'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
