Prayer for the Dead (10 page)

“I called but you didn’t answer,” she said even before she opened the door in case he wasn’t hurt.

An apparition stood before her. There was no light on in the bathroom and he shone like a ghost in the gloom. He was chalky white from head to toe. Deathly white. For one irrational moment she thought he was a standing corpse.

His eyes were wide and staring and his lips were peeled back from his teeth. She stood right in front of him and yet she was sure he did not see her. He had been looking at himself in the mirror and his mind was still fixed there, staring at his sepulchral reflection.

He moaned once more, almost a pleading, and it was then that Helen noticed that his penis was hugely erect.

“Roger?” she said, not knowing what world he was in at the moment.

He shook his head as if trying to clear it and powder floated off. Dyce struggled to focus on her, but Helen could not keep her eyes off the pure white of his stiff penis. The powder was smooth and uniform and had not been touched since application.

In the darkness its size was accentuated by its pallor. Helen thought it shined. She took one step toward him and he threw his arms around her, yanking her into his body. She groaned with gratitude as she felt the rigidity ram against her.

Becker sat at the corner of the bar so he could watch the door and see when his man was leaving. He had no need to watch him directly or to keep tabs on him in the mirror; the guy was not about to exit through the toilet window or the kitchen. He had no reason to know that Becker was tailing him, no reason to be suspicious of a thing.

Right now the man was sitting quietly at a table for two in the singles hangout called the Crossroads. Insurance literature was spread out on the table in front of him, and the man was studying it as he sipped a cup of coffee. He had a settled-in look about him as if he were here for the balance of the evening.

Becker had got onto the man initially when Laurie Seeger produced his business card from a desk drawer where Mick had presumably tossed it. Mick had purchased a life-insurance policy just before the birth of their first child three years earlier. Recently, Mick had contacted the insurance agency to increase his policy. The man who had sold him the original policy had since retired, but the new man who was now sipping coffee in the Crossroads had called on Mick and serviced the new requirement. It was, as far as Laurie knew, their only contact.

But it was not the insurance man’s only contact with one of the missing men. Marley of Guileford, mother’s name Cederquist, had taken out a policy from the same man two years earlier. None of the others had, but Vohl of Branford, mother’s name Nordholm, received a brochure from an insurance company the day before Becker’s second visit to Mrs. Vohl. The brochure was still lying on the kitchen counter, unopened, and on the brochure, stamped by hand in the bottom corner, was the name of the man’s agency.

Three of eight was pressing coincidence to the point of probability. Becker had watched the man for two days now in a sporadic pattern, checking in on his activities now and then, never staying long enough to draw attention to himself He did not expect to catch the man in the act; rather he wanted to get a feel of the man, to fill his nostrils with the man’s scent, and to get a sense of his pattern so that any aberrance would send off a warming signal.

The bartender placed another diet soda in front of Becker.

“From the lady,” said the bartender.

Cindi lifted a glass to him from the back of the room and Becker rose to join her. The insurance salesman cast him a casual glance as he passed, but Becker did not look back.

“We’ve been watching you,” Cindi said, “wondering if you’d ever turn around. Most men scope out a place. What’s the matter, not curious?”

“Who’s we?”

“Alan’s in the john. What’s the point of coming to a place like the Crossroads if you don’t check out the action?”

“I had this silly idea about getting something to drink,” said Becker.

“Yeah, I usually come to a singles place if I feel like a Coke, too. A buck and a half seems like a fair price for half a can.”

She was still wearing her spandex climbing outfit, but the front zipper was open far enough to suggest cleavage and her hair was flowing freely over her shoulders. Becker had not realized she had such a full mane of it.

“Are you a detective of some kind?” Becker said.

“I notice things,” she said, then grinned.

It was peculiar, Becker thought, but it seemed that he could see her better in the half light of the bar than in the full sunshine. There was a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. Not enough to even qualify as a dusting, a countable number. Her teeth were unnaturally bright when she smiled because of the fluorescent lighting, and her last swallow of beer had left her with a foam mustache just on the corners of her mouth.

