. Reynolds glanced at his watch and started walking briskly down the hill toward Becker’s car. It had taken Becker three minutes to walk from his car to Nate Cohen’s grave, which meant that Reynolds had at least that much time and probably considerably more, judging by Becker’s leisurely demeanor.

The beeper attached itself by magnet so all Reynolds had to do was make sure the device was turned on, then kneel beside Becker’s car as if he were tying his shoelace in case any of the locals were watching, slap the device under the inside of the frame of the wheel housing, straighten up, and walk back to his own car atop the hill. The entire procedure took one minute and forty-five seconds.

Becker was still at the grave, praying or meditating or thinking, whatever. He was a strange man, Reynolds thought. Good enough company, a regular guy most of the time, but moody. And his thought processes never seemed to be the same as everyone else’s. Not weird, exactly, but as if he jumped steps in logic. Maybe his mind was just faster, Reynolds thought. Or it was always working on things from an angle instead of straight on. Whatever it was, if even half the stories they told about him were true, Becker would be the last man on earth Reynolds would want to have chasing him.

Reynolds radioed to the communications van and confirmed that the beeper’s signal was being received loud and clear, then settled back to work on the day’s crossword puzzle. He wished he had the Sunday Times puzzle; local papers published things for beginners. Reynolds did them in minutes, contemptuously using a pen and never once having to resort to the crossword dictionary in the glove compartment.

When he checked again, Becker was still there. What the hell was he doing, grieving or something? Nate Cohen wasn’t his grandfather, was he?

Becker lifted the piece of gravel from atop Cohen’s headstone and tossed it in his palm. Dyce had been to visit, he was certain of that. There was no way to know just when, but Becker didn’t need evidence. It was recently, since he’d been in Waverly, sometime within the last two weeks.

A spider lowered itself from the plastic flowers in the funerary urn, laying down the second strand of a brand new web. Becker lifted the flowers and saw the empty space in the bottom of the urn where something had once sat amid a circle of moss and dirt.

Raised letters on the bottom of the receptacle had left slight impressions in the dust. Glass bottles were stamped on the base with the manufacturer’s name; the size of the circle would yield the volume of the container. Becker would leave the details for the technicians; they were no longer vital to him. He replaced the flowers and looked up for the first time since finding the grave. The sky was dark and lowering and ever more massive banks of gray clouds were piling up and roiling overhead. It was thunderstorm weather; the electricity in the air could almost be smelled. Whether the storm broke or not, it would be very dark tonight.

Becker glanced up the hill toward the car parked at the top, facing the graveyard. It had been there when Becker arrived and sat there still. He could make out a figure sitting behind the window Hatcher’s idea of inconspicuous, he thought. Not that it mattered now; they had already missed their shot at Dyce in the cemetery.

He had started to leave the cemetery before he realized he still carried Dyce’s marker in his hand. He returned to the grave and replaced the gravel gently atop Nate Cohen’s grave, then picked up another stone from the walk and placed it next to the first. One for himself.

Reynolds saw Becker’s car make a U-tum and head up the hill. For a second he thought of ducking below the seat, but realized it was already too late. Becker pulled up alongside Reynolds and the agent leaned across the seat and rolled down the passenger window.

“How’s it going?” asked Reynolds. “You get some communing done down there?”

“You might want to get some of the snails to look inside the urn at Cohen’s grave,” Becker said.

“I’ll get right on it.”

“Where do I find Hatcher?”

“Does he know you’re in town?”

“Only if your radio works,” said Becker. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

Hatcher preferred to brief Becker while sitting in his car so that the other agents would not overhear the insubordination in Becker’s tone-or the promises Hatcher would have to make. At times like this he wished he smoked so he would have something to cover the nervousness of his hands.

“We searched the house and barn thoroughly,” said Hatcher. “We went into the root cellar, we checked the well house. I’m not saying he’s not lying in the cornfield somewhere, but he’s nowhere in the house or the outbuildings, unless he’s a spider hanging in a corner. There’s enough cobwebs around to…”

“Did you look everywhere?” Becker asked. His tone was flat, almost bored.

“I just said…”

“Did you look in the chimney?”

“The chimney? Did we look in the chimney?… I’d have to ask. Someone probably… The chimney, Becker? Come on.”

“You told me it was a stone house over a hundred years old. It must have a big chimney. Where else didn’t you look?”

“We looked everywhere… except maybe the chimney.”

“In the basement? You checked the foundation there; there aren’t any hidden rooms?”

“We checked. I know you don’t mean to sound insulting, but…”

“The attic?”

“There isn’t an attic, just a few rafters with some boards that didn’t burn completely-you don’t understand, the place looks like it was bombed.”

