Rage Against the Dying - By Becky Masterman Page 0,43
other than the practiced mildness he has been exhibiting, with desperation.) No. You look at me. (He spreads his knees apart to show the camera a small stain on the crotch of his trousers, darker orange than the rest. Max moves within range of the camera. The next bits of dialogue fold over each other, everyone talking at once.)
MAX: You disgusting asshole.
LYNCH (ignoring Max, pinning Coleman in his gaze): What d’you see, Agent Coleman?
COLEMAN: It’s okay, Deputy Coyote. It’s okay.
LYNCH: What d’you see? Is that freaky enough for you?
(Long pause, Lynch still staring in Coleman’s direction, his whole body hanging, not spent but sad. I can imagine Coleman facing him off, refusing to be affected. Lynch lifts his hand to his face and strokes the scabby patch with his nails up and down. Max moves back out of range, but I get the sense he’s staying closer to Coleman now. Even with what I can’t see the tension in the room is palpable.)
COLEMAN (clears her throat): We’re going to take a break now. You go get yourself cleaned up.
LYNCH: Sure.
It was okay with me, too. I blew out my breath, unaware till just then that I’d been holding it. No matter how many times you’ve seen this kind of creature in action they always have an effect on you. And then sometimes they don’t, and that’s even worse.
(Sound of Coleman’s chair as she stands)
COLEMAN: Oh, one last thing while I’ve got it on my mind. The ears you removed. Were they a trophy, a souvenir?
LYNCH: I guess you could say that, yeah.
COLEMAN: The medical examiner reports said you cut them off postmortem.
LYNCH (vague): I guess so.
COLEMAN: That means after death.
LYNCH: I know that. I read a lot of Jeffery Deaver.
COLEMAN: Where are they?
LYNCH: Where’s what?
COLEMAN: The ears. What did you do with the ears?
(Long pause. Lynch pushes an invisible something away from himself.)
LYNCH: I … I threw them away.
COLEMAN (pause): Where did you throw them?
LYNCH (Pause. He has to think, and this time he’s thinking hard. His voice goes up a half octave.): I don’t know, some garbage can somewhere. What difference does it make?
COLEMAN: It’s just that you know so many details, more than we even knew, like where the bodies were. You know about the postcards that were sent after Jessica’s death and playing the Kate Smith CD, and you know about how the ears were removed. It seems like it would be important to you to remember this detail.
(Lynch’s face is working against itself while he listens to Coleman’s logic. He does not respond.)
COLEMAN: What’s wrong, Floyd? Are you afraid if you say something wrong that you’ll still get the death penalty? That won’t happen, I promise.
LYNCH: I really need to go take a piss. Right now.
For the first time in twenty-four hours I thought of something besides killing a man. I backed up the video, reran it. Three times. Counted the pauses, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand … more than three seconds each time. Managed to pause it at the precise moment Coleman asked him what he did with the ears. This is what she had given me the video for, so I could see it and judge for myself. Lynch’s retinas dilated and his eyes cut left and down. His jaw dropped. But even if I didn’t have those tells to go on, I felt certain he had to be lying.
More than lying. He actually went so pale the scab on his cheek appeared to darken. The look on his face was panic. And after Coleman pointed out how important was knowing the location of the ears, the look on his face was … fear.
I forwarded the video and the profile comparison to Sigmund Weiss.
Seventeen
Subsequent generations may develop new distasteful terms for it but, shocking though it may be, the concept has been around for some time. Dr. David Weiss, JD, PhD in psychology, aka Sigmund, Sig for short, and I were fuck buddies once. Okay, twice. Three times if you count my going-away party, where we were so drunk we never succeeded in even removing our clothes.
The first time I had sex with Sigmund was when Paul dumped me; second was toward the end of my career, after I shot the suspect, when I couldn’t remember if there was someone I really was and one night needed a connection to her.
Also, Weiss was smarter than me, and I always liked that. I like hanging out with people who make me