Damned Keystone situation and now he was probably
gonna die from something else, not the damned diabetes.
Fool, fool, fool - never underestimate the enemy - a cop like Baker would be a serious enemy - but, still, both he and Sturgis were pros, how could they have-
Hands guided him down the hill.
'Shhh,' a voice said into his ear, and he blotted out images of Luanne's reproving face.
Oh, honey.
Yeah, I screwed up, baby. Joining you soon.
My eyelids slammed as tight as metal shutters. My mouth tasted metallic. Breathing was difficult, each inhalation a rip in my lungs, and the pain in my head was a scarlet-orange-black thing.
Drowsy, but I hadn't lost consciousness. I tried to open my eyes. Too heavy. I could hear, smell - so much metal -feel, think - feel myself being lifted, pressure at wrists and ankles. Meaning at least two of them... bumpy ride.
Steps - the stairs down to the bedroom.
Lowered onto something soft. Perfumed.
Zena's perfume - Zena's bed.
New pressure bore down. Wrists, ankles, belly. Weight -dry, warm, crushing weight, like a big dog sitting on me.
The snap of clamps; now I couldn't move.
The back of my head was hot and caustic, as if something larval and fanged had hatched inside my skull and was chewing its way out... lesser pain in the crook of my right arm.
Cold sting - an injection.
I tried again to open my eyes. A sliver of light before they collapsed.
Everything okay, because Milo and Daniel knew. Daniel was listening.
Then I wondered: Not a sound had been made since I'd entered the house and said hi to Zena.
Were they assuming Zena'd made good on her promises, the lovemaking beginning spontaneously, silently?
Or were they unable to hear - an equipment malfunction? Those things happened. Space shuttles went down.
Waiting for some kind of signal from me?
My lips wouldn't function.
Rest up, stay calm, regain your strength.
The plan had been for me to open the living-room curtains. Did the fact that I hadn't alarm them?
Where were they?
I needed to say something for the parabolic mike.
Breathing was so hard, my throat a pinpoint - now I did black out.
Up again, no idea how long it had been. Eyes wide open, pupils aching as they expanded to take in the bright light of the bedroom.
The bedroom ceiling, I could see little else.
White ceiling, sparkle-sprayed.
The light from a cheap plastic fixture. White, circular, brass finial in the center, like the nipple of a big, white breast, Zena's breasts so small-
I pressed my head to my chest to see what was holding me down. Leather restraints. Thick, brown hospital restraints; as an intern on the psych wards, I'd wondered what they felt like...
Flashes of color off to the left. I struggled to get a better look, my neck trembled with pain that traveled down my spine, as if someone had run a filleting knife down my center.
Say something for the damned mike.
My tongue was a soft, useless pillow, taking up space in the garbage can claiming to be my mouth.
I strained some more, studying the color to my left.
Eyes. White eyes with flat black irises.
Dead eyes - plastic.
Stuffed animals, what seemed to be a mountain of them stacked against the left-hand wall. Behind them, another curtain. Behind it, no doubt, another glass slider.
Teddy bears, a gigantic panda with a lolling head. Disney characters, a killer whale that was probably a souvenir from Sea World, more kapok and felt that I couldn't make out clearly.
Zena's collection... that surprised look. I'd taken it for wide-eyed arousal-
The wire around her neck, gritted with blood, biting, just a twist from decapitation.
I moved and the restraints compressed my chest and my forearms and my shins.
But I was breathing better.
'Good,' I said.
It came out 'Guh,' barely audible.
Loud enough for the mike to pick up?
I tried to relax. Pace myself. Save the energy for talking.
As I worked myself up for another syllable, a face blocked out the light.
Fingers pinched my left eyelid, lifted it, let it snap as something tickled my nose - bristly, the face so close I couldn't focus.
Then it drew back.
Dirty-blond beard-hairs raking my chin on the way up.
Smelly beard - fermented-food stink - over red skin, dandruff flakes.
A hair-framed mouth breathed on me, hot and sour. A pus pimple nested in the fold between nostril and cheek.
More distance and I saw Wilson Tenney, dressed again in a sweatshirt, this one green and reading Illinois arts festival.
'He's up.'
'Nice recovery,' said another voice.
'Must be in good shape. The rewards of a virtuous life,' said Tenney. Then his face shifted to the right and vanished, as if moving offstage, and another one, freshly shaved, ruddy, sun-burnished, took its place.
Wes Baker folded his arms across his chest and studied me with mild interest. His eyeglass lenses glinted. He wore a pink button-down shirt, beautifully laundered, sleeves folded up crisply on thick bronze forearms. I couldn't see past the third button.
His right hand held a small hypodermic syringe filled with something clear.
'Potassium chloride?' I said, for the mike, but it didn't come out right.
'Speech will return in a few minutes,' said Baker. 'Give yourself a little more time for your central nervous system to bounce back.'
