Rage Against the Dying

by Becky Masterman

  So far Carlo didn’t seem to notice the difference. “That business you’re involved with?”

  “Uh-huh, that.”

  As Carlo handed me the phone, his eyes drifted over my shoulder and stopped. That would be where I left my Smith on the desk. We both pretended it wasn’t there.

  I smiled my reassurance again and he turned away to let me answer the phone.

  “Brigid,” the voice said.

  “Hello, Coleman.”

  “So, what do you think? Did you look at the video?” She sounded a little disappointed, as if she already knew the answer to that.

  I forced my thoughts to something I temporarily couldn’t give a shit about. “No, not yet. I’ve been a little preoccupied with some personal business.”

  “That’s where…” She sighed, knowing she’d gone over all that already. “I was thinking I’d go see Lynch’s father out in Benson tomorrow. We didn’t take the time to interview him and he’s so close.”

  “That’s premature. You need to develop an interview plan.”

  “You think I didn’t already do that?”

  In my distracted state I’d forgotten this was cross-the-t Coleman I was talking to. “So, go.”

  “Come with.”

  “No,” I started, then thought about my being attacked in the wash two days after I got reinvolved with the Route 66 case. Visiting Lynch’s father might not be such a bad idea. “Okay, why not. When do you want to go?”

  “Swing by my office first thing in the morning since it’s on the way. I’ll drive from there.”

  I hung up (I don’t care what they call it these days) the phone and sat for a while, wondering if I should hide the gun or keep it handy. I covered it with the manila envelope. Then I threw the backpack into the washing machine with the other clothes and made a mental note to wash them again, but for now I let the exhaustion wash back over me. I spent the rest of the day pretending not to brood while I made my plan for finding out who wanted me dead.

  “You know what?” I said, going into the kitchen in the late afternoon where Carlo had just poured himself a glass of Chianti and put some Triscuits and a hunk of smoked Gouda in a plastic bowl. “I think I’m in the mood for a drink. I guess that fall stunned me more than I want to admit.”

  “Shall I fix one for you?” Carlo makes a good vodka martini, loads the glass with olives, making it more of a salad than a drink so I feel less like a lush.

  I watched Carlo with the shaker while thinking of having, for the first time in my life, someone close enough to me to be in danger. I was part of a family, a pack if you counted the Pugs. I carried my martini out to the backyard under the pretext of relaxing, but actually to assess the perimeter of our property in case of attack. There were no houses in back of ours except for in the far distance, where the ground rose up to the mountain. On either side we were separated from the neighbors by five-foot cinder-block walls. The neighbors to the right were snowbirds who wouldn’t be returning until the weather cooled. Someone could easily hop over that wall. Or simply unlatch the gate leading to our backyard, though the rusty latch made so much racket the Pugs would surely be alerted. They had followed me out and were sniffing for lizards by the bougainvillea. I should have a shepherd, I thought, or at least a hound. These guys put together wouldn’t make one decent dog.

  I walked out a bit to the life-size statue of Saint Francis and wondered whether Jane bought it for Carlo before or after she bought the Pugs. By that time the drink settled me some and I was able to go back over my experience of the afternoon more calmly than before, like watching someone else’s movie frame by frame. Old women. Condom on a string. Blood in the van. Broken bones. Other bodies. Photo of me. News clip on a DVD. Barbie lunch box.

  Nothing.

  Dinnertime came and there we were, just like always, cozily munching on chicken curry sandwiches that Carlo, trying to be subtle in his hovering, fixed for us. The Pugs sat at attention waiting for the empty dishes to be lowered at the end of the meal so they could clean up the chicken residue.

  There was nothing on the news that night about a body being discovered outside the city, no ticker headline running across the bottom of the television that read Former FBI Agent Sought in Tucson Slaying. I had mixed emotions. If the body was found it might be identified. And knowing who it was would lead me closer to finding out who sent him. On the other hand, with every twenty-four hours that passed, decomposition and insect activity would destroy more and more evidence of my involvement.

