Light of the World by James Lee Burke Page A

class.”
    “What was in the story?”
    “I forget. Something that bothered him. He took it to the head of the creative writing program. I thought he was a silly guy. He said he’d published some novels. I think he was probably a fake.” He stared into her face as though waiting for her to confirm or deny his perception.
    “What would you like to talk about?” she said.
    “I’m waiting for you to ask the question they all ask.”
    “I don’t know what that is.”
    “Don’t lie. You know what the question is. It’s not a question, either. It’s the question. It’s the only reason any of you come here.”
    “Why did you torture and kill all those people, Mr. Surrette?”
    “See?” His eyes were dark brown and contained a greasy shine, like rainwater in a wood barrel that never saw sunlight. His teeth were widely spaced, the back of his tongue visible when he breathed through his mouth.
    “Are you asthmatic?” she said.
    “Sometimes. I was asthmatic when I needed to get out of the navy.”
    “I want to clarify something. You’re operating under a misconception,” she said. “I have no expectation that you will ever tell me or anyone else why you tortured and killed all those innocent people. In all probability, you will never deliberately reveal your secrets. You’ll refuse to tell family members where the bodies of their loved ones are buried. Your legacy will be the suffering you leave behind, and you’ll leave as much of it as you can.”
    “Not true.”
    “What you don’t understand, Mr. Surrette, is your deeds and your motivations are scientifically inseparable. A cause has an effect. An effect has a cause. Nothing happens in a vacuum. A physical act is the consequence of an electrical impulse in the brain. It’s like watching a moth in a windstorm. The outcome is immediately demonstrable. It’s not a complex idea.”
    His eyes seemed to dull over, as though for a few seconds he had slipped sideways in time and was no longer in the room. She could see a piece of food in his teeth and dried mucus at the corner of his mouth. “Who was it that said don’t try to understand me too soon?” he asked.
    She tried not to show any reaction to the confident gleam in his eye and his apparent sense of self-satisfaction.
    “It was Proust,” he said.
    “Your first victims, or the first anyone knows about, were a mother and father and their two children south of Wichita. You strangled and/or suffocated all four of them. You saved the children for last. The little boy was nine. The girl was eleven.”
    “That’s what they say.”
    “You killed the parents first. Was that because you wanted to take more time with the children? Did you feel great anger toward them?”
    “I didn’t know them. Why should I feel anger at them?”
    “So your feelings toward them were primarily sexual? After you strangled the little girl, you ejaculated on her legs. I don’t think you mentioned that in your allocution. You want to say anything about that now?”
    “All I have to do is signal the CO and this is over.”
    “Then call him.”
    The heat in the room had intensified. She could smell his odor, and she remembered the correctional officer saying Surrette was allowed to shower only three times a week. His whiskers looked like emery paper. “In your letter you said your father was a police officer,” he said.
    “He’s a sheriff’s detective in Louisiana.”
    “That’s where you learned this stuff about people with my kind of history?”
    “I have a degree in psychology from Reed.”
    “I never heard of it.”
    “Why did you ejaculate on the little girl?”
    His face was slanted away from her, as though a bitter wind had struck his cheek. “I can’t think about that right now. I can only think about that in sessions with the counselor here. I will not talk about that now.”
    “Why is that? Do you think I can harm you?”
    “You’re trying to embarrass me. You want me to feel bad about what I am.