David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

But he wouldn’t do it then, Becker knew. There was no sense to it. More to the point, there was no joy to it. Drug them in the car, drag them into the house, and chop them up? Why? What would he get out of it? He was getting something out of it. He’d killed many times; he wouldn’t take the risk if it offered him nothing in return.

So he kept them alive for a while. That’s why he needed the soundproofing, that’s why there was anesthetic in the syringe and not poison.

Becker returned to the living room. And he kept them alive in here. Where he lived.

Switching on the lights for a moment, squinting against the sudden brightness, Becker studied the room. There was only one place where Dyce would have sat. He turned off the lights and sat in the overstuffed chair. It was easier in the dark.

He had told Tee that it was an exercise in imagination, but that was not how Becker thought of it. He had to study his quarry’s lair the way an anthropologist would study the cave paintings of early man. Those paintings went a long way toward explaining the man behind them. Becker hoped to learn as much about Dyce by sitting in his living room and absorbing his presence. He sat in the dark in Dyce’s chair and breathed the air Dyce had breathed. He let the atmosphere sink in. He unleashed his mind and set it free to wander the room, the house, to seek out Dyce and inhabit his soul.

Sitting in the chair, looking straight ahead, Becker turned on the flashlight. It did not hit the screen of the television set. Why would he align the chair so he could not watch the television without twisting his head-unless he didn’t watch TV. When he sat here and rehashed what he did, dreamed what ghoulish fantasies he needed, what did he look at? The light fell on nothing but space from the chair clear across the room to the wall.

With the lights on, Becker studied the room again. A sawhorse sat under the bookshelf People used saw-horses for table legs sometimes, but one sawhorse in a room full of heavy oaken furniture? Why a piece of makeshift furniture in a room already overcrowded, and why just one? What good was one sawhorse? Probing with the beam of his flashlight, Becker looked for another support. The sofa arm was the only other surface of the same height in the room.

There were marks on the floor where the sawhorse had been placed with weight on it. The scratches in the wood were small and only in one spot. Becker put the sawhorse on the scratches and judged the distance to the sofa arm. At eye level, on the wall above the sawhorse, was a mark on the wallpaper, a black horizontal line where something had dug into the wallpaper, the deep, regular mark of something heavy pressing over a period of time. The only structure in the room of the right length was the bookshelf Removing the books, Becker placed the bottom shelf against the mark on the wall. The shelf leaned against the wall at an angle of about ten degrees off the vertical, not quite upright, but close. Easing the shelf horizontally, it fit neatly across the sawhorse and the arm of the sofa.

Becker returned to the chair and looked straight away, then directed the beam the way his gaze fell. The beam hit the bookshelf about a foot away from the sofa arm. Where the head would be, thought Becker. He saw Dyce sitting in his chair, watching his victims. You sat and watched them. How long? How did they die? Were you watching the death? Is that what you needed? You liked to see them die, didn’t you? And in what manner did they die? Slowly? Of course, slowly. That’s why you brought them home. To watch them die. The forensic people would figure out how. Probably. But how was not what really interested Becker. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know what Dyce saw when he saw men dying slowly. He wanted to know what pleasure it gave him, what he thought it meant. There was a wire crossed there, some permanent glitch in the circuitry of the brain. Becker wanted-no, not wanted. Needed. Becker needed to see with Dyce’s eyes and feel with Dyce’s heart-without becoming Dyce. Tee had called it psychic shit. A psychologist might call it extreme empathy. Becker did not have a name for it; he just did it. He did not think of it as anything mystical. It was more a matter of reasoning by analogy. I line my faulty wiring up next to his, Becker thought, and see if any current jumps the gap.

Eric circled the house twice, sizing it up. There were no lights on as he had anticipated. He had called the hospital from the rich bitch’s house and had been told that Mr. Dyce was not scheduled for release for several days. Eric had pretended he was Dyce’s brother, just in case they had trouble giving out the information; he was prepared to be snooty with them if they got that way with him, but there had been no problem. Mr. Dyce, they had said, was still under observation.

So Eric had come to observe Mr. Dyce’s house for him. He parked his station wagon three blocks away, up against the curb, nowhere near a hydrant, as safe and legal as could be. No reason for anyone to notice his car, no excuse for any cruising cop to ticket it. In his early days he had been caught that way when some property-owning asshole had thought Eric’s car was blocking his driveway and called a cop. Eric had come tiptoeing back to the car with a pillowcase full of goodies on his back and a portable TV under his arm just as the police cruiser pulled up to write out a citation.

But that was years ago and time had taught Eric the virtues of caution. He walked the route once, just strolling casually, to check out the presence of any dogs. There was a barker about a block from the car, but he could easily avoid it on the way back. The block that held Dyce’s house was as clean of canines as a cat convention.

He went in the back way, cutting across a neighbor’s garden and through a hedge. The night had turned cloudy and the entrance through the hedge took a little finding, but then Eric was in Dyce’s backyard and it was clear sailing. The garage shielded him on one side. Eric pulled on the ski mask and his work gloves. The only skin showing was around his eyes. In this light, if anyone was going to see him, they’d have to be pointing a flashlight right at him.

There was some kind of material blocking the window-what was this, some kind of anti-burglar device? God, the shit people tried. They just didn’t have a clue, but it gave easily enough on the second shove and Eric hoisted himself into a bedroom. Hauling himself in put strain on the knuckle and made him wince.

The room was a disappointment. No jewels, no cash, no hidden stash, not even a lousy TV. The guy lived like a monk except for the fancy hairbrushes that might be worth something. He stripped a pillowcase from the bed and tossed the hairbrushes in it. Some wardrobe; the guy must have bought his suits at Sears. Nothing in the pockets, nothing in the linings, no little secrets tucked in the toes of the shoes.

Eric paused at the bedroom door as he became aware for the first time of the odor. Christ, it smelled like a backed-up septic tank. He began to question the wisdom of his decision. Why was he putting his balls on the line to rip off the house of some geek who didn’t own anything and lived with a dead cat? He hadn’t fucked the bitch and her daughter, either. He could still imagine taking the kid on the stairs. He should have, get her dripping from the shower, yank off the towel, make her happy. It got him hot just thinking about it now. Why didn’t he? All these goddamned lost opportunities. Instead, he was in this dingy house, afraid to breathe the ah, with two old-fashioned hairbrushes in the bag. For a moment he contemplated giving it up and going home; it wasn’t worth the chance. Then he realized, hell, he was here anyway, what did he have to lose? Might as well see what’s on the other side of the bedroom door.