Psycho-Paths

by Robert Bloch

  “That side of the roof. Over there. I can anchor it with wire. There’s time. There’s plenty of time.” He dropped the frame and went back to his room. The sheets of thin aluminum would be perfect for his shadow creation. He didn’t remember where he had read it, but radiation would cause neutrons to explode from the aluminum as it vaporized in the onslaught of X-rays. This would darken the shadow left on the Flatirons even more.

  Proud Aphrodite would be etched into stone for all time. His conception would endure longer than Mount Rush-more!

  Arthurs wrestled the aluminum sheets onto the roof and began working. Over the past two days, he had cut the pieces, preparing them for assembly. His vision would be magnified from the ten feet on the roof of the hotel to fifteen hundred feet on the Flatirons. Fired directly into stone, Proud Aphrodite would combine classical art work with the modern technology of the atomic bomb.

  His hammer rose and fell in just the right amounts. Nails held the sheeting to the wooden frame, but only in the exact spots art demanded. Always art. It spoke to him. It commanded him to create. And Marvin Arthurs obeyed.

  When he began walking the ten-foot-high sculpture up to the side of the roof, it was perfect. He used thick wire to anchor Proud Aphrodite upright, taking several turns around vent pipes and other convenient protuberances. Arthurs stepped back and stared at it.

  “They’ll know now. They’ll know. Anita laughed. The bitch didn’t think I had it in me, but I do.”

  He looked down from his four-story perch through the faint dawn and saw Jamil’s van. Arthurs turned and stared up at the Flatirons five miles away. More than half their expanse would be branded with true art by noon.

  High noon. Gunfighters. Daring men living and dying for their convictions. Sun directly overhead. A new sun, a creating sun on the ground. Jamil had figured that this small a device would only kill everyone within a half-mile radius. Arthurs regretted that they had to die for his art, but it was worth it. Most were spies and police trying to stop him, anyway. Let them die for the glory of Proud Aphrodite!

  Arthurs hurried to his hotel room, shucked off his sweaty clothing and put on another set he had taken from an undercover policeman who had almost caught him the evening before. The plaid shirt was bloodstained and too small, and the pants almost cut him in two, but Arthurs barely noticed such discomfort. To be so close to completion was all that mattered.

  He took the clanking elevator to the lobby and ignored the clerk at the desk. The man looked at him curiously, but Arthurs refused to catch his eye. To do so might create alarm. He radiated victory. They must not know until it was too late.

  The back of the van seemed even more crowded than it had before. Arthurs gently worked off the side of the wood crate. With Jamil’s notes spread on the bomb casing, he began the tedious work of setting the timer. It was entirely electronic, and he wasn’t sure he had set it properly. He went over the instructions left by his dead friend and patron of the arts. When Arthurs had finished, he ran through the directions a third time.

  All was ready. At noon, the searing nuclear blast would produce art unlike any ever seen in the United States. Why go to Hiroshima when real art work could be viewed at home?

  Marvin Arthurs stood next to the van and stretched mightily. It was a lovely day, the first fingers of false dawn stroking the far horizon. This was one thing he liked about Boulder. When the sun rose, it cast its rays across the plains and city and foothills in a panorama unmatched anywhere else in the world.

  Tomorrow, the rising sun would shine for the first time on the dark likeness of Aphrodite—his masterpiece.

  Wind whipped along the street, kicking up dust and debris. Arthurs started walking toward the bus depot. He had almost six hours to get to Denver. That ought to be far enough away for him to view the result of his artistic innovation.

  He had gone only half a block when a sudden gust of wind, stronger than the others, blew against his face. A grinding sound startled him. Arthurs’ eyes widened in horror when he saw Proud Aphrodite wobbling.

  “No! No! You can’t! Don’t do this to me!” He turned back to the hotel and ran through the lobby.

  “Hey, buddy, you stayin’ another night? You got to pay in advance. And no more of that bangin’ noise.”

  “Proud Aphrodite,” he muttered.

  “What’s that? You have a broad up there?”

  Arthurs ignored the ignorant clerk and punched repeatedly at the elevator button. The cage was stuck on the third floor. Frantic, he turned for the stairs.

