“I’ll bite. What does he need from here he can’t get anywhere else?”
“His victims. He’s got them selected already. He’s gone to a lot of trouble and time to locate them, and he’s used a lot of expensive hardware to do it.”
“Your famous list.”
“His list, not mine.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t have a list.”
“Christ, I get the point. It’s just a manner of speaking.” Tee waved for Janie, then sighed.
“Why can’t he just make up a new list. All right, not just. I suppose it’s complicated, but still, why not do it the safe way? Why come back here? They sell insurance in Utah, don’t they?”
“He could make up another list. Maybe he’s doing it now, in which case we won’t catch him, not now, maybe not ever. But I don’t think he is. He doesn’t have the time.”
“Time? He’s got all the time in the world. What’s he got to do in such a hurry?”
“Kill.”
“Come on, John. What is he, Dracula? He’s got to hurry up to kill? If I was doing it, I’d take all the time I needed and set it up right.”
“That’s because you’d be doing it logically-but then you’re not doing it in the first place. And why aren’t you?”
“Why aren’t I what? Boiling bones?”
“It’s a real question.”
“Because why should I?”
“That’s the point. You’ve got no reason to. You have no need to. And I don’t mean killing, exactly. I think that’s incidental. That’s probably just a way of dealing with the disposal problem. When I say kill I mean a whole complex of emotional reactions involved with whatever it is he does to these men before he gets rid of them. Whatever that compulsion is, I don’t think it can wait. It has to be fed, and it has to be fed a very special diet. It happens the diet he knows about is around here. Which is why I think he’ll be back.”
Tee felt an inward shudder at the off-hand phrase “disposal problem.” There was something eerily detached, yet at the same time intensely personal about Becker’s manner when he discussed Dyce that made Tee increasingly uneasy.
The two men sat in silence for a while, Becker lost in his thoughts and Tee studying his friend with concern.
Becker finally broke the silence.
“We’re getting along fine,” he said.
“None of my business,” said Tee.
“She’s a nice woman… Too young for me.”
“I wasn’t prying…”
“She keeps me from dreaming.”
“Look, John…”
“Or at least from sleeping.” Becker smiled humorlessly before raising his hand slightly above his shoulder. Janie, the waitress, came to the table with a pot of coffee in hand.
“So what is it with you and Janie?” Becker asked after the waitress had withdrawn. “She ignores you because you made a pass at her, or because you didn’t make a pass at her?”
“I remind you I’m a married man.”
“Oh. Pardon me.”
“Also a gentleman. Naturally I cannot discuss these things. My lips are sealed.”
“In other words, you made a pass at her, she refused you, you made an ass of yourself, and she hasn’t spoken to you since.”
“Not quite. She wanted to play with my gun.”
Becker laughed. “A consummation devoutly to be wished, I would have thought.”
Tee leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “I’m serious. She wanted to fondle the goddamn. 38.”
“Confusing symbol with substance.”
“Whatever that means. Stop grinning. She wanted to stroke it. Weird.”
Becker laughed, glancing at Janie.
“Don’t look at her, for Christ’s sake. And stop laughing. I’m not sure it’s funny. You shouldn’t laugh at her.”
“I’m laughing at you,” said Becker. “The horny chief finally gets the girl in his cruiser and all she wants is his hardware.”
“She’s looking at us,” Tee hissed. “Stop it. Act natural.”
Becker tossed his head back and laughed aloud.
“Ah, Tee,” he said. “If I could act natural… If I knew what the hell that was.” Becker stuffed a napkin in his mouth and shook with laughter. At least it sounded like laughter, but Tee thought his eyes looked enormously sad.
Becker found Cindi in her basement, hanging from the ceiling like a three-toed sloth pondering its next move.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She was dangling from a horizontal I beam running across the ceiling joists, clinging to the half-inch flange of the beam with the heels of each boot and the first knuckle of her fingers. Becker had seen her work out on the beam before, and also on the exposed pipes which she had reinforced with U-bolts and wire, converting her cellar to a kind of adult jungle gym.
She tipped her head all the way backward to see him as he came down the stairs, making her look a bit like a slain deer being carted away on shoulder poles.
“Hello, Becker,” she said coolly.
Becker removed his jacket and sat on one of the old packing mats that Cindi had lifted somehow from a moving van. They were not there for padding in case she ever fell-as far as he could tell, she never fell- but for insulation against the cold cement of the floor when she did her loosening exercises. The basement was totally unfinished; except for the beam and the pipe reinforcements, it was unimproved in any way.
“There’s something oriental about this room,” Becker said. “You know, spare and clean, but somehow evocative of-of-what would you call the essence of this room? Indoor plumbing?”
Cindi released the beam with her feet and swung down to hang by her fingertips. Her feet were a foot off the floor. She walked hand over hand to one end of the beam, then worked her way backwards. After repeating this procession three times, she swung one foot onto the beam again and let go with one hand so she hung by one heel and the opposite hand. She let the free arm and leg dangle as she stared at Becker.
He had removed his shoes and was slowly stretching his thigh muscles on the mats.
“Keep your clothes on,” she said.
Becker looked up at her and grinned. “That sounds like a promising invitation.”
“You’ve got the wrong day,” she said. Cindi switched arms and heels and let the others dangle, still staring at Becker.
“It’s like having a conversation with a gibbon,” he said. “ ‘Course, I’ve always liked doing that.”
“You’re thinking it’s Thursday,” she said. “You’re confused. It’s Saturday. Our date was for last Thursday.”
“I was in Washington. Talking to my shrink again.”
“What about?”
“Partly about why I wasn’t with you.”
“I hope he offered a better explanation than you have.”
“He doesn’t explain things. He asks questions.”
“Did he ask you why you didn’t call me to tell me you weren’t going to show up? Did he ask you why you’ve been avoiding me generally?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“I don’t want to be an imposition on you, Becker. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.
