Cabal

‘A murdered man.’

‘Yes. A murdered man.’

Not simply murdered: butchered. The life slashed from him in a fury of slices and stabs, his blood flung on the blade that had taken out his neck, taken off his face, on to the wall behind him. He wore only his shorts, so the wounds on his body could be easily counted, despite the blood. Boone did just that now, to keep the horror from overcoming him. Even here, in this room where the doctor had chiselled another self from the block of his patient’s condition, Boone had never choked on terror as he choked now. He tasted his breakfast in the back of his throat, or the meal the night before, rising from his bowels against nature. Shit in his mouth, like the dirt of this deed.

Count the wounds, he told himself; pretend they’re beads on an abacus. Three, four, five in the abdomen and chest: one in particular ragged, more like a tear than a wound, gaping so wide the man’s innards poked out. On the shoulder, two more. And then the face, unmade with cuts. So many their numbers could not be calculated, even by the most detached of observers. They left the victim beyond recognition: eyes dug out, lips slit off, nose in ribbons.

‘Enough?’ Decker said, as if the question needed asking.

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a lot more to see.’

He uncovered the second, laying the first beside the pile. This one was of a woman, sprawled on a sofa, her upper body and her lower twisted in a fashion life would have forbidden. Though she was presumably not a relation of the first victim the butcher had created a vile resemblance. Here was the same liplessness, the same eyelessness. Born from different parents, they were siblings in death, destroyed by the same hand.

And am I their father? Boone found himself thinking.

‘No,’ was his gut’s response. ‘I didn’t do this.’

But two things prevented him from voicing his denial. First, he knew that Decker would not be endangering his patient’s equilibrium this way unless he had good reason for it. Second, denial was valueless when both of them knew how easily Boone’s mind had deceived itself in the past. If he was responsible for these atrocities there was no certainty he’d know it.

Instead he kept his silence, not daring to look up at Decker for fear he’d see the Rock shattered.

‘Another?’ Decker said.

‘If we must.’

‘We must.’

He uncovered a third photograph, and a fourth, laying the pictures out on the table like cards at a Tarot reading, except that every one was Death. In the kitchen, lying at the open door of the refrigerator. In the bedroom, beside the lamp and the alarm. At the top of the stairs; at the window. The victims were of every age and colour; men, women and children. Whatever fiend was responsible he cared to make no distinction. He simply erased life wherever he found it. Not quickly; not efficiently. The rooms in which these people had died bore plain testament to how the killer, in his humour, had toyed with them. Furniture had been overturned as they stumbled to avoid the coup de grace, their blood prints left on walls and paintwork. One had lost his fingers to the blade, snatching at it perhaps; most had lost their eyes. But none had escaped, however brave their resistance. They’d all fallen at last, tangled in their underwear, or seeking refuge behind a curtain. Fallen sobbing; fallen retching.

There were eleven photographs in all. Every one was different – rooms large and small, victims naked and dressed. But each also the same: all pictures of a madness performed, taken with the actor already departed.

God almighty, was he that man?

Not having an answer for himself, he asked the question of the Rock, speaking without looking up from the shining cards.

‘Did I do this?’ he said.

He heard Decker sigh, but there was no answer forthcoming, so he chanced a glance at his accuser. As the photographs had been laid out before him he’d felt the man’s scrutiny like a crawling ache in his scalp. But now he once more found that gaze averted.

‘Please tell me,’ he said. ‘Did I do this?’

Decker wiped the moist purses of skin beneath his grey eyes. He was not trembling any longer.

‘I hope not,’ he said.

The response seemed ludicrously mild. This was not some minor infringement of the law they were debating. It was death times eleven; and how many more might there be; out of sight, out of mind?

‘Tell me what I talked about,’ he said. ‘Tell me the words –’

It was ramblings mostly.’

‘So what makes you think I’m responsible? You must have reasons.’

‘It took time,’ Decker said, ‘for me to piece the whole thing together.’ He looked down at the mortuary on the table, aligning a photograph that was a little askew with his middle finger.

‘I have to make a quarterly report on our progress. You know that. So I play all the tapes of our previous sessions sequentially, to get some sense of how we’re doing …’ He spoke slowly; wearily. ‘… and I noticed the same phrases coming up in your responses. Buried most of the time, in other material, but there. It was as if you were confessing to something; but something so abhorrent to you even in a trance state you couldn’t quite bring yourself to say it. Instead it was coming out in this … code.’

Boone knew codes. He’d heard them everywhere during the bad times. Messages from the imagined enemy in the noise between stations on the radio; or in the murmur of traffic before dawn. That he might have learned the art himself came as no surprise.

‘I made a few casual enquiries,’ Decker continued, ‘amongst police officers I’ve treated. Nothing specific. And they told me about the killings. I’d heard some of the details, of course, from the press. Seems they’ve been going on for two and a half years. Several here in Calgary; the rest within an hour’s drive. The work of one man.’

‘Me.’

‘I don’t know,’ Decker said, finally looking up at Boone. ‘If I was certain, I’d have reported it all –’

‘But you’re not.’

‘I don’t want to believe this anymore than you do. It doesn’t cover me in glory if this turns out to be true.’ There was anger in him, not well concealed. ‘That’s why I waited. Hoping you’d be with me when the next one happened.’

‘You mean some of these people died while you knew?’

‘Yes,’ Decker said flatly.

‘Jesus!’

The thought propelled Boone from the chair, his leg catching the table. The murder scenes flew.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Decker demanded.

‘People died, and you waited?’

‘I took that risk for you, Boone. You’ll respect that.’

Boone turned from the man. There was a chill of sweat on his spine.

‘Sit down,’ said Decker. ‘Please sit down and tell me what these photographs mean to you.’

Involuntarily Boone had put his hand over the lower half of his face. He knew from Decker’s instruction what that particular piece of body language signified. His mind was using his body to muffle some disclosure; or silence it completely.

‘Boone. I need answers.’

‘They mean nothing,’ Boone said, not turning.

‘At all?’

‘At all.’