  “Mister, wait—”

  He left the complaining clerk behind. The man might have crept to the roof after he’d left and cut the wires. Just one or two undone guy wires would bring the entire sculpture down. Arthurs cursed himself for not having dealt with all his enemies. The clerk was a guilty party, he knew. And what about the man in the room across the hall? That had to be a spy hunting him down. The clerk and the derelict must be in a partnership of evil to keep him from completing his life’s work.

  Out of breath, sweating from every pore, Arthurs burst onto the roof. The sheet-aluminum Aphrodite swayed precariously in the high wind coming down the mountainside. He rushed forward, hands trying to steady the ten-foot-high sculpture.

  The aluminum bent. Two support wires whipped about from a new gust. Arthurs caught at the sculpture, trying to support it. He failed. The heavy outline of the Greek goddess of love slipped flat onto the roof.

  “There’s time,” he muttered. He set to work with a feverish intensity unlike anything possessing him before. He hammered and strengthened, he pulled and shaped and formed until Proud Aphrodite was whole once more.

  The sun crept up in the sky as he struggled to finish his repairs. Everything had to be perfect. Nothing less would do. Hours later, he pushed the heavy sculpture back erect. A period of relative calm allowed Arthurs to cinch down the guy wires. He stepped back and stared up at his noble work.

  He went to the edge of the roof and checked the van. He almost puked when he saw the police car. Relief better than any sex swept through him when the cruiser didn’t even slow.

  “Proud Aphrodite, my sweet goddess. You’ll give loving testimony to the world of my genius.”

  The wind from the mountain blew the sculpture over the edge of the roof. It broke apart before it hit the ground.

  Arthurs stared at the ruined work four stories below him. Then he looked at his watch.

  A few seconds before noon.

  His eyes darted from the van with the armed nuclear weapon in it to the Flatirons, all pristine and barren of true art. He had to change that. His hands rose.

  The forty-seven thousand people who died and were blinded by the blast never saw the product of Marvin Arthurs’ genius. Burned into the Flatirons was his seven-hundred-foot silhouette and a one-hundred-foot-high finger-play shadow dog barking forever at the world.

  A Determined Woman

  Billie Sue Mosiman

  Patrol Officer Beatty heard the call come in at 8:05 Saturday night. The streets were alive with crime, just another Saturday night in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and every other city of any size in America. The crack houses west of Interstate 95 swarmed with roachlike activity. The hookers strolled the palm-lined boulevards picking up fresh young tourist meat. Drunks beat their women and sloe-eyed teenagers skulked outside empty bungalows looking for a way to enter and make off with the retirees’ jewelry.

  Beatty patrolled her midtown beat with her mind trained on the radio so she was ready when the dispatcher’s voice gave the code and address. There had been four child rape-and-mutilation cases in as many weeks. Lauderdale had an epidemic on its hands. If there was anything Officer Beatty would not countenance it was molestation of children. She could understand prostitution. She could see the monkey-grip crack cocaine had on the underprivileged. She could wade through the cesspool of criminal element without getting a taint of the scent on her, without being too warped out of a semioptimistic mental state, but when the sl
ime went after the kids—and when they murdered them—the night bloomed red. All she wanted to do was bust the guy. When no one was around. Bust him so good he’d never be able to hurt another kid again. This violent attitude didn’t bother her. The male officers felt the same way. They wanted every pervert to hang from a crucifix.

  She sped down Andréws Avenue toward the tall lighted buildings. There were two cars at the scene before her. She parked with a screech of tires and was out of the patrol car within seconds of slamming the transmission into park. An ambulance roared up behind her.

  A tall, freckled rookie by the name of Gene turned and saw her approach. “Hey,” he said in greeting. At first glance Beatty was often taken for a male officer. She stood an even six feet in her uniform. Her shoulders were strong and wide. She weighed a hefty one hundred and seventy, all of it muscle she kept firm with regular workout weights at home. Her blond hair was cut to just below her ears, the police cap over it. The single telling evidence that she was a woman was the firm, sturdy breasts that filled the front of her shirt.

