Into The Fire jb-4

by David Wiltse

  "You mean you don't know? I was counting on you to have it all figured out."

  "Shut up," — he said softly.

  "If it's up to me, I say let's play another game entirely.

  How about the one where I stick you in the sack and set you on fire?

  You'll like that one, I promise. I'm good at it."

  "I said be quiet. I'm trying to think."

  "While you're thinking, open a can. I'll have the beans."

  To Aural's amazement, he smiled at her.

  "All right," he said. "Since you're so eager to get at it, I'm up now anyway. Beans do sound good, don't they?"

  He released Aural from the sack, undid her handcuffs from the ankle irons so that she could stretch and feed herself, and fed her beans and peaches.

  "Eat up," he said. "You're going to need your strength. This will be a longer session than before since we've got more time."

  "More time to kill, you mean," Aural said.

  "That's good. I like that. More time to kill. That's good."

  "I've got hundreds of them," Aural said.

  "I like women with a sense of humor," Swann said.

  "I spent three years living with a gorilla who had the sense of humor of a rock."

  "I think I used to date him," Aural said. "Did he have a tattoo on his butt?"

  Swann giggled. "You're funny," he said.

  "You're a little strange yourself. In a very interesting way. I can see why the girls like you."

  "They do, you know," he said soberly. "You're yjoking, but they do. My girls love me-at the end. You will, too, you'll see."

  "Do you get those headaches a lot?" Aural asked abruptly. "I heard you crying last night."

  "I wasn't crying."

  "You ought to have that looked at."

  "Your boyfriend did it to me," he said. "The one who beat me up in town."

  "Harold Kershaw? He always was a favorite of mine.

  He let me set him on fire, he liked it so much he can't let me go. You sure you wouldn't let me try it with you?"

  Swann pushed his can of beans from him and took Aural's from her hands.

  "How about if I visit the little girls' room before we start again?" she asked.

  "All right."

  He tied the rope around her waist and gave her a candle.

  As she walked towards the graveyard, Aural thought of how she might slip a shinbone in her shirt when she squatted. If she kept it hidden long enough, she could pull it out when she got within range and hit him on the head.

  Halfway there, the rope grew taut.

  "I'm going in the right direction," she complained.

  "I know it," Swann said. He was crossing quickly to her, holding the lantern. As she started to turn to face him, he kicked her legs out from under her and rolled her onto her stomach before refastening the handcuffs so that her hands were secured behind her back, making any attempt to get a bone impossible.

  Swann grinned at her. "You mustn't ever think I'm stupid," he said.

  "That would be a serious mistake."

  "I sure don't want to get on your bad side," Aural said.

  "You're just a little too eager," he said, hauling her to her feet.

  When she returned, he shackled her hands to her ankles once more.

  "Let us pray," he said.

  "Praise be to Jesus," said Aural.

  He looked at her, pleased.

  "Would you like to lead the prayer, sister Aural?"

  "Not just yet," Aural said.

  "Or sing? Would you sing a hymn for us?"

  "I'd rather get burned by cigarettes," she said.

  "Very well."

  He lit a cigarette and coughed at the smoke.

  "I think this relationship is coming along nicely, don't you?" Aural asked. The last words were lost in her involuntary gasp as he touched her.

  Becker lived with the tape of his meeting with Swann, turning it on in the morning after Jack was off to school and turning it off only when the boy had returned home.

  During the late afternoon and the preparation for the evening meal, Becker acted as if nothing were different, joking and playing with Jack, helping him with his homework, trying to make the mysteries of beginning science and mathematics less arcane. When Karen came home he was still buoyant, almost jolly, but when Jack had gone at last to bed, Becker retired to the office and turned on the tape once more, playing it with the volume low. It was no longer the words he was listening to but the rhythms, the pauses, the stops and starts, the sudden, fleeting fermatas that bespoke lies.

  You have a rep," Swann's voice said on the tape.

  "I'll bet," came his own reply.

  "I hear you climb, you climb mountains. You're a rock climber, right?" A pause, no response from Becker, then Swann's voice again, a trace of triumph. "You'd be surprised how much they know about you."

  "You a climber, Swann?" Becker could hear the strain in his voice as though it were filtered through the discomfort he felt in the little cell, the unease he experienced in the presence of Swann. I was off balance already, Becker thought, pausing the tape. One minute into the interview and already so skewed by my problems that I wasn't listening right. Swann was telling him what he wanted to know. They always told him; they could not help themselves; they were always so pleased, so proud of their ghastly accomplishments that they could not help but reveal it in some way. The hardest thing for such psychopaths was keeping the secret to themselves; the great trick was to listen. In this interview Becker had listened only to himself But he could hear it clearly now.

  "Well… not really. I worked with ropes a little bit, I know what's involved. That's scary work."

  He's'playing on your ego there, Becker thought. And why? To cover himself "Not so scary if you know the safe way," Becker said on the tape. In his own home, Becker squirmed with irritation at his own stupidity. "You ever try it?"

  "I believe in gravity," Swann was saying. "If it tells me to go down, I go down."

