Psycho-Paths

by Robert Bloch

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” Mildred said. “Perhaps I’ll make him an offer next time I see him. You won’t mention I talked to you about it, will you? I wouldn’t want him to think I didn’t trust him.”

  “Nahhh—not if you promise to bring it in regular.” The mechanic grinned.

  “If I buy it, I will.”

  It was easy to find Barry Lind in the phone book. Later that afternoon, Mildred drove past the address. The building, a hundred one- and two-bedroom units meant for singles, was quite similar to her own. The tenants never got acquainted, never noticed who came or went, which was, she thought, rather sad. She spotted the yellow car in the parking area and smiled. In a week or two her plan would be ripe.

  In the teachers’ lounge, Pat said, “Brian stole that Black Forest carving from the international display.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I found out when he tried to slip it out of his desk and into his lunch bag.” The third-grade teacher began to peel her orange, easing the rind off in a long spiral. “He said it wasn’t the same figure, that it was a similar one his uncle had brought him from Germany. He gave me a confused story about how he had brought it with him to use as a decoy to catch the real thief. I’m condensing, of course; it took ten minutes to tell, with numerous asides about his uncle the fighter pilot and how Brian always keeps the gnome on his bedside table and how he saw this cop show on TV where the detective used some powdered soap in place of cocaine to catch a drug dealer.”

  “Yes, I can hear him telling it,” Mildred said. She had had encounters with Brian while on playground duty. “I don’t suppose his uncle actually had. . .?”

  Pat looked at her pityingly. “I called Brian’s mother and asked. One of his uncles repairs appliances. The other is a Baptist preacher. Neither one has ever been out of the country. Mrs. Hajny says Brian doesn’t have anything remotely like that figure. Furthermore, I asked Janie for a detailed description of her gnome, and it tallied—right down to a bit that had broken off and been glued back on.”

  “Then what happened?” Mildred asked, although she could guess.

  “Brian claimed Janie had given it to him and was now lying because she was afraid her parents would be angry. Brian’s mother says he has a wonderful imagination. She says the other kids are always telling lies about him,” Pat added flatly.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “At second recess yesterday he set a fire in his locker.”

  “I hadn’t heard that.” But it wasn’t at all surprising.

  “It didn’t do much harm: someone noticed the smell. His rain boots were sort of melted and I guess his locker is going to be pretty stinky for a while, but that’s about all. His mother is complaining about crime in the school, although three reliable witnesses saw Brian at his locker at recess. I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy.”

  He’s simply evil, Mildred thought, but she knew better than to say it. So many people preferred to ignore the truth. She sighed. Someone was going to have to do something about Brian.

  Mildred nervously eyed her reflection in the glass door (pearl earrings, lace-collared pink dress—the one she wore to weddings) before she pushed into the cocktail lounge. She felt a bit embarrassed about going to such a place by herself, although she had occasionally gone out with friends. This place, all polished oak and brass and planters of ficuses and hanging baskets of ferns, seemed quite nice, if rather dim. What if she couldn’t recognize him? she wondered. She had waited down the street from his building every evening for days, inconspicuous in her little blue sedan.

  One night he’d come out and she had followed him at a discreet distance, but he had only gone to a convenience store before returning home. Twice he had not come home after work at all—or at least, not until after Mildred had given up for the evening. But this was Friday, and as she had hoped, he had stopped at his apartment only long enough to eat dinner and change his clothes. She herself had eaten a tuna-fish sandwich and strips of raw vegetable during her vigil.

  With an assumed air of calm, she glanced around, searching for a face or back she knew. There seemed to be no large groups, only couples and singles. Deliberately—the only way she could move in her high heels—she strolled into the room.

  There, in the corner! She remembered that sleek hair. He was sitting at a table for two, scanning the crowd. Mildred made her way between occupied tables, carefully disregarding an empty one and several tall stools at the counter.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, with a shy smile. I cannot believe I am doing this.

  The blue eyes scanned her, dispassionate as camera lenses.

  “Sorry, I’m expecting someone.”

  “I knew you must be,” Mildred explained. “So am I, but I’m afraid to wait alone until he comes. Perhaps it’s silly, but all this talk about women disappearing makes me nervous. I assure you I am not in the habit of. . .of making overtures to strange men.”

  The straight, rather wide mouth curled up in a smile. “I can see you aren’t. And I’m not a strange man, anyway. Scout’s honor. I guess we’re both looking for company.” The man’s eyes were flat as blue glass.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked when the waitress came up.

  “Oh—a pink squirrel, please,” she said. “It will match my dress,” she added with a little laugh.

  “I’ll have a scotch and soda. Is this your first time at the Green Macaw, Miss. . .?”

