The Perfect Husband

“You can’t stop me,” she murmured, and parted her legs farther.

  “Goddammit,” he swore, and thrust hard. She cried out as he penetrated. “I’m going to save you,” he ground out, his hips already moving. “Dammit, I’m going to save you. I’m going to save you!”

  “You can’t,” she whispered, but then she couldn’t think. The air was cold and crisp, his body hard and hot.

  The tempo increased and her ears knew only the sounds of her thundering pulse and his grunting breaths. The feel of him sliding inside her, deeper and deeper. The joining of him with her. The realization that it might mean little to him, but it meant everything to her. It would always mean everything to her.

  “Goddamn the colonel!” he whispered abruptly. “Goddamn Jim Beckett. I won’t let them destroy another. I won’t let—”

  His voice broke into a garbled cry. He thrust hard, pouring into her just as she cried out her release.

  Then she whispered his name and knew in her heart it was too late for sanity. She understood his anger, she understood his fear. She understood his need. She’d gotten under his skin and seen all the good he couldn’t acknowledge, the fear he tried to hide, and the loneliness he pretended didn’t exist.

  She loved him.

  MUCH LATER, WHEN the sun was gone and a fresh moon flirted with the sky, they checked into a new motel room. J.T. was silent, as he’d been all afternoon. After dropping her bag on the floor, Tess handed him her bottle of aspirin. He shook out eight and popped them at once.

  Tiredly he began to strip off his clothes. She watched, wordlessly.

  “You’re making me self-conscious,” he muttered.

  “I’m just admiring. Has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful?”

  “The stress has fried your brain.”

  “I mean it, J.T. You’re beautiful to me.”

  He turned away and climbed into bed. She removed her clothes and joined him. They’d already spoken to Lieutenant Houlihan. There was no sign of Jim, no sign of Sam. Somewhere out there her daughter slept alone. Was she well cared for? Had she been fed? Did Jim read her stories before tucking her into bed?

  Tess couldn’t stand the distance anymore. J.T. was the one who played tough. Tess knew she was overwhelmed and frightened and near despair. She curled her naked body spoonlike around his, though she knew he resented the contact.

  He stiffened. She held on anyway, pressing her cheek against him.

  “She’s starting to remember,” he said abruptly.

  Tess stilled, then stroked her fingers down his shoulder in silent comfort. “You’ll help her.”

  “She made me promise never to mention him again.”

  “Give her time. Sooner or later she’ll need to talk about it. She’ll come to you, and you’ll be ready.”

  “Rachel used to tell me that I had to let things go. That I held on too tight.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I failed her, Tess. You should’ve seen the look in her eyes . . . I didn’t even know how much I’d failed her until I saw her memories in her eyes.”

  “Shh . . .”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then abruptly he rolled onto his back. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but his fingers touched her cheek softly.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “I have to. Everyone has fought the battle but me. Everyone has paid the price but me.”

  “So that’s when you’ll be happy? When he finally kills you?” His voice was tight, his muscles tense to the touch.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Well, I do. Go away, Tess. Go hide out in some hotel in Arizona and I’ll pretend to be you in the house.”

  “You’re injured.”

  His muscle spasmed and she knew she’d inflicted an immeasurable blow to his masculine pride. “Don’t you trust me, Tess?”

  She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. She threaded her fingers through the dark hair on his belly. “It can’t be just you, J.T.,” she whispered, “trying to save the world. No one is that strong. It will be you and me together in the house. I’ll be bait, you be ready to catch the rat.”

  “I won’t have you die on me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m so tired of them dying on me.” His voice was hoarse.

  She held him closer. “I love you,” she whispered.

  Neither of them spoke.

  EDITH SAT IN the living room of Martha’s house, holding a cup filled with black tea and watching Martha’s granddaughter read a book on the couch with Martha sitting beside her.