  Becker turned off the tape and glanced at the clock. It was close to four in the morning. He had run through the entire tape dozens of times, trying to filter his own ego out of it. He rewound it and played the same section over.

  Karen was asleep, or pretending to be. Becker watched her for a moment from the doorway, then walked through the darkened house to Jack's room.

  Becker looked lovingly at the boy asleep; innocence, all innocence. He turned away from the door and went outdoors to stand alone in the yard.

  He felt like howling. He was giving it up, giving it all up as surely as if he were leaving the earth. When he returned, he would be too vile to live with them again, he thought. His hands would be too bloody, his soul too restless. Innocence deserved to be protected; it could not be entrusted to the ravening beast. Listening to the tapes, Becker had found Swann, but he had lost what he loved.

  He was like a junkie with the needle in his arm, Becker thought. He had put it there himself when he had deciphered the first cryptic note from Swann; he had prepared himself for the fix as surely as if he had gone out and bought the narcotic and the syringe that same day. When he performed the actual injection no longer mattered because he was already gone, and he knew it, and anticipation was as much a part of the experience as the act itself He knew that he had taken the first step down the long, slippery slope and any subsequent flailing of arms or attempts at equilibrium were just posturing for the benefit of others, futile attempts to convince them, and himself, that he was an unwilling victim. In fact he could see ahead of time the terrible fall that awaited him as he gathered speed, and he knew he wouldn't stop until he hit the gutter. He shuddered, looking forward to the trip, his chest fluttering with excitement.

  That was what Hatcher knew about him, understood better than Becker would admit to himself, and the real reason he hated Hatcher. In the long run, Becker could not resist the hunt, the chase. He could not ultimately deny himself the kill, which was just the plunging of the syringe.

 
He was like Swann in that, Becker knew. No, worse, he wasn't like Swann.

  He was the same.

  This time Pegeen Haddad was in acceptable Bureau costume. She met Becker at the airport dressed in a navy blue business suit with a white blouse closed at the collar by a red and blue foulard. Becker thought she looked like an airline stewardess.

  "Well, Haddad, there you are," he greeted her.

  Pegeen tried to remember any of the witty remarks she had prepared for the meeting.

  "Here I am," she said.

  Becker nodded several times as if he wanted to say something further and she waited before realizing that he had nothing clever to say, either.

  "Okay, then," he said finally. "Let's get at it."

  As she led him to the car in the parking lot, Pegeen wondered if it was at all possible that Becker felt as nervous as she did. He was a hard man to read at the best of times, and seeing him again after several weeks was not the best of times. She had not expected to see him again at all, ever. His request to have her assigned to him as an assistant had come as a complete surprise and had raised more than a few eyebrows in the Nashville home office. The story of her presence in the motel room during Becker's unexplained shower had made the rounds of the rumor mill with great celerity, and her continual and increasingly weary explanations of innocence had finally begun to taper off when his sudden request came through, reviving and inflating the previous spate of salacious humor in the office.

  He did not speak to her again until they reached the car.

  "Got any other clothes with you?" he asked.

  "No," she answered, surprised. "Why?"

  "Things are going to get kind of grubby," he said.

  "You'd be better off in a pair of jeans."

  "Agents don't wear jeans on duty. This outfit conforms to Bureau dress code."

  "It doesn't suit me, though. I'm your boss now, Haddad. They told you that, didn't they?"

  "They said I was to assist you."

  "That means doing what I tell you to do, all right?"

  Pegeen did not understand the harshness in his tone. He sounded angry with her. Her first reaction was to get angry herself.

  "They didn't tell me why you wanted me to assist you," she said.

  "I didn't tell them."

  "Want to tell me?" she inquired sharply.

  Becker studied her for a moment as she maneuvered the car into traffic.

  "What do you want to hear-I asked for you because you're the best agent I've ever met?"

  "That would be a nice opening, then you could tell me the truth," she said.

  "You're not going to like the truth," he said.

  Pegeen felt herself blushing. He wanted to be with me, she thought. He wanted to spend time with me, to be with me, he's been thinking about me just as I have been thinking of him. Her ears were on fire, her damned ears were giving her away again.

  "What's the truth?" she asked softly.

  "Let's go to your place and change your clothes," he said.

  She glanced at him for as long as she dared before turning back to the traffic.

  "I'm not sure that's a good idea," she said. In fact, she thought it was a splendid idea, if not a very safe one.

  "Well, let's try it anyway," Becker said. "Sometimes my ideas are better than they look at first glance."

  Pegeen paused for several moments before saying, "I've given it several glances now. I still don't think it's a good idea."

  "Do what you're told, Haddad," he said gruffly. "I'm not in a mood to argue with you about everything I say."

  He laid his head back against the seat. "Wake me when we get there," he said. "I haven't slept for several days."

  "I'm glad I have that soothing effect on you," she said, trying to figure out just what was going on.

  "It's not you, kid. It's the car." He closed his eyes and by the time Pegeen had swallowed the "kid" and fought back her urge to retaliate with a cutting remark about his age, Becker was asleep.

  When she stopped the car in her driveway, Pegeen had still not decided quite how to handle the situation. Becker made it easy for her. He rolled his head towards her, opened one eye, and said, "Jeans and something old on top, and boots." He then closed his eye and rolled his head away from her.

