Men Seeking Women Read online

  That night, Carly appeared in Byrne’s room in a sheer white negligee, and Byrne had to explain that he wanted to take things slowly, that he was an old-fashioned sort, and that if she could only be patient . . .

  The speech seemed to work. When Carly left for work on Monday morning—she was a receptionist at a veterinary office—she was in good spirits, knowing, at the very least, that a man would be waiting there when she returned.

  The day was warm and Byrne decided to take a walk, to find a pay phone; he was reluctant to drive, or to make any long-distance calls from Carly’s house. Something told him to take extra care.

  He walked for two miles, until he came across a gas station and a convenience store. There was a phone outside the store. Byrne called his brother at his bookshop.

  “Paradise Lost,” came Ted’s voice.

  Byrne listened as the operator asked Ted if he would accept the call. Ted did.

  “Kyle,” he said. “Jesus.” His voice grew confidential. “Where are you?”

  “Is something wrong?” Byrne said.

  “Yes,” said Ted. “Something is wrong.”

  Byrne listened to a story of how the cops had come and asked Ted questions about a murder, then left and came back with a search warrant, and seized Byrne’s computer, as well as some photographs. Also—Ted was fairly certain—they had wiretapped their home phone.

  Byrne was speechless; he could not understand how this had happened.

  “Did you have anything to do with this?” Ted demanded.

  “Of course not,” said Byrne, but his voice quavered. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “It was your ex-girlfriend that tipped them off,” said Ted, sounding unmoved by Byrne’s denial. “Diane. Wasn’t that her name? She heard about this doctor who was shot, and she thought you might have been involved, so she called the police.”

  Byrne was silent. Diane. He hadn’t seen her in two years. After the abortion she’d moved to New Mexico, or one of those states. Byrne had not figured her in his calculations.

  And yet she was the cause of all of this. When she first told Byrne that she was pregnant, Byrne had been overjoyed. He’d always wanted children. But Diane had other ideas. She wanted to travel, to study, to live; motherhood was something for later. I’m only twenty-two. Byrne could not understand it. There was a life inside her. A life! He begged her to reconsider. Genetically, it was as much his child as it was hers. It was a part of him, the very protein of his substance, an Adam in his own image. Diane was eight weeks’ pregnant on the day she went to the clinic. Byrne had already done some research and had discovered what an eight-week-old fetus looked like. He’d seen the feet and the hands, perfectly formed, and the head, unmistakably human; and no one could convince him afterward that it was not a life, and that to abort it was not murder. A spark had clicked, flown, caught; the miracle of creation had been kindled. To quench that light was an unholy act. And yet with a tube and suction, the deed had been done. Byrne had been haunted ever since. A possibility had been erased from history, forever; it was a loss that could not be measured. Byrne was not religious, but word of the pregnancy had given him a sudden knowledge of God. The ultimate force of the universe had spoken. More than once, Byrne had nearly convinced Diane to carry the baby to term; together they had imagined what the child would look like, act like, what its talents might be, they’d even considered names, argued about names. Kyle for a boy; Kelly or Kira for a girl.

  By week eight, the skeleton had begun to harden; simple reflexes occurred, and the external sex organs could clearly be seen.

  “Diane’s just out to get me,” Byrne said defiantly, “for leaving her.”

  “I told them that.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes,” said Ted.

  “Thanks, brother.” Byrne wondered what else Diane had told the cops.

  “You know they got your password, too,” said Ted.

  “What?”

  “Your password. When they took your computer, there was a little slip of paper underneath, with a word on it.”

  Byrne said nothing.

  “They’ll have access to all your files. I hope you didn’t write anything incriminating.”

  “No,” said Byrne. He felt sick. “I have to go now.”

  “Kyle!”

  Byrne hung up the phone and set off toward the house. His first concern was that they’d read his correspondence with Carly. Included in those e-mails were directions to the diner where he and Carly had met. The cops would go there, then, and ask questions, pass around pictures. Maybe they were there right now. Byrne wondered if they could have gotten Carly’s name and address from her Internet provider. Would her privacy be protected, even if she herself weren’t a suspect? Byrne didn’t think so. They might be waiting at Carly’s this minute. If so, Byrne would cooperate. They could judge his innocence for themselves. Besides, they’d have a hundred other leads—surely they were looking into all the fanatics on the Internet who had posted threatening messages about abortionists. Why should they suspect only Byrne?

