Mindkiller Read online

  He said no word as he untied her bonds, partly from an awareness that it is impossible to apologize to a captive audience, and partly because he could not conceive of anything to say. She stared fixedly at the ceiling until he was done, then rolled convulsively from the bed.

  Of course her legs would not support her. No more would her hands break her fall; she landed heavily on her face.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Kent?” the technician called from the hallway.

  Sure thing, Jimmy, Norman thought for the millionth time in his life, just changing into Superman. “Yes,” he roared. “Right out.”

  “That’s what he said the last time,” Norman heard the dwarf complain.

  He managed to heave Phyllis up onto the bed. She bit him as he did so, and he let her. When she let go, he began dressing at once. “Phyllis, listen. Stay right there. Get dressed when you can, leave when they’re gone. There’s no second choice. There’s a gun in my desk, I’d appreciate it if you could blow my fucking brains out before you go.”

  She had the gag down now. “Do it yourself, mother-fucker.”

  He shook his head. “If I had the guts I’d never have waited this long.” He finished sealing his trousers and decided slippers eliminated the need for socks. “Phyllis, I have to talk to these people, now. That’s CBC and ATV and both papers and most of the FMs out there, they want to know about Maddy. I might—it could—she could be—” His jaw worked. “Phyl, for the love of God wait until they’re gone. If you go out there now with rope marks on your wrists they’re going to think I killed Maddy and ate her. I’ve got to get her picture on the air.”

  Without waiting for an answer he left the room, returned at once, shut off the vibrator, left again.

  He held up his hands as he entered the living room, partly to head off conversation and partly to save his eyesight—his living room was now hellbright. “Hold it, ladies and gentlemen. I’m still not here yet, it just looks like it. Is coffee made?”

  “Let’s just get a reading on you, darling,” the dwarf said.

  “No,” he said firmly. “I’m a different color when I’ve had my coffee.”

  “See here—”

  “No, you see here. Every piece of equipment in this room has its own battery pack, and you’re all draining my wall outlets. I’ll accept that, because I want the opportunity to shout with your voice. But I will damned well have coffee first.”

  One of them had figured out the machine; ten cups of coffee were ready. Norman took his cup back into the glare of video lights.

  “Now,” he said, sitting in his desk chair, “explain something to me. Dr. MacLeod has a good deal of influence in this town—but this big a turnout is ridiculous. I ignore news myself, but you people are obviously the first string. Since when does the first string cover a simple missing-persons story?”

  “Since Samantha Ann Bent was found dead in a stand of alders outside of Kentville,” Gérin-LaJoie said, coming back with his coffee.

  Norman’s ears began to buzz. “I don’t believe I—” The dwarf thrust a light meter in his face and clipped a mini-mike to his shirt.

  “She disappeared from Halifax two days after your sister. She was…it was a sex crime. A very ghastly sex crime.”

  Coffee slopped on his legs. He set the cup down on the desk with exquisite care and lit a cigarette. “Where was she last seen?” he asked mildly.

  “Kempt Road,” Saint Phillip supplied. “Near the all-night donut place, at about four o’clock in the morning.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Mr. Kent, I don’t know if you want to—”

  “Before, dammit!”

  “Oh. She was blonde, dyed blonde, and rather short. About seventeen or eighteen, but she looked younger, I should say. Perhaps fifty kilos. A rather bad complexion, and a sort of teenybopper figure, with—”

  “They searched the area where her body was found?”

  “For others, you mean? Yes, I imagine so. Probably still at it now.”

  “Any leads on the killer?”

  “Nothing yet,” from Gérin-LaJoie. “Except that he is very sick.”

  Norman let out a great slow breath, and worked his shoulders briefly. “All right. I think it’s okay. I don’t think the same man got Maddy.”

  Gérin-LaJoie murmured something into his cassette deck. “Why not, Monsieur Kent?”

