see any pee stains on my trousers?'
'You left me for ten minutes,' Kiwasee repeated, not looking at McNeil.
'I asked you a question, Tyrone.'
Kiwasee turned immediately to the command in MeNeil's voice. His chest rose and fell in great panting breaths, trying to make up for ten minutes of not breathing.
'Sir?' Kiwasee asked.
McNeil smiled. 'You can talk right, after all. I always thought you people could if you put your minds to it. You see any snot on my shirt, Tyrone?'
'No sir.'
'You see anybody climbing out of the window of that house last week?'
'No sir, I did not.'
'Were you in the house next door that night?'
'Yes sir, I sure was.' Kiwasee searched McNeil's face for the proper answer. 'No sir, I was not.'
'That's right. You were everywhere else all those other times though, weren't you?'
'Yes sir… Which ones?'
'All the other burglaries you did in Clamden the last three years, you're going to tell Chief Terhune about each one, honestly, aren't you?'
'That's right, sir. I done 'em all. I'm guilty as can be.'
'Except for which burglary?'
'The one last week, the one in the house we just looked at. '
'Were you there or not?'
'No sir, I was not.'
'Ever?'
'Never, I never was there.
'Ever hear of anyone else who was there?'
'No sir. Never. I ain't even been in Clamden in over a month. Ain't heard of no one else who was, neither.'
'Ever see anyone leaving that house next door?'
'I ain't never seen that house next door 'cause I ain't never been in the other one in the first place.'
'Good, Tyrone. Very good. That gas didn't affect your brain, after all. In fact, I'd say you're a little smarter than before, definitely.
You're a better man for the experience.'
'Yes sir, I am.'
'How about your dick? Your dick still work?'
'I don't believe so, sir. It sure ain't working right now.'
McNeil laughed. 'You're all right, Tyrone. Now step on out of there.
First you're going to clean up my car, then you're going to clean up yourself, then we're going to talk to Chief Terhune.'
'Yes sir.' Kiwasee slid quickly out of the car.
'Don't think about crying to Terhune or any asshole lawyer about police brutality either. You haven't got a mark on you.'
'I wasn't thinking about that.'
'Don't ever think about it.'
'I won't.
'And Tyrone?'
'Sir?'
'Now that you're out of the car, do anything wrong and I'll shoot your head off… You believe me, don't you?'
'Yes sir,' said Kiwasee. 'I surely do.'
Later, McNeil wondered if he had overreacted, if he should have just laughed off Kiwasee's account instead of proving its importance. He did not second-guess himself for long, however, and he did not chide himself for making a mistake. He was, at all times, extremely forgiving of himself. To McNeil, McNeil was always right.
7
The were on display in the FBI forensic lab in New York like a paleontologist's dream-complete skeletons laid out from head to foot, everything in its place, nothing left to speculation. Lying side by side, teeth grinning ironically in the horrible skeletal grimace, they looked like a horizontal chorus line of phantoms, frozen in time and space in a Halloween dance. There were six of them in all, and each was identified by a tag placed between the, feet that read 'Fl — Becker,'
'F2-Becker,' and so on, with the date on which it was exhumed. 'F' meant female.
Becker looked at the identification tags with distaste, as if the bodies had been assigned his name because he had had something to do with their deaths, not because he was the case officer. Grone, a forensic technician, spoke of the skeletons with pride. 'You don't see a display like this outside of medical school,' he said. 'Everything's there, each in its own little bag, neat as a pin. You could bring students in here and teach them right off the slab. Becker's beauties.' Becker glared at him. 'What did you say?'
'We're calling them that, Becker's beauties.'
'Don't,' Becker said. 'No offense intended,' Grone protested. 'Well, there's offense taken. These are not mine.'
Grone nodded and turned away to hide his consternation. He realized they were not Becker's, Becker had his own bodies, everyone in the Bureau had heard about Becker's bodies. Eight of them, ten, twelve-the numbers varied according to the legend or the excitement of the teller, because people in the Bureau became exercised and imaginative when discussing Becker and his feats, real and imagined. As certain men grew impassioned describing the exploits of great athletes, agents in the Bureau, trained to the craft, thrilled to Becker's record. Enough of the deeds ascribed to him were true, or sufficiently true, to lend credence to the rest. He had killed a number of men-and one woman-each of whom was a serial killer, a dangerous, desperate sociopath; but it was the rumored zest with which he did it that aroused adniiration, fear, and disapproval in almost equal parts from his fellow agents. They thought of him as a ferret, born to the hunt and specially equipped by nature with a feral understanding of his prey, a bloodlust that matched his victims'. Becker was a serial killer himself, it was pointed out by his detractors. Licensed to it by the FBI, lauded for it. What they did not say was that he was also haunted by it. He knew what was said about him, he heard the whispers and saw the furtive looks from those not bold enough to confront him. Just as hard to bear were the congratulations and misapplied approval of those who thought him a hero.
Hardest of all was that he knew the truth on which all the exaggeration was based. There was no need to exaggerate, Becker thought grimly. The truth was bad enough.
'Naturally we'll be putting names on them when we can make IDs through dental records. Right now, we haven't got a clue.'
'That's a poor choice of words for a criminalist,' Becker said.
Grone tried to smile. Becker frightened him, not because of his reputation but because of a certain keen concentration that set him apart from the others. It was said that he could look at the evidence and see things with his naked eye that the technicians had missed with their microscopes. Grone did not believe that, he knew it was hyperbole, part of the gentle hazing applied to new men in the lab, and he had said it himself to intimidate rookies, but it was true that Becker looked at things differently. As if he had a contrary understanding of evidence. As if he had the point of view of the one who had created the evidence, not the ones who had discovered it.
'Well, still, the fact is, we have very little to work with here. The bones have been in the ground a long time, the flesh has long since putrefied, some of the nutrients probably taken up by the trees-the roots had penetrated the bags, in some cases they even penetrated the bone, amazing how persistent nature is with growing organisms
