“I watched Mikey from a distance,” Linski said. “Watched him as he grew up. He was never again as beautiful as when he’d been so young, so innocent. But I was growing older and hated growing older. Year by year, I became more aware that I’d never have … never have anyone … anything as beautiful as Mikey again. He was always there to remind me of the best time of my life, the brief best time of my life.”
“How did you manage to get the tutoring job? Why would he come to you of all people?”
“He didn’t remember me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. That was a terrible realization… knowing that every kindness I’d shown him was forgotten … every tenderness forgotten. I think he forgot not just me but everything that happened … being touched, being adored … when he was four.”
Ben didn’t know if his worsening nausea was a result of his wound or of Linski’s strange characterization of the molestation.
The killer sighed with regret. “What do any of us remember from that far back? Time steals everything from us. Anyway, when he needed a tutor, he came to me because I was on the list the school gave him. Maybe it was a subconscious recollection of my name that made him choose me. I’d like to think he still held some memory of me even if he wasn’t aware of it. However, I think it was really just pure chance. Fate.”
“So you told him what you’d done to him when he was little?”
“No. No, no. But I tried … to reawaken his desire.”
“It was focused on girls by then.”
“He shunned me,” Linski said, not with anger, not in a cold mad voice, but with deep sadness. “And then he told his parents, and they threatened me again. My hope was raised, you see … raised and then shattered forever. It was so unfair to have it raised and then … nothing. It hurt.”
“Lora and Harry … they must have suspected you killed him.”
“Who’re they to point a finger?” Linski said.
“They gave me your name.”
Ben thought of the way in which they had directed him toward Linski: Harry pretending to recall the tutor’s name only with effort, getting it only half right, and Lora correcting him. Too gutless to violate the sixth commandment and seek the vengeance they wanted, they had contrived to see in Ben the hand of God and had deviously pointed him toward this man.
“I should have passed judgment on Harry and Lora too,” Linski said but without anger. “For letting the boy become what he became.”
“It had nothing to do with what the boy had become. You killed him because you couldn’t have him.”
In a still, solemn voice, Linski said, “No. That isn’t it at all. Don’t you see? He was a fornicator. Don’t you understand? I couldn’t bear to see what Mikey had become over the years. Once so innocent … and then just as filthy as anyone, as filthy as all of us, a filthy and callow fornicator. Seeing what he became … in a way that soiled me, soiled the memories of what we’d once had. You can understand that.”
“No.”
“It soiled me,” Linski repeated, his voice gradually growing softer. He seemed lost and far away. “Soiled me.”
“And what you did with him … that wasn’t sin, wasn’t filthy?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Love.”
War was waged to make peace. Abuse was love. Welcome to the funhouse, where strange mirrors reflect the faces of Hell.
Ben said, “Would you have killed the girl with him?”
“Yes. If I’d had time. But you interrupted. And then … I just didn’t care about her so much any more.”
“She was a witness. If she’d seen anything …”
Linski shrugged.
“All your anger turned toward me.”
“You being a hero,” Judge said cryptically.
“What?”
“You being the war hero … what did that make me?”
“I don’t know. What did it make you?”
“The villain, the monster,” he said, and tears welled in his eyes. “Until you showed up, I was clean. I was judgment. Just passing judgment. But you’re the big hero … and every hero has to have a monster to slay. So they made me the monster.”