He didn't budge.

“Like Ponsico,” I said, “Nolan lacked the will eventually. More important, he had some sort of conscience, what he did eventually got to him. You sent him to Lehmann but it didn't help. How'd you prevent him from bringing you down?”

No answer.

“The sister,” I said. “You told him what you'd do to her if he destroyed anyone but himself. And if his will had failed again and he didn't eat his gun, you'd have taken care of him?”

His left shoulder twitched. “Think of it as euthanasia. He was suffering from a terminal disease.”

“Which one?”

“Malignant regrets.” I heard him laugh. “Now we'll have to get the sister, anyway. Because you might have educated her.”

“I didn't.”

“Who else knows besides Sturgis?”

“No one.”

“Well,” he said. “We'll see about that… I've always liked North Carolina, the horse country. Spent some time years ago, raising Thoroughbreds.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?”

He turned around and smiled. “Horses are immensely strong. Horses kick hard.”

“More killing, more fun.”

“You're right about that.”

“So ideology- eugenics- had nothing to do with it.”

He shook his head. “Strip away what passes for motives and motivation, Alex, and the sad truth remains: For the most part, we simply do things because we can.”

“You killed people to prove you were able to get-”

“No, not to prove it. Simply because I could. Same reason you pick your nose when you think no one's watching.”

The silencing finger touched my lips. “How many ants have you stepped on during your lifetime? Millions? Tens of millions? How much time have you spent regretting the fact that you committed ant genocide?”

“Ants and people-”

“It's all tissue, organic material- jumbles of carbon. So simple, until we elevated apes come along and complicate things with superstition. Remove God from the equation and you're left with a reduction as rich and delicious as the finest sauce: It's all tissue, it's all temporary.”

He righted his glasses. “Which is not to say I don't create my own excuses. Everyone does, everyone has a cutoff point. For you, it's ants, perhaps you'd spare a snake. Someone else might not. Others draw the line at vertebrates, mammals with fur, whichever arbitrary criterion defines lovable or cute or sacred.”

He straightened, looked wistful. “You can't really understand unless you travel and expose yourself to different ways of thinking. In Bangkok- a beautiful, putrid, very scary city- I met a man, a master chef, artist with a Chinese cleaver. He was working in a luxury hotel, preparing banquets for tourists and politicians, but before that he ran his own restaurant in a harbor district where tourists never go. His forte was cutting- slicing, cubing, julienning at unbelievable speed. We smoked opium together several times and eventually I gained his trust. He told me he'd trained as a child, working his way up to sharper and sharper knives. Over thirty years he'd cut everything- sea slugs, grasshoppers, shrimp, frogs, snakes, beef, lamb, monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees.”

Smile. “You know the punch line. Under the knife, it all splits apart.”

“Then why even bother picking targets?” I said. “If it's a game, why not just strike randomly?”

“Deconditioning takes time.”

“The troops need a rationale.”

“The troops,” he said, amused.

“So you gave them one: inferior tissue. Your ants.”

“I didn't give anyone anything,” he said. “Deafness is inferior to hearing, retardation is inferior to an adequate intellect, not being able to wipe your own anus is inferior to studying philosophy. There is intrinsic value in cleaning house.”

“New Utopia,” I said, fighting to speak clearly, calmly. Was anyone listening? “Survival of the fittest.”

He shook his head again, Mr. Scoutmaster showing a dull scout how to tie a complex knot for the fiftieth time. “Spare me the sloppy compassion. Without the fittest there will be no survival. Retardates don't discover cures for diseases. Spastics don't steer jumbo jets. Too many of the unfit, and we'll all be enduring, not living. The way Willy was forced to endure that bathroom.”

He removed his glasses, cleaned them with a tissue. The house was silent.

“A nice mix,” I said. “Pop philosophy and sadistic fun.”

“Fun is good,” he said. “What else do we have to show for our time on this planet?”

He raised the syringe again. No help coming, but play for time, time was all I had.

“Melvin Myers,” I said. “A blind man trying to live a normal life. What was his sin? Learning something about Lehmann while fooling with the computers? Embezzlement? Shunting grant money to New Utopia?”

Big smile. “Ah, the irony,” he said. “Money allocated for the inferior finally used productively. Myers, that place- pathetic.”

“Myers was intelligent.”

“It's all the same.”

“Damaged tissue.”

“Spoiled meat can be gussied up and sautÉed, but it remains unfit for consumption. The blind don't lead the blind. The blind get led around like barnyard animals.”

He aimed the needle at the ceiling, squirting liquid. A toilet flushed. Footsteps, again.

I heard Tenney's voice. “Whew, no more Mexican for me.”

Baker tapped the syringe.

No rescue.

Daniel, Milo- how could you abandon me?

My body started to shake. “You can't hope to-”

“Hope has nothing to do with it,” said Baker. “What you know amounts to supposition but no evidence. The same goes for Sturgis. The game needs to end. Here's a true test of your belief system: Is there an afterlife? Now you'll find out. Or”- he smiled-“you won't.”

“DVLL. You're the new devils?”

The needle caught ceiling light, sparking white.

His mouth tightened. Irritated. “How many foreign languages do you speak?”

“Some Spanish. I learned a little Latin in school.”

“I speak eleven,” he said.

“All that travel.”

“Travel enriches.”

“What language is DVLL?”

“German,” he said. “Nothing like the Goths when it comes to matters of principle. The crispness, none of that useless Gallic lassitude.”

Zena's comments about French. Parroting her guru.

The needle lowered.

“So what does it mean?” I said.

No answer. He'd turned grave, almost sad.

Daniel, Milo… the limits of friendship… just another delusion…

“Potassium chloride?” I tried for the third time. “Freelance executioner. At least the state offers sedation.”

Tenney said, “The state offers a last meal and prayers and a blindfold because the state's game is insincerity- pretending to be humane.”

He laughed very loudly. “The state actually takes the time to sterilize the injection site with alcohol. Protecting against what? The state is an ass.”

“Don't worry,” said Baker. “Your heart will explode, it won't take long.”

“Dust to dust, carbon to carbon.”

“Clever. Too bad we never got a chance to spend more quality time together.”

“Executed,” I said, barely able to restrain the scream that kept growing within me. “What's my crime?”

“Oh, Alex,” he said. “I'm so disappointed in you. You still don't understand.”

“Understand what?”

A sad shake of his head. “There are no crimes, only errors.”

“Then why'd you become a cop?”

The needle lowered a bit. “Because police work offers so much opportunity.”

“For power.”

“No, power's for politicians. What law enforcement offers is choice. Possibilities. Order and disorder, crime and punishment. Playing the rules like a card hustler.”

“When to fold, when to draw,” I said. Stall, stretch every second, don't look at the needle. Robin- “Who to arrest, who to let go.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Fun.”

“Who gets to live,” I said, “who doesn't. How many others have you killed?”