  Gene finally recognized it was Beatty coming their way and he nudged his partner. Beatty saw how nervous he looked. The men turned and barred her way.

  Frowning, Beatty said, “Another kid?”

  “You don’t wanna see, Beatty.”

  “Fuck that. I work this district, what’re you saying? Now move over.” She pressed between them expecting to be let past. The two officers stood their ground, each of them giving her a stern look that said don’t push it.

  Beatty stepped back. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

  Gene’s older partner, Everett, coughed into a fist. He lowered his head and his voice. “Girl,” he said softly. “It’s real bad, Beatty.”

  Beatty leaned in. “Yeah?”

  “Little girl. Dead. It’s. . .bad. . .”

  Beatty felt sour night sweat break out on the back of her neck. They knew she hated it when kids were trashed, but why were they trying to keep her from the scene? What were they up to?

  “So let me through.”

  Everett shook his head. “You don’t wanna go over there.” He meant the alleyway between a Chinese restaurant and an office building where the paramedics were scooping up the child’s cold remains.

  “Why wouldn’t I? I’ve followed all these cases. What’s wrong with you guys anyway? This is getting fucking ridiculous.”

  “It’s fucking ridiculous all right,” Gene said. “It’s fucking sick outrageous.”

  Everett gave him a sidelong look. Gene gazed past Beatty, his lips held in a prim line.

  Everett said, “Beatty, prelim ID on the kid says. . .”

  “What?” Now Beatty felt her spine stiffen and her broad shoulders hitched back. She’d stopped breathing.

  “. . .kid’s someone you know.”

  Sally. Beatty’s vision blurred. The lights swam into a fuzzy halo. Couldn’t be Sally. Her niece, her sister’s girl. That’s the only kid she knew. That’s the only kid they’d be trying to keep her from viewing.

  “You got the wrong ID.” That’s all she could think to say. They must have the wrong ID. Wrong kid. Sally was home, safe. No reason Sally would be down here on her own where the killer could get to her.

  “Sally Selkirk. Name was written in ballpoint pen on the sides of her Reeboks,” Everett said.

  Beatty glared at him for a full thirty seconds before she armed him aside and stepped past the two officers. She had bought the Reeboks for Sally. Birthday present. Two months ago. She’d watched while Sally wrote her name along the rubber soles with a departmental pen she borrowed from Beatty’s pocket.

  She strode over to where the body bag was being zipped on the gurney. She snatched the zipper and raked it down the small body. She bent over, squinching her eyes against what she would see.

  Sally. Eight years old. Yellow T-shirt torn jaggedly across her chest. A purpling bruise around her neck where she’d been strangled. From the waist down her clothes gone and on her thighs dark shadows of blood stains.

  Beatty turned away and walked several feet into the shadowed lee of the building. Everett came over and put a hand on her arm. She shook off his touch. He sighed and moved away.

  Beatty didn’t cry. Beatty was a police officer, a trained veteran who lived by procedure. She was a policewoman before she was a woman. Tears did not belong to police personnel. She hadn’t cried since she was fourteen. She would not give in to emotion now.

  It was four in the morning before Beatty walked into her inner-city Florida two-bedroom bungalow and took off her hat and gun holster. She had met her sister and brother-in-law at the morgue and from there she accompanied them to the station. Sally, they said, had merely offered to take the trash outside to the curb while her mother finished the dinner dishes. This happened at six-thirty. When Sally didn’t return in a couple of minutes, they went to investigate. They’d searched the street, knocked on neighbors’ doors, panicking like crazy each second their daughter was missing. Not long after they called the police, the first squad car found the body.

  Beatty sank into a kitchen chair and twirled her hat on the Formica tabletop. The clock on the wall ticked loudly. The refrigerator purred to life. A blue beam from a yard light came through the kitchen window and lay like a soft scarf on the tile floor.

