David Wiltse - Bone Deep

"You're sure?"

Becker sighed wearily. It was the certainty of his knowledge that drained him. Born not of research or years of pursuing serial killers, but of bone-deep understanding. "I'm sure," he said flatly.

Karen did not argue. There were areas of Becker's expertise where he was not to be questioned. She understood and avoided them when she could, aware of an incipient empathy within herself that she feared to encourage by associating too closely with Becker's own.

Jack bounded into, the room with his own fanfare. "Ta da!" He leapt high, landed with his arms spread wide, one foot perched on its heel.

The new sneakers gleamed.

"What do you think?":'Fantastic," said Becker.

'You ought to feel them. It's like you can fly."

"I remember the feeling well. I used to get that feeling with a new pair of Keds."

"Keds, " Jack said, horrified.

"That's all we had then, we were deprived." 'I thought you wore rocks."

"That was for dress-up," said Becker. To Karen, he said, "He looks the very epitome of inner-city youth, doesn't he?"

"Makes a mother proud. I tried to interest him in a pair of oxblood wing tips, but he was having none of itJack! "

Jack was rubbing the sole of one sneaker vigorously atop the instep of the other. "I can't go to school with them all shiny," he said, continuing to grind off the sheen.

"Do you know how much those cost?"

"You told me often enough."

"Now your mother will have to arrest someone extra just to pay for those shoes."

"It's not funny, John. How is he going to learn respect for his belongings."

"It's called 'distressing,' " said Becker. "If he did it to furniture, you'd think it was very fashionable."

"He does do it to the furniture. Look at the sofa."

"Here's where you tactfully withdraw," Becker said to Jack. The boy slipped quickly out of the living room.

"A boy has to be free to loll around," Becker continued.

"He can loll on the floor."

"On the floor it's just rolling, not lolling."

"I don't care what it is, he's got to learn more responsibility toward property. I know how that sounds, by the way, so don't remind me that I'm turning into my mother… What is it?"

Becker had disengaged from the conversation abruptly, staring into space.

"Distressing," he said. "Those marks on the bones of the girls that Johnny killed. The ones we thought might be a signature or a talisman of some kind?"

"You couldn't figure out how they got on the bone during the dissection."

"What if Johnny put them there deliberately like distress marks on furniture?"

"To make the bones look older?"

"No. Not older. To make his work look clumsier."

"I don't follow you."

"It worked-halfway anyway. Kom thought the job was sloppy. But that's when we just showed him the one bone. Grone thought it was very skillfully done, seeing those marks so uniformly applied."

"Take me through it," Karen said.

"He cuts the girl into pieces; then, probably as an afterthought, he decides to confuse the issue just in case the bones are ever found-an event he didn't really anticipate-so he takes a couple of swipes at the exposed joint to make it look like sloppy work. We know he had to do it after the job was done, there was no other way to get the marks where they were during the boning process. It's not anything he takes too seriously, he doesn't think it will ever matter, but he's a careful man, a methodical man, so he does it on a couple of more bones. Same way, slash, slash. It looks good enough, he keeps doing it, it becomes part of his pattern and after a while he doesn't even think about it, he just does it with each bone when he's cut it free."

"Like somebody on an assembly line. A pieceworker if that isn't too horrible to say."

"Yes, something like that. Debone, slash, slash, toss it aside into the trash bag. He thinks he's making his work look awkward, but he doesn't realize that by doing it all the time, every time, he's creating just the opposite impression. Those are the only marks on the bones. It's never a slip of the knife, it's always the slash in the same place. If you saw just one body, maybe you'd think it was the work of a butcher.

But if you found all seven bodies..

"And the new girl?"

"Grone will have a report for us tomorrow. We might know who she is by then too."

"Will you ask Stanley to come into the city for a look too? Grone won't mind."

"Sure he will."

"Tell him it's my idea."

"He'll still mind."

"But he'll have sense enough to keep it to himself. Take Stanley, will you?" Becker groaned. "Do I have to take Tovah, too?"

"Tovah is not an expert in that kind of bones."

"What if he wants to have a little heart-to-heart talk again afterwards?"

"You listened to Tee, didn't you?"

"Tee was desperate. He's got his neck in a noose."

"Stanley's desperate too. You were able to help Tee, weren't you?"

"Did I give you that impression? I don't think I helped him at all. How can I help hiw.? He wants to be thirty again. He wants to fall in love and rescue women and feel something again. There's no way I can help him with any of that. All I can do is try to keep him under control when it comes to dealing with McNeil, who might well try to blackmail him, and that's all he wants me to do for him. I don't know what the hell Stanley wants from me."

"He wants some emotional intimacy, if that's not too trite."

"Do I have to be emotionally intimate with everybody who comes along, whether I like it or not? Do I have some kind of obligation there?"

"Do you have that many coming along? If so, you're not telling me about it."

"I'd just like to have something to say about whether I'm on the other end of intimate exchanges or not, that's all. I don't like to have it dumped in my lap like a spilled drink. Stanley's like having a cup of cocoa poured on you, all warm and sweet and sticky."

"Maybe what Stanley needs is not a male friend," Karen offered. "Maybe he needs a woman."

"What is the appeal of the guy?"

"What makes you afraid of him?"

Becker threw his hands in the air. "I'll take him, I'll take him."

"You don't have to." Becker laughed and took Karen in his arms. The embrace turned serious and after a few minutes they sat together on the sofa and made love to each other in a gentle, prefatory way, touching through their clothes. Sweetly, teasingly, they drove each other wild with desire until Jack came in to say good night. They looked at him in parental innocence, beaming with smiles.

Becker rose from bed at t, o a.m., moving silently as he gathered his clothes in his hand and eased toward the bedroom door. Karen lay on her side, facing away from him. She had not moved but he could tell by her breathing that she had awakened. "Be careful," she said, her voice still hoarse with sleep. "Yes. Go back to sleep."

"You're sure you have to go?" Becker stood for a long moment in the dark, his shirt and pants in his hand. "I have to," he said finally.

She rolled over to face him. Her face was a pale shape without features in the darkness. "I knew you would tonight," she said.

"How did you know?"

"You're different when you're fighting it," she said, meaning the urge that she knew was driving him now. "You make love differently."

'Do I?"

"You're even more gentle than usual-and even more intense, somehow. I can't explain it, but I can feel it."

"There was nothing in my mind but making love to you-I don't want you to think it was tainted."

"I don't think that. But it's like… I don't know." She thought it was like making love with a wolf with a human heart, the beast holding its strength and instinct in check, aware what it could do with those powerful jaws, the vicious teeth, the instrument of death caressing her as gently as it would pick up a pup in that mouth. It was frightening and exciting and Karen had come over the years to want it most of all-but she did not tell him that, or any of it. "It's just different," she said.