Prayer for the Dead (26 page)

“Yes, grandfather.”

“You did? You did know that?”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“You certainly didn’t learn it from your father.”

“No.”

“And I don’t believe I have told you this. About the Lord being vain.”

“No, sir.”

“Then you don’t know it.” Roger shook his head, pausing for a moment with the brushes. “How many strokes is that?”

“Seventy-eight,” said Dyce, moving the brushes again.

“You mustn‘t say you know a thing if you don’t know it, Roger.”

There was never a note of threat to his grandfather’s tone. Dyce did not fear being corrected by him because a blow did not accompany the lesson.

“I won’t.”

“What you know is all you will have in this life. What you know of man and what you know of God. Now the reason I can say the Lord is vain is because of the praise He demands of us. Look at what the Bible tells us to do. Look at what the Lord commands us to do. Praise Him to the Heavens. Sing out His praises. Glory unto God. The Lord wants to hear us praising Him. Glory to God in the highest. He
requires
it, Roger. And, of course. He deserves it. Vanity in a man is a human failing—not a bad one, mind—but vanity in God is holy. There’s the difference. You won’t hear that in any church.”

“One hundred,” said Roger, letting the brushes fall to his sides.

“You might do a few more tonight, lamb,” grandfather said. “Considering.”

Dyce understood the special circumstances. Grandfather had worked hard all day preparing for the ceremony. He had built the box himself from lumber stripped from the loft in the barn, sewn the cloth, prepared the body. All the while tending to Dyce, feeding and dressing him and offering hug after hug as he explained all that he was doing. The boy understood that his grandfather was concerned about his state of mind, but Dyce was not feeling sorrow the way grandfather feared. He couldn’t say he was feeling much of anything except the tingling of hope. If he
knew
his father was dead, if he could be absolutely certain that he would never come back and that he could stay here forever with grandfather,
then
he knew what he would feel. But it was too soon; his father was dead too short a time to be fully believed. Dyce had simply put his emotions in abeyance; grief was not called for and hope was too painful if it were to be undone. What he felt more than anything was anticipation, as if the great event had not already happened but was yet to come. He could not have said what the great event was to be.

“Let us prepare ourselves, “grandfather said at last. He touched Dyce’s hand holding the brush. Dyce saw the brown spots on his skin, the large veins that looked swollen, close to bursting through the flesh. Grandfather was seeking his eyes in the mirror and Dyce looked at him and smiled broadly. He hoped the old man could tell how much he loved him, how much he wanted to please him. How very grateful he was for the love the old man showed to him. Dyce would do anything for his grandfather.

“I like to brush your hair, grandfather.”

“Do you, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

Grandfather’s voice was oddly strained. “Why is that?”

Dyce lay his cheek against grandfather’s hair and closed his eyes. “I love you,” he whispered.

Grandfather didn’t answer and when Dyce looked in the mirror he saw the old man’s face twisted into the strangest mask. He looked as though he might cry. but there was something else there, something that Dyce had seen a few times before, but could not identify.

“We must prepare,” grandfather said again, in a voice that was cracked. He moved to the window and looked out. “The sun is down,” he said. “It’s time.”

When the candles were lighted and all was ready, grandfather fetched Dyce from the bedroom, leading him into the darkened parlor by the hand. The candles provided the only light in the room and shadows danced on the walls and ceiling and floor. His father lay in the coffin grandfather had made that day, his head resting on a pillow. A black tarpaulin covered the legs of the sawhorse on which the casket rested, making it appear to float in the air.

“We will watch him for three days,” grandfather said. “We will pray and ask the Lord to return him to us. If the Lord chooses not to do so, then we will bury him.”

His father’s features loomed in the semidarkness of the room, as sharp as if chiseled from New England rock.

“Come.” said grandfather, pulling at Dyce’s hand as he moved closer to the coffin. Dyce pulled back, drawing away.

“I don’t want to.”

“He cannot hurt you now.”

“I don’t want to.”

Grandfather stopped tugging at his hand. He walked to the casket alone and stood above the corpse, looking down.