  The living room really wasn’t much. The sofa was old and threadbare and had probably been purchased from Goodwill. Like the other few pieces of furniture, it reminded Edith of the clothes Martha selected—old, eclectic, and mismatching. There weren’t even pictures on the walls. Edith had never noticed that before. In the whole house there wasn’t a single picture or framed photograph.

  Edith forced her gaze back to the little girl. Her name was Stephanie, and she seemed to be a somber, quiet child. She wore a thick sweat suit with a baseball cap covering her hair and eyes. Her face nagged at Edith mildly, as if she’d met Stephanie before. Of course, little kids had a tendency to all look alike to her.

  She focused on examining her tea as Stephanie continued reading the story of Cinderalla out loud.

  Edith was just picturing the pumpkin stagecoach in her mind, when the chills swept up her arms.

  She looked up and wished she hadn’t.

  Girls, so many girls. She’d never seen so many at once before. Here in this living room their features were so clear, she thought she could reach out and touch them. How could Martha not see them? How could Stephanie talk of mice turning magically into footmen while a dozen ethereal shapes swarmed around them, naked and ashamed?

  Her chest hurt, the pressure squeezing her ribs like a vise. She opened her mouth. She tried to yell at them to leave her alone; she was just an old woman and she didn’t know what they wanted.

  Then she realized that they weren’t looking at her, not pleading with her with their tortured eyes. Instead, they stared at Martha and Stephanie, and their distress was plain.

  Edith bolted upright. She spilled her tea across her lap, not noticing the burn.

  “Martha!” she gasped. “You’re in danger! Horrible, horrible danger!”

  Stephanie stopped reading and looked at Edith with wide blue eyes. Martha raised her head more slowly.

  “Stephanie, please go to your room.”

  Stephanie got up quickly, looking relieved to escape. Then Martha turned to Edith.

  “How do you know?”

  “I see things,” Edith confessed in a rush. She’d never said so out loud before. It eased the pressure in her chest. She said more firmly, “I see the dead.”

  Martha’s eyes widened. Edith waited to see shock, disgust, or even a faintly repelled look. Instead, Martha’s gaze grew sharp and intensely curious.

  “You see the dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they talk to you?”

  “No, they just appear, so tortured, as if there’s something they need me to understand.”

  Martha leaned forward and clutched Edith’s hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

  IN THE BEDROOM Samantha took her ear away from the door. She’d been trained how to dial 911 and give her full name, address, and phone number. But she didn’t have a phone in this room and she no longer knew her address or phone number. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now.

  Finally she walked over to the bed she’d been given just a few days ago.

  She sat on the edge and stroked her dolly’s hair. “It’s all right,” she told her baby. She patted the pretty pink doll again. “Mommy will come. Mommy will come and everything will be all right.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE POLICE W
ERE trying to make up for past mistakes. Now the officers filing in for the briefing had to show their badges at the door. All three task force leaders stood next to the receptionist, personally identifying each man. With this system it took forty-five minutes to assemble the group.

  Tess sat at the front of the room, J.T. beside her. Marion sat toward the back and Tess was still trying to decide if the distance was intentional. For the past twenty-four hours Tess and Marion had hammered away on Special Agent Quincy and Lieutenant Houlihan until they agreed to Tess’s plan. Last night Tess felt triumphant; finally something would happen. This morning she watched the news, saw her daughter’s picture flash across the screen once more, and simply felt terrified.

  “All right, people,” Lieutenant Houlihan said, “listen up.”

  Quincy strode into the room, looking harried, and Houlihan scowled. Quincy did a small double take, and instead of walking to his chair in the front of the room, promptly took a seat next to Marion. Houlihan got on with it.

  “As you know, we have formulated a new strategy for catching Jim Beckett. In the front of the room here, we have Beckett’s ex-wife, Tess Williams, whom many of you know from before. Two and a half years ago she agreed to sit in her house and wait for Jim Beckett’s return. We agreed to protect her and catch her husband. We didn’t fulfill our end of the deal so well. Now she has volunteered to do the same once again, and, people, this time we’re going to get it right.