  Either way the time dragged. In the evening the phone in the kitchen rang twice, once from a telemarketer offering us reduced rates for credit card transfers, and once from Carlo’s sister in Ann Arbor. Each time I was certain it was Max coming to get me after discovering the body. After that I unplugged the phone and turned off my cell so I could relax a little.

  At bedtime, still with the events of the day replaying in my head, I kissed Carlo to reassure myself, though I noticed that our glances slid by each other in a way they never had before, as if I was afraid my eyes would reflect what I had seen that day and he sensed my secrecy. Just my guilty conscience working my imagination, I’m sure, but this is what it would have been like at the best of times, married in the Bureau: half-truths and sliding eyes. As it was, despite all my precautions, I couldn’t keep from fearing that it was only a matter of time until Carlo would discover the woman I really was and look at me the way Paul had.

  Carlo turned the ceiling fan on and the light off, and in the dark my thoughts shifted. If I hadn’t tried to cover up the incident in the wash, if I had told Max about what I did, he would have found the envelope with the photos that showed I was a target. Then I would have had him on my side. If that were the case, I would have given anything to repeat the last ten hours, given anything but Carlo, that is.

  Long after his breathing had settled into that quiet rhythm that told me he was asleep, I reached over and lightly brushed his hand through the sheet, my touch lingering on his man-size knuckles. When that didn’t wake him I folded slowly, one millimeter at a time, my fingers around his thumb, trying not to imagine it disappearing, my ending up with nothing but a wad of bedsheet in my grip.

  What do they call this, obsessing? I was obsessing.

  I finally fell asleep to the sound of a pack of coyotes somewhere in the arroyos beyond our property. It was a chorus of barks, howls, coughs, cackles, and a high-pitched keen, like manic ghosts. Carlo told me once they do that when they’ve killed something.

  Sixteen

  Still rattled from my experience of the day before, brooding about who had hired the killer and how I was going to find out, yet knowing that I was going to have to appear knowledgeable about Coleman’s continuing the investigation of Lynch, I pulled the DVD labeled “Lynch Interrogation: Session 12,” from its pocket in Coleman’s report. Because the case was so big they hadn’t relied on just recording him but videotaped every session for posterity. The date on it was August 7, three days before Coleman had gathered us all together to go find Jessica’s body.

  To avoid Carlo’s hearing any of the interrogation I got up and shut the door of my office, and for good measure kept the volume so low that I had to lean forward to catch the dialogue. The video loaded to reveal an empty room, standard interrogation, like a white box with two chairs and no table to hide their body language.

  As I watched, the door to the room opened and a jailer led Lynch in, dressed in his orange prison suit and handcuffs. Lynch shuffled immediately to the far chair as if he’d done this enough times to know the drill. After spending so many hours in this room, he had also discovered the camera mounted in the corner near the ceiling. He waved at me, then apparently forgot the camera was there and lifted his cuffed hands to run his upper lip back and forth over the wart on the back of his hand the way he had when we were at the crime scene. When he bit down on it, he didn’t show any pain.

  I stopped the film and studied him more closely than I had been able to at Jessica’
s scene. There was the dark curly hair I remembered, the ski nose, and the wire-rimmed glasses. Now I noticed other details, how his upper lip was more prominent than his jaw. How his fingers showed he was a fine-boned man. I noticed again that scabby patch on one cheek that looked like it got picked at when he was bored with biting his wart. How his ears stuck out from his head.

  After a few minutes Coleman and Max Coyote entered the room. I couldn’t see them, but Lynch said hello to both. I heard the skreek of the other chair on the tiled floor as Coleman took the chair facing Lynch. Max would stand, leaning against the wall by the door, the usual stance. Lynch rose just enough to make a little bow, convincingly respectful without threatening Coleman, and sat back down. While he was the only one I could see throughout the interrogation, I imagined both of them sitting there with their little wire-rimmed glasses, looking like social studies teachers in conference.

  Lynch lifted his hand to show a small smear of blood. Did he do this to create the sense that he had some control over his captors?