“Lars Dysen, you took my only child, my beloved daughter, away from me and killed her with your abuse and neglect. You drank and whored and blasphemed and wasted the life the Lord gave you. You mistreated my beloved grandson and beat him and deprived him of the joy of his youth. You have been a canker in my life since the day I first saw you and I have hated you, and the Lord has turned His face from you and brought you to this end… I forgive you now for all you have done to me and mine and I pray that the Lord will forgive you also. I pray for your return to us, and if the Lord sees fit to take you unto himself, I pray for your redemption. “

Nate Cohen leaned into the coffin and kissed his son-in-law, then stood aside and regarded his grandson.

Dyce shook his head violently.

“You must,” said grandfather. His voice was calm and understanding.

In the flickering of candlelight, Dyce thought he saw his father move. He began to cry.

Grandfather was nodding his head slowly now. “You must,” he repeated. “The Lord wants you to.”

Dyce whimpered. Please don’t make me, he thought. Please, grandfather, I’ll do anything for you, but please not this, don’t make me do this.

Grandfather stood waiting. With his eyes on grandfather, not looking at his father, Dyce approached the coffin, little bursts of fear shaking his chest with sound.

Grandfather lifted the boy and held him over his father’s face. Dysen’s face moved, seemed to rise, to come forward toward Dyce’s face. The boy could see his eyes through the pale lids, the pupils wide with anger, red streaks shooting off’ into the whites like furious fire. Dyce squeezed his own eyes closed, but he could still see his father’s face, drunken, dangerous. Deadly. I do not want him back, Dyce thought. I want him dead, dead, dead.

“Kiss him,” said grandfather.

The old man’s hands trembled with the effort of holding the boy up. He put his knee against Dyce’s buttocks to help support him. Dyce felt the pressure in his bottom and groin.

He opened his eyes and Dysen was even closer, pale, so ghastly pale, but all the blemishes were gone. The broken blood vessels, the veins burst in the nose, the red flushes on the cheeks that seemed to burn when he drank—all had vanished into a smooth, snowy white.

“Kiss him, “grandfather said. “You must.” His knee pressed harder into Dyce’s bottom as he urged him forward a bit more so that the boy’s face was nearly touching his father’s.

Again the corpse seemed to move. Dyce squeezed his eyes closed and pursed his lips, then touched them to his father’s skin. It was so cold. Grandfather had shaven the corpse in the morning, but the beard had continued to grow and a slight stubble pricked against the boy’s lips.

Grandfather sat in his chair and Dyce stood beside him, holding the old man’s hand.

“Now we will watch,” said grandfather. “When I am gone, you must do this for me.”

Dyce stared dutifully at the corpse for a while, watching it seem to sway and lift in the candlelight, choking down his terror. After several minutes he became aware of grandfather’s hand clutching his own. The hand seemed so warm and the warmth just kept increasing. Dyce glanced at grandfather to see if he felt it, too. Grandfather did not return his look, but pulled slightly on Dyce’s hand, drawing him around to the front of the chair.

“See how peaceful he looks,” said grandfather. “How serene. Nothing troubles him now.”

Dyce climbed onto grandfather’s lap and lay his head back against the softness of the old man’s silver beard. Grandfather put one arm around the boy’s waist and with the other continued to hold his hand in his gentle fiery grip. When he spoke, his breath tickled Dyce’s ear, making it tingle.

The two of them continued to watch the corpse in silence. Dyce felt grandfather growing hard against his bottom. He shifted his weight and grandfather imperceptibly tightened his grip on Dyce’s waist, pulling him more firmly into his lap. Dyce loved the warmth of grandfather, the safety and comfort of him. He would do anything for him. After a time the feel of the firmness pressing against his bottom no longer confused him.

“How serene,” grandfather said. They watched until the candles guttered out and the room was in darkness.

“We’ve got Special Agent Hoban coming down from Boston; he’s actually the closest. He should be in Waverly already. We can fly in to an airstrip in Minnot and from there it’s a half-hour drive to Waverly. The plane’s ready for us now at McNeil airport. Allowing for traffic, we’ll be at the insurance agent’s office within an hour. It’s a Cessna eight seater, a little bumpy, but we can’t get a jet into the Minnot field. You can handle a little airsickness, can’t you, Becker?”

