Death Match

An electric silence filled the room.

Handerling licked dry lips. “I—” he began. He fell silent.

“Once our work is completed here, you’ll be remanded — with the indictable evidence — to the custody of the authorities.”

“The police?” Handerling said sharply.

Mauchly shook his head. “No, Mr. Handerling. Federal authorities.”

The look on Handerling’s face turned to disbelief.

“Eden has information-sharing agreements with certain branches of government. You know that. Some data involved is of a classified nature. By covertly manipulating our databanks, you have committed what could be considered a treasonable offense.”

“Treason?” Handerling said in a strangled voice.

“You would be prosecuted in a federal facility, sparing ourselves and our clients embarrassing publicity. And in case you weren’t aware, there is no parole in federal prison, Mr. Handerling.”

Handerling’s roaming eyes shifted back to Mauchly: a furtive, hunted look.

“Okay,” he said. “All right. It’s like you say. I did meet those women. But I didn’t hurt them.”

“What were you doing to Sarah Hunt when we approached, then?”

“I just wanted her to stop shouting. I wouldn’t hurt her. I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Haven’t done anything wrong? Stalking women, misusing confidential and trade-secret information, making false representations — that isn’t wrong?”

“It didn’t start out that way!” Handerling’s gaze swept the room frantically, searching for a sympathetic eye. “Look, it began as an accident. I realized as scrub boss I could exploit this vulnerability I’d discovered, look beyond our compartment, piece together enough data fragments to get full client briefs. It was curiosity, just curiosity…”

It was as if a dam had burst. Handerling began spilling it all: his accidental discovery of the loophole; his timid early probing; the methods he’d used to evade detection; his first meetings with the women. Everything. And Mauchly had handled it beautifully. With a series of baiting questions about lesser crimes, he’d gotten Handerling to bite. And now that the man was talking, it would be almost impossible for him to stop. Mauchly, having unbalanced his victim, would go in for the kill.

Just at that moment, in fact, Mauchly raised a commanding hand. Handerling stopped in mid rant, unfinished sentence hanging suspended in the air.

“This is all very interesting,” Mauchly said quietly. “And we’ll want to hear all about it in due course. But let’s move on to the real reason you’re here.”

Handerling passed a hand over his eyes. “The real reason?”

“Your more serious offenses.”

Handerling looked dazed. He said nothing.

“Would you care to tell us where you were on the morning of September 17?”

“September 17?”

“Or the late afternoon of September 24?”

“I don’t… I don’t remember.”

“Then let me remind you. On September 17, you were in Flagstaff, Arizona. On September 24, you were in Larchmont, New York. You have a hotel reservation tomorrow night in Burlingame, Massachusetts. Do you know what those three addresses have in common, Mr. Handerling?”

Handerling’s fingers gripped the edge of the table, knuckles dead white. “The supercouples.”

“Very good. They are each residences of one of our uniquely perfect couples. Or, in the first two instances, were.”

“Were?”

“Yes. Since both the Thorpes and the Wilners are now dead.”

“The Thorpes?” Handerling said, his voice little more than a croak. “The Wilners? Dead?”

“Come now, Mr. Handerling. This only wastes time. What were your intentions for the coming weekend?”

But Handerling did not answer. His eyes had rolled back, shockingly white in the bright light of the room. Lash wondered if he was going to faint.

“If you’d rather not say, then let me tell you what you were going to do. What you’ve done already, twice. You were going to kill the Co

The room was quiet, the only noise Handerling’s labored breathing.

“You murdered the first two supercouples, in order,” Mauchly said. “Now you’ve been pla

Still, Handerling said nothing.

“We’ll be doing a deep psych reval on you, of course. But we’ve already put together a theoretical profile. After all, your actions speak for themselves.” Mauchly consulted the papers before him. “I’m talking about your fear of rejection, your shrunken sense of self-worth. Armed with information you pilfered from our files, you knew just how to approach those women you selected and manipulated. Remarkable that, in some cases, you failed, even with such an overwhelming advantage.” Mauchly smiled mirthlessly. “But if these encounters eased your feelings of inadequacy around women, they did nothing to ease your anger. Anger that others could find the kind of happiness you never would. Those others who you’d always envied. Our supercouples were that embodiment for you. They became the lightning rod for your anger, which was actually self-loathing, twisted in such a way that—”

“No!” Handerling screamed: a thin, high keening sound.

“Come now, Mr. Handerling. Don’t excite yourself.”

“I didn’t kill them!” Tears were starting from his eyes. “Okay, so I went to Arizona. I have relatives in Sedona, I was going there for a wedding. Flagstaff was nearby. And Larchmont is only an hour from my house.”

Mauchly folded his arms, listening.

“I wanted to know. I wanted to understand. You see, the files just didn’t explain. They didn’t explain how somebody could be so happy. So I thought maybe, if I just saw them — if I could just watch them, just for a bit, from a safe distance — I could learn… You’ve got to believe me, I never killed anybody! I just wanted to — I just want to be happy, like them… oh, Jesus…” And Handerling dropped forward, his head hitting the desk with an ugly sound, sobs racking his frame.

“No need for dramatics,” Mauchly said. “We can do this with your cooperation, or without. You’ll find the former far less of an inconvenience.” When Handerling did not respond, Mauchly bent toward the physician, whispered in his ear.

But for Lash, the scene had suddenly changed, and changed utterly. The cries of Handerling, the murmuring of Mauchly, drained away to silence in his head. A chill passed through him. Eden could interrogate, could examine, this man as much as they wanted. But in his gut, Lash sensed Handerling was i

The worst thing was he should have known before. The suspect chart he’d worked up on his whiteboard, the theoretical profile he’d written and Mauchly had just delivered to the room, suddenly seemed as thin as the rice paper woodcuts in Lewis Thorpe’s study. They were full of inconsistencies, false assumptions. He’d been too eager to solve this terrible puzzle before more people died. And this was the result.

He sank deeper into the shadows. A haiku of Bash — o’s kept repeating in his head, eclipsing the wails of Handerling:

It was close to midnight by the time he pulled his car into Ship Bottom Road. He killed the engine, got out of the car, and walked slowly, deliberately toward the mailbox. Something had been tugging at the back of his mind since he’d left the Eden building; something that had nothing to do with Handerling. But Lash steadfastly refused to pay attention. He felt more tired than he’d ever felt in his life.