Urge to Kill

“I understand,” Marty heard himself say.

“We all do what we gotta do,” Carl Hawk said, “an’ then we live with it. That’s somethin’ I thought I taught you.”

“I understand,” Marty said again.

His father stood there, studying him; then he wiped the knife on his jeans and stuck the point of the blade in a nearby wooden support pole, near where a kerosene lantern hung with its handle looped over a long nail. Below the lantern a metal pail, shovel, and a tow chain hung from hooks.

“It’s done for now,” Carl said. “Let’s both of us go back in the house and see if we can sleep. Come mornin’ we’ll put the body down that old well back in the woods. The innards we’ll feed to the hogs.” He sighed and gave Marty a tight, humorless smile. “Then that’ll be that.”

Carl turned down the lantern wick, and the barn was in darkness except for what moonlight filtered in through the cracks and where the door stood open. He laid his hand gently on Marty’s shoulder and guided him outside into the warm night. They began the slow walk toward the house.

“It had to be done,” Carl said. “You know that, Marty. If it hadn’t, you and me’d both be dead right now.”

Marty didn’t answer.

“When she was finished on me with the axe, she was gonna go on back to the house an’ do you.”

His father’s boots made a creaking, leathery sound as he walked. Marty could barely hear it over the noise of the katydids. “You believe me, Marty?”

“I believe.”

“You okay?” his father asked.

“I can do whatever you say,” Marty told him.

His father stopped walking, closed his bloody hand tighter on Marty’s shoulder, then drew him in close and hugged him.

Marty hugged him back.

50

New York, the present

The first thing Dr. Alfred Beeker saw when he opened the door to his office’s anteroom at 9:45 A.M. was Beatrice with her blond head thrown back, laughing so hard that her fillings showed. Quinn was in Beeker’s waiting room, charming the doctor’s middle-aged, attractive receptionist, but he was sitting off to the right and not immediately noticeable to anyone walking in.

Beeker was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties, with thinning black hair combed severely sideways to disguise his baldness. His features were sharp, with dark eyes that appeared slightly crossed and lent him an expression of intensity. He was wearing a nicely tailored gray suit and carrying a beat-up black leather briefcase with a large tarnished brass clasp. Quinn wondered if the briefcase was an affectation. Or maybe that was where the good doctor kept his whips.

“Am I missing something?” Beeker asked Beatrice. Then he glanced to the side and saw Quinn.

Beatrice put on a straight, if twitching, face and stood up behind her desk. “This is Detective Frank Quinn.”

Beeker didn’t seem thrown by finding a cop in his office. He smiled at Quinn and looked at him curiously.

“I thought it best to catch you before your morning appointments,” Quinn said, standing up. “It’s become necessary for you and I to have a conversation. It won’t take long.”

“Am I under arrest?” Still the smile. A joke.

“Not yet,” Quinn said. No smile. A joke, maybe.

“Come in and sit down,” Beeker said, with a sideways glance at Beatrice, who was now engrossed in some kind of paperwork. He stepped past the reception desk and opened a plain oak door, then stood back so Quinn could enter first.

“Wonderful talking to you, dear,” Quinn said to Beatrice, as he entered the office.

It was everything a Park Avenue psychoanalyst’s office should be, restful and hushed. Very much like Zoe’s office. Maybe they had the same decorator. Pale green walls, darker green carpet, lots of dark brown leather furniture, framed modern paintings that would scare no one. Centered in the room, facing the door, was a vast mahogany desk. There were matching file cabinets on the wall behind it. There was one very large window. Pale beige drapes lined in caramel-colored silk extended from the ceiling on either side of it and puddled on the floor.

The desk was uncluttered but for a dark brown phone, a freshly cut long-stemmed rose in a delicate crystal vase, and a gold picture frame. The wall to the right was floor-to-ceiling books, most of them medical journals. An ornate brass floor lamp near the desk was unnecessarily on and softly glowing. Apparently Beatrice had readied the office for her boss. Have a nice day hung in the air.

Beeker motioned for Quinn to sit in one of the sumptuous leather armchairs angled toward the desk. Quinn lowered his weight into the chair, which was even more comfortable than it looked. The seat cushion hissed as if it didn’t like being sat on.