  Racked with confusion and conflicting desires, Pegeen dressed in front of the mirror over her bureau. The jeans were easy enough, but the selection of the blouse took some consideration. She contemplated her reflection as she held a number of possible selections under her chin and against her bra. The brassiere was demure and proper and perfectly appropriate for her business outfit, but not right for the more casual tops she was contemplating. She decided on a purple underwire push-up bra and paused to look at her naked torso. Her breasts were full, almost too large for her body size, she thought, but beautifully formed. She was very proud of the way they looked and regretted at times that her best features were necessarily hidden under her clothes while her face, which she could only tolerate, and her ears, which she loathed, represented her before the world.

  As she admired her nakedness, she half wished that Becker would suddenly walk in on her. She imagined him pausing for a moment to admire her beauty, then taking her into his arms and kissing her softly before trailing his tongue down to her breasts.

  Christ, she thought, putting on the bra and tugging on a top, you're going to be up on a charge of sexual harassment in the workplace if you don't stop this. The man is asleep in the car, not in here, that ought to tell you something.

  As she approached the car, Becker rolled his head towards her once more.

  "Cover yourself," he said.

  Pegeen thought her face would burst into flame. She knew she should not have chosen the tank top.

  "I am covered," she said angrily.

  "Warmer," he said. He rolled- away from her and closed his eyes again.

  Fuck you, too, she thought, storming back into the house. She reemerged with a flannel shirt buttoned at the wrists.

  "Good," he said. "It's going to be cold. We're going underground."

  "The tank top was less conspicuous for going undercover than this is. I look like a lumberjack."

  "Not undercover, Haddad. Underground."

  Becker handed her a slip of paper with an address in downtown Nashville written on it.

  "Wake me when we get there," he said.

  "Is this how it's going to work? You give me orders, then go to sleep?

  If you'd let me in on what the plan is, I could do a little thinking on my own. My brain does work, you know."

  "I thought we got past all this defensive shit the last time around," he said.

  "There seems to be some difference of opinion as to what exactly happened last time."

  He opened both eyes and studied her.

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "I'll wake you when we get there," she said, throwing the car into gear too abruptly.

  "Something wrong, Haddad?"

  "What could be wrong?"

  "The address is for the headquarters of the speleological society. The guys who crawl around in caves."

  "I know what speleology is. They're spelunkers."

  "They call themselves cavers these days," he said.

  "You ever done any caving?"

  "No. Have you?"

  "Hell no," he said. "I'm scared of places like that."

  Once more he turned away from her and seemed to sleep.

  Erskine Browne was built along the lines of a stiff rope.

  When he stood behind his desk to greet his visitors, it was easy for Becker to see why he had been nicknamed Weasel by his colleagues. Before arthritis had debilitated his flexibility, Browne had been legendary within caving circles for his ability to squeeze himself into any hole and wriggle through it like a ferret after its dinner. Even now, with his bent and frozen joints, his hands shaped into claws by the arthritis, he looked to Becker as if he could slip through an s-curve if he had to, and his lively eyes s
eemed to indicate that he wouldn't mind it at all.

  "Becker, isn't it?" Browne asked.

  "John Becker, that's right. And this is Special Agent Haddad."

  Browne offered his gnarled hand to Pegeen.

  'Agent Haddad. A pleasure. I didn't realize they made agents so pretty."

  He winked at Becker.

  Pegeen decided that Browne's age allowed him a certain dispensation in the sexism category. Any man over sixty was to be excused for the occasional inappropriate remark because of a deficient early education.

  "Only the good ones," Becker said soberly.

  Browne winked again and offered such a knowing grin to Pegeen that she changed her mind about dispensation.

  "I did the research you were asking for on the phone," Browne was saying. "You wanted me to look for a name in the enrollment roster of the SOA… " He turned again to Pegeen. "That's Speleologists of America."

  Pegeen did not return the smile.

  "I have that," she said.

  "Name of Swann, right? The national search was easy, that's all computerized, has been for seven years."

  "Any luck?"

  "Nope. Of course that doesn't mean too much. There are a lot of amateur cavers-some of them pretty good, too-who aren't members. We only have maybe ten percent of the active cavers in the country, which is a shame because we have a good deal to offer them. The newsletter alone is worth the price of membership."

  "I didn't really expect to find him on your list," Becker said. "It was a long shot. People like Swann are not great joiners."

  "Well, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Browne. "That wasn't all I did. The FBI calls me, I'm going to put myself out a little bit, right? What did he do, exactly?"

  "Exactly, it's hard to say," said Becker. "He may not have done anything at all. He may just be a figment of my imagination."

  "Yeah, sure, which is why you go to the trouble of trying to find him in our lists. I figured, it wasn't important, you wouldn't ask. Like I said, the national is all computerized, but it doesn't go back very far.

  Now regionally, we're about halfway through getting all the names into the machine. It takes time, and with these fingers I'm practically worthless myself. But they Work when I really need them." He waggled his fingers suggestively in front of Pegeen. She had an urge to take one of the swollen knuckles and bend it backwards.