“So you checked the attic or you didn’t?”

“It’s thirty feet in the air, there is no second floor at all, there is no stairway leading up. There is no attic. What makes you so sure he’s at the farm?”

“I’m not sure, I’m just making sure you checked. He’s still around here, I feel certain of that. The farm is the logical place for him to go. He knows it, he knows where to hide.”

“We saw no sign of him. None. He’s not there.”

“Unless he’s in the chimney.”

“Or maybe he buried himself underground and is breathing through a straw.”

Becker shrugged. “You’re probably right.”

“We’ve already started the house to house; it should take two more days…” Becker was no longer listening. He thinks he knows better than I do, Hatcher thought angrily. He’s convinced I’ve made some mistake but he’s not going to tell me. He’s just going to do things by himself. As usual.

“Can you get a chopper in here in the morning?” Becker asked, gazing straight ahead.

“Do you know how expensive that is?”

“No. How expensive is it?”

“What do you need it for?”

“Where did he put the cars? He’s ditched two of them, his and Tee’s.”

“If he has Tee,” Hatcher said. “We don’t know…”

“There are acres and acres of corn around here; you’ll never find the cars from the ground unless you stumble over them.”

“I’ll see if we can afford a chopper.”

“And I want to be left alone, you understand that.”

“This is my operation,” said Hatcher.

“I won’t interfere with your operation. Don’t you get in the way of mine.”

Hatcher noticed Becker’s clothes for the first time. He was wearing black chinos and a navy blue turtle-neck. The sweater would be black by night, too, and the long neck would roll up to cover most of Becker’s face. Hatcher remembered seeing it the day Becker went after the assassin, Bahoud, in New York. It was his killing outfit.

Hatcher crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits.

“Have it your way, since you will anyway. I won’t interfere.”

Becker turned to face Hatcher. Hatcher felt he was uncomfortably close in the little car.

“You nearly killed me once,” Becker said.

“That wasn’t my fault,” Hatcher said. “Some of the agents got overzealous…”

“Not again.”

“There was a full report on the Bahoud thing, I was cleared…”

“Not again,” Becker repeated. He turned away from Hatcher and started the engine. Dismissed, Hatcher got out of the car.

Becker drove down the county road and caught sight of the farmhouse from atop the hill. He could make out the general layout of the place before the road flattened and he lost sight of it over the corn. Driving at a normal speed, he took the approach road, his eyes taking in every detail as he drove past the Cohen farm and off into the distance. He had not seen much but it would be enough to orient himself when he returned by night.

Thunder rumbled ominously in the west. The cloud cover was now so thick that it was already prematurely dark, as if dusk had come two hours early. Whatever he was going to have to do, Becker reflected that he would have a good night to do it.

Tee woke from what had seemed an endless dream in which a beautiful woman had tied him to the bed and left him, subdued but eager for what was to follow. When she returned he arched to meet her, but she smiled at him with fangs and walked to the bed on six stalklike legs. His eyes fluttered open to see Dyce leaning over him.

“You’re doing fine,” Dyce said in a voice so soft Tee could scarcely hear it above the rush of wind outside.

Dyce’s bearded face vanished for a moment, although Tee made out his form as a darker shape against a dark background. The lightning flashed again and Tee suddenly saw everything in a second, as if in a photograph.

He was lying down, close under a roof in an attic of a house that looked as if it had not survived an air attack. There were gaping holes in the roof, and rafters without crossboards gave way to emptiness below. Dyce was sitting astraddle a rafter, legs dangling into space, and just behind him, several feet away over the void, was a small island of intact flooring just large enough for a man in the fetal position to lie on. On the island was a brown grocery bag, a bottle of spring water, a small container that looked familiar but which Tee could not immediately identify, and a gallon jug.

What held Tee in the air he could not tell, nor could he be sure what Dyce was doing to his arm.

Tee tried to speak but couldn’t, but felt no surprise. He had known somehow on waking that he could not speak and could not move. It didn’t bother him too much; he was more curious than frightened.

Lightning flashed again and Tee could see Dyce massaging his upper arm with his thumb, although he could feel nothing. A dark liquid dripped from a needle in Tee’s arm into an empty spring water bottle.

“We have to speed things up with you,” Dyce said, as if sensing Tee’s curiosity. “I’m sorry to rush things, but we probably don’t have much time. We’ll both just have to do the best we can in the situation.”

Tee realized then that it was Tee’s own blood that Dyce was massaging from Tee’s arm and into the water bottle. The bottle was nearly full and Tee had no idea if it was the first. He felt his heart lurch violently in his chest and for the first time felt the panic of fear.

