“If you say so.”
”I do say so. And be good enough to forgo any macho
protestations that Jared Baker is beyond fear. Fear is not the
same as cowardice. I do not approach cowards. Fear has
value. Managed fear equates with prudence. With the
proper training and the correct documents, you could live a
rich new life, yet the fear will always be there. You would always be watchful for that unexpected familiar face, or
ducking camera lenses that are innocently pointed in your
direction, or wonder why some stranger seems to be staring
at you.”
”I understood all that going in. I also understood that the
point of the hypnosis sessions was to learn how to deeply
ingrain a new personality so that even I would believe in it.
But through it all, I'd still be me. Not some freak.”
Sonnenberg made a visible effort to soften. He paused,
nodding and smiling, as he lifted his cup and saucer and slowly sipped. Let out more line, Marcus, he thought. Go
slowly.
“You'll still be you, Jared,” he said. “You'll still be your
daughter's father. She, for one, will see no difference.”
“What does my daughter ...” Baker stopped himself. He
knew that Sonnenberg was trying to switch him onto another
track and it was working. Sonnenberg understood the im
ages that still filled his mind at the mention of his wife or
daughter. The street outside his home. Sarah dead there. So
broken and torn she can only be dead. Tina screaming,
crawling toward her mother. Why is she crawling? Her foot.
It just bumps along behind her, leaving a wash of blood. And
the Frisbee, circling. The one with the motorcycle. The one
who speeds by here and gives you a finger if you . . . He's
yelling at them. He's yelling at Sarah for being dead... The
Frisbee still rolling .. .
“Jared.” Sonnenberg reached for his arm and squeezed. “Jared, I can stop that too.”
“What?” Baker asked dully.
”I can't stop those pictures from coming back. You don't have to live in that world anymore.”
“Tina has to.” His voice was distant.
“Only until the foot is repaired and healed, Baker,” Son
nenberg whispered. “Only until the limp is gone. She cannot
be with you while she limps.”
“It's hard to wait. I ought to be with her while she's hurt
ing.”
“You'd be waiting anyway. But you'd be waiting in
prison if not in a prison morgue. This way is much better for
her. She knows you are well and that you're free. This way
you're a hero to her, not a convict in a cage or a corpse.”
”I want to call her more often,” said Baker, looking away.
”I ought to talk to her every day.”
“You know you can't do that.”
”I know you said I can't, but I don't know why. You told
me I'm safe as long as I limit the call to forty seconds and
call at random hours.”
“Comparatively safe,” Sonnenberg corrected. “Each call that you place is a challenge to the authorities. It announces
that you're near, at least in spirit, that the tie to your daugh
ter is strong, and that you may attempt to see her. Each call
breathes new vitality into the hunt, challenges the hunter to
new effort. This is doubly foolish in your case because the
authorities never had much stomach for it anyway. But even
that is not the critical problem. Your daughter, God bless her, is a distraction. You must learn to ration your thoughts of her
if you are to accomplish your ultimate goal of being to
gether.”
“That's my goal, all right.” Baker nodded. ”I begin to get
the feeling, though, that it's not yours especially.”
“Quite possibly true.” Sonnenberg's eyebrows went up
and his head went back in another Rooseveltian gesture of
candor. “I've begun to conclude that my goals were too
modest.”
“I'm not a plaything, Doctor. I expect to pay you for a
service.”
Sonnenberg patted Baker's knee. “We'll do all that I
promised, Jared,” he said slowly. “We'll do it together. If
you will go forward with me one step at a time, I assure you
that you may draw any line you wish. But I've discovered,
you see, that I may be able to give you much more than I
promised. Much, much more. I believe I can offer you the
ability to deal confidently with any situation that might
arise. It could be within your power to choose at will from
three uniquely talented entities, selecting the personality
that is most suited to any challenge, physical or intellectual,
that you may face.”
“Who's the third personality?”
“You are, of course.”
“Does that mean I can do something the others can't?”
“Not necessarily. Obviously, all three are still you. The
three faces of Baker, so to speak. What you are is their con
trol, which is, of course, a singular talent not shared by the
famous Eve. Your judgment will be more balanced than that
of either except in situations of high stress. But on the
whole, you'll be more circumspect. Think of yourself as a
football coach who sends in the right player for a particular
situation.”
“Why me, Doctor?”
“Why not you?”
Baker shook his head. ”I think you had this in mind from
the very beginning,” he said.
”I was hopeful,” Sonnenberg admitted. “Now I'm more
than hopeful.”
“You haven't said why me?”
“The young man who drove the motorcycle, the motor
cycle that killed your wife. You attacked him, Baker. An
grily, clumsily, out of control. You attacked him and you
beat him. It was an impassioned act. But it was also an un
skilled and awkward act. In brief, your inept assault was quite in character for an ordinary, civilized, domesticated,
and atrophic suburbanite.”
“But not so inept when he came back again?”