  Approaching the house, Byrne saw through some trees that there were no additional cars in the driveway. He heard a whimper of relief jump from his throat.

  He entered through the back door, with one of the keys that Carly had left for him. Georgie greeted him with loud barking. Byrne let him out into the yard. Then he went to his room and sat down at Carly’s computer.

  His hands were shaking as he logged on. He was curious to know if Carly had received any mail.

  She had. It was from a WhiteKnight29. Byrne decided to open it.

  To: GeorgieGirl

  From: WhiteKnight29

  Hi GeorgieGirl, I noticed your personal ad and I think you are very beautiful and that we have a lot in common, everything in fact. I would like to tell you about myself and would like to know more about you. Please write as soon as possible. WK

  Byrne stroked his whiskers. The words felt like a threat to his preeminence in the house. He dashed off a short response.

  Hi WK. Thanks for writing, but I already met somebody. GG

  Byrne then went into the website of the Times-Dispatch back home to see if there were any updates about the case. A headline read “Probe into Abortion Shooting Widens,” but before Byrne could read the article, there appeared, in the upper left corner of the screen, a notice that he had received an instant message from WhiteKnight29.

  Byrne flinched; the intrusion was like a hand slipping into his pocket.

  He thought to ignore it, but the request shone there with such insistence that he felt compelled to accept.

  WHITEKNIGHT29: Hi there.

  Byrne tried to think of something.

  GEORGIEGIRL: what do you want?

  WHITEKNIGHT29: jeez don’t be so mean, I’m a nice guy

  GEORGIEGIRL: im sure

  WHITEKNIGHT29: are you at work?

  GEORGIEGIRL: maybe

  GEORGIEGIRL: where are you?

  WHITEKNIGHT29: not far from you.

  WHITEKNIGHT29: Moller’s Junction

  Byrne hesitated. Moller’s Junction? He’d never heard of it.

  WHITEKNIGHT29: you familiar with it?

  Byrne was afraid to respond; he felt like he was being tested.

  GEORGIEGIRL: I told you I met somebody

  WHITEKNIGHT29: met him? in person?

  GEORGIEGIRL: maybe

  WHITEKNIGHT29: how do you know you’d like him more than me?

  GEORGIEGIRL: I like the way he looks

  WHITEKNIGHT29: you haven’t seen me yet

  WHITEKNIGHT29: but I’ve seen you, Georgie

  WHITEKNIGHT29: you’re very pretty

  GEORGIEGIRL: so what

  WHITEKNIGHT29: so about this other guy. Have you met him?

  GEORGIEGIRL: maybe

  WHITEKNIGHT29: where’s he from?

  Byrne felt a buzz. It was the cops!

  They had infiltrated, they were trying to get information. He knew this: he knew i
t in his blood.

  His mind raced, trying to recall Carly’s syntax, her style, her language. He remembered that she favored the exclamation point.

  GEORGIEGIRL: none of your business!

  WHITEKNIGHT29: come on, I want to know what sort of man I’m up against

  GEORGIEGIRL: a better one than you!!!

  WHITEKNIGHT29: you torture me

  GEORGIEGIRL: okay I met him

  WHITEKNIGHT29: you did?

  GEORGIEGIRL: he came to visit!

  WHITEKNIGHT29: is he still there?

  GEORGIEGIRL: no he left yesterday :(

  WHITEKNIGHT29: to visit another girl, I bet

  GEORGIEGIRL: I doubt it!!

  WHITEKNIGHT29: why, where did he say he was going?

  GEORGIEGIRL: back home

  WHITEKNIGHT29: where’s that?

  GEORGIEGIRL: Virginia!!

  WHITEKNIGHT29: was it a nice visit?

  GEORGIEGIRL: yes

  GEORGIEGIRL: he’s really nice!

  GEORGIEGIRL: I have to go now!

