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.”
“I guess we will,” said Becker. He paused, prying the blinds apart with a finger and looking at the withering acacia tree on the street below.
“What will happen with Dyce?” Gold asked.
“He’ll be declared innocent by reason of insanity and put away for a while until he proves himself sane. He probably will be able to do that eventually, won’t he, Gold? Convince some people that he’s sane?”
Gold sighed. “Possibly, Probably. If he’s sane most of the time, he can get away with it.”
Becker turned to look at Gold. “In other words, you admit you can’t really tell.”
“I admit we can’t always tell… Can you, Becker? Can you always tell if they’re sane or insane?”
Becker grinned broadly. “What’s the difference?”
Becker turned back toward the window and watched the traffic for a moment before moving toward the door, rubbing his fingertips together.
“You should dust more often, Gold,” he said. “The place is full of cobwebs.”