Prayer for the Dead (34 page)

Becker’s hands reached a wide flat space and he pulled himself into a hole in the wall that had once encased a window. He sat there for a moment to rest. arms and legs dangling. His muscles were dancing from the strain. He was halfway up.

The technician from the panel truck was trying to explain, but Hatcher was no longer interested.

“It was that last bolt of lightning, the one that was so close. It screwed up all the electronics.” The technician had his mouth close to Hatcher’s ear to be heard over the storm.

“I’ve lost the signal,” the technician said. “I don’t know if it’s the beeper that got hit or my equipment, but it’s dead flat.”

“I’m not concerned with your excuses,” Hatcher said.

“It was the lightning.”

“What you’re saying is you’ve lost him,” Hatcher said.

Reynolds had signaled a halt and vanished into the darkness in front of the convoy just as the technician ran forward to rap on Hatcher’s car window. Hatcher felt the operation turning bad in his hands. Things involving Becker always seemed to turn bad; it had to do with the man himself. He would not submit to control.

“Christ,” Hatcher thought, “if he gets Dyce here, if he gets him in a place I’ve already looked—if I’m not there when it happens …” He didn’t want to think about it, but there would be plenty of necks on the chopping block in front of his if things did go rotten. This technician’s, for one.

Reynolds reappeared, his thin beam of light pointed at the ground, approaching Hatcher’s car.

“It’s Becker’s car,” Reynolds said, leaning in through the window. Water dripped from his head and nose onto Hatcher’s pant leg. “He left it about ten yards ahead and to the right. The driveway to the farm is just past that.”

They all huddled around Hatcher’s car now, awaiting instructions. Hatcher was the only one still dry as the others hunched their shoulders against the ram.

Hatcher grabbed the binoculars and slipped their battery pack around his neck.

“We don’t need your beeper,” Hatcher said to the technician dismissively, as if the faulty equipment had been the man’s idea.

Lightning cracked close by and Hatcher winced, then recovered himself, wondering if the others had noticed.

“I’ve got a feeling Dyce is here,” Hatcher said, getting out of the car. “Let’s go find him.”

Tee watched the white blur in the darkness that was Dyce move around the framework of rafters, looking for something or someone coming at him from the ground below. “Your friend is here,” he had said. Did he mean Becker? Please, God, let it be Becker. The hope was almost enough to overcome the lethargy that gripped him, and Tee renewed his efforts to move his foot. It was so strange; he
felt
as if he could move, he could sense the movement within his limbs like an itch—but nothing moved. As if his nerves had been severed but not deadened. They wanted to move but could not relay the message.

Dyce moved close to Tee now and Tee could see the whites of his eyes standing out starkly within a small. dark circle Dyce had missed with the talcum powder. In a burst of lightning Tee could make out something in Dyce’s hand, small and glistening. A hypodermic syringe. Tee remembered the needle in his own arm, but by the time he glanced down to see if the blood was still dripping from it, the light was gone.

Dyce had looked down within the cavern of the house when the lightning flashed, and Tee recognized the fear in his face. The snowy shape hovered close to Tee for a moment and Tee was certain that the hypodermic was intended for him, but then the shape moved off with surprising agility across the rafters and Tee understood that the needle was meant for Becker.

Tee prayed that the stories he had heard about Becker’s prowess were true.

Hatcher scanned the area slowly with his night-vision binoculars, seeing the invisible yard come into view in shades of eerie green. Stored heat from the day made the barn glow slightly in the infrared sensing binoculars. Hatcher scanned toward the house, seeing only variations in emanated heat but no movement. And then, leaping out at him from the roof of the house like a flame from a sea of green, the shape of a man, arms upraised and gesticulating.

“Got him,” Hatcher muttered triumphantly. “Bring up the vehicles and fan them out with their headlights pointing toward the farmhouse. We’re going to need light, but none until I give the word. Not so much as a spark, you got it?”

“Got it,” one of the agents replied.

“Do you see Becker?” Reynolds asked.

Hatcher returned to the binoculars but the man was gone. There was no movement to be seen anywhere at the farmhouse.

