“Certainly. No one recognizes his photo or description. Did you expect them to?”
“I don’t hope to be that lucky. Who’s buried there?”
“In the cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“In the whole goddamned cemetery?”
“He’s there to visit someone’s grave, isn’t he? Isn’t that why people go to cemeteries?”
“Most people don’t go at all,” said Hatcher, “except to bury somebody. People don’t ‘visit’ graves anymore, do they?”
“He was there for some reason.”
“We don’t know he was there at all. And even if he was, I thought you thought he was there to get a ‘headstone.’ “
“He could get a stone anywhere, pick one up out of the street. If they were using these for pathways… it’s not as if they’re consecrated rocks. I think he was there-if he was there-for some other reason and happened to see the stones at a time when he needed one. Which means either that he goes there regularly-if he goes at all- and his visit happened to coincide with a time when he needed a gravestone. What’s wrong with that theory?”
“Is this a quiz, Becker?”
“Just checking my thinking.”
“It probably wasn’t that he just happened to be there at a convenient time, because three of the stones still had dust on them, which means-since you don’t think he got them in advance-that he goes there when he’s killing somebody-or because he’s killing somebody-something along those lines?”
“Now you’re getting the hang of it.”
“It’s not hard,” said Hatcher. “Just toss logic and probability out the window and we can all be geniuses.”
Becker studied Hatcher a moment. “There’s no point in being envious of me. Hatcher.”
“Envious, Christ…”
“Because it’s no fun.”
“That doesn’t stop you from doing it.”
Becker paused. “Can’t argue with you.”
Breathing deeply to let the moment pass. Hatcher continued. “So you figure he goes there to commune with the spirit of someone when he’s in the act of- whatever?”
“I think it’s possible. I think doing this thing to men stirs him to the depths. Let’s find out who’s in the cemetery. Do a genealogy on Dyce.”
“We have. All his relatives are dead.”
“That’s fine. We’re looking for a dead one if Dyce visits him in the cemetery. While you’re doing the paperwork, I’ll go visit the cemetery. You were there, weren’t you? What’s it like?”
“What’s a cemetery like?” Hatcher could think of nothing appropriate to say about a cemetery. “Very nice,” he said.
The man behind the car-rental counter had the right look to him from the back. Dyce noted the pale hair, neatly trimmed, the long expanse of neck, the ears that pushed out from the head. When in a good mood, Dyce’s father had sometimes made fun of his own ears. “I’m just waiting for a good wind,” he would say, “then I’m going to take off and fly.” And he would wiggle his ears, his eyebrows moving up and down at the same time. Dyce would laugh, delighted by this inexplicable display of whimsy. His father looked so unguarded, so harmless.
“A regular Norwegian squarehead,” Dysen would say. “My mother used to cut our hair, practically scalp us, and those were the days when everyone’s hair was short. Everybody had big ears; look at the old pictures. But I was worse than most, practically a Dumbo, and don’t think the kids didn’t give me shit for it.”
And then his mood would turn darker as he recalled the slights of his youth. “I’d get back at them, though, don’t worry. They could laugh and fart around during class, but I’d be waiting for them after school. Your old man knew how to take care of himself, don’t you worry about that, old Rodger-Dodger.” He would sometimes try to return to the lighter mood, but the moment was past and Dyce had been reminded of the paranoia and anger lurking always just a fraction of an inch from the surface. He would no longer laugh with his father and that seemed to make the older man angrier.
The man behind the counter turned and the resemblance vanished. He had a round, vacuous face, a countenance without contrast of bone or flesh. His name tag read Tad.
Dyce lay his new driver’s license on the counter. “I’d like a compact car,” he said.
“Certainly, Mr… Cohen. Do you have a major credit card, please.”
Dyce produced a Visa card, as freshly minted as the driver’s license, also issued to Roger Cohen. This was the first test of the license since he had bought it for one hundred dollars two days earlier. He had already used the Visa card to get a cash advance against a nonexistent credit line of five thousand, some of which he used to pay for the license and credit card.
Dyce watched closely for any sign of suspicion as Tad went through the paperwork to release the car. If he had any doubts about the authenticity of the documents, none showed on his placid face.
He smiled routinely as he handed the cards back and gave Dyce the keys to his rented vehicle. Dyce carefully replaced the cards in his wallet, an item as new as the cards themselves. Everything about Dyce was new now, from the clothes he wore to the papers in his pockets, all of it financed with the several new cards in his wallet. The bruises on his face had nearly vanished, and the moustache, enhanced with mascara for the driver’s-license photo, was coming in nicely.
Once in the car and on his way out of Bridgeport, Dyce finally relaxed. The ease and simplicity of it all scared him more than anything. To think that an underworld of minor thugs and petty hoods could elude the system so efficiently. He could imagine how his grandfather would have inveighed against them, and how his father would have given them grudging admiration.
It was not until he reached New Haven and turned north on Interstate 91 that Dyce realized he had been automatically assessing Tad, the car-rental clerk. I must be crazy, he thought, thinking about that now. There was no time for it; he was being pursued. It was insane to even think about it and besides, he had vowed to put all of that behind him. It was not as if he had to do it. Surely he was enough in control of his emotions to deny himself such a dangerous pleasure. Especially in view of the disruption it had just caused. He promised himself to give it up, to give up even thinking about it. This was the perfect opportunity to start fresh in every way. The past was behind him now and he would keep it there; he was certain he could do it. He would shed the old skin and put on a new one as easily as he had slipped out of the hospital and created a new identity.
There is no way they will ever find me if I behave myself, Dyce thought. Criminals are creatures of habit; that’s how they are caught, everyone knows that. I am not a criminal, in the first place, and in the second I am too bright to let myself do anything stupid. He remembered the man in his hospital room, the one whose eyes seemed to cleave through Dyce’s skull. That man was the danger, Dyce thought. The Others do not frighten me. I could walk past them as if invisible-but the one with the searching eyes… He tried not to think about it.
After an hour Dyce stopped in the town of Waverly. Within five minutes he had located an independent insurance agent working out of a real-estate office, and asked to be taken on part-time as a salesman. The real- estate agent, happily surprised to find a man who was willing to canvass clients as well as do administrative work, hired him immediately.
“Do you know how to work one of these?” the agent asked, patting the personal computer terminal on his desk.
“Some,” said Dyce. “I’m sure I could learn what I need to.”
“I’m sure you could, too,” said the agent. “You seem like a bright guy to me.”
Dyce ran a hand over the terminal as if he were stroking an animal.
“Nice machine,” he said.
His father’s grave was marked by a simple marble stone whose original reddish-brown hue had aged into a darkish pink that seemed inappropriate to Becker. He remembered helping his mother pick out the headstone at a time when she was scarcely capable of making the least decision and the proper headstone struck her as a very important one. Ultimately she had opted for the slight reddish tint over the plain gray because she felt it would reflect some of the softer side of the man. Becker was not aware there was a softer side. He was eighteen and
