by David Wiltse
She was a woman in her thirties, a young mother of two. Quite pretty, not that that mattered to Captain Luv; he was an indiscriminate lover, offering his services to the comely and plain alike. He could see her breasts through the skimpy material of her summer nightgown.
Perhaps he would seduce her another time, he thought, chuckling to himself. That would be good, that would be perfect. Only a mother-daughter combination would be better. But he had done that, of course. He would find an excuse to run into her next week and start a conversation. It frequently took little more than that. Just give them some attention.
The mother was trying to comfort Inge, who had inexplicably burst into tears, muttering some incomprehensible nonsense about a nightmare.
Captain Luv could imagine the mother sitting on the bed next to Inge, who would have the sheet pulled up over her nakedness. The mother would put her bare arm around Inge's uncovered shoulders, flesh to flesh, lean her pretty head against the all pair's. Her breast would be pressed against Inge's side. He thought of stepping out of the closet and presenting himself, buck naked, suggesting a threesome. He had to stifle his sniggers at the thought.
Again, he heard the footsteps before anyone else. A heavy tread in the hall, and then a man was in the room.
"She had a nightmare," the woman said.
"Uh," the man grunted. He was wearing only pajama bottoms, his arms crossed over his broad and hairy chest. Standing in the gap of the open closet door, filling the gap with his size, he ran a hand through his rumpled hair. "Pretty loud."
The man cast his eyes around the room. Looking for me, thought Captain Luv. Quite right, too. Can't have young Inge fucking while the kiddies lie asleep next door. A young husband and father should be suspicious, there was an awful lot of sex around these days. Probably not with your wife though, eh? Probably not nearly often enough with the good lady, but not to worry, Captain Luv will take care of that. Please the lady and relieve you of the duty.
The husband turned and looked directly at the closet door. Captain Luv held himself very still, but did not take his eyes off the man. Despite Inge's residual sniffling and the comforting noises of the wife, the room seemed to have gone deadly still. For Captain Luv, time seemed to have slowed down and focused itself sharply on the husband and himself.
He was aware of an itch in the back of his knee, he was aware of the way Inge's clothes felt against his skin, aware even of the vanishingly faint metallic odor of the clothes hanger an inch in front of his nose.
As he watched the husband, who seemed to be in suspended animation, Captain Luv was aware, too, of the beating of his heart. Where others' would be racing with fear and adrenaline, his had actually slowed and a kind of calm that had nothing to do with serenity had come over him. He loved danger, not with excitement but with acceptance, as if it were his natural state, as if he were a bird that had been returned to the medium of the air after a life underground. He knew exactly what to do in crisis, exactly how to behave.
The husband stepped toward the closet, each movement as clear and distinct as if illuminated by a strobe light. It seemed to Captain Luv to take forever, and he watched with amusement to see what the man would do next. Would he hurl open the closet door, thrust the clothing aside, and grab the good Captain? Would he go for a baseball bat, a knife, a gun? Would he see the Captain, recognize him, scream for the cops, make Inge's indiscretion public and ruin the Captain's career? Captain Luv continued to grin. He would get out of it, whatever happened, he would get out scotfree. He believed in himself, in his invulnerability. He knew it.
The man put his hand to the closet door and pushed it closed, sealing Captain Luv into the blackness with a gesture of obsessive orderliness.
Luv wanted to laugh and he put Inge's blouse in his mouth to keep himself quiet. Chewing the taste of cotton, he put his hand on himself and felt his erection. It was even larger than before, threatening to burst the condom with its swelling. He did it for this, he realized.
All the tiresome seduction, the slipping around, the risks, the inconvenience, the going without sleep, he did it all not for the sex.
He did it to get away with it. It was fooling everyone that he loved.
He fooled the victims, he fooled the cuckolded boyfriends and husbands, the disapproving parents. He fooled his wife. He wondered if it would be nearly as much fun if he weren't married.
When the husband and wife had gone Captain Luv came out of the closet to find Inge in a state.
"You must go," she whispered fiercely. "You must go. "
"Can't go yet," he said, grinning at her. "They'll hear me.
"You cannot stay, you cannot stay. It is very dangerous now, you see."
She stood in front of him, gesticulating. Luv, still grinning, pointed at his erection.
"No, no, impossible now," she said, shaking her head.
"Not impossible." He grinned. "It just looks that way. You managed it before."
"No, no," said Inge, looking past him toward the door as if the wife might reappear at any second. "You do not understand. "
"You do not understand," he said, mocking her accent. "Ve shall resume."
He turned her around and took her from behind, bending her over the bed.
She resisted briefly, but without conviction. He took his time, still making sure to please her because a craftsman takes pride in his work, and by the end she was moaning vigorously again, but this time with a pillow stuffed in her mouth.
As his own climax approached he waited to see if the mania would seize him, waited for the great gasping need to possess him and demand her death. He thought that it might, he thought it was due, but the mania didn't arrive, so he let her live. For now.
Luv made a great show of his orgasm, panting hoarsely as it arrived, clutching her to him, then quivering wildly, as if being thrown about by his passion. He knew the victims liked a big display, it made them feel powerful to think they had him, at least temporarily, under their control, to think that something about themselves had brought him to this shivering, spasming end.