  “You may call me Millicent. Yes, I’m new to the, er, singles scene.”

  “I’m not exactly a regular myself. My name is Barry. Tell me all about yourself. I’ll bet you’re a Gemini. If I’m not being too inquisitive.” He flashed another smile.

  “That’s very perceptive: my birthday is in June.” Although she did not believe in astrology, she found herself impressed—until she remembered she was wearing her moonstone ring. So, if he knew the birthstones and astrological signs, he stood a good chance of deducing correctly. If he were mistaken, it was still a conversational opening. But she did not want to waste time on meaningless chatter; she wanted more information about him. She volunteered, “I work for the school district. And I suddenly decided it was time to sow some wild oats,” she confided—artlessly, she hoped. “What about you?”

  “I’m in the R and D department at Cook-Corry. You may have heard we’re developing a new tungsten alloy for shuttlecraft wings.”

  Their drinks came and they toasted the future. According to Barry, his parents were wealthy and split their time between Connecticut and the Florida Keys. He had been transferred to the local plant several months ago—a promotion, he admitted modestly—and since he had been working twelve-hour days, he had not yet made many friends. He excused himself and went off toward the rest-rooms.

  No one at the adjoining tables was paying any attention. Casually, she slipped the plastic envelope out of her purse and tipped its contents into the scotch and soda left-handed, while pretending to fiddle with the card that listed the house specialties. She twirled the swizzle stick to disperse the powder and hoped it dissolved quickly. The scotch ought to mask the acrid taste of the barbiturates.

  Then for distraction she concentrated on the conversations at neighboring tables.

  “. . .and I said, ‘This is your two-week warning’. . .”

  “. . .awful. Now this kid Brian Hine—Hodge?—is missing. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

  “. . .we could, you know, maybe go to my place. . .”

  “. . .really like to jog but my doctor says. . .”

  “I don’t care what they say, Beta’s better.”

  She jumped when he came up behind her and joked, “A nickel for your thoughts.”

  What would he say if she told him? What should she be thinking about? “It’s sad that no one has any roots anymore. Look at all these people—like you and me—trying to find friends or. . .or. . .”

  “Significant others,” Barry suggested.

  “Whatever,” Mildred agreed.
“Where were you located before?”

  “Philadelphia,” he replied, staring at a blond girl in tight pants.

  “I didn’t know Cook-Corry had a facility there,” Mildred remarked. Actually, she knew almost nothing about the firm: she only wished to see how he would respond.

  He was momentarily at a loss. “I didn’t work for them then. I was employed by. . .Harrison Aerospace. A corporate headhunter lured me here.”

  “Oh, I see. Something you said made me think you’d been working for Cook-Corry all along.”

  “No, I never said anything like that. Say, has anyone ever told you that you look just like Katharine Hepburn?” He sipped his drink, made a face and said anyone could tell he didn’t drink much of the hard stuff. He drank the rest of it at one gulp.

  They ordered another round; he switched to beer. Mildred thought she could tolerate another pink squirrel. Barry glanced at his wristwatch several times; Mildred noticed because it was the kind that did half a dozen other things besides providing the day, minute, second and date. At 8:02, something beeped.

  “Uh-oh, that’s my pager. Excuse me while I call in? In case the drinks come while I’m gone—” He put a ten down.

  She watched as he strode out to find a telephone. The phones were apparently in the same direction as the rest-rooms, she noted. Could he have called someone on his previous trip, and requested to be paged at eight?

  The drinks came, the waitress made change and left. Mildred glanced toward the door. No sign of Barry Lind yet. How long would the drug take to work? She had given him the stiff est dose it seemed possible to incorporate in a cocktail. Would it come on slowly—or was he stretched unconscious on the floor? No, apparently not: he was striding through the entrance, distinctive in his open-necked cream shirt and a tweed jacket. Mildred recognized the need to be the center of attention.

  “Someone at the lab has a problem,” he explained when he returned. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut our evening short.”

  “But you must at least finish your drink,” she said. “All work and no play, you know.” Did barbiturates lose strength? They’d only been a couple of years old.

  “Can’t let good beer go to waste.” He finished it and mumbled, “I’ll be glad to get out—it’s getting stuffy in here.”

  “I’d better be going, too—if you wouldn’t mind walking me out to my car? There’s so much crime now.”

  “My pleasure,” he muttered.

  He stumbled as they went out. His eyes looked even glassier than before, Mildred noted: they were now fixed as well as flat.

  “Don’t you feel well, Barry?” she asked as they crossed the parking lot.

  He peered at her as if trying to remember who she was. He shook his head in a puzzled way. “Uh-uh.”