  “Well, I’m not positive—but it doesn’t feel right. My understanding is that sex killers pick a type and stick with it. Maddy was—is—thirty-four years old, brown hair exactly the same shade as mine, about three inches taller than I am, and a good sixty-five kilos. Her figure was excellent and her skin superb. When I last saw her she was not dressed remotely like the way seventeen-year-olds dress these days. She dressed sensibly, tastefully. Her clothes were European, with those loose lines, and that air of durability we stopped respecting over here a long time ago.” He ran down awkwardly.

  “Sex criminals don’t always stay with a type,” Gérin-LaJoie said. “Some like variety.”

  “The circumstances don’t match. This Bent girl was way over at the North End at 4:00 A.M. Maddy was last seen downtown, on Argyle Street, planning to walk down one block to Barrington and catch a bus, at a little after midnight. The whole MO is different.” He puffed on his cigarette and frowned. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this. If a tie-in gives it more news value—”

  “Mr. Kent,” Saint Phillip said, “when two women disappear off the streets of Halifax within forty-eight hours, it is news even if one is built like a hippo and the other a giraffe. It is not inconceivable that two killers independently—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “No, you’re right.” Norman’s face was stony. “None of this makes things look any brighter for Maddy. But at least I don’t think it was your butcher-crazy that got her.”

  “Monsieur Kent,” Gérin-LaJoie said, “forgive me please, I have not had a chance to familiarize myself with your case. Is there no chance that your sister could have…taken it into her head to—”

  “I don’t think so.” Norman frowned. “Look, in your business you must hear a lot of people tell you, ‘but she had no reason to.’ Maddy not only had no reason to, she had reason not to. It’s too long a story to explain, but—will you just accept it that Sergeant Amesby down at Missing Persons believes she was abducted? He’s a rather skeptical man.”

  “Hell yes,” the dwarf agreed. “If Amesby says she was snatched—”

  “Hadn’t she been in Switzerland for ten years?” asked Saint Phillip, who had plainly done her homework. “Couldn’t she have—”

  “Leaving everything she owned? It’s been almost three weeks, and Interpol comes up empty,” Norman said.

  The bedroom door opened, and Phyllis entered the living room. She wore her own jeans and one of his shirts, with the sleeves buttoned. “Goodbye, Norman,” she said icily, and exited. There was a brief pause.

  “Look, are you ready to tape?” Norman asked.

  “Yes.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “Okay.” He looked at the largest of the videocameras, told himself it was an old and understanding friend who happened to have one round eye. “My deepest sympathies go to the family of Samantha Ann Bent. I think I know something of what they are feeling now. But I don’t believe that the beast who took their girl got my sister Madeleine. Their physical types and the manner of their disappearances are too dissimilar. I’m all the family Maddy has left and I don’t know what has happened to her.” He took a folder from his top desk drawer, selected a large color glossy. He held it up to the cameras, which all trucked in. “This is my sister, Madeleine Kent. She is thirty-four. She was last seen on June twelfth near Barrington and Argyle, wearing a tan calf-length skirt, matching jacket and pale yellow blouse, carrying a yellow purse. She had just returned from ten years in Switzerland, and she tended to speak as though English were a learned language, although she was losing the tendency. If you have any in
formation which could help us locate her, I beg you to contact Sergeant Amesby of the Halifax police, or the RCMP. Complete anonymity can be guaranteed.

  “My sister has been gone for eighteen days. I am worried sick. If you know anything at all, if you saw anything unusual near Argyle or Harrington streets on Friday, June twelfth, please…call Missing Persons. I—” His voice broke. “I need your help. Thank you.” He sucked hard on his cigarette. “Okay?”

  “In the can.” “Got it.” “Good take.” At once all the video people and half the others lit cigarettes.

  “All right.” He drained the coffee, set it on the desk, and took a folio from the same drawer. Most of the journalists came closer, gathered round the desk. “You newspaper people, here is a dossier I’ve compiled on Madeleine. I gave a copy to Sergeant Amesby, but he won’t have let you see it. It contains everything I know or was able to find out about Maddy, everything known about her last evening. Statements from people who were at the party. A copy of the posters I distributed to all the cab companies. Still shots of Maddy, ten years out of date. She had a home videocassette in her belongings that seems fairly recent. I’ve had some stills made up from that. You can see that she hasn’t changed a great deal in ten years.”

