Swann's grip was surprisingly strong and Becker could not wrest his hand free as Swann placed his lips on Becker's palm.
"No," Becker said. Swann muttered something into Becker's skin, and it sounded like more prayer, but Becker was unsure if the man was praying to Jesus or to him.
"You let go of me, damn it.
Swann was kissing Becker's hand, peppering it with little pecks of his lips, working down the length of it to the fingers. His lips touched a fingertip and opened and took one of Becker's fingers into his mouth. He rolled his eyes up to look Becker in the face.
With a cry of disgust, Becker yanked his hand away at the same time that Swann released his wrist. His knuckles flew upwards, hitting Swann in the mouth and the nose.
"I only wanted to thank you," Swann said reproachfully.
Becker did not look at him as he pounded again on the door.
Despite the blow to the face, Swann had still not backed away. He stood too close, so that Becker put a hand on his chest and pushed him back.
Swann's fingers touched Becker's hand again before Becker yanked it away.
"Keep your hands off me," Becker said.
"You didn't have to hit me," Swann said.
"Sorry," Becker muttered. He stared anxiously out the window in the door, looking for the guard. Surely he wasn't locked in here; he didn't have to stay in here any longer with this man. The air seemed heavier still, as if weighed down on him; the walls seemed unbearably close.
"I was only thanking you."
"Just keep your distance," Becker said.
"Are you frightened of me?" Swann asked softly.
There was a taunting in his voice, the first recognition by a chronic victim who suddenly realizes he has an advantage. "You seem frightened.
You don't need to be." His voice became softer, gentler with each sentence as his sense of control grew. "I'm your friend, you know. I want to be your friend."
Becker turned and looked at him for the first time since he had hit him.
Swann's face was wet with tears, and blood trickled from his nose onto his lips. He had not wiped it since Becker's blow. When he caught Becker's eye he parted his lips and smiled. His teeth were red with blood and his eyes twinkled with a sense of victory.
Pegeen stood at the guard control room, just outside the first-level cellblock, and, trying not to let the guards know what she was doing, she smelled deeply of the air. At first there was just the odor of cleaning liquid, heavily ammoniated with a scent of lemon, but as her nose grew used to that, Pegeen began to detect the deeper, pervasive smell, the true, identifying smell of the prison. It seemed to hover on the other side of the control room like a column of heat in a furnace, rising from the ground to the fourth-level cellblock, containing itself within its own shimmering,boundaries inside the vessel of the cauldron, betraying its presence only with occasional puffs just as the heat outside a furnace gives only the slightest clue of the fury of the inferno blazing within.
The stench was of sex, old sex. Sex dried and crusted and worn on the body, but with something else, a sort of grace note of emotion, a commingling of old sweat and new perspiration, both of them caused not by exercise nor heat, but by fear. The prison smelled of sex and fright.
The smell was rape.
Pegeen waited by the car for Becker's return After leaving the prison she had called a colleague in Nashville and asked what he knew about John Becker, a former agent, now on indefinite medical extension. The colleague, a fifteen-year veteran, had laughed at her naivete but seemed eager to fill her in on Becker's career as he perceived it. He hit the highlights, most of which seemed to be Bureau legend.
"One ba-aaad dude," he had concluded gleefully, bleating like a sheep.
"And you say you're with him?"
"I'm with him," she said.
"What are you doing, holding his hand?"
"Something like that," Pegeen had said, feeling herself blush.
"Well, when you get it back, check your hand for blood," he had said, laughing. "Becker never comes out of a case without blood on his hands."
Then his tone had become very serious. "Now, no shit, Pegeen, this is the straight s — tuff, okay?"
"Okay-,
"Be careful, be very careful..
"I'm just the chauffeur."
"Great. Let's hope it stays that way. What I'm telling you, kiddo, is first of all, forget his record, the man is the best. I mean the best, nobody else comes close. But things have a way of happening around him.
I'm not saying it's his fault-or maybe it is, I don't know. Just keep your eyes open and your wits about you."
"He seems nice, actually."
"Did I say he wasn't nice? He's nice." She heard his chortle of condescension distantly, as if he were trying to hide it, but not too hard. "Nice. Jesus, Pegeen, you're such a girl."
"I'm not going to respond to that."
"Now don't get upset. I don't mean it as an insult…
"Thank you so much. It's not.", 'It's just that 'nice' is what makes you a girl, thinking about people that way, assuming things like that.
Pegeen began to regret having made the call. "I don't think you're nice," she said. "That should be good for something."
"But I actually am nice."
"I'll have to refine the definition, then."
"The point is, you're like a little kid who wants to run up and pet every dog she sees. Well, some of them are pettable, and some of them bite… And some of them aren't even dogs. They can take your arm off at the shoulder; they can rip your throat out when you bend over."
Pegeen hung up the phone. What had Becker called himself A werewolf. Not the man who had needed to hold her hand before he entered the prison.
That was not a dangerous man, it was a sweet, troubled, sensitive man.
What, she wondered, would he be when he came back out? To her surprise, she felt a thrill of anticipation.
Back in the car, Becker was agitated and distracted answering Pegeen's questions only with grunts. When they returned to the highway he kept his eyes on the road, searching for something.
"There," he said finally, pointing a finger. "Pull over there."
"Where?"
"The motel."
"Why are we going to a motel?" Pegeen asked, dutifully steering into the motel courtyard.
Becker didn't answer but bolted from the car and into the office. He returned quickly, holding a key, and he strode to a motel room and entered. Pegeen followed reluctantly, puzzled. There had been no mention during training about agents darting into motel rooms in the middle of the day.
The door of the room was ajar, but Pegeen knocked first. What if he was lying naked on the bed? What if he was… She stopped trying to imagine and admitted to herself that she had no idea. She knocked again, spoke his name, then eased the door open.
She saw his shoes and socks where he had discarded them outside of the bathroom. The bathroom door was open and she heard the sound of the shower running.
She said, "Hello?" feeling foolish. She waited for several minutes, uncertain what he was doing or what she should do in response. Finally she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Would he emerge from the shower with fangs and fur like the werewolf of the movies? she wondered. Would he come out wearing a towel? Without a towel? Should she go wait in the car? Steam billowed out from the bathroom door. She decided to just sit tight and see what happened next. Whether or not he was the "baaaad dude" she had been warned to be careful of, he was a damned sight more interesting and less predictable than any of the agents at the office.
Or than any other man she knew, for that matter. The steam filled the entire motel room. Pegeen threw her feet up on the bed and relaxed into the pillow. The spot on her cheek where he had touched her still burned, but she knew that was just her imagination.