Dyce kept droning on in his soft, patient voice.

“You’re not really right, of course. I mean, you just don’t really look right. That’s not your fault, of course. It’s nobody’s fault. You’re here-and I can’t tell you how hard it was to get you up the ladder-I nearly gave up, but I couldn’t leave you in the cornfield, you can understand that. And you’re here now, that’s the important thing, and I can’t very well get anyone else under the circumstances, but that young Nordholm was perfect, just perfect. Your friends took him away from me. You can blame them for that.”

Dyce scuttled back across the rafter with surprising agility and put the full bottle of blood on the island. He returned with a fresh, empty bottle and began to massage Tee’s arm once more, pressing his thumb into the vein and sliding it down to the needle.

Tee’s heart lurched again and his eyes widened; he was certain it was about to give out. Dyce stopped and placed his ear on Tee’s chest. His hair bushed against Tee’s chin.

“You’ll be all right, I think,” Dyce said. “That happens sometimes when it goes too fast; that’s why I like to take it slowly. We’ll just stop right here. Now listen to me. Are you listening to me?”

Tee stared at Dyce. His features had become clearer as Tee’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. Dyce put his hand lightly over Tee’s nose.

“If you’re listening, just hold your breath for a count of six… Good, all right, you can breathe normally now. Now listen very carefully. I would normally give you another shot now to keep you quiet, but considering your heart and everything, I think I’d better not, so you’ll just have to cooperate. All right? What you must do is lie very, very still. Even if you feel some sensation coming back to your arms and legs, you must not move a muscle. If you do, first of all you’ll fall and hurt yourself-it’s a very long way down-but also you’ll destroy the illusion and then we’ll just have to start over. Do you understand? Hold your breath if you understand… Good. Keep your breathing as light as you possibly can. I don’t want to see your chest heaving up and down; that makes everything silly. And your eyes have to stay closed the whole time. All right? Now that you’re conscious you’ll be tempted to want to see, but you must avoid that, all right? Hold your breath if you understand… Very good.”

Lightning flashed and thunder followed it so quickly from so nearby that the house seemed to shake. Tee saw the ladder tucked into the space where the roof met the walls. If I could move at all, he thought desperately, if I could nudge the ladder with my foot so it would fall, do something, anything. But he felt so weak and tired, horribly tired.

“It will take me a minute or two to get ready,” Dyce said, propelling himself across the rafter with his hands. “You can keep your eyes open until I tell you.”

Straining his eyes to the side, Tee could see Dyce on his midair island begin to undress.

Becker turned off his headlights before he was halfway up to the crest of the county road. He drove in darkness, his eyes fixed not on the road invisible in front of him, but on the silhouette of the farmhouse that stood against the dark sky.

Coasting with his foot off the gas, he counted seconds from the moment the car started downhill. It had taken a count of twelve when he did it in the daylight. At eleven he geared down into second, using his handbrake to slow the car so that the flash of red brake lights would not betray him. His right front tire slipped over the edge of the roadside ditch, and Becker compensated accordingly with the wheel, pulling the car onto the access road. He was moving beneath the shelter of the corn now and was hidden from the view of the house, but still he drove with his lights out. If he turned them on, they would splash off the corn and into the air like a warning beacon for Dyce. If Dyce was there.

Becker waited for a flash of lightning, fixed the path in his mind, and drove straight ahead until the image faded from his retina. Then he stopped and waited for the next flash. When he was within a few yards of the entrance to the farmyard, he stopped. Timing his move with a clash of thunder, Becker opened the car door and stepped into the corn.

Gold’s voice had been running through his mind like a tape since he got into the car and started toward the farm.

“It’s a function of will,” Gold had said. “We all have fantasies. It’s whether we act on them that matters. Most of us don’t. You don’t, Becker.”

“Don’t I?” thought Becker.

“What you do, what you have done-the experience with Bahoud in New York, the incident in Washington, the other times-they cause the fantasies. It is not the fantasies that cause the incidents.”

“Incidents. You mean the killings.”

“All right, the killings,” Gold said.

Becker bent between the corn rows and rubbed dirt on his forehead and under his eyes. The turtleneck rolled up to just under his mouth. Lightning flashed and thunder roared so close it seemed to be over the cornfield itself Becker could smell the electricity in the air. Strangely, there was still no rain.

The wind was beating against the corn stalks so fiercely they sounded like acres of crackling cellophane. The earth itself was so noisy there was no need for caution, but Becker moved silently, anyway, from long habit.

Cutting diagonally through the field, Becker came to the edge of the cultivated ground where the corn stopped and the farmyard began. Kneeling, he studied the house and the barn.