Becker studied the traffic in front of them as they raced toward the airport. The driver was good; he made high speed seem almost safe.

“I’m not going,” said Becker.

“What do you mean? We’ve got the guy.”

“So far you’ve got a computer terminal, but I’m not going with you anyway. I told you, I’m not going down any more holes for you. You go down this one.”

“Hole, what hole? He’s trapped in plain sight.”

“A lot of people are using the word trapped, but I haven’t seen anyone actually caught yet.”

“We know where he is, we know who he is, he doesn’t know we’re coming. What do you want? You expect him to come out with his hands up before we even get there? We even know his family.”

“When?”

“Records and Statistics came up with it last night.”

“Everybody’s taking his time about telling me things.”

“I
am
in charge, you know,” said Hatcher. “You want to know how we found the family?”

Becker shook his head. People asked the stupidest questions. The driver was passing on the inside lane, weaving like a fish through the rapids. He hated driving in cars with broken seat belts and the belts in the backseats of federal cars seemed never to work.

“He worked for a pharmacist once, apparently while he was still in college. Delivering prescriptions. The DEA had his prints on file for the standard security procedures because he was handling prescription drugs and controlled substances. What do you want to bet that’s where he learned about PMBL? Probably stole some from the supply room. A gallon jug would last him for life. So we got his real name, his family background, and his source of supply all from the same search. Talk about serendipity.”

“We didn’t find any gallon jug of PMBL in his house. Where is his supply?”

“I mean we found out where he probably got it.”

“If he got it ten years ago, does that mean he’s been killing men for that long? Or did he take a sample of PMBL just in case he might someday want to start drugging his victims?”

“When we find him, you can ask him. We might be digging up kitchen floors for a week just to keep up with him.”

“You find him. I’ll ask him when he’s behind bars in a straitjacket.”

“What are you afraid of, Becker?”

Hatcher regretted the remark immediately. Becker turned slowly away from the traffic and looked into Hatcher’s eyes. He didn’t appear to be angry, Hatcher thought. His gaze was pitying, murderous, maybe, but not angry.

“Sorry,” said Hatcher.

“Who’s his family?”

“Well, as you know, his real name isn’t Dyce, it’s Dysen. Norwegian, right? The kind he’s looking for, but his mother wasn’t Norwegian; that’s the strange thing. Her maiden name was Cohen. Jewish.”

Becker nodded. “Jewish.”

“Your theory on the stones and the grave markers? Okay, you may be right about that, but not in the cemetery in Clamden. He has no family there. You’re wrong on that one. If he went there to commune when he picked up the stones, he wasn’t communing with family. We went back to his great grandparents on both sides and none of them is in the Clamden graveyard.”

Becker shrugged. “The stones were just gravel, they could have been from anywhere.”

“What’s wrong, Becker? You don’t like your own theories anymore?”

“I guess I don’t like them when they become yours. Hatcher.”

“Have you lost your touch all of a sudden? Have you lost the legendary Becker feel of a case?”

“I wish,” said Becker.

“Well, we didn’t need it anyway, did we? We cracked this one with ordinary detective work. The kind the less gifted among us can still perform.”

“More power to you.” Becker leaned forward slightly and caught the driver’s eye in the mirror. “Reynolds, after you drop Hatcher at the airport, you can swing me back toward Clamden.”

Reynolds, reduced now to just eyes and brows in the mirror, sought out Hatcher for confirmation.

Hatcher said, “You can still be useful up there, Becker. You’re the only one who knows what Dyce looks like.”

“Tee saw him in the hospital, too.”

“Who, the local sheriff? Come on.”

“He’s a good man and he knows as much about this case as anybody.”

The car nosed in front of traffic and came to a halt at the terminal amid the honking of horns.

Hatcher got out and leaned toward Reynolds.

“Get a hold of Sheriff Terhune. I want him in Waverly as fast as you can arrange it.” Hatcher slammed the door closed. “And take Becker wherever he wants to go.”