  “More worldly-wise,” Saint Phillip said. “A faint flavor of cynical amusement. Of self-assurance. She was a very beautiful woman, Mr. Kent.”

  Norman clenched his teeth. “And still is, so far as I know.”

  “Oh, my God, I’m sorry. Of course she—”

  “As for you print and radio people, perhaps it would save us all a good deal of time if I simply ran off several copies of this dossier for you to take with you. Then if you have any questions you can phone me; I have full-range audio.”

  “Can we borrow these photos, Mr. Kent?” one of the print journalists asked.

  “I’ll fax them to you, if you’ll all be so kind as to give me your access.” He started a notepad circulating. “If there are no more questions, I’ll start these through the copier. Please feel free to start a fresh pot of coffee, and there are munchables in the first cabinet on the left.”

  He collated the dossier and took it down the hall to the library. As paper was stacking in the output hopper, he became aware that he was not alone.

  “Mr. Kent?” Alexandra Saint Phillip said.

  He did not turn.

  “Mr. Kent, it is my business to listen to sad stories all day long. In my darker hours I think of myself as a sob-sucker. I know how to give sincere condolences to people I don’t give a damn about. I…I just…I’m sorry, Mr. Kent. I’m sorry for your sister, who looks like she is a hell of a woman. But most of all I’m sorry for you. Whatever happened to her, at least she knows it.”

  He kept feeding sheets into the copier, perhaps a little more clumsily.

  “I’ve been a journalist a long time, Mr. Kent. You start to get a feeling. I can’t be sure, of course, but I don’t think you are ever going to know any more than you do now. I don’t think she’ll ever be found.”

  Norman stopped feeding the machine. His shoulders knotted. “I don’t think so either.”

  “You are either going to learn how to live with that, or you aren’t. I read you as the kind of man who has what it takes to survive something like this. But—forgive me, aren’t you in the midst of a divorce right now?”

  “That was my ex who greeted you at the door.”

  “Yes. Look, I have no wish to pry. I’m not trying to get a juicier story, this is off the record. But I think if you own a gun you should throw it away. If you own a straight razor, buy an electric one instead. Perhaps I talk too much. I—if there’s anything at all I can do—well, here.”

  He turned to see her offering a card. Past her he saw the dwarf looking through the open bedroom door. “Get the hell out of there,” he barked.

  “Certainly, old man. Thought it was the loo.”

  “Try the one I came out of wearing a towel,” Norman suggested bitterly.

  “Sorry.”

  Norman turned back to Saint Phillip. “Madam,” he said slowly, “I don’t know if I’m the kind of man who can take a lifetime of this. But I value your opinion. And your concern. Thank you very much.”

  She smiled, a very sad smile. “Take the card. It’s the one with office and home numbers. I don’t give it out often. My husband’s name is Willoughby. Go on with your copying.”

  After they all left he noticed that the orange juice had been mopped from the kitchen floor, and knew that she had done it.

  That evening he took another walk out onto the MacDonald Bridge. He watched the clouds slide past the moon for several hours, and once he sang a song, and at eleven-thirty he threw his gun over the side into the harbor.

  4

  1999 I woke the next morning with less headache than I deserved. The nose hurt worse. I was alone in the bedroom. I heard distant kitchen sounds, smelled something burnt. I found I was irritated. I had not cleared Karen for solo flight yet. That made me laugh sourly at myself, and any kind of laugh will do to get a morning started.

  I found her sitting on a pillow in the dining area adjacent to the kitchen. She did not acknowledge my arrival. She was staring expressionlessly at what she had intended to be an omelet. It was the toast that had burned, and these days it’s hard to burn toast.