His heart seemed to have ascended in his chest and was beating rapidly just beneath his collarbone. Becker recognized the excitement for what it was-an eagerness for action and a tingling of anticipation. There was no fear involved in it. Caution, prudence, but no fear.

“They were all justified,” Gold said. “You were in danger every time. You did what you had to do to save yourself”

“Justified?”

“Justified. Absolutely.”

“But were they necessary?”

Becker approached the barn from the rear where there was nothing but blank wall to watch him. He did not expect to find anything in it, but this was not the time to go on assumptions alone. That was Hatcher’s way, not Becker’s.

“Why are you so sure he’s at the farm?” Hatcher had asked.

Becker said, “I’m not sure of anything,” but he was. He could not say that he was sure because he had come to understand Dyce on a level that Hatcher could not begin to comprehend. The man’s life had fallen apart on him and he had fled to the place where it had all begun, the cruel, twisted injury that had made him what he was. He could not tell Hatcher that he understood the man’s thoughts and needs and darkly contorted emotions just as he had understood Bahoud’s and all of those since then.

He could not tell Hatcher, but he had told Gold.

“Don’t be so damned hard on yourself, man,” Gold repeated now in his mind. “You don’t want to do it; it happens because of circumstances. These are not pussycats the Bureau sends you after. These are multiple murderers, hardened killers who would have killed you in an instant.”

“How do you know I don’t want to do it?”

“How do I know? Because you don’t do it any other time, that’s how I know. What you experience isn’t joy; it’s a final release of adrenaline. You are in great danger, under terrible stress-you are feeling the sense of release, not pleasure. You were brought into this by accident. It turns out you’ve got great skills, but having empathy or understanding for these people does not mean you are these people, understand? You have the empathy to be a great shrink. I understand my patients, most of them. That doesn’t mean I am them, doesn’t mean I share their problems-but I understand them.”

The farmhouse had two stone chimneys, one at either end of the house on the exterior. The stone walls had been breached as if a tank had driven through them, but those sections that still stood were enough to hold up the roof beam and the unburned portions of the roof.

There was no blind side from which to approach. Becker counted on the darkness and moved swiftly across the yard. When the lightning struck, he dove for the ground and lay there motionless, hoping that if Dyce had seen his movement he would attribute it to a trick of the night.

He lay still until his heart stopped racing. It was a job he had to do, he told himself. Nothing more. A job. There was a maniac to find, possibly a friend to save if he wasn’t already too late for that.

Becker tried to turn off the tape in his head, but Gold’s voice insisted on being heard.

“I can’t give you absolution, I’m not a priest. I can forgive you, I can understand you.”

“I don’t want that.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to stop it.”

“You have stopped. Just keep stopping.”

“And if I go after Dyce?… I do have to go after him now.”

“Good. Find the bastard.”

“And then?”

“He’s killed at least eight men. He may have killed your friend… Find the bastard.”

“And then?”

The first rain hit him as he lay and it felt like the initial gush from a faucet. The clouds opened as if rent asunder by the last lightning bolt. By the time Becker got to his feet, he was already soaked to the skin.

Dyce was talking nonstop from his island in the air, but Tee was not listening. With every ounce of concentration he could muster he tried to move his foot toward the ladder. It was precariously balanced; it would only take a nudge to make it fall, but he could not move, he could not move. It seemed just a fraction away, as if a final effort could awaken his nerves and make them speak to his muscles, but it was a fraction he could not bridge. Tee did not think beyond the ladder. What would happen then, what he hoped to accomplish he could not say. It was an action, the only one available to him, or nearly available, and he had to do something before Dyce sucked him dry and left his husk in the deserted attic of an abandoned shell of a house. If only it didn’t make him so terribly tired to even try to think.

Rain hit the roof over Tee’s face as if a firehose had been trained on the house.

Dyce’s voice rose, claiming Tee’s attention over the noise of the rain. “I’m ready now,” he said.

Tee turned his eyes to look at the maniac. Dyce was standing on his little space of floorboards, his arms spread as if to say, look at me. The container of talcum powder was still in his hand and sprinkles of the white powder drifted off his body. He was completely naked and white as snow. When lightning flashed it illuminated him as if he were lit from inside, but even in the dark he gave off an eerie glow.

The son of a bitch has an erection. Tee thought. He’s mad as a hatter and hard as a rock.

“Remember now, try not to move when you breathe and keep your eyes closed.”

Tee did not need to be told. His eyes were already squeezed shut. Whatever was going to happen, he didn’t want to watch.

