Hatcher raised his eyebrows and tried to look as if his feelings were hurt. The form had to be observed in these matters.
'I want the tape you made of my interview with Swann,' Becker continued.
Hatcher raised a finger towards Withers, who made a note.
'When I narrow him to an area, I want to be able to pick and choose from the local agents myself.'
Hatcher nodded, again motioning with a finger towards Withers.
'And full cooperation from the national information net, of course.'
'Certainly.'
'And if I smell you anywhere near me, if I so much as sense your interference, no, hell, even so much as your observation of the case, I'll quit.'
Hatcher sat stock-still.
'I have my responsibilities, John.'
'My conditions, yes or no. You've fucked up every operation of mine you've ever gotten close to… Yes or no?'
Hatcher waited as long as dignity required before finally lifting his finger a fraction. Withers began to write.
Aural spent the night as if in her coffin. He had put her in the leather golf sack for warmth and zipped it up so that only her face was uncovered. She was still shackled hands to ankles, and he had taken the additional precaution of securing the sack with the length of rope, tying the other end around his leg so that if she moved too far in the night, he would know it. Later, when she was weaker, he could relax his vigilance, but he knew that she still had some resistance left.
Eventually she would welcome the end as much as he did, but he wanted to postpone that time as long as possible. When they gave up and lost the will to remain, they slipped away from him much too quickly. Life was a curious thing, Swann thought, capable of withstanding injuries and insults of the worst sort as long as the fiber of the will was intact to hold it together. But if the heat of despair got too high, the will would melt irreversibly, like gelatin oozing between his fingers. He tried to make his girls last longer; he urged them to withstand him and to hold on; but when they decided to go, he could not restrain them.
Sometimes they went so quickly that he almost missed the passing, which would have been a terrible waste. He wanted to celebrate the moment, to exult in it, to sanctify it with his great joy and release. It would be an awful thing for them to have suffered so much and then to have slipped away unnoticed, uncelebrated. If he knew that their time had come, he would try to speed them along by intensifying his pleasure, because it was important that he should send them, that he should be the cause. He would work on them all night, if necessary, never leaving their side when the time had come, ignoring his own need for sleep or food, denying himself comfort for the greater cause. He thought of it as a sacrifice he made for his girls, just as they had made their own for him. It was the least he could do for them; he owed them that much when they had given so much to him.
When their time came he forgave them their spitefulness, he overlooked the horror of their appearance, their mutilated, untouchable bodies, the tears and mucus and excrement with which they soiled themselves. At the end they were all his angels and he in turn was the ministering angel for them, the last sight they saw on this earth, the last human touch they would ever feel. They took him with them into Jesus' embrace and Swann knew that Jesus thanked him for sending them to him. And they thanked him too, or they surely would once they reached the other side.
He could detect the light of love in their fading eyes as they eased away. At the end, they understood, he was certain of that. They knew that no hospital emergency team could have tried harder to prolong their life, and that no minister in the world could have given them a more joyful, jubilant valedictory when the inevitable arrived at last.
When he grew weary, when he could take no more pleasure for that day, he had trussed up Aural in her sack and then crept into his sleeping bag with the contentment that came from exhaustion. He turned off the lantern and the insistent hiss died with the light, leaving them in silence except for the sounds of the girl. She moaned when she moved, but he knew that after a few days that would stop. Something happened to them after a few days, and they slept peacefully at night. They still screamed for him when he made them, but they stopped moaning. And this one wasn't a crier, he was glad of that. Sometimes they cried all night long and destroyed his rest, which only made him angry. He regretted that because this was not a business to be done in anger. It had to be done carefully, slowly, with love. If he was angry, he went too fast and hurt them for the wrong reasons. He hadn't gone to all this trouble and taken such risks just to hurt them to punish them. He was ashamed of himself when he allowed his anger to get the better of him and always regretted it later. This girl was not going to anger him, however. She was going to fight him, she was going to hang on as long as she possibly could-and she was not going to cry. She was wonderful and Swann drifted into sleep thinking that he truly loved her already.
Aural was astounded to realize that she had slept. She awoke with a start, not from a nightmare, but to it as the realization of what had happened, was happening, flooded back to her consciousness. She heard a noise beside her and realized that he had awakened her with a shout. She could sense him in the dark, twisting about in his sleeping bag, groaning.
'Sweet Jesus,' he cried, his voice filled with pain.
'Oh, Christ, Jesus.'
'What the fuck are you doing?' she asked.
He continued to groan, and although she couldn't see him, Aural could imagine him clasping his head with his hand as he had earlier when he seemed to faint.
'Jesus,' he muttered again, then, 'Goddamn it.'
'I'm trying to sleep over here,' she said.
He stopped shouting then, but she could hear him whimpering and rocking back and forth. The noises came rhythmically after a time, as if he were receiving the pain in pulses. She hoped it came like machine gun fire; she hoped it ripped his head off.
'What's the matter?' she asked after several minutes, trying to sound sympathetic.
He did not respond.
'Do you need anything?'
He was silent and she realized that he had stopped rocking. If he continued to whimper, it was so quietly that she couldn't hear it over her own breathing.
Because of the rope tied around the sack, she could not roll over and her back was aching fiercely. Amazingly, the cramped muscles hurt more than the burns, which, at the time they were administered, seared so painfully that she thought they might kill her. She knew now that they wouldn't kill her-at least the pain wouldn't kill her.
What effect it would have if he kept at it, if he burned all of her… she tried not to think about it.
She had been freed once from the contorted fetal position. She had told him she had to go to the bathroom, and to her amazement he had unhooked her hands from her ankles and allowed her to stand. He tied the rope to her handcuffs and secured her wrists in front of her body.
He had been strangely courtly throughout the proceedings.
'You will want privacy,' he said. He gave her a lighted candle and pointed the direction she should go.
'Keep on until the rope is taut,' he said. 'You'll find the appropriate spot there.' He even handed her a roll of toilet tissue and made a display of turning his back although she felt his eyes on her every step of the way.
Aural hoped to get closer to the wave formations on the wall; she thought there might be potential hiding places there if she could ever get to them; but as she veered in that direction, he called out sharply.
'Not that way,' he said. 'Straight ahead.'
'Well, how'm I supposed to know where I'm going?' she demanded.
'Oh, you'll know it when you get there,' he said, his voice suddenly amused. 'It's well marked.'
He was full of these little jokes to himself, giggling at things only he thought were funny. Aural not only — hated the bastard in a general, all-encompassing way, but she couldn't find much to like about him, either. He'd be a creep even if his hobby was collecting stamps instead of torturing women.
She walked forward into the wavering candlelight, then stopped and gasped.
He giggled, 'Find it?'
A human skeleton lay a few feet from her. The flesh was gone, but long dark hair still curled in a mat under
