David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

“I’ve been trying to figure it out.”

“Oh, this guy, Dyce, who was reported missing by his girlfriend. Or she says she’s his girlfriend, but I’m not too sure of that. She doesn’t seem to know much about him except where he lives. Their relationship is fairly recent and-uh-more physical than cerebral, well, you would know about that, wouldn’t you.”

“Christ.”

“A man your age. A pretty young thing like Cindi. And I’m younger than you are. Where’s the justice?”

“They say if you tie a string real tight around your dick, after three days it will just fall off. Your problems would be over.”

“That’s horseshit, John. I’ve got a string around my dick all the time, just to remind me to use it.”

Tee turned off on the third exit and turned onto the Post Road, following the signs to the hospital.

“This Helen was frantic-she’s the frantic type to begin with. Seems her boyfriend has been missing for four days. With a girl like her, I would figure he’s just not answering his phone-except for what’s going on around here. So I did the usual checking around and I found him. In the hospital here in Essex.”

“So he’s not missing.”

“No, but here’s the thing. I think maybe he nearly was. The EMS people found him at the train station in Guileford. He’d been mugged. Well, a good deal worse, really. Someone really did a number on his head, slammed the door on his arm, I mean kicked the shit out of him before they took his money. That’s rare enough around here. This isn’t the city, after all, although, by the train station, maybe some of the boys from Hartford are looking for new territory, but I don’t think so. The thing is, we found a syringe on the ground next to the car. On the passenger side.”

“A drug buy that went wrong.”

“I thought that, but we checked the substance in the syringe and it wasn’t drugs. I mean recreational drugs. It was something called PMBL, a barbiturate, kind of out of fashion according to the drug people. You heard of it?”

“No, but that’s not my line. What does it do?”

“It’s an anesthetic. Actually a combination hypnotic and anesthetic, what they told me. It puts you out and keeps you out.”

“You have a theory?”

“What kind of chief would I be without a theory?”

“A Clamden chief. Turn at the light for the hospital.”

“I know where to tum. What if this guy Dyce went to the ATM at the station and our snatcher is waiting there. The snatcher follows Dyce to his car, tries to stick him with the needle and drag him off, but Dyce resists, fights. The snatcher loses his cool, beats the shit out of Dyce, and drops his anesthetic in the struggle so he can’t cope with Dyce anyway.”

“Why the ATM? Why not getting off the train?”

“The tuning’s bad; too many witnesses if a train just came in. Besides, we think the snatcher was hanging around the money machine. Somebody pissed all over it.”

Becker laughed.

“It’s not funny, John. You forget, this isn’t the city. Commuters use the train here, not derelicts, not kids. People don’t just drop by to take a quick pee at the train station. It’s the kind of thing anybody who’s weird enough to snatch people would do.”

“Or any boy under the age of eighteen, or any half-drunk adult male, or any dog, for Christ’s sake.”

“If this was a dog, you’d better call Ripley’s. The guy hit the computer keys.”

“We’re not looking for a public pisser. Tee. More likely he pees sitting down and wipes his dick afterwards.”

“How do you figure?”

“This is not a man who calls attention to himself. If he did, he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

Tee parked the cruiser in front of the hospital’s main entrance, sliding in front of a departing Volkswagen that had just let off a pregnant woman. The driver of the Volkswagen honked angrily. Tee stepped toward the Volkswagen, whose driver thought better of it and pulled around, shaking his fist.

“I read that people in New York have stopped doing that,” Becker said. “They don’t even yell at cab drivers for fear they’ll get shot.”

“We need a little more random violence around here,” said Tee. “Teach these people respect for the police.”

The woman at the information desk seemed annoyed that they wanted a patient’s room number. She made them wait until she finished her phone call.

“I asked this Helen if she knew Dyce’s mother’s maiden name. She didn’t, of course. Then I ran the usual checks on him myself, just to see if he had a record, and so forth.”

The woman at the desk finally checked her computer and told them the room number.

“They’re volunteers.” Tee led the way to the elevators. “You can’t fire them, so they act like that. Ever notice how many of them are fat? Why is that?”

“Got a theory for that, too?”

“A man’s got to speculate, John. That’s why you’ve got an imagination… The MVD came up with something interesting. Mr. Dyce is a safe driver-but he hasn’t always been Mr. Dyce. Four years ago he changed his name.”

Tee punched the floor button, suddenly silent.

“And I say, ‘From what?’ “ said Becker.

“Dysen. Scandinavian, wouldn’t you say? I may not know anything about the urinary habits of the perpetrator, but I do believe Mr. Dyce/Dysen was a very lucky man who just missed being victim number nine.”

Becker did not respond.

As they approached Dyce’s hospital room. Tee said, “I knew a kid in high school who wiped his dick. Weird. Shook, then wiped. Barely had any to mention in the first place.”

“Good thing you were there to notice,” said Becker.

“Guy became a golf pro, not a player, a teacher. How’s that for symbolism? Spend your life with this four-foot-long club swinging between your legs. A classic case of compensation.”

Becker said, “Unlike our good selves.”

“Well, exactly,” said Tee.

Dyce dreamed his father was alive again and looking for him. He could hear his angry voice calling “Roger,” with the snarl of an animal in the tone, and his footsteps, those dreaded, off-beat clumps of a cripple, were coming toward him. The young Dyce was hiding under the bed, whimpering with fear. He did not know what he had done to bring on the wrath this time, but then he seldom knew. Sometimes he thought his very existence enraged his father, as if his presence, perhaps even his very life, were a mistake that the man was trying to eradicate with his belt and his fists.

In the dream Dyce could see directly through the covers that hung to the floor and concealed him. His father entered the bedroom and Dyce could see him yanking the belt from his pants, see him breathing heavily through his mouth as he always did when he had been drinking. His eyes were red from the alcohol, the capillaries burst from within, and a crust of something had formed in the corners of his mouth. His hair fell diagonally across his forehead, limp and straight and dirty blond.

“Roger,” he said again, this time softer, cajoling. “Come on out, Roger. Come here son. Daddy’s not mad.”

Dyce was not fooled by the change in tone. He had been caught that way before. There was neither sweetness nor forgiveness in the man when he had been drinking, only malice and cunning. Much as Dyce wanted to believe it was the voice of love calling, he dared not move.

He looked straight up through the bed and saw the man’s eyes cloud and the lids quiver, then close. His father sat heavily on the bed above Dyce, then fell back, inert, dropped finally by the liquor. When his father’s rage was gone, he collapsed inward, as if the anger was the only thing to keep him going.

Hovering over his father while somehow still under the bed, Dyce saw the drool form and dribble from his mouth. He heard the breath making its tortured way through his nose, still miraculously straight and fine despite the brawls, the spills, and the accidents of a drunkard’s life.