  “We have three teams in this room. I’ve already briefed your supervisors, who will cover the details with you later. This is what you need to know now. Task Force A will continue canvassing for Samantha Williams and Jim Beckett. I know the hotline is still getting hits. Plus, it has been suggested that you follow up on the validity of Beckett’s family’s death certificates. You’re moving from an eight-hour to a twelve-hour shift—”

  There were a few tired moans.

  Houlihan continued ruthlessly. “Yes, people, your life sucks. Next, Teams B and C are assigned to Tess Williams with everyone rotating eight-hour shifts. You have three main objectives: Scout and secure Williamstown, watch the safe house, and remain mobilized for a full-fledged assault. Officers will be deployed in pairs. Some of you will walk beats, others of you will keep watch from unmarked cars. We will have ten officers deployed at all times. The FBI will coordinate surveillance and wiretapping. Also aiding you will be the SWAT team. We can’t keep them on full alert indefinitely, but they have agreed to give us three snipers to cover the rooftops. As you will read in your reports, that’s how Jim Beckett entered the house the first time around. This time we’re not going to give him that chance.”

  A hand came up in back. It was an older detective who’d worked the task force two and a half years before. “With all due respect, Lieutenant, we can’t maintain this forever. Last time we also started out ultra alert and ultra ready. But six months later we were down to two men watching the house and no SWAT support. How’s this going to be any different? We got budgets, we got constraints. And Beckett knows it.”

  Houlihan nodded. “Good question. We might as well cover it now. Special Agent Quincy . . .”

  Houlihan stepped aside and Quincy walked up to the front of the room. He didn’t look at J.T. or Tess. In his dark blue suit he appeared composed and distant. Tess had spoken to him numerous times; now, as before, their lives were intimately intertwined. But he still refused to call her by her first name, and he rarely spoke to her about anything outside of business.

  His job had taught him dispassion well. The things that horrified her were commonplace to him. The questions she found intrusive were merely business. His job took him outside the world of civilized people, and she didn’t think he could find his way back anymore. She respected him immensely and worried about him frequently.

  He began as he always began, without preamble. “We don’t believe we’ll have to wait long for Beckett’s attack. We believe he is beginning to decompensate.”

  “English, please,” Lieutenant Houlihan muttered. “We’re not the ones with the Ph.D.”

  “Jim Beckett’s beginning to fall apart,” Quincy said bluntly.

  Disagreeing murmurs broke out. The man had killed three officers in twenty-four hours. That didn’t fit their definition of someone falling apart.

  Quincy held up a silencing hand. “Hear me out. A psychopath is a complex creature. In many ways, however, we can compare him to a particularly bad child.”

  More grumbles. Quincy remained patient.

  “You’ve heard the tapes. You know Jim Beckett considers himself to be a man of unprecedented control. ‘Discipline is the key,’ that’s what he likes to say. However, he’s wrong. He is driven by a compulsion that not even he can explain. On the one hand, he considers himself outside the boundaries of society—that is his neurosis. On the other hand, deep down, like any person, he has a need for limits. As he gets away with murder, he tries even more daring and dangerous stunts. Not just because of ego, but because some part of him wants to be caught. Like the child who evolves from petty tantrums to small crime to get a parent’s attention, Beckett will commit riskier and riskier murders seeking that barrier.

  “That is the psychological component of his decompensating. Research also indicates there is a physiological component, but we don’t understand it as well. The act of murder appears to release chemicals in the brain. Murderers talk about a feeling of euphoria similar to a runner’s high. Before a murder they are tense, wound, overwrought. Afterward they are relaxed, calm, and settled. Over time, the desire, the need for this euphoria begins to drive the killer. We see shorter periods of time between killings, cycle times going from six months to six days to, in the current case of Jim Beckett, six hours.”

  The room grew quiet.

