The Thanatos Syndrome

explosions start up again.
    â€œVergil?”
    Vergil hits on a way to tell me. Vergil is probably the most decorous man I know. He tells it as a report, as matter-of-factly as if he were reporting the soybean harvest to Lucy, number of bushels, price.
    â€œIn the home movies, that is, the 3-D videos, they had the children doing it with each other.”
    â€œYou mean boys and girls having intercourse?”
    â€œYes.” Vergil clears his throat. “And boys with boys. Going down, you know.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œThey also have the children with the grown people.”
    â€œI see. What grown people?”
    â€œAll of them. I didn’t have much time. I fast-forwarded it, you know.” He clears his throat, drums his fingers on his knees, looks around.
    â€œOkay. What grown people?”
    â€œOkay. Dr. Van Dorn, the Coach, Mr. and Mrs. Brunette.”
    â€œMrs. Cheney?”
    Vergil snaps his fingers softly, as if he had forgotten a soybean sale. “Mrs. Cheney? You’re right. Mrs. Cheney.” He nods in appreciation of the correction.
    â€œWhat were they doing?”
    â€œLet me see.” Vergil is drumming his fingers and frowning in routine concentration. “Mr. Brunette was with Mrs. Brunette, but not in the regular way, and there were two girls with them. And—ah—Dr. Van Dorn was with a little girl—there was a lot more but I was fast-forwarding—there wasn’t time—”
    â€œI understand. And there’s not time now.”
    â€œDon’t worry. I have these cassettes. We can look at them later.” He does not know how to tell me.
    â€œI understand, but I need to know now what you saw. I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me directly. I know you have a great sense of propriety, but I have to know what you mean when you say that Mr. Brunette was with Mrs. Brunette but not in the regular way and about the two little girls. Ricky cannot hear us.”
    â€œRight,” says Vergil, appearing to take thought, but falls silent.
    â€œGoddamn it, tell me, Vergil. This is important.”
    â€œAll right. Mrs. Brunette was sucking off Mr. Brunette with the two little girls placed in such a way that they could watch, don’t you know.”
    â€œI see. And Dr. Van Dorn?”
    â€œOh. Well, he had this child and he was holding her like—Oh. I also picked up these stills.” He is leaning over, fishing in his jacket pocket. “I had to grab what I could.”
    â€œStills?”
    In the space on the sofa where Ricky was sitting and out of sight of Ricky, Vergil carefully lines up half a dozen glossy 5x7 photographs, taking care to place them at an angle so I can see them easily and he has to slant his head. Vergil is finding it useful to be overly considerate. There is only time to catch a glimpse of the Coach and Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Cheney on all fours, naked, the Coach behind her, also naked and kneeling, torso erect above her, and Mr. Brunette kneeling at a young man, not Claude, and Van Dorn lying on his back holding a child aloft as a father might dandle his daughter except that—when there are two knocks at the door, too sharp for knuckles, either boot heel or gun butt.
    I sweep up the photos, slip them under the plastic cushion. Strange to say, what sticks in the mind about the photos is not the impropriety but the propriety: Mr. Brunette’s carefully brushed hair, cut high over the ears and up the neck in 1930s style, the vulnerability, even frailty, of his pale, naked back; the young man’s solemn, smartest-boy-in-the-class expression; the child’s—perhaps a six-year-old girl—demure, even prissy simper directly at the camera.
    â€œAnd I got these cassettes here,” says Vergil helpfully.
    â€œNever mind,” I say quickly. “There isn’t—” I see only the top cassette, Little Red Riding Good, showing Little Red Riding Hood without her hood astride the wolf in bed, who is dressed like Grandma in a bonnet and is arched up under her, in a cheerful opisthotonos, keeping her in place with his paws. “Just tell me quickly what the setup is with the additive, the source of the tube there.”
    He speaks rapidly, hands on his knees. He could be in his chemistry class at L.S.U. “They have metal canisters lined up. They’re double-walled like a thermos. One was empty, so I could see that. One is upended right there in that corner and