  I heard Max open the door, speak to the jailer outside, and come back in with a tissue. He appeared briefly in front of the camera while he handed the tissue to Lynch and then retreated back to his spot near the door. Lynch dabbed the wart and balled up the Kleenex in his fist so the blood didn’t show. When he was done, Coleman spoke:

  COLEMAN: Good morning, Floyd.

  LYNCH: Good morning, Agent Coleman.

  COLEMAN: Did you sleep well?

  LYNCH: Not too bad. My cell is bigger than the cab of my rig. Want to know something else?

  COLEMAN: What’s that?

  LYNCH: I was thinking some, talking to you has made me think a lot, and decided I must’ve talked more to you than anybody else in my whole life.

  COLEMAN: Why do you think that is?

  LYNCH: Not much of a talker, I guess.

  COLEMAN: Did you talk to the girls a lot, Floyd?

  LYNCH: No, not much. I didn’t want them to talk. (Closes his eyes and with his fingertips makes a circular motion on his thighs, as if he’s lost in the memories. The cuffs make his hands move in sync with each other.) Girls never said anything nice to me.

  COLEMAN: Please open your eyes, Floyd. (He does, but looks slightly off to the right, a dreamy expression on his face.)

  COLEMAN: Is that why you switched to having sex with dead girls, Floyd? Because they didn’t talk?

  LYNCH: I thought we went over all that already.

  COLEMAN: Do it again.

  LYNCH (looking like he’ll resist, then giving in): Okay. When I found out I had an FBI agent in my car—

  COLEMAN (interrupting): In your car, not your truck.

  LYNCH: That’s right. Like I told you before, I would park my rig off road somewhere and use a rental car to pick up the girls. Then I’d get them into the rig and dump the car. But this one scared me, especially when I found out she was wired.

  COLEMAN: How did you find that out?

  LYNCH (pause): I don’t remember every line of the conversation. We’re talking seven years ago, you know? (Pause.) Wait, I do remember that bit. As soon as she got in the car I got her mouth taped, her wrists bound, and slashed her ankle. She fought me, but I surprised her. She thought I was a woman, see.

  COLEMAN: How did you do that?

  LYNCH: I had a wig on and shit. And I raised my voice like this.

  COLEMAN: Would you please repeat that?

  I stopped the video, made a note: Do a voice comparison to see if it matches the one we have on file from the night Jessica got taken. Something, but still not compelling enough to force Morrison to review the case, let alone make Lynch recant. I started the DVD again.

  LYNCH: I found out she wasn’t really listening to anything on her headphones, that it was a wire. I figured she was a plant. So that’s when I came up with the plan to play the CD and leave her wire in the SUV. To stall whoever was tracking her.

  COLEMAN: And do you remember the music that was playing on that CD?

  LYNCH (rolls his eyes and laughs): Yeah, Kate Smith.

  I stopped the video again. I’d forgotten. This was another one of those facts that we never released. So far this video was not swaying me toward the opinion of a false confession. I clicked Go again.

  COLEMAN: Why in the world would you want to listen to Kate Smith?

  LYNCH (laughs softly): She reminds me of my mother. Anyway, I was lucky, they took a long time to get their act together, or they were too far away, or something.

  COLEMAN: I think you must have told me before, but when did you first think of making mummies?

  LYNCH (Pause. He stares at her, blinking.): I can’t remember.

  COLEMAN: Try. There’s a seven-year gap between Jessica Robertson’s murder and the body we found on your truck.

  LYNCH (pause): I went back to the car again and again, and jacked off on the body. I liked that. I found out I liked that just as much as killing. (He stops talking; his thumbs move in circles rapidly over the tops of his thighs.) After a while the body dried out and I started thinking about how cool it would be to have a body with me all the time and not have to go up on the mountain and take the chance of getting caught. I experimented on animals and shit.

  COLEMAN: I understand.

  LYNCH: Do you, Agent Coleman? (He stares at her with a sad frown, his eyes narrowing, his thumbs moving more rapidly over his thighs.) No, I can see it in your face, Agent Coleman. You think I’m sick.