"Incredible," he whispered, when he could speak at last. "You were incredible." He would have preferred to utter his victim's name at the end for the personal touch, but experience had taught him that he sometimes got it wrong and more frequently couldn't remember it at all.
Still later that night, safe in his own home, he would make an entry in his secret journal, recording one more victim in a list that numbered 127. When he slid quietly into his bed, his wife stiffed and mumbled.
"How did it go tonight?" she asked sleepily. "Fine," he said, returning to his real self, no longer Captain Luv, leaving that persona between the sheets of some other bed. "Just fine."
3
With Jack away for two weeks in the summer to be with his father, Karen and Becker spent their evenings in a grateful peace. It was surprising to find themselves suddenly without the burden and pleasures of caring for an eleven-year-old, and for the first few days there was a sense that the tranquillity of the house was a fraud, a cruel trick that would be suddenly reversed, leaving them off balance and embarrassed. But they both soon adjusted to childlessness and turned to each other in deeper and warmer ways. Karen had suffered from Jack's absence when he was younger, feeling nervous and deprived of his love as well as his presence. She had not trusted the elements or the fates to keep him warm and dry and safe and healthy without her moderating influence. She had resented the time her ex-husband spent with the boy, mistrusted his ability to nurture and parent, feared that his influence would woo her son away from her. As Jack grew older, she had come to relish the two weeks as relief, respite, an island of tranquillity in the year-long effort to do the impossible job of raising a child without error.
Becker and Karen would do the dishes by hand rather than use the dishwasher, because it was a way to prolong the mealtime, and afterwards they would sit next to each other on the sofa, listening to music, sipping wine, and talking. The wine was a recent innovation. She
had read that people who drank a small amount of alcohol dailyother factors being equal-were less prone to heart attack than teetotalers. Although neither of them was even a casual drinker by nature, Karen had instituted a glass-of-wine-aday regimen, like it or not. Becker's glass frequently saw him through dinner and well into evening, but Karen had come to meld into the ritual, feeling the wine warm and soften her in places that had spent the day as clenched as a fist.
Karen was Associate Deputy Director of the FBI in charge of Serial Killings and her days were fraught with tension.
"I'll bet I'm the only associate deputy having her feet massaged right now," she said contentedly.
Becker smiled at her and gripped the outer edge of her foot between his thumb and finger. She winced and then hummed in that mixture of pleasure and pain peculiar to massage.
"It's your hands," she said. "You have the best hands."
"It's your mind," he said. "You want to think I have the best hands."
"Are you saying I'm easy?"
"I'm saying you're the best," he said. He ran his thumb stiffly lengthwise on the center of the sole of her foot and she jerked so violently her foot jumped from his lap.
"Yikes," she said. Then, grinning: "Do it again."
"That one's done," Becker said, shifting her feet in his lap and starting on the other. He began by just running his hand over the length of her foot, letting her skin respond to the warmth of his touch. She closed her eyes and moaned again.
"I think something's up with Tee," he said. "Why do you say that?"
"I just have a feeling… Certain things he was saying, way he was saying them… I told you about the lady with the bone in her yard?
Well, I think Tee might be having a thing with her. Or would like to.
Or has been offered the chance. Some combination there."
"What makes you think so?"
"If you knew the police were coming over to investigate something-would you greet them in shorts and a halter?"
"With my thighs? Don't be silly."
"There's nothing wrong with your thighs. You have most excellent thighs."
"No wonder your hands have to be so good," she said. "You're blind… and bless you for it. How old is this woman?"
"Young thirties. Two kids, Tee says."
"Sort of standard issue for around here. Maybe a little younger than most. But to answer your question, no, most women wouldn't wear an outfit like that to greet the cops. It's certainly not that hot."
"That's what I thought."
"How did she look?"
"Okay, if you like that kind of look."
"What look is that? And do you like it?"
"Thin. Too thin, really. If she raised her arm you could see her ribs, that kind of thin. Small-breasted."
"The slut," she said, grinning. "Why was she raising her arm in the first place?"
" I didn't find her all that attractive. Tee does, I think."
"I remember seeing one of my ribs," Karen said. "It wasn't recently, but I remember it."
Becker slid his hand up her side, feeling her ribs with the tips of his fingers.
"Still there," he said. "And fine ribs they are, too."
His hand came to rest on the side of her breast. He left it there.
"You've got a lousy sense of direction," she said. "Keep it up."
"After I've finished your foot," he said, pulling gently on each of her toes in turn. They had made love most nights that Jack had been gone, flowing naturally and warmly into the act as a natural continuation of being together. The feet, the talk, the touching, were all part of it.
"Did Tee say anything about this woman?"
"Not really. I thought he was going to, but then he just Clammed up."
"I've never known Tee to clam up," she said.
"I don't mean he was quiet, he just didn't want to go any farther on the subject. You know, as much as I like Tee, it's getting to be kind of a strain being with him sometimes. We have this way of talking to each otherit's not really to each other, it's sort of at each other, if you know what I mean. We seem to be trying to top each other all the time.
