Becker pressed the knuckle and held it. Eric moaned.
“Do you believe me?”
“I believe you!”
Becker released the knuckle but continued to hold Eric’s hand in his.
“How did he get you into the car?”
“He was parked right next to my wagon. He had the passenger door open so I couldn’t get past him. He said he needed my help in starting the car without his key. Some bullshit. I don’t think he knew how to hot-wire.”
“The syringe?”
“He must have had it down on the seat. It fell on the floor when I dragged him across the seat. I didn’t know about it till then.”
“You were too busy hitting him.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the busted knuckle. Ironic, don’t you think? You use it on him, I use it on you, it gets you coming and going.”
Becker released Eric’s hand.
“You did want to kill me in that house, didn’t you?”
Becker smiled at him.
“I still do.”
The snails were doing their usual thorough job. After five hours of labor, there was not a square inch of Dyce’s house that Drooden’s forensic team hadn’t scrutinized, dusted, scraped, probed, or photographed. Becker could read their trails everywhere, like the rivulets of slime left behind by garden slugs. As Becker had known it would, the house had given up its ghosts, and they had been replaced by tape measures, grid lines marked with string, smudges of fingerprint powder. The house was no longer a place where a man had dreamed his nightmares and made them come true-it was now an archaeological dig. All that remained undisturbed were the bones.
“I thought it might be helpful for you to see this in situ before we take the bones for analysis,” Hatcher said.
Drooden leaned against the refrigerator, watching like a protective parent. He had resented the Bureau involvement from the beginning and was barely able to tolerate Becker’s unorthodox presence. A member of his forensic team stood in the doorway, tapping the ashes from his cigarette into an evidence bag.
“If he didn’t see it last night,” said Drooden.
Hatcher ignored the state cop. He had seldom met one who liked being outranked.
“I was struck by the stones,” said Hatcher. He pointed with the toe of his shoe as Becker squatted next to the makeshift graveyard. The state police had removed enough floorboards to reveal all of the skeletons, which lay atop each other like the tossed shafts of a game of pick-up-sticks. Only the skulls were kept separate. They were sitting side by side in a row eight long. Next to each skull, like a hyphen separating it from its neighbor, was a small stone.
The snails had covered the area with a grid of string bisected into three-foot squares and then photographed it from several angles so that exact measurements could be reproduced later. A twelve-inch ruler included in the photos to give perspective still lay between a pair of thigh bones.
“I assume he kept the skulls separate as some sort of burial notion. Given the cramped circumstances, it was probably the best he could do.” Hatcher stepped back and watched Becker.
“You call that a burial?” Drooden asked.
“Well, he didn’t just throw the skulls in there with the rest. What would you call it?”
“You cut somebody up in your bathtub, flush his hair down the drain, and boil his bones-I doubt that you care enough about him to give him a burial,” said Drooden.
Becker spoke for the first time. “He cared about these men very much. They were very important to him.” Becker looked at the forensic man, who was watching his smoke rise to the ceiling. “They were all men?”
The forensic man nodded. “Pelvic bones look like it. We’ll know for sure later.”
“He cared enough about them to keep them alive for a while,” said Becker. “He might very well care enough to give them the best kind of burial he could manage.”
“Kept them alive while he did what to them?”
“Watched them, for one thing.”
“How do you know that?” Drooden demanded. Becker moved a hand toward one of the stones. “May I?”
The forensic man removed a pair of disposable plastic gloves from his pocket and handed them to Becker.
“Wait a minute,” said Drooden. He rounded on the forensic man. “Did I say anything could be disturbed yet?”
“No, sir.”
“You wait until I do, damn it.”
The forensic man was standing at attention in the doorway, trying to figure how to get rid of the cigarette without leaving and without giving Drooden another chance to yell at him;
“What have you found out about him from the neighbors?” Hatcher asked evenly. He moved slightly to screen Becker who was already holding one of the stones between his gloved fingers.
“They liked him,” said Drooden. “Nice man, quiet, minded his own business. He distributed fruit cakes at Christmas, attended the annual Fourth of July barbecue one of them gives in his backyard. On Halloween the kids said he usually gave candy and acted like he was scared by every ghost and ballerina that showed up. The first year here he gave them fruit, but apparently someone set him straight and after that it was always candy. The kids think he’s fine. The adults don’t pretend to know him, but think he’s fine, too. Can you imagine Halloween at this house?”
“Did they say anything about his girl?” Becker asked, straightening. He had replaced the stone.
“No one knew about her. If she came here, they never saw her.”
Hatcher looked at Becker, who nodded. The two men walked toward the door.
“Finished, are we?” Drooden asked. He turned on the forensic man, who was snuffing out the cigarette between moistened fingers. “Clean it,” he said. “And Wilkins…”
“Yes, sir.”
“You people better find out something we don’t already know.”
Hatcher walked Becker to his car. Some of the neighbor-children were still gathered on a lawn outside the barricade, making a picnic of watching the police come and go.
“What about the stones? Anything?” Hatcher asked.
“Just gravel, I think. But fresh; it still had a dusting of pumice on it. Either it came right out of the rock crusher or else he got it somewhere before it got rained on and was washed clean. You might check on the local source for gravel, see where they’ve delivered in the last four years, cross-check that with precipitation reports, find out when and where he might have got it before it got wet.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I think the stones were markers. Tombstones. His way of paying his respects. He might come back for more.”
“More?”
“You don’t think he’s through killing people, do you? He’s just warming up.”
“But he must know we’re on to him by now. That’s why he walked out of the hospital.”
“He’s not a criminal. Hatcher. He can’t just decide to lie low for a while. He doesn’t kill for profit.”
“Why does he do it? Do you have any theories yet?”
Becker hesitated.
“Why not ask an alcoholic why he drinks? Because by the time he knows he has a problem, the problem is already most of his life. It would be easier if you find him and we’ll ask.”
“We’ll find him. He’s got no credit cards, no money, thanks to our friend Eric. Who’s he going to turn to for help? We’re covering his girlfriend, the people he worked with. If he has any family, we’ll find them, too. We should have him in custody within forty-eight hours.”
“Save that for the press release. This guy is not stupid. He only got caught this time because of the girl. He won’t make that mistake again.”
“What tipped him off that we were on to him?”
“Have you been to his office?”
“The insurance company in Hartford? Not personally. Milch has talked to his employer.”
“And?”
“Good worker, low profile, not much snap to him, but he does his work on time and accurately. He was passed up for a promotion recently and they assume there was a natural resentment, but he didn’t show much.”