“However”—Sonnenberg raised a hand to stay Baker's
interruption—“this fine young product of your community, this privileged and pampered son of a superior court judge,
he came back, didn't he? He came back to settle a score with
t
he angry man who beat and shamed him. He cared nothing for the consequences. The death of your wife and the maim
ing of your daughter were irrelevant to him. He wanted
vengeance. He hurled a bottle of flaming gasoline at your
house and another at your dog, who stood snarling at him. And then you came out. Your home was burning. The home
this man had already twice devastated. Your pet retriever
was writhing in the midst of flames. What did you do then,
Jared?”
Baker didn't answer.
“You must tell me, Jared. It's time to speak of it.”
”I went after him ...”
“And did what?”
”I hurt him worse than before.”
“You say that as if you remember it.”
”I do remember it. I just don't remember doing it. It was
more like I was watching.”
“And what did you see?”
“You know what. I hurt him.”
“You destroyed him, Baker. You did it systematically,
carefully, dispassionately. You methodically shattered each
of the young man's arms at the elbow and shoulder, where
the pain would be greatest and the healing slowest. You did
this, according to witnesses, without apparent anger. As if
you were changing a tire, as one said later. Your golden re
triever, your pet, for whom you presumably felt some affec
tion, was in its last moments of agony. Yet this caused you
no noticeable anguish. You forced the young man's face .. ”
Baker was seeing it. He was watching the scene from a place near his own right shoulder. He was part of himself,
but he was not. Baker remembered looking down as his
hands moved and feeling surprised that they were moving.
He was not attached. But he remembered wanting them to
do what they were doing.
. . . Come on, asshole . . . Come on, the young man
sneered. He stood in a crouch, a baseball bat in one hand,
the
fingers of the other beckoning Baker
..
... daring him. It was
at that moment that Baker fell back but his body went for
ward. The young man coiled and struck, first hooking with
his fist, then bringing down the bat across Baker's shoulder.
Baker thought both blows had landed, but they had not. At least not the baseball bat. His own hand had caught it, and now the other hand was twisting it, breaking it, snapping it
in two, so that each hand held a short wooden sword. The
hand with the thicker half let go and gripped the young
man's arm below the shoulder. It turned him and it lifted
him. And now the right hand pointed the wooden sword be
tween his legs and pushed. Baker couldn't see the bat any
more. He saw that the right hand was free. It joined the first
hand, gripping the young man's arm below the shoulder. The
lower hand was at his elbow, and both hands drew the
screaming man's arm like a bow, very slowly, until it
snapped, and then still farther, until the grinding of bone
against bone could no longer be heard. Then the flapping
limb moved up and then backward until the shoulder's joint
cracked free. The sounds the young man made were beyond
a scream. He shrieked and whooped, falsetto squeals and
yips pumping out in a mindless rhythm. Baker remembered
wondering that a pair of human lungs could sustain so long
a scream. And he remembered wondering at the strength of his own left hand, which now held the full weight of Andrew
Bellafonte at arm's length. Bellafonte, half-conscious, was
kicking at Baker's legs, but Baker felt nothing. Someone
else was screaming too. A woman. A neighbor. And now a
man was shouting his name. Baker didn't answer. He
wanted to watch.
Another bow was being drawn. Another arm. He didn't remember how the transfer was made, but the young man was turned and hoisted again and the new screams were half-choked in vomit.
Baker looked away. There was no satisfaction now. Only
disgust. He looked to where Macduff lay on his side, the
upper two thirds of his body still wreathed in lapping flames
and his hind legs moving in small, convulsive kicks. Baker
wanted to turn away from that too but he was moving closer.
His own body and that of the coughing, mewling Bellafonte
were moving closer to the dog, and now the others were
screaming again and Bellafonte's face was being .
.
..
“You forced that young man's face into the pyre that was
your dog. Do you recall that, Baker?”
Baker looked past him, saying nothing.
“With your hand, you gripped his hair and you held his
face against the flaming head of your dog and you held it
there. You held it there until the screams were quiet. You
held it there until his face was cooked and until the young
man's eyes had turned to grease.”
Baker looked pale and ill. Perspiration beaded on his forehead, and his eyes flashed angrily at Sonnenberg.
”I know,” the doctor said gently. “That was cruel of me.
But you must begin to see the question that it raised. Was
that the behavior of an ordinary, civilized suburbanite, no
matter how great the provocation?”
“You're saying it was Abel.” Baker's voice was flat and
dulled.
“Was it Jared Baker?’
“No.”
“It was Abel. He's always been there, sometimes not very
far beneath the surface. On that occasion, Abel broke
through. You let him through. He seemed out of control, but I don't think he was. He certainly didn't go back by himself. You put him back. I'm convinced that you can control him.
You can control him by a simple act of will.”
Baker glanced at him doubtfully. But Sonnenberg was right on at least one point. Baker had never tried to stop it. It ended when Baker wanted it to end. And then this other
one was gone.