  “In most cases the organized serial killer begins to demonstrate more and more of the traits we associate with a drug addict. One, he’s no longer so composed or calm. Physical health deteriorates. The chemicals released in the brain and constant adrenaline rush interfere with his ability to function. Like someone mainlining cocaine, he stops sleeping, foregoes food, and neglects personal hygiene. Second, his murders become more rash and desperate, the junkie needing his fix. They also become more brutal; the killer goes from carefully orchestrated murders to a blitz style of attack—hit and run. Third, the use of alcohol and drugs generally increases as the killer seeks substitute highs.

  “In short, the killer becomes thoughtless and vulnerable. We have seen the pattern in Kemper, Dahmer, Bundy, and numerous other killers. And we are seeing this pattern in Beckett. Observe.”

  Quincy waved his hand and the lights dimmed. He turned on an overhead projector and a time line appeared on the wall. It was marked with red lines, then blue. The blue lines leapt up uncontrollably at the end of the graph.

  “Before going to prison Beckett killed ten women over sixteen months. This is indicated by the red lines, starting with the birth of his daughter, and ending eight months before he was caught. The blue lines indicate postprison behavior. He’s now killed six people in less than four weeks. First he killed two corrections officers. He was quiet for three weeks. Then suddenly, in four days, four people died.

  “Not all these deaths were necessary. Shelly Zane was his accomplice and would’ve continued to aid him. His penetration of the safe house could’ve been done with less violence. Originally his pattern was one body per letter. For example, he killed one woman in Clinton, Massachusetts, for the letter C. Now he’s killing multiple people at a location. Two corrections officers in Walpole for the letter W. Both Wilcox and Harrison in Springfield for the letter S. Basically he’s gone into a mode of extreme overkill.

  “Also, he’s no longer sleeping. Observe the last four days and the distances between the crime scenes. First he killed Shelly Zane in the early morning, dumping her body in Avon, Connecticut. Then he drives up to the Springfield area. He kidnaps, tortures, and kills Wilcox eight hours later. Now he must drive to his hiding place,
probably outside the Springfield area, as we’ve turned the immediate vicinity upside down. He has to steal a police uniform, buy his disguise. Then he must assemble everything. Make the phone calls to cover his tracks, etcetera. Then he has to drive back to Springfield as Officer Travis. By six in the evening the next day he surprises and shoots Harrison. Then he has to stay awake in the unmarked police car. One A.M., after thirty-six hours without sleep, he attacks Difford. Then he kidnaps Sam. Now he must run all night. He’s carrying around Difford’s corpse, and Difford is not a small man. Maybe he does get to sleep a few hours in the early morning while Sam sleeps. But soon she’s awake and now he must entertain his daughter. He’s gone over forty-eight hours on minimal sleep, and instead of going to bed that night, he returns to the Difford crime scene. He attacks Ms. Williams and Mr. Dillon, and he sustains a shoulder wound. Once again he must drive back to his hiding place, wounded and having gone fifty-six hours on almost no sleep. Samantha will be awake soon, keeping him up for another day.

  “He still has Difford’s body, and he still has some sort of plan.”

  Quincy looked at Tess. “I believe it’s all aimed at getting you, Ms. Williams. His rage is getting high, his blood lust outweighing his control. If he can find you, he’ll move. Your idea to serve as bait is most likely the best we can do. Sooner or later there is going to be a confrontation. It’s better that it be on our terms than on his.”

  The room remained hushed. Tess felt that silence echoed inside her. She nodded slowly.

  Abruptly a phone rang. People looked around, shaken and confused. After a moment it became apparent that the ringing was from the back of the room.

  “My cell phone,” Quincy murmured. His briefcase was sitting back there. He nodded toward Marion, who picked up his phone and answered it.

  She frowned, then covered the receiver with her hand.

  “It’s a Lawrence Talbert requesting ‘Coroner Quincy.’”

  Quincy froze. He didn’t say anything, and then Tess understood. It was him. It was Jim. Holy Mother of God, it was Jim.