David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

“What does he want with them?”

“How the hell do I know. They were sexually abused, I assume.”

Karen shook her head. “It puzzled all of us, but no. No sign of sexual abuse.”

Becker was silent for a long time. Karen watched his face but could read little there.

“I assume the Investigative Support Unit is involved? Have they given you a profile of the guy?” he asked finally.

“Sort of. It isn’t much help yet. They don’t have a lot to work on and they seem to be thrown by the lack of sexual abuse.”

“Did Gold have anything to offer?”

“Gold was a bit confused.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“He is a good man, Becker.”

“I know, I know.”

“What do you expect from a shrink, after all?”

“Miracles, mostly. If he’s your own.”

“He’s helped you, you’ve said so.”

“Allow me my own twisted response to my shrink, if you don’t mind. What was he confused about?”

“He thought it was very unclear, he was getting conflicting signals from this guy. At least Gold was frank enough to admit it.”

“He’s as honest as his profession will allow,” Becker conceded. “So the psychological profile isn’t much use?”

“As usual. You can give us a better one.”

Becker looked at her, smiled ruefully.

“We know why that is, don’t we?”

She chose to ignore his remark. “I’ll let you see Gold’s profile, of course. I can put everything we have in your hands in less than a day.”

“How much do you have on the man himself?”

Karen cleared her throat. She glanced at the pilot and owner, then back to the file on the table in front of her.

“Nothing,” she said finally.

“Partial description?”

“No one has ever seen him.”

“He took six kids away from public places, once from a schoolyard, once from a school outing at a museum-and no one saw him?”

“No.”

“He just walked off with them? No protests from the kids, no foot dragging, no struggles, no tears. Nothing to make anyone notice? Nothing to even make someone imagine they saw something peculiar? There’s always someone around who’s willing to make up something in exchange for attention from us. No lonely clerk who likes having the FBI talk to him as long as he can fantasize what he thinks we want to hear?”

“Nobody, John.”

“Who is this guy, the Invisible Man?”

“The agents are calling him Lamont Cranston. Apparently there was an old radio show called ‘The Shadow’ about this man, Lamont Cranston, who could cloud men’s minds and become invisible…”

“I remember,” said Becker.

“Before my time,” said Karen.

“Your loss,” said Becker. He fell into a deep announcer’s baritone. “ ‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?… The Shadow knows.’ ”

“Yeah. I’ve been hearing a lot of that one,” Karen said.

“Orson Welles did the voice, I think.” Becker said.

Karen waited impatiently, clearly not interested in nostalgia.

From the other side of the room she could hear the pilot’s own sotto voce rendition of “The Shadow knows.” It seemed to be a phrase that men of all ages could not resist crooning, whether or not they had even heard of the original radio show.

“How does he get them to leave so peacefully that no one sees anything?” Becker was musing aloud, not expecting an answer. “As if he had them hypnotized.”

“We checked hypnosis, actually.”

“I wasn’t serious,” Becker said.

“We weren’t either, but we checked it anyway. None of them had ever been previously hypnotized, so there was no posthypnotic suggestion at work.”

“What physical evidence have the forensic people come up with?”

Karen shook her head. “Nothing. I know it’s hard to believe, but nothing. I told you, the bodies had been cleansed. There was nothing in the bags except the bodies. No hair samples, no prints, no fibers

… Part of that is the nature of the plastic used in the bags, apparently. It’s chemically inert and very smooth so it won’t pick up fibers from a car’s seat covers, for instance.”

“No prints on the outside of the bags? That stuff will hold fingerprints.”

“Only the prints of the people who found the bags along the highway. I don’t know. John. It’s like he killed and cleaned them in a scientific lab.”

“You’ve checked that?”

“In every case we investigated every lab within a fifty-mile radius of where the kids were taken. Every medical lab, every scientific research facility, every university with a science department, every place we could think of that keeps a sterile facility.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Hundreds of names of people who work there or have access to the facilities. But no connections to the victims, at least none that the computer could find. Maybe you could tell the computer what else to look for.”

Becker fell into a deep silence. When Karen started to speak to him he lifted one hand, stopping her. After a moment she slid out of her chair and crossed the room to join the pilot and the airport owner. Instinctively, they all spoke in hushed tones.

“Is he going to help find Lamont?” the pilot asked.

Karen arched her eyebrows, cocked her head slightly. Becker was not a man to make predictions about.

“He’s helped already,” she said.

“Did he come up with something?”

“No. But he’s confirmed that we’ve done all the right things.”

The owner craned his head to look past Karen, studying Becker as if seeing him for the first time.

“Is this guy really all that bright?” the owner asked. Karen shot the pilot a hard glance. She did not like the idea of discussing Bureau business with a civilian.

“I just mentioned that he’s someone special,” the pilot said shamefacedly.

“Doesn’t look it,” said the owner.

“That depends what part of him you’re looking at,” Karen said.

The owner looked at the pilot, suppressing a smile. The woman wasn’t his boss, after all. He had no reason to be afraid of her.

“What part are you looking at?” he asked.

“The part that’s looking at you,” she said.

Becker was still staring blankly at the table.

“He’s not looking at me,” the owner said, puzzled.

“Which ought to tell you something,” Karen said. To the pilot she said, “We’ll be leaving in fifteen minutes. Are you ready?”

“She’s ready when you are.”

“Go to the bathroom first,” she said. “It’s a long flight.”

Karen walked back to Becker.

“I have a bladder infection,” the pilot told the owner sheepishly.

“He wasn’t looking at me at all, was he?” the owner demanded, still puzzled.

The pilot looked at Becker. If one hadn’t heard the stories they told about him, Becker would appear to be a fairly rugged man, no longer young but certainly not old, an ex-athlete perhaps, who still stayed in shape, still had his hair. Presentable but nothing remarkable. But if the viewer had heard the stories; if even half of what they said about him was true…

“From what I hear,” the pilot said, “you’d better be grateful he isn’t looking directly at you. They say he sees everything, anyway. But what he looks at, he hits.” The pilot knew that was not what Deputy Assistant Director Crist had meant, but then she had actually worked with Becker. Humped him, too, apparently. The pilot was not certain just what sort of insight that gave her into Becker’s heart and head. He himself had certainly slept with many women without revealing a damned thing about himself except his sexual preferences, which was just the way he wanted it. How these things worked with Becker, he had no idea and no real desire to know.