Chase

'Fuck you,' Linski said.

Ben put the muzzle of the pistol against the bridge of his captive's nose.

Linski stared. Then: 'You wouldn't.'

'Remember my war record.'

Linski paled but still glared at him.

'The silencer's homemade. Is this something the average physics teacher does for a hobby?'

'It's part of what we learn in the Alliance. Survival skills.'

'Real Boy Scouts, huh?'

'It may be funny to you, but someday you'll be glad we taught ourselves good defense. Guns, explosives, lock picking — everything we'll need for the day when the cities burn and we have to fight for our race.'

'What does the Aryan Alliance have to do with this, anyway?'

Linski's manner changed. He grew less arrogant and nervously licked his lips.

'I've got to understand what's going on. I have to know if they're going to come after me,' Ben said, 'this whole crazy group. And if they are — why? What did I step into the middle of when I pulled you out of that car on lovers' lane?'

When Linski didn't reply, Ben put the muzzle of the pistol against his right eye, so he could look directly into the barrel.

Linski sagged in the chair. A sudden despair seized him. 'It goes back a way.'

'What does?'

'The Aryan Alliance.'

'Tell me.'

'We were in our twenties then.'

'We?'

'Lora, Harry. Me.'

'Karnes? His parents?'

'That's how we met. Through the Alliance.'

The connection so surprised Ben that he wondered if he were hallucinating the conversation. The pain in his shoulder had spread to his neck and up the back of his skull.

'They fell on hard times. Harry out of work. Lora was ill. But they had… the boy.'

'Mike.'

'He was a beautiful child.'

Ben knew, didn't want to hear, had no choice but to listen.

'An exquisitely beautiful child,' said Linski, clearly seeing the boy in his mind's eye. 'Three, almost four years old.'

Ben no longer pressed the pistol to Linski's eye. Now that he had started, the killer would need no encouragement to continue. His entire demeanor had changed — and he almost seemed relieved to be forced to this confession. He was unburdening himself for his own sake more than Ben's.

'I had some money, a trust fund. Lora and Harry needed money… and I needed what they had.'

'They sold him to you.'

'They set a high price for a night now and then,' Linski said.

'His own parents,' Ben said, remembering Lora and Harry Karnes and the enigmatic needlepoint quotations on their living-room walls.

'A high price in more ways than one.'

'How long did that go on?' Ben asked.

'Less than a year. Then… remorse, you know.'

'You realized it was wrong?'

'Them.' Linski's voice, gray with despair, was briefly enlivened by sarcasm: 'They had the money they needed, they were out of their financial trouble… so they were in a better position to find their misplaced scruples. They denied me the boy and told me to stay away forever. He was such a little angel. Forever, they said. It was so difficult. They threatened to tell others in the Alliance that I'd molested Mikey without their knowledge. There are some members who would take me out in the woods and shoot me in the back of the head if they knew what I am. I couldn't risk exposure.'

'And all these years…'

'I watched Mikey from a distance,' Linski said. 'Watched him as he grew up. He was never again as beautiful as when he'd been so young, so innocent. But I was growing older and hated growing older. Year by year, I became more aware that I'd never have… never have anyone… anything as beautiful as Mikey again. He was always there to remind me of the best time of my life, the brief best time of my life.'

'How did you manage to get the tutoring job? Why would he come to you of all people?'

'He didn't remember me.'

'You're sure?'

'Yes. That was a terrible realization… knowing that every kindness I'd shown him was forgotten… every tenderness forgotten. I think he forgot not just me but everything that happened… being touched, being adored… when he was four.'

Ben didn't know if his worsening nausea was a result of his wound or of Linski's strange characterization of the molestation.

The killer sighed with regret. 'What do any of us remember from that far back? Time steals everything from us. Anyway, when he needed a tutor, he came to me because I was on the list the school gave him. Maybe it was a subconscious recollection of my name that made him choose me. I'd like to think he still held some memory of me even if he wasn't aware of it. However, I think it was really just pure chance. Fate.'

'So you told him what you'd done to him when he was little?'

'No. No, no. But I tried… to reawaken his desire.'

'It was focused on girls by then.'

'He shunned me,' Linski said, not with anger, not in a cold mad voice, but with deep sadness. 'And then he told his parents, and they threatened me again. My hope was raised, you see… raised and then shattered forever. It was so unfair to have it raised and then… nothing. It hurt.'

'Lora and Harry… they must have suspected you killed him.'

'Who're they to point a finger?' Linski said.

'They gave me your name.'

Ben thought of the way in which they had directed him toward Linski: Harry pretending to recall the tutor's name only with effort, getting it only half right, and Lora correcting him. Too gutless to violate the sixth commandment and seek the vengeance they wanted, they had contrived to see in Ben the hand of God and had deviously pointed him toward this man.

'I should have passed judgment on Harry and Lora too,' Linski said but without anger. 'For letting the boy become what he became.'

'It had nothing to do with what the boy had become. You killed him because you couldn't have him.'

In a still, solemn voice, Linski said, 'No. That isn't it at all. Don't you see? He was a fornicator. Don't you understand? I couldn't bear to see what Mikey had become over the years. Once so innocent… and then just as filthy as anyone, as filthy as all of us, a filthy and callow fornicator. Seeing what he became… in a way that soiled me, soiled the memories of what we'd once had. You can understand that.'

'No.'

'It soiled me,' Linski repeated, his voice gradually growing softer. He seemed lost and far away. 'Soiled me.'

'And what you did with him… that wasn't sin, wasn't filthy?'

'No.'

'Then what?'

'Love.'

War was waged to make peace. Abuse was love. Welcome to the funhouse, where strange mirrors reflect the faces of Hell.

Ben said, 'Would you have killed the girl with him?'