"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.