“My apologies,” he said. “This is really clumsy… Under different circumstances, I think we might both have enjoyed it.”
But Dyce was enjoying it now, surprising himself with the pleasure he took, even in this unaesthetic way.
The blood, when it finally came, was astounding in its volume and pressure. To think that all that pressure came from the tiny pump of the heart.
It took him several minutes to clean his hand before he closed the closet door behind him and then he had to go back in to retrieve the syringe.
Surprisingly, although the needle had snapped off in the big man’s leg when he fell, the syringe itself was unbroken. He would need another needle, perhaps several, and more PMBL. There was a needle in the car hidden under the material of the visor and enough PMBL under the seat in a water bottle to suffice for one more injection. After that he would have to return to his supply.
Dyce’s heart was pounding and he realized it came from excitement, not exertion. Helen had been a revelation and this agent a confirmation. There was more to dying than just being dead. The state of death was serene-but dying, dying was a dynamic act shared by two. Dyce was sorry that it had taken him so long to realize it-but grateful he had learned at last.
Dyce glanced in the plate glass window of his office and was surprised at how calm he appeared as he walked toward his Valiant. A casual observer would never know he was a man who had just had a life-altering experience. Dyce laughed inwardly at his inadvertent pun. The experience had actually altered two lives.
A clerk from the hardware store was standing in the store’s doorway. He nodded and smiled politely at Dyce.
Dyce took the time to pause. “How are you today?” he asked. “Looks like a good one, doesn’t it?”
The clerk glanced up at the sky. The cheekbones are perfect, Dyce thought. And the nose, sharp and raw as a chip of flint. The eyes were wrong, but they’d be closed.
“High time we had a good day,” the clerk said. Even the mouth was right, with the same taut lips as his father’s. Dyce felt the stirring within and wondered that it could strike him even now, even when he should be fleeing and sated. In a way the death of the agent may have been only a tease, he realized, not a resolution. He may have served only to whet Dyce’s appetite. Or perhaps to combine two appetites into one larger, all- encompassing, insatiable one. He felt like a man who had lived his life on a diet of brown rice and has just had his first taste of ice cream.
“Well, have a good one,” Dyce said. He felt the clerk watching him as he forced himself to walk casually toward his Valiant and slid behind the wheel.
Perhaps we’ll meet again, Dyce thought to himself He adjusted his rearview mirror and saw that the clerk was, indeed, watching him. Not with any great interest-there was little else to look at on the street- but watching him nonetheless. We may well meet again, he thought. We shouldn’t, but we may.
Driving well within the speed limit, Dyce left Waverly and headed north toward Minnot.
“We stopped calling it sexual perversion a few years ago,” Gold said. “Too judgmental. Paraphilia sounds more scientific, anyway.”
“As if there were science involved,” said Becker.
“We have our professional image to maintain,” said Gold wryly. “Otherwise, we could just call everybody loony and be done with it. Being scientists, how ever, we like to sort our loonies into categories and give them names.”
“You’ve loosened your sphincter muscles a bit since we began,” said Becker.
“That’s the effect you have on me. You’re so comforting to talk to.”
Becker laughed.
“Is this a new tack? Shrink as wit and good guy? Shrink as pal?”
“Shrink as human, maybe. Since I can’t impress you with my credentials or my vast learning, I might as well try my menschlichkeit.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Great, then let’s get on with it. What do you need to know about paraphilia?”
“How does it happen?”
Gold shrugged. “I don’t know how specific I can be, but which particular variety? There are an awful lot and some of them have yet to be identified, like the insects in the Amazon basin.”
“Dyce’s variety. I think he has to make himself look like a corpse to get aroused. And I think he likes to look at other corpses. I don’t know if he does anything to them or not, but I’m pretty sure he sits there looking at them. Probably in the dark. And not just any corpse or he could get a job at a mortuary. They have to look a certain way.”
“That’s what the mother’s maiden name is all about?”
“I think it’s a start. If you like redheads with green eyes and freckles, it’s not a bad idea to start with — people with Irish names. He wants Scandinavians, or people who look that way. So he starts with people whose mothers were of Scandinavian descent. He’s got access to thousands of names anyway and this way he’s not going on a random search; he knows where they live, where they work. It’s easy enough for him to get a look at them and see if they’re what he’s after.”
“Why doesn’t he find someone who looks right in the first place?”
“Because it’s difficult and dangerous. If he sees somebody in a line in a supermarket, how is he going to find out enough about the guy’s patterns to abduct him? Follow him home? Hope his wallet falls out of his pocket so he can get an address? Strike up a conversation and have witnesses see him? It’s not as if he’s just trying to pick somebody up; he’s selecting a victim, and he’s very careful about it.”
“Why does he use the mother’s name? Why not the victim’s own name?”
“I’m not sure. There’s always the fact that you can’t be sure the father is really the father, but I suspect it’s to avoid creating an obvious pattern. I think he’s been at this a long time, and the only way he’s gotten away with it is by making it appear that nothing at all is happening.”
“Any idea why your boy likes Scandinavians?”
“His father was Norwegian is all I know. His mother was Jewish, but she died shortly after he was born anyway.”
Becker paused and Gold studied the ceiling for a moment.
“Well-in general, paraphilias are caused by some sort of psychic trauma that occurs when a child is between the ages of about three and eight. That’s when the pattern is set in the mind-a lovemap, some call it, but I’m not crazy about the term. It sounds too much like pop psychology, although it’s meant very seriously. Anyway, something happens to the child to derail the normal erotic drive. It could be child abuse-it frequently is-or the loss of a parent or sibling. It could be as simple as severe sexual repression in a family’s attitudes so that the child finds a way of expressing his desire by masking it. Spankers, mild sadists, people who can only have sex if it’s seen as punishment. It could take the form of a fetish that substitutes for forbidden lust-rubber suits, feather, silk garments. Or it can be caused by very complicated circumstances and find expressions that are bizarre in the extreme. There are men who kill their partners after sex as a form of atonement. You probably know about those.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Professionally, I mean. Does any of this help at all? Or even tell you anything you didn’t already know?”
“Not really.”
“Sometimes it helps just to hear it said aloud,” said Gold.
“Maybe.”
“And how about you?”
“What about me?” Becker asked.
“Any closer to telling me about your traumas? It’s all for the same price, as long as you’re here.”
“Is there any hope for curing somebody like Dyce? If you could find out what has caused him to be this way, could you undo it?”
Gold studied Becker for a long moment.
“Truth?”