“I notice you’ve been climbing again,” said Becker. “Or else you’ve got a very limited wardrobe.”

“Right on both counts. We tried a new face today. It’s about a quarter mile farther north than the last one.”

“How is it?”

“Kind of tough. We missed you.”

She seemed a little older than she had on the rocks, too, for which Becker was grateful. He had trouble finding himself attracted to women who were too young for him. Cindi, if one were liberal enough about these things, was just old enough for a man his age. Her bottom teeth were not quite straight, as if orthodontia had been abandoned before it could take full effect. A restless, impatient girl who did not wear her retainer often enough or long enough.

“Do you do anything else for fun, or just climb rocks?”

“Now that is a lousy come-on for a man of your age and experience,” she said.

“I’m out of practice.”

“That might be marginally in your favor,” she said.

The waitress stopped at the insurance salesman’s table and spoke to him. The salesman shook his head and the waitress moved off. Becker watched him from behind as he rearranged his papers, put some in his briefcase, then checked his watch.

“So he finally looked,” said Alan as he slid into his chair. There was an extremely loose, limber quality to everything he did. A natural ease in his body that was completely lacking in his social manner.

“I summoned him.”

“Bullshit,” said Alan. “She was trying to make you turn around by the power of her thoughts. Her karma, or whatever you call it.”

“That’s pronounced
charm,”
said Becker.

Cindi grinned again. “Better,” she said.

“What?” said Alan, testily. “She came over and got you, right?”

“No. Like she said, she summoned me as if from afar.”

“Yeah, bullshit.” Alan waved impatiently for the waitress. Becker guessed it was at least his fourth beer. Alan seemed just at that point of balance where the night could go either way. Alan clearly had decided it would go downhill.

“So you were a hotshit fed, is that the story?” Alan demanded. He was the type of blond who should not try to grow a mustache. Becker felt an urge to pluck it off his face.

“Tee talks too much.”

“Tee? Who’s Tee? I heard this from my mother.”

“Who’s your mother?”

“Mrs. Tolan. That help?”

“Not much. Should it?”

Cindi was leaning back in her chair, looking slightly amused. Becker decided she was perfectly content to let them butt heads.

Alan said, “She said you wouldn’t remember her. She knew you from school.”

Becker instantly reappraised Alan’s age. The man had to be much younger than he looked.

Cindi laughed, without explanation.

“You’re some kind of a legend among the older generation,” said Alan. “What was it, you blew a lot of people away or something?”

“Cindi tells me you tried a new face today.”

“No, the same one. He didn’t even shave,” said Cindi.

“It’s not as if you were a war hero, though, is it? These were civilians you were killing, right?”

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket approached the salesman’s table. They shook hands, the man in tweed sat down, and the salesman turned the literature so his companion could read it. Seven o’clock and the man was still working. Selling was not an easy life, Becker thought. Not that that was any excuse for the man’s hobby—whatever it was—but still not an easy life.

“Let it go, Alan,” Cindi said. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“That was then, though, right? You were this kind of super fed and now you’re what? Nothing?”

“Now I’m nothing. You’ve got it.”

“Alan,” said Cindi. “Go away.”

“Listen,” said Alan. He gripped her elbow possessively and she twisted it away.

“Go on.” She did not raise her voice but spoke as if she expected to be obeyed.

To Becker’s relief, Alan went. He had been afraid of a scene developing that would have drawn the salesman’s attention to him. He was also gratified to see that whatever bond Alan had with Cindi, it was loose enough for her to order him off.

“Kind of an asshole, isn’t he?” Becker said as Alan made his way toward the bar. “I thought he was going to take me to the parking lot and bump antlers.”

“He’s just being protective of me,” said Cindi.

“Why? Are you in danger?”

Cindi grinned. “Mom made us promise to take care of each other.”

Becker winced. “Ouch.”

“No harm done. He can be an asshole.”

“He’s your younger brother, I hope.”