From the ground the chimney looked wide enough to hold a man. They had built them large in the last century. Not that Becker expected to find Dyce squirreled away in the chimney-although it was a possibility he did not reject. He had mentioned it to Hatcher just as an example of what he might have overlooked. Even if he had hidden there when the FBI came by, he would probably not be there now, not on a night when he could come out and move without much fear of detection.

The night is better for all of us, Becker thought.

A noise that didn’t come from the storm teased Becker’s hearing, something not wind nor rain but more familiar, chased by the tempest so quickly Becker was not sure if he had heard it or imagined it. He crouched by the side of the first chimney, his shoulder pressed against the stones, readying himself to look into the house itself The porch was dangerous: too many charred boards that could break under his weight or groan to give away his presence-if any noise that weak could be heard now. He skirted the porch, crawling on his stomach to the edge of the wall where it had partially crumbled away.

Lightning like a row of flashbulbs crackled in the sky, giving Becker a full view of the house. He looked up at the space Hatcher had not investigated. Many of the rafters were still intact, but the flooring across them was scattered and broken, a board here, two or three there running only a few feet. It looked like a net with bits of flotsam stuck to the webbing in places. One section was severed by fire into the shape of the letter C; another section, three boards wide and tucked against the junction of roof and rafter, was a bit over six feet long. A man, lying perfectly still, could stretch out unseen on that platform. The C might hold a person on his side, but Becker could see why Hatcher had dismissed the attic, or what remained of it, as a hiding place-it could be a sanctuary only for the very imaginative and desperate. But then that was what made Hatcher the way he was. He never credited desperate men with being bold enough to take truly desperate measures. Hatcher judged the men he chased by himself, and assessed their hearts by what he found in his own. And I judge them by myself Becker thought. Which is why I would have looked in the chimneys and Hatcher didn’t. Hatcher is too sane to track the mad.

The light vanished, swallowed by the storm, but Becker had seen something in the last faint illumination, a movement of a ghost against the blackness of the night.

Crouched, he waited for the next flash, which seemed to take forever in coming. Even without the lightning, he thought he could almost discern the movement under the roof on the C section of flooring, something flapping, like the wing of a huge moth. But he could not be sure if he really saw it or simply willed it. Willed it because he wanted it to be there, he thought. I want him, Becker thought. I want Dyce as badly as I have wanted any of them. Running from it, hiding away in Clamden had done no good. They are all around me, the Dyces, in small towns and large. Whether they are attracted to me or I am attracted to them, we will find each other. The silent, secret killers and the one who hunts them down. We are bonded together, Becker thought. Opposite sides of the coin-or perhaps the same side, he didn’t know and right now it didn’t matter. He was here, where he wanted to be, where he had yearned to be despite his struggles against that desire ever since Tee told him of the disappearance of the men. And Dyce was here, where he, too, must have known he would end up, waiting for the man who would put him out of the misery of his madness.

Maybe Dyce was here above him, caught in the web of roof and rafters, flailing like an insect. Be there, Becker urged. He willed him to be there.

At last lightning struck again, followed by a roar so loud and instantaneous it seemed to come from the earth under his feet, and in the flash Becker saw it clearly, a specter in white, thirty feet up, arms raised and flecks of snow or dust wafting down. It was looking straight at Becker.

When the light faded, Becker moved, knowing he had already been seen. The only way up was the walls themselves. He removed his shoes whose soles would be as dangerous as if he had greased them. Although he hadn’t paid any attention to the weather for several minutes, Becker realized now that the rain was still coming in torrents. Slender cascades of water rippled off the stones and into his face. He felt for his first handhold, pulled himself off the ground and began to climb.

Dyce had seen the headlights on the county road minutes earlier, had seen them disappear behind the screen of the corn, and had not seen them reappear. They’re coming to try again, he thought, but still he had not been ready to see the man crouched beside the wall. He was there too soon-but then Dyce realized who he was. He did not recognize him, but he knew, remembering the sense of dread and respect from the hospital bed.

“He’s here,” Dyce said softly to Tee. “Your friend is here.”

Once past the turnoff to the access road. Hatcher had the three vehicles shut off their lights. Agent Reynolds was sent to walk ahead with a focused flashlight to lead them on the dirt road, but even with a guide the road was treacherous with mud. The panel truck with the electronic equipment slid into the ditch and had to be pushed out, wasting valuable time.

Did they bring ladders this time? Dyce wondered. He was safe if they did not. The policeman would need another injection to insure his cooperation in any case. Dyce looked at himself and saw that his erection was still huge, despite the dangers. He giggled at himself as he sought his syringe.

