Part 4 (1/2)
”He's not a lunatic, not by any definition we have of the word. I'd stake my life on it.”
”Maybe you don't sense mental illness because he doesn't know he's sick. Amnesia-”
”No. No amnesia. No schizophrenia. He's very aware of his murders. He's no Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'll bet he'd pa.s.s any psychiatric examination you'd care to give him, and with flying colors. This isn't easy to explain. But I have the feeling that if he is a lunatic, he's a whole new breed. No one's ever encountered anything like him before. I think-dammit, I know- know- he's not even angry or particularly excited when he kills these women. He's just-methodical.” he's not even angry or particularly excited when he kills these women. He's just-methodical.”
”You're giving me the s.h.i.+vers.”
”You? I feel as if I've been inside his head. I've got a chronic a chronic case of s.h.i.+vers.” case of s.h.i.+vers.”
A coal popped in the fireplace.
She took hold of his free hand. ”Let's not talk about Prine or the killings.”
”After tonight, how can I not talk about them?”
”You looked wonderful on television,” she said, working him away from the subject.
”Oh, yeah. Wonderful. Sweating, pale, shaking-”
”Not during the visions. Before them. You're a natural for television. Even for movies. Leading-man type.”
Graham Harris was handsome. Thick reddish-blond hair. Blue eyes, heavily crinkled at the corners. Leathery skin with sharply carved lines from all the years he had spent in an outdoor life. Five-ten; not tall, but lean and hard. He was thirty-eight, yet he still had a trace of boyish vulnerability about him.
”Leading-man type?” he said. He smiled at her. ”Maybe you're right. I'll give up the publis.h.i.+ng business and all this messy psychic stuff. I'll go into the movies.”
”The next Robert Redford.”
”Robert Redford? I was thinking maybe the next Boris Karloff.”
”Redford,” Connie insisted.
”Come to think of it, Karloff was a rather elegant-looking man out of makeup. Perhaps I'll try for being the next Wallace Beery.”
”If you're Wallace Beery, then I'm Marie Dressler.”
”Hi, Marie.”
”Do you really have an inferiority complex, or do you cultivate it as part of your charm?”
He grinned, then sipped the brandy. ”Remember that Tugboat Annie movie with Beery and Dressler? Do you think Annie ever went to bed with her husband?”
”Sure!”
”They were always fighting. He lied to her every chance he got-and most of the time he was drunk.”
”But in their own way they loved loved each other,” Connie said. ”They couldn't have been married to anyone else.” each other,” Connie said. ”They couldn't have been married to anyone else.”
”I wonder what it was like for them. He was such a weak man, and she was such a strong woman.”
”Remember, though, he was always strong when the chips were down: right near the end of the picture, for example.”
”Some good in all of us, huh?”
”He could have been strong from the start. He just didn't respect himself enough.”
Graham stared at the fire. He turned the brandy snifter around and around in his hand.
”What about William Powell and Myrna Loy?” she asked.
”The Thin Man movies.”
”Both of them were strong,” she said. ”That's who we could be. Nick and Nora Charles.”
”I always liked their dog. Asta. Now that that was a good part. ” was a good part. ”
”How do you think Nick and Nora made love?” she asked.
”Pa.s.sionately.”
”But with a lot of fun.”
”Little jokes.”
”That's it.” She took the brandy gla.s.s out of his hand and put it on the hearth with her own snifter. She kissed him lightly, teasing his lips with her tongue. ”I bet we could play Nick and Nora.”
”I don't know. It's such a strain making love and being witty at the same time.”
She sat in his lap. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him more fully this time and drew back and smiled when he slid a hand beneath her sweater.
”Nora?” he said.
”Yes, Nicky?”
”Where's Asta?”
”I put him to bed.”
”We wouldn't want him interrupting.”
”He's asleep.”
”Might traumatize the little fella if he saw-”
”I made sure he'd be asleep.”