“Maybe he’s lost in the corn,” said Hatcher.

Becker was heading toward a gap in the roofline that he had seen during the last flash. Moving laterally was even harder than going up. The wind screamed and slashed him with sheets of rain. Becker’s foot settled on a small stone used as filler, and it tore at his flesh before pulling loose and tumbling to the ground twenty-five feet below. His other foot, yanked off balance, lost its hold, and Becker was slammed into the wall by his own weight. He clung to the stones with his fingers as his feet scrambled for a hold—then froze completely as a ghostly figure appeared in the gap in the roofline five feet above his head.

Dyce peered into the darkness, waiting for lightning to show him the world beyond an arm’s length. Becker held his breath and willed himself not to move, even though his arms were trembling with the strain of supporting his own weight. Dyce had not seen him yet, he was certain of that, but the slightest move on Becker’s part would give his presence away now; they were too close for the darkness to give any protection. He was alive simply because Dyce had not thought to study the stonewall itself.

His fingers screamed for relief then his left hand went into spasm, the muscles jerking in protest against the strain.

“The vehicles are in position.” The agent’s deep voice rumbled close to Hatcher’s ear.

“Becker’s here,” said Hatcher, hoping the disappointment didn’t sound in his voice.

Against the green field of the binocular’s vision. Hatcher could see the glowing form that he knew was Becker, going straight up the side of the house. Like a goddamned spider. Christ, straight up a wall. The things they said about him must be true. Despite himself, Hatcher felt a sense of admiration for the man. Teamwork would have served better, of course. A little organization, a little planning, but still—the bastard had found him and was climbing a wall to get him.

Hatcher saw Becker pause, then stop abruptly as another form leaped suddenly into the binoculars’ vision, almost atop Becker. Neither shape moved for long seconds, and Hatcher could not tell if they were looking at each other or staring into the darkness that surrounded everyone but Hatcher and his infrared vision.

Beams of light suddenly hit the house and Becker cursed under his breath, sensing immediately what had happened. I will kill Hatcher, he thought as a loudspeaker crackled against the storm.

He could see Dyce clearly now, the man’s eyes wide and startled by the headlights, squinting momentarily as the beams struck him in the face, then looking down at Becker, seeing him for the first time. Dyce looked more pleased than surprised.

“I was wondering,” Dyce said, looking straight at Becker. The rain caught Dyce as he stood in the gap in the roof and the white of the powder seemed to explode off his body where the drops hit him.

Becker moved his feet at last, securing them in the stones and taking the weight off his fingers. He wondered whether to push off the wall and drop, but one of Dyce’s hands was visible and it held no weapon. The other hand was out of sight, but his arm did not hang as if it held the weight of a revolver.

Hatcher was speaking over the loudspeaker now but his presence seemed irrelevant to the moment as Becker and Dyce looked at each other.

“I knew you’d come,” said Dyce.

“I knew you’d be here.”

Dyce nodded and smiled, a strangely kind, forgiving smile. It flashed through Becker’s mind that Bahoud had done the same thing in the second before he had tried to kill Becker—which was the second before Becker had killed him. It seemed they had all smiled.

“You look just like him,” Dyce said.

For a moment, a look of sweet understanding passed between them.

“You can sympathize with them, you can empathize until you’re inside their skin—that doesn’t mean you
are
them,” Gold said in Becker’s mind.

Dyce lifted his hidden hand and Becker saw the syringe.

Lightning seemed to explode inside Becker’s left ear and the thunder boomed immediately after like a bomb in the yard. Even as Becker let go with everything but his right hand and swung free to avoid the sudden swoop of Dyce’s needle, the headlights snapped off and he could hear the scream of human beings from the vehicles.

In the aftermath of so much light, everything seemed darker than ever.

Becker found another grip as Dyce’s arm slashed the air again in the space where Becker had been. Becker could sense Dyce’s hand probing for him, but for several seconds until his eyes adjusted he could not even see his own arms against the wall.

When vision came at last, it was with the flickering light of the burning panel truck set aflame by the lightning bolt. Panicked voices yelled instructions at each other, but both the light and the chaos were beside the point now as Becker moved lower and to his right, away from the stabbing arm.

