Show of Evil

a moment for him to regain his composure and go on with the confrontation.

'So you discussed the Altar Boys,' he said finally.

'Of course, that's what it was all about, right?'

'It was all about a lot of things. How about Alex, did they discuss Alex with you?'

'Alex?'

'Lincoln. Alex Lincoln?'

'Lincoln.' Not a glimmer when he spoke Lincoln's name. 'You mean the other Altar Boy? I don't recall Roy ever said much about Lincoln.'

If the eyes are a window to the soul, Vail thought, Raymond has no soul. Aaron may have passed on his IQ and his fantastic memory to Raymond Vulpes, and all that sweetness and light, but he hadn't passed on his soul because Aaron had had no soul to pass on.

'How about Linda? Did anyone talk about her?'

Vulpes stared out the window for a moment, then said, 'Gellerman. Her name was Linda Gellerman. Aaron had a warm spot for her, even though she ran out on him.'

'He said that, that she ran out on him.'

'Perhaps I'm paraphrasing,' Vulpes said.

'Did Roy ever tell you the last thing he said to me?'

Vulpes stared at him blankly, then slowly shook his head. 'I don't think he ever mentioned it. What was it about?'

'Nothing, really. An aimless remark. Kind of a joke.'

'I'm always up for a good laugh.'

'Some other time, maybe.'

Vulpes's jaw tightened and he sat a little straighter. 'Must've been pretty good for you to remember it after ten years.'

'You know how it is, some things stick in your mind.'

Woodward sensed the animosity growing between the two. 'Raymond, tell Martin about your first trip downtown,' he said.

This time it was Vail's jaw that tightened. He stared across the table at Vulpes and their eyes locked.

'You've been outside?' Vail asked, trying to sound indifferent.

'Just three times,' Woodward interjected. 'Under close supervision.'

'When was this?'

'During the last two weeks,' Vulpes said. His eyes were as expressionless as a snake's. 'You don't know what it's like, to walk into an ice cream store and have your choice of twenty-eight different flavours and hot fudge covered with… with those little chocolate things.'

What was wrong with that statement? Vail thought. Then he realized there had been no joy in his tone. No excitement, no animation. Vulpes was emotionless, making words, doing his best to create the perfect conundrum, a man so calm his equanimity invoked thoughts of the nightmare sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Control. Raymond Vulpes had perfected control.

'Sprinkles,' Vail said.

'Sprinkles,' Vulpes repeated.

'That's what excited you about your first day of freedom in ten years, an ice cream with sprinkles?' Vail asked.

'Metaphorically. It's having the choice,' Vulpes answered. 'Here, it's chocolate or vanilla.'

'Another metaphor,' Vail said. 'Black and white, like most choices in life when you carve away all the bullshit.'

Their eyes never strayed. They sat three feet apart, their gazes locked in a hardball game of flinch. Black and white choices, Vail thought, and his mind leapt back to the last day of the trial. There was a clear black and white choice. Vail and his team had spent weeks struggling to prove that Aaron Stampler was really two personalities in one body: Aaron, the sweet kid from Crikside, Kentucky, who had suffered every imaginable kind of abuse; and Roy, the evil alter ego with an insatiable lust for murder and revenge. Vail had won for Stampler, rescued him from almost certain death in the electric chair or from a needle filled with terminal sleep. Venable, realizing she was beat, had agreed to the plea bargain: Aaron Stampler would be sent to Daisyland until such time as he was deemed cured and his evil