  WHITEKNIGHT29: maybe I can call you?

  GEORGIEGIRL: no, sorry

  GEORGIEGIRL: bye!

  Byrne exited. His teeth were chattering. He wasn’t sure what to do. If it really was the cops, maybe he had managed to throw them off the trail, for the time being. But he couldn’t be sure. He was anxious to check his own e-mail, but knew that if he went online right now, under his own screen name, it would look strange, since whoever was tracking Carly’s movements was no doubt tracking his. Byrne pictured someone in a crime lab, surrounded by computers, waiting for him to appear.

  He decided to wait at least an hour before going back online.

  He sat on the bed, his fist at his mouth. Things had become more complicated than he’d figured. He would need some help. He knew that if he seduced Carly, slept with her, she would do anything for him—she’d cover for him, defend him, at any cost. But he could not sleep with her. The shooting had changed him, had ruined him for mere mortals. He walked among the gods now, a nimbus of glory surrounded him, he knew, despite his nervousness. In a way it always had. When he was little, people compared him to an angel; his mother even told him that if he looked closely in the mirror he could see the scars where his wings had been clipped. Byrne did this, turning his head until his neck cramped up; and he thought he saw them, two faint marks on either shoulder blade. But he could never be entirely sure. For all the attention he devoted to the front of his body, there was still that region of himself that would always be a stranger to him, a long broad wall of flesh and bone that could never be feast for his senses. How he wished to be able to stroke his back from neck to tailbone, touch his lips to its salt skin, feel its knobs, its ribbing, observe its constellations! It was the vulnerable spot, the place of exposure. Byrne had not planned to shoot the doctor in the back, but it happened to be the target that presented itself, wide and faceless as he advanced to the doors of the clinic: Byrne fired two shots, made two tidy holes for where they could mount that murderer on two burning hooks in hell.

  Ted set aside his reading of Donne’s sonnets and went online. He typed in lovesearch.com. It was a recent diversion of his to search for love during store hours. Business was slow. He would be lucky to sell a single book today. Regardless, he could never resist acquiring more: novels, histories, biographies, poems, books on physics, on philosophy, on mathematics, on art, books on animals, on the cosmos, holy books, cookbooks, children’s books, travel books, atlases, all brought to him several times a week in milk crates, shopping bags, and cardboard boxes. The walls were covered ceiling to floor with packed bookcases, and his desk was obscured under precarious towers of books waiting to be priced and shelved. These piles never seemed to dwindle. Sometimes Ted thought of his store as a kind of dumping ground for the printed word.

  He got onto LoveSearch, but instead of punching in keywords such as poetry and literature, he decided, this time, to go strictly by looks. That meant he must disqualify any ad without a photo—a direct response to what had happened with Femcaesura. That little affair was over. Oh, it had been promising enough. She was thirty-six, childless, and a Ph.D. candidate in eighteenth-century British literature. Her grammar and spelling were immaculate. But Ted’s curiosity got the better of him, and he’d asked her to send him a picture before they met, which went against his original conviction that he must strive at all costs for a pure spiritual union, a closeness unpolluted by baser considerations. As it happened, he received her e-mail the previous night, not long after Messerschmidt and company had left with various of Kyle’s possessions. Shaken by the day’s events, Ted had downloaded her photograph with wild hopes, only to find that she was not nearly as attractive as she’d claimed. In point of fact, she had the long, narrow head of an Afghan hound, and the same long, silky white hair that grows down from an Afghan’s ears, framing its face, giving it a womanly aspect. Ted was crushed. Yes, language could be powerful and seductive; yes, one could fall in love with words, but the language of form, of symmetry, had a power all its own, and was still the chief tongue of Eros. The poets understood this; they seduced with words, but it was physical beauty that inspired those words, and feminine beauty in particular, the genius of Nature, the fire at which poets knelt; yes, Beauty was the true seducer, no Donne had ever required an unlaced mistress to turn a graceful phrase.

  No wonder, then, that Kyle had done so well on the Internet. His image made words superfluous. One could draw him, paint him, but Ted had found it impossible to approach his corporeality through language. For his own part, Kyle could barely string together two sentences. He insulted language; he could capture a woman at will.