I heard Tenney's laugh from behind me.
'Potassium chloride,' I tried again. Clearer, I thought.
Baker said, 'You just won't relax, will you? Obviously a striver. From what I've been able to gather, pretty bright, too. It's a shame we never got a chance to discuss issues of substance.'
How about right now? I thought.
I tried to say it. The result was a series of mouse squeaks. Where were Daniel and Milo?
Taping, wanting evidence? But... they'd never let me down...
Baker said, 'See how peaceful he looks, Willy? We've created another masterpiece.'
Tenney joined him. He looked angry but Baker was smiling.
I said, 'Zena was... artistic' Almost perfectly clear. 'Goya...'
'Someone who appreciates,' said Baker.
'Posed...' Like Irit and Latvinia and--
Tenney said, 'Her life was one big pose.'
'No gende... strangulation?'
Tenney frowned and glanced at Baker.
'Why kill her?' I said. Good, the words were out: my tongue had shrunk to normal size.
Baker rubbed his chin and bent closer. 'Why not kill her?'
'She was... a believer-'
He held up a silencing finger. Professorial. I remembered what Milo had said about how he loved to lecture. Keep him talking, get it all on tape.
'She was,' he said, 'a receptacle. A condom with limbs.'
Tenney laughed and I saw him pick something out of the corner of his eye and flick it away.
'Zena,' he said, 'exited this mortal coil with a bang.' One hand touched his fly.
Baker's expression was that of a weary but tolerant parent. 'That was terrible, Willy.' He smiled at me. 'This may batter your self-esteem, but she was as sexually discriminating as a fruit fly. Our little barnyard gimcrack.'
He turned to Tenney. 'Tell him Zena's motto.'
'Cock-a-doodle-do,' said the bearded man. 'Any cock will do.'
'She was a lure,' I said. 'For Ponsico, me - others?'
'A lure,' said Baker. 'Have you ever gone fly-fishing?'
'No.'
'It's a marvelous pastime. Fresh air, clear water, tying the lures. Unfortunately even the best ones unravel after too many bites.'
'Malcolm Ponsico,' I said. 'He lost e
nthu-'
'He lacked commitment,' said Tenney. 'A weak trout, if you will. It soon became clear something smelled fishy.'
'Willy,' said Baker, reprovingly, 'as Dr Alex here can tell you, inveterate and inappropriate punning is a symptom of mood disorder. Isn't that so?'
'Yes.' The word sounded perfect. At least to my ears. My head was clearer - back to normal.
'Feeling better?' said Baker, somehow sensing it.
He flourished the hypodermic, then I heard a metallic clank as he put it down somewhere. The leather restraints were killing the blood flow to my limbs and my body seemed to be disappearing. Or maybe it was the remnants of the drug, pooling in low places.
'What axis?' Tenney asked me. 'Depression or mania?'
'Mania,' I said. 'And hypomania.'
'Hmm.' He stroked his beard. 'I don't like to think of myself as hypo-anything.' Sudden smile. 'Maybe hypodermic. Because I do have the capacity to get under people's skin.'
He laughed. Baker smiled.
'Perhaps that's why I've been feeling crabby. Or perhaps my moods just shift for the halibut.'
'What a wit,' I said. He reddened and I visualized
Raymond Ortiz, snatched in the park bathroom, bloody
shoes.
'I wouldn't irritate him,' Baker said, almost maternally.
'He doesn't take well to irritation.'
'What did Raymond Ortiz do to irritate him?' Tenney bared yellow teeth. Baker turned his back on me. 'Want to tell him, Willy?'
'Why bother?' said Tenney. 'I have no need to clear my sole - petrale, Dover, take your pick. To assuage my admittedly shrimpy conscience by confessing what I did to the stupid little squid. The scales of justice are in equilibrium. No pearls of wisdom. I prefer to clam up.'
Suddenly, his beard loomed above me and his hand was around my neck.
'All right,' he said, spraying spittle. 'Since you insist. What the obese little degenerate did was destroy the quality of my life. How? By filthying the bathroom. Inevitably. Inexorably. Every single time he used it, he filthied it. Do you understand?'
He bore down, increasing the pressure on my neck, and I gagged, heard Baker say, 'Willy.'
My field of vision grew black around the edges and now I knew something was wrong, Milo would never let it get this far - the fingers loosened. Tenney's eyes were moist, bloodshot.
'The stupid gobbet of scrambled DNA couldn't figure out how to use toilet paper,' he said. 'He and all those other limpy, loopy defectoids, day after day.'
He turned to Baker. 'It's a perfect metaphor for what's wrong with society, isn't it, Sarge? They shit on us, we clean up.'
'So you killed him in the bathroom,' I said. 'Where else?'
'And the bloody shoes-'
'Think!' said Tenney. 'Think what he did to my shoes!'