He had not let go entirely when Dyce swung at him, he had not chosen to leap free. That’s how badly I want you, Becker thought. Gold’s voice started to sound in his head again, but this time Becker simply shut it off. He no longer had the luxury. Crabbing sideways along the wall, he moved toward the next break in the roofline. Amazingly, neither fatigue nor danger affected him anymore. He felt fresh and agile, as if he were born for this kind of work.

In the flicker of distant firelight. Tee saw Becker’s shape slip into the attic behind Dyce’s back. When lightning flared, Dyce turned and saw him, too, and fled across the rafters to the C-shaped island. Becker moved after him, balancing on the beams as deftly as a gymnast, and the two men stopped a few feet from each other, pausing like animals going through a ritual display that would determine if there was to be violence. Dyce stood on the floorboards of the island. which gave him a normal stance, but Becker was in a semicrouch, one foot in front of the other on a single rafter, arms out for balance like a tightrope walker.

“Grandfather said you’d come,” said Dyce. He held the syringe in front of him like a knife.

There are no options, Becker thought. If he steps to the edge of the boards, he can reach me with a jab. I am defenseless here, one step short of the platform.

“Grandfather prepared me,” said Dyce. His tone was completely calm and rational. “He told me what to do.”

Dyce stepped to the edge of the platform.

If he goes for my legs, he has me, Becker thought. I have a chance if he strikes for my body, but I can’t move my legs without falling.

“What did he tell you?” Becker asked.

Dyce bent low. He was going for the legs.

“He said you would rise again,” said Dyce. He leaned forward, judging the distance to Becker.

“Grandfather was an asshole,” said Becker.

Dyce looked up abruptly, startled by the blasphemy, then lashed out angrily at the same time that Becker kicked with his lead leg and pushed forward with the back one. The kick caught Dyce in the chest and knocked him back onto the platform as the syringe fell from his hand and crashed to the floor below. Becker landed atop Dyce and heard the wind rush from the man’s body.

Becker had Dyce’s head in his hands, his neck twisted to the side. One snap, one final, violent twist was all it would take. He could feel his muscles shaking with the effort to stop and he heard a high, trembling murmur that he realized with surprise came not from Dyce but himself.

“It’s a question of will,” Gold said. “We all feel urges of all kinds, we don’t act on them.”

Becker felt the tension in Dyce’s neck resisting his hands. It was turned as far as it could go without shattering the vertebrae. He could imagine the satisfying sound of the final snap.

“It’s what you ultimately do that counts,” Gold said. “Not what you think. A killer doesn’t just think about killing—he kills.”

For the first time Becker noticed Dyce’s moan. He didn’t struggle; he lay beneath Becker like a lamb on the altar, bewildered but accepting.

Lightning flashed and Becker saw Tee’s eyes watching him, wide and staring with anticipation. He read permission in Tee’s eyes, approval.

“It’s what you
do,”
Gold said. “Ultimately, you’re in control of it. They’re not. You are. That’s the difference.”

Becker released Dyce’s head and pulled him into a sitting position so that Dyce’s back was against Becker’s chest. Dyce sagged limply against Becker with a grateful sigh. Becker cradled him as the sound of Hatcher and the rediscovered loudspeaker moved closer in the darkness.

“You had no options,” Gold said.

“I could have backed away.”

“While balancing like that? You would have fallen and killed yourself. You had to go for him.”

“I could have just waited. Hatcher was out there. He would have shown up eventually. There was nowhere for Dyce to go.”

“That’s pretty cool thinking under the circumstances. At the time, you felt that you had no option but to attack. You did the right thing. It worked, didn’t it?”

“If I hadn’t seen Tee looking at me, I might have killed him.”

“You said Tee thought you should have done it.”

“He told me that afterward. At the time I just wanted to think he approved.”

“You don’t know you would have killed him if it hadn’t been for Tee watching.”

“I don’t know I wouldn’t have,” said Becker.

“You didn’t do it. That’s what counts. We’ll just have to leave it at that.”