anything in twenty-four hours, she was probably nervous as a cat going to meet him there, it was some kind of big rendezvous-we know that the teddy she was wearing was brandnew.
There was nothing in her stomach to let us put a time on the death. He could have been there three hours before we saw hi@, or an hour or two later.'
'I heard there was a watch or something..
'Easiest thing in the world to fake. It was a farce, the whole thing.
He was laughing at us, using us as his alibi.'
'A jury would like that broken watch business.'
'I know they would,' said Becker. 'It's worse. The P.I. who was supposedly watching him said he never left the hospital. Which means that he never drove his car, but the hospital has several exits, he could have left whenever he wanted to.'
'I hope you've got more than any of this. This is worse than thin, John.'
'Yes, I have something else. He told me he did it.'
Becker told Tee of his conversation in the elevator, and of his interpretation of it.
'To anyone else it would look like you were beating a confession out of him, you know that.'
'I don't have a prayer in court. I can't even justify fur there FBI inquiries. I sure as hell can't talk to Karen about it-not that we're speaking to each other anyway. All I can do is tell another cop what my gut feeling is. So I'm telling you.'
'You want more than to just tell me though, don't you, John?'
'A little more.'
You want me to help you.' 'Yes,' Becker said. Tee was silent for a moment. Becker added,
'Please.'
Tee studied his desk for a moment as if to find his decision there.
'I'll need some help during the day,' Becker said. 'I'll be up with him at night, but I need a chance to sleep-I don't want him to.'
Tee looked up from the desk, drummed his fingers on the surface. He reached over to the white bag Becker had brought him and peered in.
'Did you tell them the bagel was for me?' he asked. 'They usually give me more crewn cheese.'
30
Three days following the incident at the Marriott, Kom arrived at Norwalk Hospital and sauntered through the lobby with a word for the receptionist as usual.
'A man's been asking for you, Dr. Kom,' the receptionist told him.
'Who?'
'Didn't give his name. Wasn't no patient though.'
'How do you know?'
'Said so. Just kept asking if you'd come in yet. Said he'd check back.'
'What did he look like?' Kom asked. The receptionist hesitated. She had no words to distinguish between shades of pale. 'Look like a cop,' she said finally. Kom suppressed a smile. Becker. A sore loser. 'Let me know if he comes again,' he said.
The following day Kom left his office at noon and drove toward Trumbull on the Merritt Parkway. He made his usual evasive maneuvers, and when he was convinced that he was not followed, he drove to the motel where he saw Doris Waxman's black Acura waiting in the parking lot. In the darkened motel room, Kom was removing her brassiere when the telephone rang. They both stared at the instrument, startled and uncertain, as it rang again. On the fourth ring Kom picked it up gingerly, as if it might explode, and he held it to his ear without speaking. 'Mrs.
Waxman,' said a man's voice, flat and unaccented. Kom thought he knew the voice, but he was not certain.
'He asked for you,' he said, holding the phone to the woman who sat beside him on the bed, now replacing her bra. She said, 'Yes?' then held the receiver to her ear for a long time, saying nothing, listening.
Kom watched her expression change from puzzlement to fear, and not fear of being discovered by her husband but something far deeper, something genuinely terrifying. When she hung up at last, she grabbed her blouse from the floor and started for the door.
'Who was it?' Kom asked. Without answering, without glancing back at Kom, she opened the door and hurried from the room, dressing as she went. By the time Kom had put on his shoes and hastened after her, Mrs.
Waxman was already pulling out of the parking lot in her Acura. Kom jogged a few paces after her, waving for her to stop. At the exit onto the street, Mrs. Waxman was forced by traffic to halt. She turned to see Kom approaching her, then accelerated dangerously into the stream of oncoming cars. Amid a chorus of angry horns, she fishtailed briefly until she regained control of her car, then raced away, her engine howling.
Kom stood by the exit, wondering what could possibly have happened on the phone. The look on her face just before she risked her life in traffic had been one of sheer terror, and it had come from seeing Kom approach. Becker, he thought again bitterly.
Two nights later, Kom paced his darkened house restlessly while his wife slept. For the first time in years, he had no woman to visit. Denise was dead, Doris Waxman would not speak to him even on the telephone, and Karen Crist, for whom Kom still had hopes, was a very dangerous choice with Becker on the prowl. Her time would come, he had not given up, and his victory over her would be all the sweeter because of Becker's petty vindictiveness-but her time was not yet. He was seized by a kind of desperation which he had been forestalling by making love to his wife, but there were limits to how much of that he was willing to do. The woman bored him; all women bored him after half a dozen times. Once he had mastered their needs, once he had laid waste to their defenses and learned how to reduce them to eager accomplices of their own seduction, there was little else to maintain his interest. It was not sex that he craved, he had realized that about himself long ago; it was mastery, and sex was his chosen vehicle for its display. An artist did not continue to paint the same work after he had completed it; he sought a new canvas, a new subject. There were variations he could ring on Tovah, more ways that he could reduce her to his will, different means of demonstrating his control, but there was no point in it other than as a bravura exercise. He had mastered her years ago and she served him now-sexually, that is-as no more than an escape valve, a convenient means of letting off some libidinous steam, but while a session with her left him physically relieved, at least for a short time, it did nothing for him mentally. His spirit did not soar, because he had conquered her.
He needed more conquests, he needed more victims, Captain Luv was not a homebody, he was a presence abroad in the world, a natural force that could not be confined for any length of time. Not only did he have no woman to visit, none to court or flirt with or scheme about, but since Becker had impounded the Caprice, he had no safe way to get around. That problem could be addressed in due course once the hysteria surrounding the Appleseed murders had abatedas it would do, as it must do if no more bodies were found, and Kom would see to it that no more were found-but in the meantime, he felt the pressure of his need build within him.
The telephone rang and Kom looked instinctively at the hour. It was past midnight. The call was on their private, unlisted line, the one Tovah gave out only to her close friends and the one Kom gave to no one.
Neither his office nor the hospital had this number at any time.
He picked up the phone on the second ring and said, 'Hello?'
'You home, stud?' a voice demanded.
Kom paused, shocked. He hesitated to respond. Perhaps it was a trap of some sort. Or just a crank… But he knew it was not. 'It's you, isn't it?' he said. The voice laughed. 'No.'
'What do you think you're proving by this?'
The line went dead in his ear and Kom hung up, disappointed. He wanted to talk about it, to debate the voice, to have a chance for his superior wit to come into play. If Becker wanted to play games, that was all right with Kom, as long as he was allowed to play too. What was this silly long-distance sniping supposed to do? Did