It's fun-but it's exhausting. I wish we could just relax and really talk sometimes."
"Maybe the two of you need a break. This is your vacation-why don't you go rock climbing?"
"Don't feel like it."
"You love it."
"I never loved it, I did it because I was afraid of it."
"It looked like enjoyment to me."
"That grin on my face was just a grimace of fear… I don't want to go if you can't come too. It wouldn't be any fun without you."
"John, you have changed so much."
"That's what Tee says."
"Why, do you think?"
"You don't know?" he asked. "It's you. Simple."
"Is it really?"
"You made me talk to you."
"I didn't make you."
"You taught me. Or maybe you just made it safe enough to allow me to talk to you. Maybe our work helped."
"Our work? Being in the Bureau? It doesn't make any of the rest of them talk, God knows."
"I mean, we've been scared together, and we've admitted it. And survived it. Maybe sharing the big fears have made it easier for me to share the smaller ones."
She sat up and put her arms around his neck.
They made love a little earlier than they had expected, and a little longer.
Afterwards, Becker held her in his arms as he drifted off to sleep. His last conscious thought was that after years of inner ton-nent he had found peace at last, and the reason was in his embrace right now. He had loved women before but none of them had released him from himself as much, none had brought him family or permitted him to be an alternate John Becker.
4
The orthopedic surgeon met Tee and Becker on his tennis court, sweat cleaving his shirt to his stomach. He wore red terry-cloth bands on both wrists and his forehead and looked, Becker thought, like a neophyte's idea of a tennis player. He strode from the court, where he had been dueling in a losing contest with a ball machine, extending his hand heartily.
"Hello, Chief," he said, taking Tee's hand. "Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday, I had to operate. Did arthroscopic on the Baldwin girl, you know her? Super tennis player, really super. Ranked nationally, screwed up her knee pretty bad but we got it working again. Hope you didn't mind coming to my house."
"Not at all."
"Knees are so fragile. You can abuse them just so many times and that's it." He stopped talking long enough to give Becker a head-to-toe survey. "Dr. Stanley Kom," he said, thrusting out his hand again.
"This is John Becker, he's uh-on vacation."
"I know who John Becker is. It's a pleasure."
"Nice to meet you," Becker said.
"You don't look like what I'd expect," said Kom.
"I hear that a lot," said Becker.
"Thought you'd be…" Kom shrugged, unable to explain.
"I left my other head in the car," said Becker.
"Too bad, too," said Tee. "It's better-looking."
"I admire your work. Seriously. Thank God for people like you," said Kom. Becker tried to muster a smile. "Thanks."
"We appreciate your taking time off to help us out here, Doctor," said Tee.
"Happy to do it. What made you call on me, by the way?"
"We usually use Dr. Lando if we have broken bones or anything-I mean living bones, we don't get that many corpses in Clamden-but he was in New York City…"
"Tony Lando's a fine man, fine surgeon. Well, delighted to get a chance to take a turn."
Kom walked to a table set beside the court, where a beach towel was folded in half. He pulled the top half of the towel aside, revealing the bone.
"It's human. The humerus, upper arm." Kom patted his own arm in the appropriate spot. "Connects here and here to the shoulder and the ulna and radius of your forearm. This one belonged to a young adult female, you can tell that by the thickne
ss, the density at the joints, right here, you get an idea of the age by the degree of ossification on the epiphysis."
Kom indicated the points of interest on the bone, looking at the two men to see if they followed his explanation. His tone was slightly bored, as if he had explained basic anatomy too many times.
"How old a female, would you say?" Tee asked.
"Can't be certain. Want an informed guess?"
"Fine."
"Late teens, early twenties… This is the left arm, by the way."
"Anything else you can tell?"
"With the kind of examination I gave it? Not really. You need a pathologist to look for disease, a forensic specialist for anything else. What do they call the forensic people now, criminalists? Anyway, you really need someone with the microscopic facilities of a good medical school, or the FBI… or is that why you're here, John?" Tee looked at Becker, who kept his eyes on the bone. "Did you notice anything else?" Becker asked.
"To me it looks like the healthy bone of a young adult… except for these, of course," Kom continued. He pointed to marks in the bone at either end. "But I assumed you knew about them."
"What can you tell us about them?"
Kom shrugged. "Cut marks, made with a knife, smallish blade. I didn't see any marks except at the joints."
"Do you draw any conclusion from that?" Becker asked. Kom looked at Becker for a moment. "Anything you have in mind?" Kom asked. "Whatever you think."
"Well, forgive me if this seems ghoulish, but I'd say someone was-uh-cutting her up. Cutting her into pieces."
"Christ," said Tee.
"I thought so," said Becker, nodding.
"You two are cool enough about it," Tee said.
"It's our profession," Kom said, smiling at Becker as if to reinforce a complicity.
"Was she dead when he carved her up?" Becker asked. "Jesus," Tee said.
Kom shrugged. "That's beyond my expertise, John. You'd need a specialist. I would certainly hope so… Do you think it might have been done when she was still alive?"