  COLEMAN: Floyd, judging sick isn’t my job.

  LYNCH: But I want you to understand. I’m no different from everyone else.

  COLEMAN: Why do you need me to understand?

  LYNCH: Sex and death together. It’s what everybody likes—like macaroni and cheese.

  COLEMAN (pause): Not quite the—

  LYNCH (interrupting): I bet you like those vampire shows, dontcha?

  COLEMAN (pause): No, I—

  This part made me squirm. Coleman seemed uncertain. She was losing control of the interrogation and I felt embarrassed for her.

  LYNCH: I seen a movie the other day where there’s these zombie girls who dance naked in a joint and then eat the guys. I bet that movie made a lot of money.

  COLEMAN: Floyd, let’s get back on—(His eyes close again and his head tilts back. His breathing is more noticeable, almost audible. He speaks softly, his upper lip pushing out with each word.)

  LYNCH: Guys standing in line to get ripped apart … because they want to have sex with dead girls.

  COLEMAN: Floyd. Stop.

  MAX (moving into camera range, closer to Lynch): Floyd.

  COLEMAN: It’s okay, Deputy Coyote. Look at me, Floyd.

  LYNCH (eyes still closed but lids fluttering, his voice turns harsh): But you think I’m different. You think I’m a freak. You think this is some kind of a freak show.

  COLEMAN: Look at me, Floyd.

  LYNCH: No. (Opens his eyes, stares at her with something other than the practiced mildness he has been exhibiting, with desperation.) No. You look at me. (He spreads his knees apart to show the camera a small stain on the crotch of his trousers, darker orange than the rest. Max moves within range of the camera. The next bits of dialogue fold over each other, everyone talking at once.)

  MAX: You disgusting asshole.

  LYNCH (ignoring Max, pinning Coleman in his gaze): What d’you see, Agent Coleman?

  COLEMAN: It’s okay, Deputy Coyote. It’s okay.

  LYNCH: What d’you see? Is that freaky enough for you?

  (Long pause, Lynch still staring in Coleman’s direction, his whole body hanging, not spent but sad. I can imagine Coleman facing him off, refusing to be affected. Lynch lifts his hand to his face and strokes the scabby patch with his nails up and down. Max moves back out of range, but I get the sense he’s staying closer to Coleman now. Even with what I can’t see the tension in the room is palpable.)

  COLEMAN (clears her throat): We’re going to take a break now. You go get yourself cleaned up.

  LYNCH: Sure.


  It was okay with me, too. I blew out my breath, unaware till just then that I’d been holding it. No matter how many times you’ve seen this kind of creature in action they always have an effect on you. And then sometimes they don’t, and that’s even worse.

  (Sound of Coleman’s chair as she stands)

  COLEMAN: Oh, one last thing while I’ve got it on my mind. The ears you removed. Were they a trophy, a souvenir?

  LYNCH: I guess you could say that, yeah.

  COLEMAN: The medical examiner reports said you cut them off postmortem.

  LYNCH (vague): I guess so.

  COLEMAN: That means after death.

  LYNCH: I know that. I read a lot of Jeffery Deaver.

  COLEMAN: Where are they?

  LYNCH: Where’s what?

  COLEMAN: The ears. What did you do with the ears?

  (Long pause. Lynch pushes an invisible something away from himself.)

  LYNCH: I … I threw them away.

  COLEMAN (pause): Where did you throw them?

  LYNCH (Pause. He has to think, and this time he’s thinking hard. His voice goes up a half octave.): I don’t know, some garbage can somewhere. What difference does it make?

  COLEMAN: It’s just that you know so many details, more than we even knew, like where the bodies were. You know about the postcards that were sent after Jessica’s death and playing the Kate Smith CD, and you know about how the ears were removed. It seems like it would be important to you to remember this detail.

  (Lynch’s face is working against itself while he listens to Coleman’s logic. He does not respond.)

  COLEMAN: What’s wrong, Floyd? Are you afraid if you say something wrong that you’ll still get the death penalty? That won’t happen, I promise.