I gave the closest thing to a shrug the bonds would allow. On my own - what to do-
'I got tired of stepping in it!' Tenney was shouting now, raining saliva. 'They didn't pay me for that!'
His fingers touched my neck again, then he reversed himself suddenly and walked away and I heard footsteps, a door opening and closing.
Alone with Baker.
'My neck hurts,' I said, throwing out another cue, but my faith was dying. 'Can these restraints be loosened?'
Baker shook his head. The needle was back in his hand.
'Potassium chloride,' I repeated. 'Same as Ponsico.'
Baker didn't answer.
'Raymond's shoes,' I said. 'Nothing random, everything had a reason. Irit Carmeli's murder simulated a sex crime. Her mother read you as a sexual aggressor, so the payback had to have sexual overtones. But you needed to differentiate yourself from just another pervert. You and Nolan. He got off on dominating little girls.'
Baker showed me his back again.
'Was Irit mostly Nolan, or both of you? Because I think you shared Nolan's tastes. Young girls - dark girls. Girls like Latvinia. Did you do her yourself or with Tenney's help? Or someone else I haven't had the pleasure of meeting?'
He didn't budge.
'Like Ponsico,' I said, 'Nolan lacked the will eventually. More important, he had some sort of conscience, what he did got to him. You sent him to Lehmann but it didn't help. How'd you prevent him from bringing you down?'
No answer.
'The sister,' I said. 'You told him what you'd do to her if he
destroyed anyone but himself. And if his will had failed again and he didn't eat his gun, you'd have taken care of him.'
His left shoulder twitched. 'Think of it as euthanasia. He was suffering from a terminal disease.'
'Which one?'
'Malignant regrets.' I heard him laugh. 'Now we'll have to get the sister, anyway. Because you might have educated her.'
'I didn't.'
'Who else knows besides Sturgis?'
'No one.'
'Well,' he said. 'We'll see about that... I've always liked North Carolina, the horse country. Spent some time years ago, raising Thoroughbreds.'
'Why doesn't that surprise me?'
He turned around and smiled. 'Horses are immensely strong. Horses kick hard.'
'More killing, more fun.'
'You're right about that.'
'So ideology - eugenics - had nothing to do with it.'
He shook his head. 'Strip away what passes for motives and motivation, Alex, and the sad truth remains: For the most part, we simply do things because we can.'
'You killed people to prove you were able to get-' 'No, not to prove it. Simply because I could. Same reason you pick your nose when you think no one's
watching.'
The silencing finger touched my lips. 'How many ants have you stepped on during your lifetime? Millions? Tens of millions? How much time have you spent regretting the fact that you committed ant genocide?'
'Ants and people-'
'It's all tissue, organic material - jumbles of carbon. So
simple, until we elevated apes come along and complicate things with superstition. Remove God from the equation and you're left with a reduction as rich and delicious as the finest sauce: It's all tissue, it's all temporary.'
He righted his glasses. 'Which is not to say I don't create my own excuses. Everyone does, everyone has a cutoff point. For you, it's ants, perhaps you'd spare a snake. Someone else might not. Others draw the line at vertebrates, mammals with fur, whichever arbitrary criterion defines lovable or cute or sacred.'
He straightened, looked wistful. 'You can't really understand unless you travel and expose yourself to different ways of thinking. In Bangkok - a beautiful, putrid, very scary city - I met a man, a master chef, artist with a Chinese cleaver. He was working in a luxury hotel, preparing banquets for tourists and politicians, but before that he ran his own restaurant in a harbor district where tourists never go. His forte was cutting - slicing, cubing, julienning at unbelievable speed. We smoked opium together several times and eventually I gained his trust. He told me he'd trained as a child, working his way up to sharper and sharper knives. Over thirty years he'd cut everything - sea slugs, grasshoppers, shrimp, frogs, snakes, beef, lamb, monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees.'
Smile. 'You know the punch line. Under the knife, it all splits apart.'
'Then why even bother picking targets?' I said. 'If it's a game, why not just strike randomly?'
'Deconditioning takes time.'
'The troops need a rationale.'
"The troops,' he said, amused.
'So you gave them one: inferior tissue. Your ants.'
'I didn't give anyone anything,' he said. 'Deafness is
inferior to hearing, retardation is inferior to an adequate intellect, not being able to wipe your own anus is inferior to studying philosophy. There is intrinsic value in cleaning house.'
'New Utopia,' I said, fighting to speak clearly, calmly. Was anyone listening? 'Survival of the fittest.'
He shook his head again, Mr Scoutmaster showing a dull scout how to tie a complex knot for the f
iftieth time. 'Spare me the sloppy compassion. Without the fittest there will be no survival. Retardates don't discover cures for diseases. Spastics don't steer jumbo jets. Too many of the unfit, and we'll all be enduring, not living. The way Willy was forced to endure that bathroom.'
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest Page 42