  Get a life. Her sister, Margo, had said that when they had recently argued. They argued seldom. When they did, it could be ugly. One sister small and feminine and sweet. Like fresh cream and Georgia peaches. University of Miami graduate. Married a med student. Had Sally and taught school at a private academy for the rich and famous who lived in the Greater Fort Lauderdale area. Then there was Beatty. Charlene Beatty, always called Charlie even as a gangly kid. Took after their father. Inherited his bone structure, his linebacker stature. Could have been pretty had she not been so large. She didn’t want to go to college. She wanted to go into law enforcement. She was made for it, wasn’t she? She’d be as strong and agile as any male officer. She’d be able to hold her own. She’d be respected instead of ridiculed. She’d be somebody. Then it wouldn’t matter she didn’t have boyfriends and a love life.

  But that wasn’t good enough for Margo. “You need to get a life,” she’d said. “There’s more to living than riding around in a car with bubble lights, a billy stick hanging from your hip. Charlie, you’re not old and you’re not ugly. There are plenty of big men who—”

  “Let it be,” Beatty said. “Just let me live the way I want. Not every woman has to have a husband and kids.”

  That was a mistaken thing to say. They knew how she doted on Sally. She spoiled the child every chance she got. She spent her days off taking Sally to the zoo, to concerts and films and the playhouse. Misdirected maternal instincts? Beatty could accept that. So what was so wrong with it anyway? She didn’t have time for romance and roses. She didn’t have time for pregnancy and babies. But she did have time for Sally.

  And now Sally was gone. Brutally taken. Butchered like a piglet, sacrificed to the demon of Lust and Perversion. Dying the way no one should be made to die in a filthy dark alley, her screams going unheard. And for what reason? Where was the logic?

  Beatty balled a fist and brought it down slowly on the rim of her hat, crushing it flat. She wiped dampness from her cheeks. Her eyes were leaking from staring from their sockets without blinking. That’s all. For she never cried.

  Not Officer Beatty.

  Beatty caught the first one on a lark. He was soliciting a twelve-year-old runaway on Sunrise Boulevard. He had the girl backed to the edge of the sidewalk, hovering over her like a bird of prey. He was shabby and unshaven. He wore red high-topped tennis shoes. He must have thought the girls would like that.

  Beatty pulled to the curb and scared him off. He took to the pavement like a marathon runner. Beatty watched the runaway run away. She wished her luck. Kid was gonna need it.

  Couldn’t let the perverts ID a cop so she let the guy run while she trailed him from a safe distanc
e. When he entered a side street, she popped from the car like a genie. She had the black cloth stuffed in her right pants pocket. She took off on foot and caught him turning the next corner. Caught him from behind in a chokehold. His feet came off the sidewalk a moment. He was shorter than she, though just as heavy. She jerked out the cloth and wrapped it around his eyes, tied it tight. Then she handcuffed him and led him docilely back to the patrol car. He was bleating all the way, thinking a drug dealer had him for ransom.

  “Hey, whatju doin to me?” the pervert whined. “I ain’t done nuthin’. I ain’t got no blow.”

  Beatty drove toward the Everglades, out of town. She ignored the whiner’s bitching from the backseat. She ignored the calls she’d damped down to a croon on the radio. She ignored the warning voice in her head that said, “Charlie, Charlie, is this any way for an officer of the law to act?”

  When the lights dwindled and the palmettos grew to the side of the two-lane, Beatty found a spot and pulled over. She killed the engine. She could hear the slobbering fool banging his head on the window. She let him out and prodded him into the dense cypress and palmetto wilderness lining the road. A wild parrot swore about holy terror beneath a silver moon and flew into the mild night from a stand of weepy fir trees. This was a desolate place, a place for dying. It was a perfect place.

  Beatty made him turn around. He smelled of quick, nasty sex acts performed in the back booths of X-rated joints. He was a scroungy bit of humanity that caused Beatty to wrinkle her nose at him. “You’re disgusting,” she said in a fake, deep voice that camouflaged her own voice.

  “Now c’mon, I wasn’t doin’ nuthin’ to that girl back there. Just offering her money to get home on. Honest to God. And man, I ain’t got no stash. Ain’t got no money. What you want?”

  “Lay down on the ground.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “LAY DOWN.” She pushed at his chest and he toppled backward and landed with a grunt of expelled air.