It would have been an easy climb without the rain, an ascent so simple that Cindi would not even deign to make it. Even now, with the stone face as slick as if it had been iced, Becker could imagine her lithe body shooting upwards as if each irregularity in the rock was a rung on a ladder. But for Becker, the climb was torturously slow and difficult. He felt horribly exposed, clinging by his inexpert fingertips to holds awash with pouring rain. If Dyce looked down the walls, if Dyce had a weapon of any kind-a loose board would do-Becker was finished. It was only the darkness that lent any safety and that could vanish in an instant if Dyce happened to be looking in the right direction when the lightning flashed.

He climbed looking upward toward the gaps in the roof squinting against the rain in his face. There was no point in looking for handholds; he couldn’t see them anyway. The climb had to be made solely by feel. He was looking for Dyce, hoping to see him peering down in the next flash of lightning to give Becker time enough to do something to save himself. There was little he could do but let go of the wall and fall to the ground below. He might break a leg in the fall, but at least it was an action, something better than clinging to the stones like a fly to be swatted.

Becker’s hands reached a wide flat space and he pulled himself into a hole in the wall that had once encased a window. He sat there for a moment to rest. arms and legs dangling. His muscles were dancing from the strain. He was halfway up.

The technician from the panel truck was trying to explain, but Hatcher was no longer interested.

“It was that last bolt of lightning, the one that was so close. It screwed up all the electronics.” The technician had his mouth close to Hatcher’s ear to be heard over the storm.

“I’ve lost the signal,” the technician said. “I don’t know if it’s the beeper that got hit or my equipment, but it’s dead flat.”

“I’m not concerned with your excuses,” Hatcher said.

“It was the lightning.”

“What you’re saying is you’ve lost him,” Hatcher said.

Reynolds had signaled a halt and vanished into the darkness in front of the convoy just as the technician ran forward to rap on Hatcher’s car window. Hatcher felt the operation turning bad in his hands. Things involving Becker always seemed to turn bad; it had to do with the man himself. He would not submit to control.

“Christ,” Hatcher thought, “if he gets Dyce here, if he gets him in a place I’ve already looked-if I’m not there when it happens…” He didn’t want to think about it, but there would be plenty of necks on the chopping block in front of his if things did go rotten. This technician’s, for one.

Reynolds reappeared, his thin beam of light pointed at the ground, approaching Hatcher’s car.

“It’s Becker’s car,” Reynolds said, leaning in through the window. Water dripped from his head and nose onto Hatcher’s pant leg. “He left it about ten yards ahead and to the right. The driveway to the farm is just past that.”

They all huddled around Hatcher’s car now, awaiting instructions. Hatcher was the only one still dry as the others hunched their shoulders against the ram.

Hatcher grabbed the binoculars and slipped their battery pack around his neck.

“We don’t need your beeper,” Hatcher said to the technician dismissively, as if the faulty equipment had been the man’s idea.

Lightning cracked close by and Hatcher winced, then recovered himself, wondering if the others had noticed.

“I’ve got a feeling Dyce is here,” Hatcher said, getting out of the car. “Let’s go find him.”

Tee watched the white blur in the darkness that was Dyce move around the framework of rafters, looking for something or someone coming at him from the ground below. “Your friend is here,” he had said. Did he mean Becker? Please, God, let it be Becker. The hope was almost enough to overcome the lethargy that gripped him, and Tee renewed his efforts to move his foot. It was so strange; he felt as if he could move, he could sense the movement within his limbs like an itch-but nothing moved. As if his nerves had been severed but not deadened. They wanted to move but could not relay the message.

Dyce moved close to Tee now and Tee could see the whites of his eyes standing out starkly within a small. dark circle Dyce had missed with the talcum powder. In a burst of lightning Tee could make out something in Dyce’s hand, small and glistening. A hypodermic syringe. Tee remembered the needle in his own arm, but by the time he glanced down to see if the blood was still dripping from it, the light was gone.

Dyce had looked down within the cavern of the house when the lightning flashed, and Tee recognized the fear in his face. The snowy shape hovered close to Tee for a moment and Tee was certain that the hypodermic was intended for him, but then the shape moved off with surprising agility across the rafters and Tee understood that the needle was meant for Becker.

Tee prayed that the stories he had heard about Becker’s prowess were true.

Hatcher scanned the area slowly with his night-vision binoculars, seeing the invisible yard come into view in shades of eerie green. Stored heat from the day made the barn glow slightly in the infrared sensing binoculars. Hatcher scanned toward the house, seeing only variations in emanated heat but no movement. And then, leaping out at him from the roof of the house like a flame from a sea of green, the shape of a man, arms upraised and gesticulating.

“Got him,” Hatcher muttered triumphantly. “Bring up the vehicles and fan them out with their headlights pointing toward the farmhouse. We’re going to need light, but none until I give the word. Not so much as a spark, you got it?”

