slept… he had to have cigarettes. I'm saying he planned it, kept at it for days, because, as he said, he liked it. It made him feel good. But the best part of the whole thing for a man who is obsessed enough to do it in the first place is not the torture… it's the death. The actual dying is the final payoff, the largest orgasm of all. 'I didn't care' is an impossible response.'
Karen looked to Gold for confirmation, but the psychologist kept his eyes on the table. She did not question Becker on his conviction. There were things that he understood that few others did, and she did not want to know the basis of that understanding. She had glimpsed such knowledge and turned away.
'Cooper wasn't lying,' Becker continued. 'He answered the question the best way he knew how. But he didn't have a better answer because he didn't have the experience.' @'Maybe it wasn't a great thing for him. Maybe he thought it would be but it wasn't,' Karen said.
'He says he did it twice,' Becker said.
'You can't mean he's making it all up.'
'He's not making it up,' Becker said. 'I suspect he believes he actually did it.'
'He believes it… but he didn't do it?'
'That's my guess.'
'Why in hell would he believe he did it?'
Becker poured himself another cup of coffee.
'I'd just be speculating on that.'
'As opposed to what you've been doing? John, with all due respect, you listened to a tape of the confessionand you know that is unauthorized, even having such a tape, don't you, Dr. Gold? — you listened to a tape, you thought about it for what, five minutes? And now you want to overturn the best arrest since Ted Bundy because… well, because it doesn't sound right to you.'
'I'm not overturning the arrest. You can put Cooper away for the rest of his life for what you got. But you won't have the guy who killed the girls in the coal mine… But I think we can find him.'
'Where? If it's not Cooper, who the hell is it?'
'Cooper got his story from someone. We know he didn't read about it.
That means someone told him.
Someone who knew the details.'
'Who?'
'The guy who's had his ear for the past three years, I would imagine.
His cellmate. My friendly correspondent.
Swann.'
'You're saying Swann told Cooper about it and Cooper thought he did it?'
'I imagine it was a bit more complicated, but something like that, yes.
Chimed in, Gold. Could it be done?'
'I'm not sure what… are you talking about hypnosis, something like that?' Gold asked.
'Hypnosis, brainwashing, I don't know what you'd call it. Two men are together in a cell for three years. Could one take on the memories of the other?'
'To the extent that he believes those memories are his own?' Gold paused, looked back and forth from Karen to Becker. Finally he shrugged.
'I don't know. If one of them is trying to make that happen, if the other is suggestible enough, if the conditions are right… I don't know. Why not, sure, yes, possible. Things have been done in POW camps by the North Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Chinese-not memory changes, that I know of, but certainly major shifts in value systems, personality makeup, that sort of thing. I mean, it seems to me that something like what you're suggesting could occur, but I'm not saying it did.
'A fine professional waffle,' Becker said. 'Still, it's good enough for me.'
'Well, it's not nearly good enough for me!' Karen said, anger rising in her voice. 'Hatcher has already delivered this Cooper to Congressman Beggs as a triumph of FBI persistence and overall brilliance-not to mention Hatcher's own genius, I'm sure-and Beggs has touted it to his constituents as a personal victory in his war on crime. You want me-I assume that's why you invited me to join in on your jerk-off session-you want me to waltz in to Hatcher and say, 'Sorry, but you have to call the whole thing off. Just go tell Congressman Beggs that you made a mistake-not only that, not only that, but tell him the reason I know he made a mistake is that former agent John Becker, one of Hatcher's favorite people, has listened to five minutes' worth of an unauthorized tape that was apparently pirated by a Bureau psychologist-or worse, a completely illegal tape made by the good doctor himself, and don't tell me which, because right now I'm in no mood to find out, and he brought this tape to my home, my home where he played it in private to John Becker, who decided that Cooper, who has already confessed in detail to killing the two girls, is not really lying because he does believe he did it, but still isn't telling the truth because he didn't really do it, he just was talked into thinking he did by his cellmate. Or so John Becker more or less sort of believes.' Is that what you want me to do?'
'That's the gist of it,' Becker said.
'John, I like my job. I worked real hard to get as high as I've gotten and I was beginning to think I might get even higher, eventually, if I didn't screw up too badly.
You have personal problems with the work. I understand that, I appreciate that, but I don't. I want to keep the job, I want to continue to be able to function as efficiently as possible. I have a son to support, college expenses to prepare for-'
'I give you the information for what it's worth, Karen.
What you do with it is up to you. The morality at the higher reaches of bureaucracy eludes me, I admit it, I have no experience at that height, I get nosebleeds..
'Information? Information? You haven't given me any information, John.
You've given me speculation. You've given me imagination. Those are fine qualities, John, assuming you want me to get tossed out on my ass.'
'Maybe I should go into the other room,' Gold suggested. He was of the mind that when two people who lived together began calling each other by their first names too frequently, it was time for visitors to depart.
Neither of the other two appeared to have heard him.
'I did not want to demean your contribution, Dr. Gold,' Karen said.
'This is extracurricular work for you and I appreciate very much that you care enough to make the special effort.'
'It was my curiosity more than anything,' Gold said.
'I understand,' she said. 'And what you and John have come up with, even though it's only a hypothesis, is troubling to me. Very troubling.'
'Not irretrievable, though,' Becker said. 'Both Cooper and Swann are available as much as we want them.
Send the Behavioral Sciences boys to talk to Swann, let them figure it out.'
'That's what's troubling,' Karen said. 'We no longer have Swann.'
'He's in Springville-get him transferred to our custody.'
'No, John, that's what I'm saying. He isn't in Springville anymore. He's gone-he's out-he's been released.'
'Released? How?'
'That was his bargain with Hatcher, his price for cooperating in the capture of Cooper.'
'He said he wanted safety.'
'He would never have been safe in the prison system, we all knew that.
So did he. Hatcher got his sentence commuted. He was released from prison the day we caught Cooper.'
'Cooperate how?' Becker asked.
'He knew where Cooper was.'
'How?'
'Apparently Cooper was sending him postcards.
Swann refused to tell us where to look unless Hatcher worked on a commutation of his sentence.' Karen shrugged. 'Hatcher gets what he goes after. We got the postcards, Swann got his commutation.'