“Three years older.”

“See you around.”

She laughed. Becker liked the sound of it. She always seemed genuinely amused when she laughed, and as if she were more than prepared to stay in that mood.

“My mother was a high school teacher,” she said. “Not a classmate. She taught typing.”

“Oh. Mrs.
Tolan.
One of my favorites.”

“You didn’t have her. I’m thirty-one. You’re forty-two. Does that help?”

“It clears up the arithmetic, anyway,” said Becker. “Terrible thing, arithmetic.”

“It’s only numbers,” she said.

When the man in the tweed jacket rose to exit, Becker left. He wanted to go out the door first so that the salesman would not look back and notice him. Only a professional ever considered the possibility of being tailed from the front.

“Stick around,” said Becker to Cindi. “I have some things to take care of but I’ll be back.”

“Or I could meet you somewhere,” she said.

“Or you could meet me,” he said. “Where?”

There was nothing flirtatious about her manner as she wrote out her address on a napkin. She seemed more amused than anything else, as if she knew a joke that Becker did not. He would have to come see her to learn the punch line.

Becker went to the parking lot, sat in his car, and waited. Before long, the salesman came out, got in his car, and drove straight home to a neighborhood like many others in the Clamden area and the adjoining towns where one-family houses were perched close to the sidewalk and children filled the narrow yards. The only thing remarkable about this particular block was the salesman’s presence there: a single man in a neighborhood where families predominated.

Becker watched for several minutes but saw no lights come on. The house remained in total darkness long after the salesman had stepped inside.

Becker drove to a phone booth and called the salesman’s home phone. When the man answered on the third ring, Becker replaced the phone on the hook and drove back to the house. The car was there, the man was there, but still not a single light had been turned on.

Sitting in the silence of his car, watching the darkened house, Becker tried to empty himself of both thought and feeling. He did not want to impose anything on the situation—there was time enough for that later. Right now he wanted to shut off his rational mind and simply react with the senses of the beast. Was there something in the house to be feared? What lurked beneath the salesman’s respectable public pose?

Becker had done this before: At other times, in other places, he had relied on his instincts when the facts presented an inconclusive picture. He needed to be close enough to sense the subject’s feelings; this kind of work could not be done at a desk. He looked for mannerisms, expressions, gestures, the tic of the nervous man or—Becker’s own bete noire and specialty—the dead calm of the monster who took the shape of an average man but who lived to kill. Sometimes he gained that special empathy without any real effort. It was almost as if his guard’s impulses sought him out. Afterwards, he could not say how it manifested itself beyond a feeling, a tingling on the back of the neck, a stirring in the bowels, a silent but overpowering sense of immediate danger.

In this case, Becker was still not sure. Either he hadn’t gotten close enough or the man was not on the stalk and thus not sending out signals. They went through quiescent phases: Becker knew all about that. Their lusts and needs could be slaked for a time and they themselves forgot the awful reality of the appetite and its consequences. It was the on/off nature of their behavior that made them so very hard to find and identify, because when they were off, they were exactly what they pretended to be—indeed, wanted to be: average, normal, harmless men. A sated Hon was dangerous to no one, and the species that was its prey could stroll in front of it unmolested.

At such times the only evidence of their bloody habits was in the refuse of their lairs. Becker decided with reluctance that he might have to go into the house, and as soon as he realized that, he felt the familiar excitement building, deep and visceral, and he knew that it came not from the salesman but from himself.

He was grateful that Cindi was already at home, waiting for him. He did not trust himself to be alone.

Pulling on her jeans, Cindi heard his car pull into the driveway. She had not expected him so soon and she was still wet from the shower. Her climbing outfit lay on the bed where she had tossed it. Throwing the outfit into the back of the closet, closing the closet door, tugging the comforter up on the bed, Cindi told herself to relax. No time for makeup, no time for perfume or lotion. Jeans and a T-shirt and a harassed shower would have to do; she was fairly certain he wouldn’t mind. He did not seem like the type to need a geisha girl.