Speaking in Tongues

man indecisive, wear down his resistance. Matthews was right—this was a diversion. And even though the man knew it Tate believed the technique was working.
    “I can’t make you a rich man but I can make you comfortable.”
    “Pointless,” Matthews said, shaking his head as if he were disappointed.
    “Aaron, you can’t change things,” Tate continued. “You can’t make it the way it was. You can’t bring Peter back. So will you just let us go?”
    “Specific request within the opponent’s power to grant,” Matthews recited, “requiring only an affirmative or negative response. Your skills are still in top form, Collier. My answer, however, is neg-a-tive.”
    “You tell me you’re after justice.” Tate shrugged. “But I wonder if it’s not really something else.”
    A flicker in the doctor’s eyes.
    “Have you really thought about why you’re doing this?” Tate asked.
    “Of course.”
    “Why?”
    “I—”
    Tate said quickly, “It’s to take the pain away, isn’t it?”
    Matthews’s lips moved as he carried on a conversation with himself, or his dead wife, or his dead son. Or perhaps no one at all.
    What a man hears, he may doubt.
    What a man sees . . .
    Tate leaned toward him, ignoring the agony in his head. He whispered urgently, “Think about it, Aaron. Think. This is very important. What if you get it wrong? What if killing Megan makes the pain worse?”
    “Nice try,” Matthews cried. “Setting up straw men.”
    “Or what if it has no effect at all? What if this is your one chance to make the pain go away and it doesn’t work? Did you ever consider that?”
    “You’re trying to distract me!”
    “You lost someone you loved. You lie on your back for hours, paralyzed with the pain. You wake up at two A.M. and think you’re going mad. Right?”
    Matthews fell silent. Tate saw he’d touched a nerve.
    “I know all about that. It happened to me.” Tate leaned forward and, without feigning, matched the agony he saw in Matthews’s face with pain of his own. “I’ve been there. I lost someone I loved more than life itself. I lost my wife. I can see it in your face. These aren’t tricks, Aaron. I do know what I’m talking about. That’s all you want—the pain to go away. You’re not a lust killer, Aaron. You’re not an expediency killer. You’re not a hired killer. You only kill when there’s a reason. And that reason is to make the pain go away!”
    And to Tate’s astonishment he heard a woman’s voice beside him. A smooth contralto. Megan, gazing into Matthews’s eyes, was saying, “Even those patients you killed here, Aaron . . . You didn’t want to kill them. I was wrong. It wasn’t a game at all. You just wanted to help them stop hurting.”
    Excellent, Tate thought, proud of her.
    “The pain,” the lawyer took over. “That’s what this is all about. You just want it to go away.”
    Matthews’s eyes were uncertain, even wild. How we hate the confusing and the unknown, and how we flock to those who offer us answers simple as a child’s drawing.
    “I’ll tell you, Aaron, that I’ve lived with your son’s death every day since the Department of Corrections called and told me what happened. I feel that pain too. I know what you’re going through. I—”
    Suddenly Matthews leapt forward and grabbed Tate’s shirt, began slugging him madly, knocking him to the floor. Megan cried out and stepped toward them but the madman shoved her to the floor again. He screamed at Tate, “You know? You know, do you? You have no fucking idea! All the days, the weeks and weeks that I haven’t been able to do anything but lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, thinking about the trial. You know what I see? I don’t see Peter’s face. I see your back. You, standing in the courtroom with your back to my son. You sent him to die but you didn’t even look at him! The jury were the only people in that room, weren’t they?”
    No, Tate reflected, they were the only people in the universe. He said to Matthews, “I’m sorry for you.”
    “I don’t want your fucking pity.” Another wave of fury crossed his face and he lifted Tate in his powerful hands and shoved him to the floor again, rolled him on his back. He took a knife from his pocket, opened it with a click and bent down over Tate.
    “No!” Megan cried.
    Matthews slipped the blade past Tate’s lips into his mouth. Tate tasted metal and felt the chill of the sharp point against his tongue. He didn’t