“Got it,” one of the agents replied.

“Do you see Becker?” Reynolds asked.

Hatcher returned to the binoculars but the man was gone. There was no movement to be seen anywhere at the farmhouse.

“Maybe he’s lost in the corn,” said Hatcher.

Becker was heading toward a gap in the roofline that he had seen during the last flash. Moving laterally was even harder than going up. The wind screamed and slashed him with sheets of rain. Becker’s foot settled on a small stone used as filler, and it tore at his flesh before pulling loose and tumbling to the ground twenty-five feet below. His other foot, yanked off balance, lost its hold, and Becker was slammed into the wall by his own weight. He clung to the stones with his fingers as his feet scrambled for a hold-then froze completely as a ghostly figure appeared in the gap in the roofline five feet above his head.

Dyce peered into the darkness, waiting for lightning to show him the world beyond an arm’s length. Becker held his breath and willed himself not to move, even though his arms were trembling with the strain of supporting his own weight. Dyce had not seen him yet, he was certain of that, but the slightest move on Becker’s part would give his presence away now; they were too close for the darkness to give any protection. He was alive simply because Dyce had not thought to study the stonewall itself.

His fingers screamed for relief then his left hand went into spasm, the muscles jerking in protest against the strain.

“The vehicles are in position.” The agent’s deep voice rumbled close to Hatcher’s ear.

“Becker’s here,” said Hatcher, hoping the disappointment didn’t sound in his voice.

Against the green field of the binocular’s vision. Hatcher could see the glowing form that he knew was Becker, going straight up the side of the house. Like a goddamned spider. Christ, straight up a wall. The things they said about him must be true. Despite himself, Hatcher felt a sense of admiration for the man. Teamwork would have served better, of course. A little organization, a little planning, but still-the bastard had found him and was climbing a wall to get him.

Hatcher saw Becker pause, then stop abruptly as another form leaped suddenly into the binoculars’ vision, almost atop Becker. Neither shape moved for long seconds, and Hatcher could not tell if they were looking at each other or staring into the darkness that surrounded everyone but Hatcher and his infrared vision.

Beams of light suddenly hit the house and Becker cursed under his breath, sensing immediately what had happened. I will kill Hatcher, he thought as a loudspeaker crackled against the storm.

He could see Dyce clearly now, the man’s eyes wide and startled by the headlights, squinting momentarily as the beams struck him in the face, then looking down at Becker, seeing him for the first time. Dyce looked more pleased than surprised.

“I was wondering,” Dyce said, looking straight at Becker. The rain caught Dyce as he stood in the gap in the roof and the white of the powder seemed to explode off his body where the drops hit him.

Becker moved his feet at last, securing them in the stones and taking the weight off his fingers. He wondered whether to push off the wall and drop, but one of Dyce’s hands was visible and it held no weapon. The other hand was out of sight, but his arm did not hang as if it held the weight of a revolver.

Hatcher was speaking over the loudspeaker now but his presence seemed irrelevant to the moment as Becker and Dyce looked at each other.

“I knew you’d come,” said Dyce.

“I knew you’d be here.”

Dyce nodded and smiled, a strangely kind, forgiving smile. It flashed through Becker’s mind that Bahoud had done the same thing in the second before he had tried to kill Becker-which was the second before Becker had killed him. It seemed they had all smiled.

“You look just like him,” Dyce said.

For a moment, a look of sweet understanding passed between them.

“You can sympathize with them, you can empathize until you’re inside their skin-that doesn’t mean you are them,” Gold said in Becker’s mind.

Dyce lifted his hidden hand and Becker saw the syringe.

Lightning seemed to explode inside Becker’s left ear and the thunder boomed immediately after like a bomb in the yard. Even as Becker let go with everything but his right hand and swung free to avoid the sudden swoop of Dyce’s needle, the headlights snapped off and he could hear the scream of human beings from the vehicles.

In the aftermath of so much light, everything seemed darker than ever.

Becker found another grip as Dyce’s arm slashed the air again in the space where Becker had been. Becker could sense Dyce’s hand probing for him, but for several seconds until his eyes adjusted he could not even see his own arms against the wall.

When vision came at last, it was with the flickering light of the burning panel truck set aflame by the lightning bolt. Panicked voices yelled instructions at each other, but both the light and the chaos were beside the point now as Becker moved lower and to his right, away from the stabbing arm.

