John Lutz - Urge to Kill

The barn’s big wooden doors were closed but for an inch, and the long rusty hasp stuck out like a handle, inviting Marty to open one of the doors and find out about the mysterious light.

Marty gripped the hasp’s rough surface and pulled the barn door open about two feet. It didn’t squeal like it usually did, and he wondered if someone had oiled the hinges.

He held his breath as he entered the barn.

Marty’s father hadn’t heard him and stood continuing his work on Marty’s mother, who was strung upside down so her nude body dangled from one of the barn’s main rafters. On one of the other rafters perched a small barn owl. Without moving anything else, it swiveled its feathered head and stared at Marty as if he was intruding.

His father was shirtless and wearing an old pair of jeans and his leather work boots. He was facing away from Marty, and between his spread legs Marty could see his mother’s upside-down face. Her eyes were open and her expression calm, though she seemed faintly annoyed by what was happening.

As Marty watched, his father raised the gutting knife in both hands and bunched his back muscles for strength. The knife descended and Marty’s mother’s insides fell out into a bloody pile between his father’s widely spread boots.

There were streams of blood on each side of Alma’s face now, and in her hair, but she held her calm expression. Marty saw that her throat had been slit and knew she’d been dead when he entered the barn.

His father continued his task, adroitly slicing here, occasionally hacking with the knife there, making sure the gutting was complete.

Then he stopped, stood very still, and turned around and saw Marty.

For a few seconds Carl Hawk looked embarrassed and ashamed. Then he looked angry and self-righteous.

Marty wasn’t exactly frightened. He loved his father too much to fear him. But what felt from the inside like a poker face must have betrayed him and shown his confusion.

“There wasn’t any choice,” his father said. He was very calm and spoke patiently, in the tone of voice he used when teaching Marty to tie fishing flies. He held the bloody knife at his side, its blade pointing down. “She come at me with that axe an’ tried to kill me.” He glanced at a rusty long-handled axe lying in the litter of straw near one of the empty stalls, then waited for Marty to look in that direction.

Marty did, and nodded, confirming that yes, he saw the axe.

“Woman tried to kill me, son. Hell, she’s been poisonin’ me for months, anyways. You know that. Told you about it last winter and lots of times thereafter. Goddamned roach poison! Guess she got impatient about my dyin’ so she took up the axe. You understand, once she killed me, you were gonna be next. She as much as said that. She went plain crazy. You understand?”

“I understand,” Marty heard himself say.

“We all do what we gotta do,” Carl Hawk said, “an’ then we live with it. That’s somethin’ I thought I taught you.”

“I understand,” Marty said again.

His father stood there, studying him; then he wiped the knife on his jeans and stuck the point of the blade in a nearby wooden support pole, near where a kerosene lantern hung with its handle looped over a long nail. Below the lantern a metal pail, shovel, and a tow chain hung from hooks.

“It’s done for now,” Carl said. “Let’s both of us go back in the house and see if we can sleep. Come mornin’ we’ll put the body down that old well back in the woods. The innards we’ll feed to the hogs.” He sighed and gave Marty a tight, humorless smile. “Then that’ll be that.”

Carl turned down the lantern wick, and the barn was in darkness except for what moonlight filtered in through the cracks and where the door stood open. He laid his hand gently on Marty’s shoulder and guided him outside into the warm night. They began the slow walk toward the house.

“It had to be done,” Carl said. “You know that, Marty. If it hadn’t, you and me’d both be dead right now.”

Marty didn’t answer.

“When she was finished on me with the axe, she was gonna go on back to the house an’ do you.”

His father’s boots made a creaking, leathery sound as he walked. Marty could barely hear it over the noise of the katydids. “You believe me, Marty?”

“I believe.”

“You okay?” his father asked.

“I can do whatever you say,” Marty told him.

His father stopped walking, closed his bloody hand tighter on Marty’s shoulder, then drew him in close and hugged him.

Marty hugged him back.

New York, the present

The first thing Dr. Alfred Beeker saw when he opened the door to his office’s anteroom at 9:45 A.M. was Beatrice with her blond head thrown back, laughing so hard that her fillings showed. Quinn was in Beeker’s waiting room, charming the doctor’s middle-aged, attractive receptionist, but he was sitting off to the right and not immediately noticeable to anyone walking in.

Beeker was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties, with thinning black hair combed severely sideways to disguise his baldness. His features were sharp, with dark eyes that appeared slightly crossed and lent him an expression of intensity. He was wearing a nicely tailored gray suit and carrying a beat-up black leather briefcase with a large tarnished brass clasp. Quinn wondered if the briefcase was an affectation. Or maybe that was where the good doctor kept his whips.

“Am I missing something?” Beeker asked Beatrice. Then he glanced to the side and saw Quinn.

Beatrice put on a straight, if twitching, face and stood up behind her desk. “This is Detective Frank Quinn.”

Beeker didn’t seem thrown by finding a cop in his office. He smiled at Quinn and looked at him curiously.

“I thought it best to catch you before your morning appointments,” Quinn said, standing up. “It’s become necessary for you and I to have a conversation. It won’t take long.”

“Am I under arrest?” Still the smile. A joke.

“Not yet,” Quinn said. No smile. A joke, maybe.

“Come in and sit down,” Beeker said, with a sideways glance at Beatrice, who was now engrossed in some kind of paperwork. He stepped past the reception desk and opened a plain oak door, then stood back so Quinn could enter first.

“Wonderful talking to you, dear,” Quinn said to Beatrice, as he entered the office.

It was everything a Park Avenue psychoanalyst’s office should be, restful and hushed. Very much like Zoe’s office. Maybe they had the same decorator. Pale green walls, darker green carpet, lots of dark brown leather furniture, framed modern paintings that would scare no one. Centered in the room, facing the door, was a vast mahogany desk. There were matching file cabinets on the wall behind it. There was one very large window. Pale beige drapes lined in caramel-colored silk extended from the ceiling on either side of it and puddled on the floor.

The desk was uncluttered but for a dark brown phone, a freshly cut long-stemmed rose in a delicate crystal vase, and a gold picture frame. The wall to the right was floor-to-ceiling books, most of them medical journals. An ornate brass floor lamp near the desk was unnecessarily on and softly glowing. Apparently Beatrice had readied the office for her boss. Have a nice day hung in the air.

Beeker motioned for Quinn to sit in one of the sumptuous leather armchairs angled toward the desk. Quinn lowered his weight into the chair, which was even more comfortable than it looked. The seat cushion hissed as if it didn’t like being sat on.

After waiting until Quinn was seated, Beeker walked around and situated himself in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. He rocked back and forth a few times in the chair, and then sat forward and made a pink tent with his fingers the way Renz often did, which made Quinn distrust him. It wasn’t hard for Quinn to imagine the doctor as his assailant in the dark Seventy-ninth Street office.