“No, lie to me.”
“No, there’s not much hope. We could keep him drugged, which would probably prevent him from doing it again, whatever it is he does. But to change him fundamentally? He’s a very, very sick puppy. This isn’t neurosis we’re talking about. My profession isn’t too bad with neurosis; we can cure it, or help it, or mask it. But psychosis? No. He’s probably that way for life.”
“The wiring is twisted.”
“In the brain, you mean? Yes. Things are hooked up wrong. Some conditions are just because of chemical unbalance, we think. Bipolar manic depression, definitely. Schizophrenia, probably. In time we should be able to control those conditions completely with a pill. I don’t mean drug them; I mean treat them specifically as we can do with hypertension or diabetes. But psychosis is different. You’re right-it’s in the permanent wiring by the time they’re adults, and we’re just not able to tinker with the wiring in the brain. Not yet.”
“So there’s no hope.”
“For Dyce. There’s hope for you.”
“I’m not talking about me,” said Becker.
“That’s all you’ve talked about since I’ve met you,” said Gold.
They sat in silence for a long time.
“Tell me about people who enjoy killing,” Becker said at last.
The flight to Minnot was like a half-hour roller-coaster ride-a good twenty-nine minutes longer than necessary for anyone but a teenager. Or perhaps someone who’s had his stomach surgically removed. Tee thought. It was certainly more than he needed; he got the point on the first dip and didn’t need any further reminder of the frailty of the aircraft, the whimsical nature of air currents, or the delicacy of his own inner ear.
“It’s summer,” the pilot yelled over the sound of the engine after the plane had regained altitude only to be sucked downward abruptly once more. “The sun heats up the ground, the air rises, and you get these wind shear kind of things.”
Wind shear was a word Tee associated with airline disasters. He reached forward to brace himself, but there was nothing to hold onto in the tiny aircraft. Agent Reynolds had shooed him onto the plane with assurances that it was perfectly safe-and also the only thing immediately available. The pilot/meteorologist appeared to Tee to be sixteen and wild-eyed. He likes being bucketed up, down and sideways, Tee moaned to himself. The kid is up here for the sport.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” said the pilot. He grinned at Tee’s discomfort, revealing a large gap between his front teeth, a condition Tee had always associated with stupidity. “Don’t fly much, do you?”
“Only in real airplanes that give peanuts,” Tee said. He couldn’t decide what to do with his eyes. Looking out made him dizzy and if he looked at the instrument panel, all the whirring dials and flashing numbers alarmed him. The plane tilted sideways and groaned loudly.
“How about you?” Tee asked. “Do you fly much?”
The pilot laughed. He thinks I’m joking, thought Tee.
“It’s just the summer,” the pilot said again. “It’s not dangerous. Except during landing.”
Tee decided his best bet was to close his eyes and pretend to be asleep. If that didn’t work, he would try to throw up in the pilot’s direction so he could get a little satisfaction before the adolescent killed them both.
He had tried to protest, but Reynolds had hustled him to the airport and onto the plane before he had much of a chance to think up a good excuse. Not that there was ever a very good excuse for a law officer to ignore a direct request by the FBI, but some kind of demurrer seemed in order if only to establish his independence. The fact was, he didn’t have any excuse; he could be spared at any time and the department would function pretty much the same. It was actually rather exciting to be invited in on the last of the chase for Dyce-it was the feeing of being commanded that he objected to.
They circled once over a surprisingly flat area of ground that appeared suddenly amidst the surrounding wooded hills as if a giant foot had landed there while striding past. Luxuriant crops covered the area, and along one side was a green strip, distinguishable from the rest of the land only by a windsock at one end and a white streak of powdered lunestone that had been laid down the center. The windsock stood straight out from its pole.
“Kind of tricky here,” the pilot said before nosing the plane into a steep decline that Tee would have thought was a power dive rather than a runway approach.
The young pilot brought the plane down as if the grassy airstrip at Minnot were a diving board and he were taking a few preliminary bounces to test the spring.
“Not bad, huh?” The pilot flashed the gap between his teeth at Tee.
I knew he was a teenager, thought Tee. He wants a grade.
“Pretty good, I’d say,” said the pilot. He taxied to the end of the runway and stopped. “You don’t mind walking to the terminal, do you? I have to take up a glider now and it’s right here.”
Tee saw a goateed man and his pretty daughter standing next to an engineless aircraft a few yards away. The girl looked to be about the age of the pilot, which meant she was too young for Tee. But not too young to appreciate.
“Where is it?” Tee asked.
“Right there.” The pilot pointed at the glider.
“I mean the terminal.”
“Oh. Well, we call it a terminal.” The pilot nodded toward a building alongside the field, equidistant between the two ends. Tee had thought it was a refreshment shack.
Tee staggered briefly as he got out of the plane and clutched at the wing for support, hoping the pretty girl had not noticed.
“Great day for it, isn’t it?” asked the man with the goatee.
The girl smiled shyly. The flash of her perfect white teeth transformed her from pretty to a ravishing beauty and Tee felt his knees weaken, no longer sure if it was airsickness or the lust, longing, and bittersweet sense of loss that beset him several times a day when he saw loveliness that was forbidden him. More and more beauty was denied him every year, an unrelenting calculus that depressed him when he paused to think about it.
He had not been entirely wrong about the terminal being a refreshment shack. The proprietor, dispatcher, air-traffic controller, and owner of the field was stocking one of three candy dispensers as he explained that a car had been left at Tee’s disposal along with directions to find Hatcher and he, the owner, would explain it all to Tee just as soon as he got the machine loaded and ready to go. Tee assumed the vending machines provided more of an income than the airstrip.
Standing outside the shack, waiting for his car. Tee saw Dyce drive by. The road was no more than ten yards from where Tee stood, and for perhaps a second he and Dyce looked directly into each other’s eyes before the car passed. It wasn’t much and the man’s appearance was greatly changed by his beard, but Tee recognized the eyes of the man who had looked up at him from the hospital bed, the eyes that had locked with Becker’s in that peculiar, semi-seductive confrontation. He was convinced he had seen the shock of recognition in Dyce’s eyes just now, which meant that there was no time to lose in pursuit.
Dyce’s car did not change speed and Tee could not see him moving his head to look back in the mirror, but he knew it was Dyce. As startled as Tee, no doubt, but too cool to give himself away. It was a game that Tee had to play, as well, and he made himself walk slowly back to the terminal as long as he was in Dyce’s line of vision. He wasted no time once in the terminal, lifting the proprietor by the armpits and propelling him to the board with keys dangling from hooks.
“Call the police-no, give me the keys first — and have them get in touch with Hatcher of the FBI. Hatcher, he’s in Waverly. Got it?”
Tee was already sprinting toward the waiting Toyota. “Tell him I’m following Dyce, going that way.” He jabbed his finger in the direction Dyce had taken, then leaped into the Toyota.
Within two minutes Tee caught up to the Valiant that was still driving within the speed limit. The roads through this flat section were long and straight, with few turnoffs, and if the Valiant had been trying to elude pursuit, it would have had to speed, but the car was fairly dawdling along.
Tee began to wonder if he had the right man. He had seen him for but a second, at a distance, in a moving car, wearing a beard. Hatcher would have his ass served on a platter if Tee had pulled him away from a stakeout