He had not let go entirely when Dyce swung at him, he had not chosen to leap free. That’s how badly I want you, Becker thought. Gold’s voice started to sound in his head again, but this time Becker simply shut it off. He no longer had the luxury. Crabbing sideways along the wall, he moved toward the next break in the roofline. Amazingly, neither fatigue nor danger affected him anymore. He felt fresh and agile, as if he were born for this kind of work.

In the flicker of distant firelight. Tee saw Becker’s shape slip into the attic behind Dyce’s back. When lightning flared, Dyce turned and saw him, too, and fled across the rafters to the C-shaped island. Becker moved after him, balancing on the beams as deftly as a gymnast, and the two men stopped a few feet from each other, pausing like animals going through a ritual display that would determine if there was to be violence. Dyce stood on the floorboards of the island. which gave him a normal stance, but Becker was in a semicrouch, one foot in front of the other on a single rafter, arms out for balance like a tightrope walker.

“Grandfather said you’d come,” said Dyce. He held the syringe in front of him like a knife.

There are no options, Becker thought. If he steps to the edge of the boards, he can reach me with a jab. I am defenseless here, one step short of the platform.

“Grandfather prepared me,” said Dyce. His tone was completely calm and rational. “He told me what to do.”

Dyce stepped to the edge of the platform.

If he goes for my legs, he has me, Becker thought. I have a chance if he strikes for my body, but I can’t move my legs without falling.

“What did he tell you?” Becker asked.

Dyce bent low. He was going for the legs.

“He said you would rise again,” said Dyce. He leaned forward, judging the distance to Becker.

“Grandfather was an asshole,” said Becker.

Dyce looked up abruptly, startled by the blasphemy, then lashed out angrily at the same time that Becker kicked with his lead leg and pushed forward with the back one. The kick caught Dyce in the chest and knocked him back onto the platform as the syringe fell from his hand and crashed to the floor below. Becker landed atop Dyce and heard the wind rush from the man’s body.

Becker had Dyce’s head in his hands, his neck twisted to the side. One snap, one final, violent twist was all it would take. He could feel his muscles shaking with the effort to stop and he heard a high, trembling murmur that he realized with surprise came not from Dyce but himself.

“It’s a question of will,” Gold said. “We all feel urges of all kinds, we don’t act on them.”

Becker felt the tension in Dyce’s neck resisting his hands. It was turned as far as it could go without shattering the vertebrae. He could imagine the satisfying sound of the final snap.

“It’s what you ultimately do that counts,” Gold said. “Not what you think. A killer doesn’t just think about killing-he kills.”

For the first time Becker noticed Dyce’s moan. He didn’t struggle; he lay beneath Becker like a lamb on the altar, bewildered but accepting.

Lightning flashed and Becker saw Tee’s eyes watching him, wide and staring with anticipation. He read permission in Tee’s eyes, approval.

“It’s what you do,” Gold said. “Ultimately, you’re in control of it. They’re not. You are. That’s the difference.”

Becker released Dyce’s head and pulled him into a sitting position so that Dyce’s back was against Becker’s chest. Dyce sagged limply against Becker with a grateful sigh. Becker cradled him as the sound of Hatcher and the rediscovered loudspeaker moved closer in the darkness.

“You had no options,” Gold said.

“I could have backed away.”

“While balancing like that? You would have fallen and killed yourself. You had to go for him.”

“I could have just waited. Hatcher was out there. He would have shown up eventually. There was nowhere for Dyce to go.”

“That’s pretty cool thinking under the circumstances. At the time, you felt that you had no option but to attack. You did the right thing. It worked, didn’t it?”

“If I hadn’t seen Tee looking at me, I might have killed him.”

“You said Tee thought you should have done it.”

“He told me that afterward. At the time I just wanted to think he approved.”

“You don’t know you would have killed him if it hadn’t been for Tee watching.”

“I don’t know I wouldn’t have,” said Becker.

“You didn’t do it. That’s what counts. We’ll just have to leave it at that.”

“I guess we will,” said Becker. He paused, prying the blinds apart with a finger and looking at the withering acacia tree on the street below.

“What will happen with Dyce?” Gold asked.

“He’ll be declared innocent by reason of insanity and put away for a while until he proves himself sane. He probably will be able to do that eventually, won’t he, Gold? Convince some people that he’s sane?”

Gold sighed. “Possibly, Probably. If he’s sane most of the time, he can get away with it.”

Becker turned to look at Gold. “In other words, you admit you can’t really tell.”

“I admit we can’t always tell… Can you, Becker? Can you always tell if they’re sane or insane?”

Becker grinned broadly. “What’s the difference?”

Becker turned back toward the window and watched the traffic for a moment before moving toward the door, rubbing his fingertips together.

“You should dust more often, Gold,” he said. “The place is full of cobwebs.”