“I don’t doubt it. Normally.”
“What do you mean ‘normally’?”
“If you’re not too involved.”
“Of course I’m involved. I’ve been working on the case for seven months. I want to hang the bastard by his balls.”
“You were doing interviews in the field in Stamford after the fourth boy’s disappearance. That was after you’d been on the case for only about five months.”
“Five months is a long time.”
“Not really. Certainly not long enough to drive most Deputy Directors out of the office and onto the street. Every one of them I’ve ever known has been more than happy to give up field work. It doesn’t look leader-like, poking around amongst the common folk, asking questions any agent could ask. It doesn’t help someone with ambitions to lay her reputation on the line by going back on the street. It’s a dumb move, Karen, especially if it doesn’t pay off. It makes you look like a poor agent and a lousy executive. That’s why I say too involved.”
“That’s why I came to you.”
“Maybe. Although I doubt that you’d come to me just to save your ass, even assuming I could do it. Or would do it… How old were the victims. Karen?”
“Four of them were ten years old, two were nine.”
“Your file says you have a child. A boy, isn’t it?”
“Jack.”
“About ten?”
“He turns ten in three weeks.”
“Does that have anything to do with your extra involvement?”
“That’s fairly simplistic reasoning, especially coming from you. I don’t see that my son has anything to do with it.”
“You have custody?”
“Of Jack?”
“Someone got custody after the divorce, right? Is it you? Or is it your ex-husband?”
“What the hell does the status of my custody arrangement have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“I don’t think you’d be asking a man this question. Would you need to know Hatcher’s ‘extra involvement’? No, you’d just treat him as a fellow professional and get on with it.”
“I happen to know that Hatcher doesn’t have enough creative imagination or sensitivity to get involved in anything other than his own career. You are very different, Karen, although you’re still ambitious as hell. You have both the imagination and the emotional proclivity to get involved.”
“Emotional proclivity? Come on, Becker. Speak English, you’re among friends.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t. And I never did. You wanted me to have some twisted involvement in the Bahoud case. I thought I understood why, back then. You were sleeping with me. We were about half in love. I guess. You wanted someone to share what you were feeling about the case because it frightened you and made you lonely, so you imagined I was the same way. But I wasn’t. I almost wanted to be, just because of our relationship, but I’m not that way. I’m just not. Why you need to think I’m that way today is frankly beyond me.”
Becker stood up and put his hands on the back of his chair. The pilot and owner stopped talking and watched him.
“What?” she asked.
“Tell me about the sixth victim,” Becker said.
“Are you going someplace?”
“I’m listening.”
“Why do men always do that? The minute a problem comes out in the open, the very second you have a chance to discuss something, off you all go. Out of the room, out of the house. Don’t want to talk about it, case closed.” She glanced at the pilot, who was watching with interest.
“I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“You’ve got one foot out the door already.”
“I’m right here. I’m just standing.”
“One foot out the door, one eye on the television.”
“I don’t remember you being quite so much fun to work with the last time,” he said.
“That’s because you were so busy humping me.”
“Humping you? I thought we were ‘half in love.’ ”
“Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t,” she said. “I just said that.”
“Were you?”
Karen shrugged. “Half, a quarter, an eighth. Some, John, okay? Some.”
“So then what’s with the humping?”
“That’s what we did on the bed.”
Karen met the pilot’s gaze directly and defiantly. The pilot looked away as if he had just been casually surveying the room. Once his back was safely turned he grinned at the owner.
“I get the impression I’m being blamed for that part,” Becker said. “For you it was being some fraction in love and for me it was humping. Is that how you remember it?”
“To tell you the truth, John. I scarcely remember at all… Oh, yeah, I did nearly get killed and spent a month in the hospital. I remember that part. What do you want me to say? Something that lets you off the hook? You’re off the hook. You’re not responsible for any of it.”
“Graciously done.”
“You’re not responsible for seducing a twenty-six-year-old rookie agent. You’re not…”
“Seducing! Seducing? What kind of archaic notion is that?”
“I said you didn’t.”
“Does seducing mean I tricked you into doing something that you didn’t want to do? Is that what that means? You’d already been married and divorced by twenty-six. How did I seduce you? Put drugs in your drink? Did I charm you out of your pants? I think we’ve already established that I don’t have any charm.”
“I believe we agree on that point, yes. The pilot is laughing at us, if that interests you.”
Becker turned toward the pilot, who was now openly staring and trying unsuccessfully to assume a straight face.
“Can you imagine anyone seducing Deputy Assistant Director Crist?” Becker demanded.
The pilot coughed and turned back to the owner again. They became suddenly involved in a weather chart. In fact, the pilot had spent the better part of his trip to the mountains trying to figure a way to make a move on Deputy Assistant Director Crist without endangering his career. If Becker had ever seduced her, the pilot would have loved to know how. So would most of the men in the Bureau. If the Deputy Director had had any private life at all following her divorce, it was exceedingly private. Her brief affair with Becker ten years ago was well known, of course, because Deputy Director Hatcher had flirted briefly with the intention of making an issue of it. But, as with most things involving Agent Becker, this case had fallen into a special category. Becker, it was rumored, literally got away with murder. Like most of the other agents, the pilot did not hold it against him.
Still fuming, Becker strode to the soft-drink machine, kicked it, and returned to the table. The owner thought briefly of saying something, but a glance from the pilot persuaded him otherwise. Becker sat abruptly.
“Feel better?” Karen asked.
“Soda’s bad for your teeth, anyway,” Becker said.
Fighting a smile, Karen said, “I’m supposed to command these people, John. It doesn’t help if you have these little tantrums and involve me in them.”
“Is that the voice you use to keep your son in line? Stern but reasonable?”
“Jack doesn’t kick things,” she said. “And he doesn’t embarrass me in public.”
“Sounds like a dull kid.”
“Never say that to a parent,” she said sharply. “Not if you want to continue the conversation. Jack is a wonderful child, a bright and sensitive and creative boy who doesn’t need to get violent to express himself.”
