“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“An answer,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me Dr. Stvan was the one who survived? You and the secretary-general sat there telling me this story when you knew all along it was she you were talking about:’
Talley was silent.
“You were afraid it would scare me off, weren’t you?” I said. “The Loup-Garou sees her and tries to kill her, so maybe he would see me and try to kill me, too?”
“Various people involved were doubtful you would go see her if you knew the whole story.”
“Well, then these various people don’t know me very well,” I said. “In fact, I would be more likely to go if I knew something like that. The ‘hell with how well you think you know me and can predict this and that after having met Lucy one or two times.”
“Kay, it was because of Dr. Stvan’s insistence. She wanted to tell you herself for a very good reason. She’d never divulged all of the details to anyone, not even the detective who is her friend. He was only able to supply us with a rough sketch.” ,
“Why?”
“Again, the people protecting the killer. If they somehow found out and thought she might have gotten a good look at him, she was afraid they might do something to her. Or to her husband- or two children. She believed you wouldn’t betray her by talking to anyone who might place her in a vulnerable position. But in terms of how much she told you, she said she wanted to make that decision when she was with you.”
“In case she didn’t trust me after all.”
“I knew she would.”
“I see. So mission accomplished.”
“Why are you so angry with me?” he asked.
“Because you’re so presumptuous.”
“I don’t mean to be,” he said. “I just want us to stop this werewolf-freak before he kills and mutilates anybody else. I want to know what makes him tick:”
“Fear and avoidance,” I said. “Suffering and rage because he was punished for something that wasn’t his fault. He anguished alone. Imagine being intelligent enough to comprehend all that.”
“He would hate his mother most,” Talley said. “He might even blame her.”
Sunlight polished his hair like ebony and caught his eyes at the edge, flecking them with gold. I saw his feelings before he could rush them back into hiding. I got up and looked out the window because I did not want to look at him.
“He would hate women he sees,” Talley said. “Women he could never have. Women who would scream in horror if they saw him, saw his body.”
“Most of all, he would hate himself,” I said.
“I know I would.”
“You paid for this trip, didn’t you, Jay?”
He got up and leaned against the window frame.
“Not some big corporation after this One-Sixty-Fiver cartel,” I went on.
I looked at him.
“You got Dr. Stvan and me together. You facilitated everything. You set all of it up and paid for it,” I said as I became more convinced and my incredulity grew. “You could do that because you’re very rich. Because your family’s very rich: That’s why you went into law enforcement, isn’t it. To get away from being rich. And then you act rich, look rich, anyway.”
For an instant, he was caught.
“You don’t like it when you’re not the one doing the interrogating, do you?” I said.
“It’s true I didn’t want to be like my father. Princeton, crewing, marrying into the proper family, kids all proper, everything proper.”
We were side by side now, looking down at the street as if something interesting was going on in the world outside our window.
“I don’t think you’ve bucked your father,” I said. “I think you fool yourself by being contraire. And certainly getting a badge and carrying a gun and piercing your ear is contraire if you went to Harvard and are a millionaire.”
“Why are you saying all this to me?”
He turned to look at me, and we were so close I could smell his cologne and feel his breath.
“Because I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and realize I’m part of some contraire script you’ve spun in your mind. I don’t want to believe I’ve just broken the law and every oath I’ve ever sworn to because you just happen to be a spoiled rich boy whose idea of being contraire is to encourage someone like me to do something so contraire it could ruin my career. What’s left of my career. And maybe land me in some fucking French prison.”