Darkfall

“He's sweet on her.”

“She'll have your balls for a necklace, old buddy.”

“From the look of him, I'd say she's already had 'em.”

“Any day now, she'll be wearing a brooch made out of his—”

Jack said, “Listen, you guys, there's nothing between me and Rebecca except—”

“Does she go in for whips and chains, Jack?”

“Hey, I'll bet she does! Boots and dog collars.”

“Take off your shirt and show us your bruises, Jack.”

“Neanderthals,” Jack said.

“Does she wear a leather bra?”

“Leather? Man, that broad must wear steel.”

“Cretins,” Jack said.

“I thought you've been looking poorly the last couple months,” all said. “Now I know what it is. You're pussy-whipped, Jack.”

“Definitely pussy-whipped,” Phil said.

Jack knew there was no point in resisting them. His protestations would only amuse and encourage them. He smiled and let the wave of good-natured abuse wash over him, until they were at last tired of the game.

Eventually, he said, “Alright, you guys have had your fun. But I don't want any stupid rumors starting from this. I want you to understand there's nothing between Rebecca and me. I think she is a sensitive person under all those callouses. Beneath that cold-as-an-alligator pose she works so hard at, there's some warmth, tenderness. That's what I think, but I don't know from personal experience. Understand?”

“Maybe there's nothing between you two,” Phil said, “but judging by the way your tongue hangs out when you talk about her, it's obvious you wish there was.”

“Yeah,” all said, “when you talk about her, you drool.”

The taunting started all over again, but this time they were much closer to the truth than they had been before. Jack didn't know from personal experience that Rebecca was sensitive and special, but he sensed it, and he wanted to be closer to her. He would have given just about anything to be with her — not merely near her; he'd been near her five or six days a week, for almost ten months — but really with her, sharing her innermost thoughts, which she always guarded jealously.

The biological pull was strong, the stirring in the gonads; no denying it. After all, she was quite beautiful.

But it wasn't her beauty that most intrigued him.

Her coolness, the distance she put between herself and everyone else, made her a challenge that no male could resist. But that wasn't the thing that most intrigued him, either.

Now and then, rarely, no more than once a week, there was an unguarded moment, a few seconds, never longer than a minute, when her hard shell slipped slightly, giving him a glimpse of another and very different Rebecca beyond the familiar cold exterior, someone vulnerable and unique, someone worth knowing and perhaps worth holding on to. That was what fascinated Jack Dawson: that brief glimpse of warmth and tenderness, the dazzling radiance she always cut off the instant she realized she had allowed it to escape through her mask of austerity.

Last Thursday, at the poker game, he had felt that getting past Rebecca's elaborate psychological defenses would always be, for him, nothing more than a fantasy, a dream forever unattainable. After ten months as her partner, ten months of working together and trusting each other and putting their lives in each other's hands, he felt that she was, if anything, more of a mystery than ever….

Now, less than a week later, Jack knew what lay under her mask. He knew from personal experience. Very personal experience. And what he had found was even better, more appealing, more special than what he had hoped to find. She was wonderful.

But this morning there was absolutely no sign of the inner Rebecca, not the slightest hint that she was anything more than the cold and forbidding Amazon that she assiduously impersonated.

It was as if last night had never happened.

In the hall, outside the study where Nevetski and Blaine were still looking for evidence, she said, “I heard what you asked them — about the Haitian.”

“So?”

“Oh, for God's sake, Jack!”

“Well, Baba Lavelle is our only suspect so far.”

“It doesn't bother me that you asked about him,” she said. “It's the way you asked about him.”

“I used English, didn't I?”

“Jack—”

“Wasn't I polite enough?”

“Jack—”

“It's just that I don't understand what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” She mimicked him, pretending she was talking to Nevetski and Blaine: “Has either of you noticed anything odd about this one? Anything out of the ordinary? Anything strange? Anything weird?”

“I was just pursuing a lead,” he said defensively.

“Like you pursued it yesterday, wasting half the afternoon in the library, reading about voodoo.”

“We were at the library less than an hour.”

“And then running up there to Harlem to talk to that sorcerer.”

“He's not a sorcerer.”

“That nut.”

“Carver Hampton isn't a nut,” Jack said.

“A real nut case,” she insisted.

“There was an article about him in that book.”

“Being written about in a book doesn't automatically make him respectable.”

“He's a priest.”

“He's not. He's a fraud.”

“He's a voodoo priest who practices only white magic, good magic. A Houngon. That's what he calls himself.”

“I can call myself a fruit tree, but don't expect me to grow any apples on my ears,” she said. “Hampton's a charlatan. Taking money from the gullible.”

“His religion may seem exotic—”

“It's foolish. That shop he runs. Jesus. Selling herbs and bottles of goat's blood, charms and spells, all that other nonsense—”

“It's not nonsense to him.”

“Sure it is.”

“He believes in it.”

“Because he's a nut.”

“Make up your mind, Rebecca. Is Carver Hampton a nut or a fraud? I don't see how you can have it both ways.”

“Okay, okay. Maybe this Baba Lavelle did kill all four of the victims.”

“He's our only suspect so far.”

“But he didn't use voodoo. There's no such thing as black magic. He stabbed them, Jack. He got blood on his hands, just like any other murderer.”

Her eyes were intensely, fiercely green, always a shade greener and clearer when she was angry or impatient.

“I never said he killed them with magic,” Jack told her. “I didn't say I believe in voodoo. But you saw the bodies. You saw how strange—”

“Stabbed,” she said firmly. “Mutilated, yes. Savagely and horribly disfigured, yes. Stabbed a hundred times or more, yes. But stabbed. With a knife. A real knife. An ordinary knife.”