them.
Don't they know cigarettes can kill you?' He giggled as if he had suddenly realized what he had said. He looked her in the face and grinned. 'They do kill, you know.
Eventually.'
Aural tried to study him, to keep her eyes on his eyes and to ignore whatever else he was doing. She wanted to kill her imagination, to keep it from killing her. Whatever would happen would happen anyway, and anticipation would only make it worse. She stared at the asshole, whose eyes were dancing gleefully. He's insane, she thought. He knows exactly what he's doing, but he's as mad as he can be.
Swann puffed on the cigarette several times until he was contented with the glowing ember.
'Shall we begin?' he asked.
'Shit, yes, let's get on with it,' Aural said, forgetting her vow of silence already.
'I usually like to start with the legs,' he said, stroking her shin.
Aural jerked away but he held her tightly, giving her a stern look of reprimand. When she stopped resisting, he ran his fingers over her calf like an acupuncturist seeking just the right spot.
He found the spot, then held the cigarette over her skin, just close enough so that she could feel the heat.
Fuck you, Aural thought wildly. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. You want me to beg, you want me to cry, you want me to piss myself out of fear.
Well, fuck you, you get none of it, none of it.
He pressed the cigarette into her flesh and she screamed. She realized very soon that she would give him everything he wanted.
Hatcher came announced this time, without pretense. He called and asked Becker for an appointment, and when he arrived he was accompanied by Karen and Gold and an agent from the Behavioral Sciences group whose purview included serial killers. Becker vaguely recognized the man.
Becker met them in his front yard, golf club in hand.
He'd been hitting plastic golf balls over the roof of the house and into the backyard with a pitching wedge.
As Hatcher and the others stepped out of the car, Becker lofted a perfect shot over the house, then he turned and thrust the golf club into Hatcher's hands before allowing him to speak.
'Try one,' Becker said. 'Aim just left of the chimney.'
Hatcher did not demur. He knew Becker wanted to make him look foolish and he was willing to oblige if that was the price to get what he wanted. He knew he would probably have to debase himself further before he was finished.
Becker teed a ball into position and Hatcher dutifully il@ swiped at it, swinging stiffly in his suit. He missed the ball completely the first time, and tried again immediately as if the first attempt had been just for practice, hoping that his flub was not as obvious to the others as it was to him.
On his second swing, Hatcher buried the head of the club in turf, disconnecting a sizable chunk of sod 'So sorry,' Hatcher said, staring at the clod of dirt and grass that he had just unearthed. It looked like a bad toupee unaccountably dyed green.
He looked at Karen. 'So very sorry.'
'It's not your game,' Becker said in a tone that implied that he was intent on continuing to humiliate Hatcher until he discovered the game that was his.
'I seem to have-' Hatcher bent over, thinking to retrieve and replace the severed turf, then stopped, wondering if calling further attention to it only made matters worse. Gold and the Behavioral Sciences man moved away from the lawn towards the porch, trying to disassociate themselves from the incident entirely.
'Jack does things like that all the time,' Becker said.
Gold thought he sounded enormously pleased. He removed the club from Hatcher's hands as if taking a dangerous toy from a child. It was not lost on Hatcher that Jack was only ten years old.
They proceeded into the house and arranged themselves in a living room that could comfortably seat only four. As if seeking the supplicant's chair, Hatcher sat on a leathercovered footstool that was a reproduction of a cobbler's seat, a piece of furniture used more for decoration than utility. The footstool forced Hatcher's knees higher than his waist, so that he looked like an adult at parents' night at grade school, sitting uncomfortably at the desk of his child.
'Comfy?' Becker crooned, smiling with a benevolence that fooled no one.
'Fine, yes, fine,' Hatcher said.
Gold and the other agent continued to avoid each other's eyes. The psychiatrist glanced at Karen and intercepted a look of cold fury directed at Becker, who seemed oblivious. Gold wondered about the long-term health of their relationship. Certainly the stress of the Cooper case was doing nothing to holster it.
'So good of you to make time for us like this,' Hatcher was saying. 'I realize you must be very busy… uh… with your interests.'
'Yes. Today I was trying to learn to cut the ball,'
Becker said, smiling. 'My normal shot is a slight draw, very good for most purposes-better distance, for instance-but there are times when you want to have that high fade available. The kind Nicklaus hils. Faldo and Norman have it when they need it, too.'
'Ah, yes.' Hatcher nodded. He thought he recognized the name Nicklaus.
The others meant nothing to him.
'It's hard, though. Especially with a wedge,' Becker said.
'Yes, difficult, I should imagine so,' Hatcher said.
'Well, now, John, we have come to see you-you do know Special Agent Withers of Behavioral Sciences, don't you?'
Becker nodded. 'Withers.'
'Of course,' said Withers, who knew Becker only by reputation. He returned the nod of greeting.
'We have come on a matter of some urgency which I believe you already know about.'
'What's that?' asked Becker.
Hatcher looked at Karen. He hoped not to let Becker drag every bit of the story out of him, inch by painful inch.
'The Cooper business,' Karen said briskly. She was in no mood for Becker's antics. Being front man for Hatcher was bad enough for her without jumping through hoops held up by the man she lived with.
'You know about the Cooper business, with the two girls in the coal mine.' Her tone allowed no room for disagreement.
'Special Agent Withers raised a few questions about the overall credibility of Cooper's story,' Hatcher said.
'Nothing crippling to the case, certainly, but an odd question here and there. When these-ah-doubts were brought to my attention, naturally I asked for more opinions. It was then that Assistant Director Crist and Dr. Gold came forward with what they tell me was originally your… idea.'
Becker smiled confusedly as if he had not yet fully grasped the meaning of the conversation.
'You know what he means,' Karen said sharply.
Becker turned his countenance towards her, still looking bemused. She glowered back darkly.
Hatcher continued. 'I refer to your-suggestion-that Cooper was somehow coached into confessing the murder of the Beggs girl. While not granting that that is the case at all, — not at all, it still raises an interesting line of speculation that one must conscientiously pursue.
Dr. Gold has been good enough to do a bit of research into the subject.'
Becker turned his attention to Gold. He imagined that Hatcher had given the assignment to Gold for two reasons.
The first would be to keep the possibility that Hatcher might be wrong about Cooper's guilt-and that Becker might be right-within as small a group as possible. Since Gold was one of the group that had originated the doubt, Hatcher would be containing the spread of doubts if he had Gold do the work. The second reason, a happy offshoot of the first from Hatcher's point of view, was to punish Gold for having been a party to the doubts in the first place. Becker also imagined that Hatcher's greatest punishment would be reserved for Becker himself It was Hatcher's