  Breakfast with a stranger is always awkward. You come upon each other before you have had time to buckle on your armor. And so the question becomes, how urgent is the need? Even if you made love the night before it doesn’t necessarily help: you can get to know someone better than you wanted to over first breakfast. Neither of us was capable of making love, but I knew Karen fairly well, in terms of the pattern of her history. But the Karen I knew had died, had committed suicide. The new Karen I had created by aborting her suicide I did not know at all.

  I found that I wanted to know her. As a man who has accidentally caused an avalanche cannot prevent himself from watching to learn the full extent of the damage, I needed to know, now that it was too late, what I had done by my meddling. I wanted to like her. That would make me a hero.

  I took the omelet and toast from in front of her. She started indignantly, a good sign. I dumped the stuff down the oubliette and took new ingredients from the fridge. On a hunch I went back and took a sip of her coffee. I pitched that too and got the grounds from the freezer.

  I mixed and sliced and grated, assembled and seasoned the resultants, and arrayed them in the cooker. I studied the controls. The combination she had programmed was straight out of the owner’s manual, with one plain error. I had figured out the quirks of this particular model—extensive ones—the first day I had been in the apartment. She was a rotten cook. I set it correctly and initiated.

  “I think I’m going to move out of this dump,” she said.

  I nodded. I did not ask where she would go. I prepared cups to receive coffee. Her sugar had been stored in a cabinet, so she didn’t take any. Expensive cream was on her shopping list, so she used it.

  “Hey, that smells good.”

  I dealt out onion-and-cheddar omelets, bacon, crisped English muffins. I put two straws in a quart of orange juice and poured Antiguan coffee. The shopping-list program had been her own. She was in the habit of ruining some very expensive food. Well, she earned her money. She started to dig in, pulled up short. “You think I’m ready for a meal this size?”

  I had reoriented her stomach with tea, soup, and other soft foods. “If it looks good to you, you should certainly have at least a little of everything.”

  She fell to at once, but ate with some caution. She did not talk while she ate, which suited me. We paid respectful attention to the food. She made occasional small sounds of enjoyment. I found this remarkable. It did not seem that any of the jelly of her hypothalamus had been boiled away. Her pleasure center was functional. Remarkable.

  While the food occupied her attention, I studied her. Her hair had been washed, dried, and brushed. She looked squeaky clean. Sh
e wore a glossy fluff-collar robe that covered her to the chin. She wore no makeup, no jewelry. Her hands were reasonably steady, her color okay.

  After a while she caught me studying her. Without hesitation she began to study me right back. For a few seconds it got like two kids trying to outstare each other, but there is a limit to the amount of time two chewing people can do that and keep a straight face. We shared a small explosion of laughter, then smiled at each other for a few seconds more and went back to our food.

  I had given her a portion a third the size of my own. Though she chewed much more slowly, she finished first. At once she reached for a nearby package of Peter Jackson. I did not react, kept eating. She looked down, saw her fingers taking a cigarette from the pack, and put it back. Though I still gave no sign of noticing, I chalked up a point for her.

  When I was done, she took the cigarette back out and touched it alight on the side of the pack. “Gasper?” she asked, offering me the pack.

  “Don’t use it, thanks.”

  “Grass in the freezer.”

  “That either.”

  She was surprised. “You don’t get high?”

  “‘Reality is for those who don’t have the strength of character to handle drugs,’” I quoted. “That’s me.”

  She pursed her lips, nodded. “Uh-huh.” She took a deep drag. “You’re a good cook, Joe. Thanks. Very much.”

  “Yeah.”

  She held her cigarettes down between middle and ring fingers. It seems like one of those meaningless affectations, until you notice that with each puff, half of the face is hidden. The inverse is to hold the cigarette like a home-rolled joint between thumb and forefinger tips, minimizing facial coverage. Now that I saw her with her hair brushed, on a head held upright, I saw that the hair too was styled for maximum concealment, in long bangs and forward-sweeping wings. If she’d been a man she’d have worn a full beard.