"Not much. You broke up with your boyfriend."
"Somebody told you that? How the hell does anybody know? I didn't tell anybody. Are they spying on me?"
Becker laughed.
"Welcome to the club, kiddo."
"It's hardly the same, and don't call me kiddo, either."
"What's hardly the same?"
"Never mind. I'm just shocked that… who was it, who told you?
Kinnock? He's been trying to get his hand up my skirt since I joined up."
"'You mean there's good reason for people to keep tabs on me but not on you? Because of my history it's all right? But it's not all right for you?"
I didn't mean anything in particular."
"So what did they tell you about me, Haddad? What gory stories did they tell you?"
"Just, you know, it's mostly very complimentary.
Everyone says you're fantastically good at it."
"But what?"
"But nothing. Everyone respects you enormously."
"But I'm what, a bit unstable? A bit crazy? A bit dangerous? Or do, they go further?"
"No."
"Do they tell you why they think I'm so good? Do they say why I seem to have such a knack for finding these psychopaths?" 4 'No. I I "Yes, they do, sure they do. Why wouldn't they, they don't-know nothing about it, what better time to speculate?"
"No, honest..
"Christ, let's not be honest with each other, Haddad.
Let's keep things just the way they are; we're getting along fine… listen, kid, fair warning. Everything they told you is true as far as it goes. If not in specifics, then in spirit. As far as it goes. It's all true… It just doesn't go far enough."
Pegeen did not know what to make of his statement, and she got no further help from him. Becker fell into a silence that remained unbroken until she pulled their car into an empty field where a large tent was being erected.
The Reverend Tommy R. Walker was uncomfortable in the presence of any police authorities, and FBI.agents made him doubly ill-at-ease.
Authorities had plagued Tommy's life. Cops and sheriffs treated him like he was running a damned carnival instead of a respectable healing and revival meeting, and even after he had paid their bribes and followed their laws Tommy felt guilty whenever they were around. The fact that one of the agents was a girl, probably no older than Aural, didn't help matters, either. She was a kind of goofy-looking creature with her funny ears and all that red hair, but kind of attractive, too, in an unusual way. Still, she had flashed a badge at him, and that meant she had authority. Ceding some sort of power to the man was bad enough, but granting it to a woman was something else, something he didn't like at all. Rae had taken enough control over him since Aural left, haranguin him with questions and accusations and using her body like it was some special treat that she would dole out only if he gave her the proper information.
He had become quite dependent on her sexual favors in the past few weeks, he found. The more eager, the more inventive she became, the deeper he fell into her thrall.
He didn't know how, exactly, but he seemed to have slipped into a form of vassalage to her body which had given her emotional and intellectual primacy as well. In ways he could not pin down, and by methods he could not adequately name, Rae had become the boss.
She even took charge now, talking freely with the agents while Tommy hung back warily.
"I reported her missing, yes, I did," Rae said.
Tommy noticed that she spoke primarily to the male agent, addressing him with a level of flirtatiousness he had not seen in her before.
"She was a dear friend," Rae continued. "A very dear friend and I was worried about her."
"Did you have any particular reason to worry?"
Becker asked. "Couldn't she have run off with a boyfriend, for instance?",
"Aural was off men; she didn't want a boyfriend."
"Why was that?" Pegeen asked.
"Bad experiences," Rae said. "You know how they are.
Pegeen nodded, feeling momentarily sisterly. She did indeed know how they were. Awful at the worst of times, and at the best, still difficult.
"Believe me, if she had wanted any boyfriends, she wouldn't have had to look very far," Rae said. Becker and Pegeen both noticed her glance at the Reverend Tommy that didn't quite take place. The Reverend stirred uneasily. "She set her last boyfriend on fire, that's how fed up she was."
"Set him on fire?"
Rae nodded proudly. "Yes, sir, right on fire."
"Wasn't on fire," Tommy said.
"Certainly was," Rae returned sharply.
"Nope. She tried to burn up the bathroom of the trailer and Kershaw was inside it. He never got burned. at all.
She's just telling you cow flop."
"No such a thing." Rae was indignant. "She set that man ablaze, and he deserved it, too."
"First off, no man deserves that," Tommy said, appealing to Becker as a fellow male.
"I've seen a few," Becker said.
Tommy acted as if he didn't hear the contradiction.
"And second, it ain't true."
"Aural told me so her own self," Rae said.
"But Kershaw told me, " Tommy said triumphantly, then quickly realized he had said too much.
Becker and Pegeen noticed the change in the relationship between the other two; it happened as palpably as a fifty-degree drop in temperature. The Bureau always wanted agents to interview subjects separately, but Becker had realized long ago that the guideline was often wrong.
People who knew each other could send signals to keep the other from saying too much, it was true, but just as often they would react to the presence of an agent as if he were an intermediary in a long-running power struggle.
Both would appeal to him to take their side and in the process reveal far more than they might alone. Like a couple before a marriage counselor, each would plead his or her own case in ways never done with the partner.
"So that was Harold Kershaw I heard you talking to outside our trailer,"
Rae said icily.
"What?" Tommy said. Becker thought his guilt was so obvious he might as well have worn a signboard. Pegeen wondered if all men pretended not to hear whenever a woman asked them the question they didn't want to answer, or if it was just every man she had ever known.
"You gave her over to Harold Kershaw?" Rae protested. "Do you know what that shikepoke'll do to her?
How could you do that to that sweet thing?"
"Kershaw ain't got her."
"He might kill her, I can't believe you.
"It ain't Kershaw," Tommy said. "I told you, he ain't got her.
"You know where she is then, don't you? You know how worried I was, why didn't you tell me? You made me go to the police and everything and all the time you knew-"
"Hey, I don't know. I don't know nothing."
"He knows where Aural is," Rae said to Becker.
"Hey!"
"You might's well arrest him," Rae said. She looked at Pegeen, nodding vigorously. "He's as bad as the man who's got her."
"Rae, Rae, calm down here…"
"Take him to the station and beat him with your nightsticks@r I'll do it myself"
"Hey! Rae. Honey. Sugar, what are you talking about?" He turned to the agents, appealing for sympathy.
"I don't know where the girl is. I didn't snatch her. Kershaw didn't snatch her. It was this little weasel. Kershaw found him and kicked the shit out of him, but Kershaw didn't take Aural, he never got close enough to her, she ran right into this weasel's car, like he was waiting for her. I think she was planning on slipping out on us anyway, Rae, honest to God, she was going away with this little guy, I'm sure of it."
Pegeen pulled a photograph from her purse.
"Was it this man?"
Tommy tried to square the grim-looking still-life of the mug shot with the face of the little man lying on the sidewalk, bleeding, cowering behind his upraised arm.
"Could be, maybe. Sure."