The snake was huge, scaleless, more like an eel than a snake, no mouth, just a long cold form unwinding, curling into him.
And George was there.
He didn't say anything, George: he simply watched and grew. His eyes were black, but somehow bright as diamonds. He closed on Bekker, the eyes growing larger, the mouth beginning to open, a forked tongue deep inside…
Bekker had killed three whores in Vietnam. He'd done it carefully, confident that he'd never be exposed; he'd worn an enlisted man's uniform, the Class A greens of a spec-5 killed in a Saigon traffic accident, the uniform dumped at Bekker's doorstep in a black satchel that had been with the dead man in his jeep.
Bekker had strangled the three women. It hadn't been hard. They'd been specialists of a sort, unsurprised when he let them know that he wanted to sit on their chests. More surprised when he pinned their hands. Definitely surprised when he clamped his powerful fingers on their throats, crushing the cartilage with a powerful pinch of his thumb and fore-finger…
The first one had looked straight into his eyes as she'd died, and it was there that Bekker had had his first hint that she'd seen something beyond.
And she was the one who'd come back.
She'd preyed on him, haunted him, followed him with her black eyes. For six weeks he'd doped himself, screaming through the nights, afraid of sleep. He'd seen her in his waking hours, too, in the shiny reflections from his instruments, from mirrors, in panes and fragments of glass…
She'd faded, finally, beaten down with drugs. And Bekker had known instinctively that the physical eyes made the difference.
For the next woman, he'd been prepared. He'd pinned her, choked her and, with a stainless-steel scalpel, cut her eyes as she'd died. And slept like a baby.
The third one had died quickly, too quickly, before he could cut her eyes. He had cut them dead, but he still feared that she would follow him into his dreams: that it was necessary to cut the living eyes.
But it was not. He'd never seen that one again.
He'd cut the eyes on the old man dying of congestive heart failure, and the old woman with the stroke-they'd delivered those two right to him, in the pathology department, and he still had the taped description of the cutting of the old woman's eyes. And he'd cut the eyes of the boy and the girl from Pediatric Oncology, although he'd had to take a good deal more risk with those. The girl he'd gotten to just before they moved her body out of the hospital. For the boy, he'd had to go to the funeral home and wait his chance.
That had been a bad two days, waiting, the boy out there…
But in the end he'd cut them all.
He hadn't been able to cut George.
And George was here now, coming for him.
Deep in his closet, naked, his arms wrapped around his knees, his eyes wide and staring into the beyond, Bekker began to scream.
CHAPTER 15
"You're sure?" Lucas asked Swanson. "It's Loverboy?"
Swanson scratched his belly and nodded. "It's gotta be. I went over to Bekker's as soon as I heard. Shook him out of bed. This was about three hours ago, six A.M., and he looked terrible, and I said, 'For the lover, how about Philip George from the law school?' He went like this"-Swanson mimed Bekker's perplexed look-"and he said, quote, If you told me so, I wouldn't be… shocked, I guess. I mean, we knew him. Why? Is it him? Unquote. Then I told him about George. He seemed kind of freaked out."
"You got the time George disappeared? It's nailed down? Exactly?"
"Yeah. Within five minutes, I'd bet," Swanson said, nodding. He was unshaven, holding an empty Styrofoam coffee cup, his eyes glassy from fatigue and caffeine. He'd been rousted out of bed at five o'clock, after four hours' sleep. "There was a guy with him, a student, when George started changing the tire. The student was supposed to get right home to his wife, she's pregnant, due anytime, so he was anxious. Anyway, he's got a clock on the dashboard of his car. He said he looked at it going out of the lot, and remembers it was ten-fourteen. He remembers that close…"
"What about this shrink Shearson's been looking at?"
Swanson shrugged. "I always thought that was bullshit, but Daniel wanted him covered."
"Sonofabitch," Lucas said in a black fury. Del was leaning in the doorway, listening, and Lucas bolted past him, out of his office, took a turn down the hallway, then almost trotted back, his face white. "The cocksucker was using me as an alibi. You know that? I'm Bekker's fuckin' alibi…"
"If George is dead," Swanson said. "That's a pretty big if. And if Bekker had something to do with it…"
Lucas poked Swanson in the gut with his index finger. "George is dead. And Bekker did it. Believe it." Lucas turned to Del. "Remember when you said the San Francisco alibi was a little too convenient?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, how about this? He invites an investigating cop over for a drink, to talk, he tries to fuckin' seduce me, man, precisely when the main witness is being taken off. How's that for a motherfucking coincidence?"
Del shrugged. He didn't say "I told you so," but his shoulders did.
Lucas turned back to Swanson, remembering his odd characterization of Bekker. Bekker had looked fine the night before: sleek, even. Beautiful. "You said he looked terrible? What do you mean?"
"He looked fucked up," Swanson said. "He looked like he was a hundred years old. He ain't getting no sleep."
" 'Cause he was working a fuckin' murder. That's why. 'Cause he had a murder going down last night," Lucas said. "All right. We're gonna take him down. One way or another"-this time he poked Del-"the motherfucker falls."
Sloan was coming down the hall, rolling an unlit cigarette around between his lips, his hands deep in the pockets of his trench coat.
"Bekker did it?" he asked.
"Fuckin' absolutely," Lucas said grimly.
"Huh," Sloan said. He shifted the unlit cigarette. "You think he killed George before or after he drove his Jeep out to the airport?"
Lucas looked at him blankly: "Say what?"
"Airport cops listed the bulletin for his Jeep, found it in the long-term ramp. Long-term. Like he ain't planning to come back."
Lucas shook his head. "Bullshit. If George is the one, he ain't running. He's dead."
"We don't know that for sure," Sloan said. "He coulda took off for Brazil. He could of cracked, decided to split."
"Who's talking to his wife?" Lucas asked.
"Neilson, but I'm going over later," Sloan said.
"I tell you, the motherfucker is dead," Lucas said, settling back in his chair. "How's he gonna leave a lug nut in the parking lot? How can you forget to put on a lug nut? You've got the bolt sticking out at you, you can't forget. The flat tire was a setup."
"How old is the Jeep?" Del asked Sloan.
Sloan shrugged. "New."
"See?" Lucas said with satisfaction. "Flat, my ass."
They were still arguing when Harmon Anderson leaned in the door, a piece of white paper in his hand. "You'll never guess," he said to Lucas. "I'll give you two hundred guesses and betcha a million bucks you don't get it."
"You don't got a million bucks," Swanson said. "What is it?"
Anderson dramatically unfolded the paper, a Xerox copy, and held it up like an auctioneer at an art sale, pivoting, to give everybody a look.