  But now it was he who was about to be captured. Messerschmidt had seemed confident about that. “We’ll find him,” he’d said, when Ted had suggested, with some pride, that Kyle might outfox them all. But Ted believed in Messerschmidt. The FBI had manpower, hardware, science; Kyle had only his wits.

  Maybe it would be better if Kyle were caught, Ted reasoned. If he did shoot that doctor—and Ted could not rule it out entirely—then who was to say that he wouldn’t kill again?

  Naturally, then, Ted wondered if there was something he could have done to avert this situation. But it was too late for that. The question was what to do now. He felt he’d handled things appropriately this morning, when Kyle had called; rather than lure him into the jaws of Messerschmidt, he’d warned him, clearly and fairly, that he was a hunted man. He’d given him a chance. What more ought one do for a killer?

  Sitting alone amid his books, Ted feared that Kyle might try to come home.

  Byrne went back online, this time under his own name. The icon of a yellow envelope appeared in the tiny mailbox: it was like an evil eye, watching him. Byrne drew a breath, then clicked on it.

  The sender was “[email protected].”

  Byrne stared. So here it was, he thought. The enemy had come.

  Dear Mr. Byrne,

  As you may have heard, I’ve been interested in chatting with you about a criminal investigation being conducted by my office. At present we are pursuing several leads in this case, and I’d like to ask you a few simple questions for the record. You may e-mail me, or call me at 804-261-1044. I appreciate your cooperation and look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours truly,

  Bill Messerschmidt

  Byrne read the paragraph several times. It was obviously a trap. Did they think he was dumb? Did Ted tell them he was dumb?

  It scared Byrne to think that they imagined such a ploy would work. That meant they were capable of anything.

  Byrne wrote his response.

  Mr. Messerschmidt, I don’t know what you want with me but I am due to return home tomorrow and will call you then. KB

  Byrne hoped that this would buy him time to think about his next move. The fear welled up in him and he considered turning himself in, reasoning that they had nothing on him, other than the accusations of a vindictive woman in New Mexico who could
easily be discredited. But what if they had something else, Byrne thought; something he hadn’t considered? A piece of surveillance tape, maybe? And what about those e-mails he’d exchanged with the gun dealer who’d sold him the Colt? It worried Byrne that he hadn’t thought of these things before. What else hadn’t he thought of?

  He would have to keep moving, then. But where would he go? Should he just start driving? He’d already claimed that he would be back in Virginia tomorrow. That was one little decoy, which they probably weren’t even buying. He ought to give them another. He should try to trick them, like the thief in a movie who stretches the resources of law enforcement by calling in a dozen bomb threats.

  Byrne needn’t go that far. All he had to do was strike up a dialogue with another woman, another Carly, and persuade her to let him come visit. The FBI, monitoring his e-mails, would then dispatch agents to the point of rendezvous. Byrne imagined a football field, on which the opposition was drawn all to one side, leaving huge daylight on the other.

  He entered LoveSearch.

  His first step was to select the city or state that he wanted to explore. Studying the map, Byrne eyed the northeast; if he drew his pursuers to that corner, with others waiting in Virginia, he could head due west, into cornfields, with the plains beyond. Somewhere in America, he would disappear.

  Once you chose a locale on LoveSearch, you were then presented with a long list of come-ons (“Lover wanted,” “Hot chick seeking nice guy” “RU4 me?”), and when you found one that grabbed you, you clicked on it, and a photo and biography followed. Byrne had clicked on the city of Boston, and was baffled to find such puzzling hooks as “Isolde seeks a Tristan” and “Svelte empiricist wants hard evidence.” One phrase did intrigue him, however. It read, “Don’t Burn. Be Reborn.” Byrne stared at those words, feeling for some reason that they referred to him specifically, even though he didn’t think he had anything for which to repent. It was like a provocation. Burn? Him? Why should he burn? What about the doctor? What about all the doctors?

  Annoyed, he downloaded the photo, not knowing what to expect. But when the picture appeared, Byrne put his hand to his throat.