'Open your… Sybil, I really need to know what you see, there at the end; I need to see your reactions. I need your eyes open, Sybil…' He rattled a key on the keyboard. 'I'm looking at your files, Sybil…'
Her eyes opened, quickly, almost involuntarily. 'Ah,' he said, 'so there is a reason I should look…'
Her eyes were flashing frantically from Bekker to the screen. He moved the cursor to the first numbered file and pushed Enter. There were two letters on the screen: MB.
'Ah. That wouldn't stand for 'Michael Bekker,' would it?' he asked. He erased the letters, moved to the next file. KLD. He erased them. 'A little message here? Do you really think they would've understood? Of course, with a few more days, you might have been able to squeeze out some more…'
Bekker went to the final file. ME. 'Got the 'me' done, anyway,' he said. He backspaced over the letters, and they were gone.
'Well,' he said, turning back to her. 'Can I convince you to keep your eyes open?'
She closed them.
'Time,' he said. 'And this time, we're going all the way. Really, truly, Sybil. All the way…'
He stepped to the doorway and glanced down the hall. Nobody. Sybil's eyes followed him across the room and back, dark, wet. Bekker, his eyebrows arched, placed his palm over Sybil's mouth and gently pinched her nose with the thumb and index finger of the same hand. She closed her eyes. With the index and middle fingers of the other hand, he lifted her eyelids. She stared blankly, unmoving, for fifteen seconds. Then her eyes skewed wildly, from side to side, looking for help. Her chest began to tremble and then her eyes stopped their wild careen, fixed beyond him, and began to shine.
'What is it?' Bekker whispered. 'Do you see? Are you seeing? What? What?'
She couldn't tell; and at the end, her eyes, the shine still on them, rolled up, the pupils gone…
'Hello?'
Panicked, he let go of her nose, backed away from the bed, the hair rising on the back of his neck. He was trembling violently, unable to control himself. She was so close. So close.
'Hello-o-o?'
He staggered to the door, barely able to breathe, peeked out. He could see a corner of the nurses' station, but nobody there. Then a woman's voice, two rooms down the hall toward the nurses' station. The nurse: 'Did you call me, Mrs. Lamey?'
Bekker chanced it, crossed the hall in three long strides and went out through the internal door. He let the door close of its own weight, let it slide shut with a barely audible hiss, then started down the stairs two at a time. Just as the door shut, he heard the nurse's voice again.
'Hello?'
She must have seen or heard something, or sensed it. Bekker fled down the stairs, the moccasins muffling his footfalls. He opened the door on his floor, stepped through and from far above heard another, more distant 'Hello?'
Ten seconds later he was in his office, the door locked, the lights out. Breathing hard, heart beating wildly. Safe. A Xanax would help. He popped one, two, sat down in the dark. He would wait awhile, get his clothes. The MDMA bit him again, and he went away…
Lucas went to pick Cassie up at the theater, and waited while she scrubbed her face, watching again for Druze. And again, Druze was somewhere else.
'How's the play going?' Lucas asked.
'Pretty good. We're actually making some money, which is the important thing. It's kind of funny, has its message. That's a good combination in Minneapolis.'
'Sugar pill,' Lucas said.
'Something like that.'
They ate a midnight snack at a French cafe in downtown Minneapolis, then went for a walk, looking in the windows of art galleries and trendoid restaurants. Two of them featured raised floors, and the younger burghers of Minneapolis peered down at them through the windows, their fat legs tucked under tablecloths almost at eye level.
'I kept looking at Carlo, I couldn't help it,' Cassie said. 'I'm afraid he's going to catch me and think I'm coming on to him or something.'
'Be careful around him,' Lucas said. 'If he comes to your apartment, tell him you're in the shower, still wet, or something. Or that you've got me in there… Keep him out. Keep the door shut. Don't be alone with him.'
She shivered. 'No way. Though… there's a funny thing about this. Before I saw those pictures, I might have said, 'Yeah, Carlo could kill somebody.' Now, it's hard to believe that somebody you know could be doing this. Especially the business about the eyes. Carlo doesn't seem out of control; I mean, he could be crazy, but you feel like it would be a real cold crazy. Not a hot crazy. I could see Carlo strangling somebody and never showing any expression: I just can't see him in some kind of frenzy…'
'Could he fake it? Could he be cold enough to do the eyes without feeling it?'
She thought for a moment, then said, 'I don't know. Maybe.' She shivered again. 'But I'd hate to think anybody could be that cold. And why would he, anyway?'
'I don't know,' Lucas said. 'We don't know what's going on, yet.'
At Lucas' house, in the bedroom, Cassie lay on top of him, a compact mass of muscle. She reached down and grabbed an inch of skin at his waist. 'No love handles. Pretty impressive for a guy as ancient as yourself.'
Lucas grunted. 'I'm in awful shape. I sat on my ass all winter.'
'Need a workout?'
'Like what?'
'No sex until you pin me for a three-count?'
'Aw, c'mon…'
'You c'mon, wimpy…'
They wrestled, and after a time, but not too long, she was pinned.
Beauty arrived home at about the same time. The night's work had been both frightening and exhilarating. A disappointment in some ways, true, but then again: he could go back. He still had Sybil to do. As Lucas and Cassie made love, Bekker ate two more MDMAs and danced to Carmina Burana, bouncing around the Oriental carpet until he began to bleed…
CHAPTER 25
Lucas heard the first newspaper hit the front porch. That'd be the Pioneer Press. The StarTribune should be ten minutes later. He dozed, half listening, drifting from dream to linear thought and back to dream, dream editing reality, Jennifer and the baby, Cassie, other faces, other times. He inserted the thwap of the StarTribune; but the dream logic wouldn't buy it, and he woke up, yawned and stumbled out to get the paper. At five-thirty it was still dark, but he could see the heavy gray clouds groaning overhead and smell the rain heavy in the air.
Not responsible… Lucas Smith.
He glanced at the comics and went back to bed, falling facedown across the sheets. Cassie's perfume lingered on them, although she'd insisted on going back to her apartment.
'We're getting close on the play. I shouldn't fool around late and get up late. I have to work,' she'd said as she dressed.
The perfume was comforting, a sign of society. He slept on her side, dreaming again, until the telephone rang. Startled, he thought, Loverboy, and rose through his dreams and snatched at the telephone, almost knocking the lamp off the bedstand.
'Davenport.'
'Lucas, this is Del…'
'Yeah, what's happening?' He sat up, put his feet on the floor. Cold.
'I'm, uh, over at Cheryl's. We were talking last night, and she told me that Bekker has been creeping around her ward. He's been seeing a woman patient almost every day-and the thing is, this woman can't communicate.'