  “I don’t think you should drive. Please give me your, keys.”

  Leaning against the fender, he fished in his pocket, swaying.

  “Here,” she disentangled his hand from his pocket and pulled out the keychain. She got him into the passenger seat, and none too soon. She had to fasten his seat belt for him.

  The car handled quite differently from her own, but she drove sedately through town to Riverside Park. At the intersection of Sixteenth and Rose she found herself stopped at a light beside a police car. The officer gave her a sharp look and was evidently reassured by her obvious sobriety: at least he nodded approvingly. Mildred smiled back. It was nice to know the police were on the alert for drunk drivers. The slaughter on the roads was truly shocking.

  The park ran along the river bluff, a long narrow strip, with parking spaces facing the river. The lot tilted toward the water, with only a low rail to separate it from an abrupt drop. When the roads were icy, drivers avoided the outlook. Not, Mildred thought reasonably, that anyone would want to sit looking at the river when it was that cold. The PTA had been campaigning for a chainlink fence: children would slide on the parking lot when there was ice or snow and skateboard there the rest of the year. It was a miracle some adventurous boy had not gone over the edge already.

  By accident, Mildred added to herself—Lee Jones did not count. Although he had brought it on himself, the way he terrorized the smaller children. She had found him tightrope-walking on that rail during one of her early morning jogs. It had seemed an opportunity to speak to him away from school, off the record. He wasn’t one of her students, being a sixth-grader—but hers had suffered from his bullying. Mildred knew, of course, that some children were simply bad, but Lee was not stupid so he must be redeemable.

  He had stayed on the rail while she was talking to him, ignoring her warning that it was dangerous. When she finished, he jeered, “I don’t have to do what you say—all you can do is order little kids around. And you have to do that because you’re so dumb and bossy, no one wants to screw you!”

  The foul language did not shock her, since even her second-graders occasionally surprised her with the terms they picked up from older siblings. It was the unfairness of the accusation that made her strike out. She only meant to grab him by his jacket and pull him off his perch, to make him see he was not as big or as impervious as he thought. Her sudden movement made him flinch back. He hung there, overbalanced, for what seemed like eternity, but not so long she had time to catch his arm or jacket. Then he fell, plummeting in dull blue denim and bright blue ripstop nylon. Mildred watched the body hit the rocky slope, bounce and roll. It ended up facedown in the water.

  It never occurred to her that he could be alive. Even if he were, by the time someone got down to him, he would have drowned. Her first thought was, thank goodness it wasn’t a nice boy. No one was in the park so early, and the buildings on the street side were all businesses that opened later. Why shouldn’t everyone think Lee had simply tumbled over? It would be better that way. And she had promptly continued her exercise. It was later, after she had recovered from the shock, that Mildred realized that what had happened by accident might as easily be done intentionally. She imagined the effect on classes and on the world in general if the rotten apples were removed from the barrel before they spread their contamination.

  However, she had avoided Riverside Park ever since. Now she was glad, because it would be the perfect place for this project. She stopped the yellow sports car in the deeper shadow of a willow tree near the entrance, its sleek hood pointed downhill, toward the river.

  She sat for a moment, trying to think whether she had forgotten anything. This was quite different from culling the one from the ninety and nine. In procedure, at least; the principle was the same. She shifted to neutral and switched off the ignition, keeping her foot on the brake pedal. There was no traffic on the street behind them: the bank, clothing stores, omelette house and antique shop fronting the river were closed and it was too early for anyone to be thinking of the park as a lovers’ lane.

  Mildred disengaged her seat belt, opened the car door and awkwardly got her left foot out—she was less than agile in high heels, and preferred not to risk the car beginning its roll to judgment prematurely. Then she took her right foot off the brake, twisted out and backed away to see if the darn thing would move. If it didn’t, she would have to wake Barry up enough to get him out of the car, help him over to the edge and let nature take its course.

  The car did roll, almost to her surprise. You could always count on people to act certain ways, but mechanical things were not so consistent. It was not moving very fast, but she had aimed it at the middle of the rail, between two of the squat, square posts. The wooden rail burst outward under the car’s weight and the yellow import surged over the brink, falling tail over nose. When it was found, it would appear that Barry’s companion had escaped the car then been swept away by the river. It happened: Lee’s body never came to shore. He was thought to have run away. It would seem like a straightforward accident.

  Now that it was finished, she wished she were at home with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate. The two pink squirrels stirred restlessly, and her pumps were provi
ng not to be as comfortable as she had remembered. Mildred sighed. Should she walk over two blocks and catch the Center Street bus as planned? Or should she splurge and call a taxi? There was a pay phone across the street. It would be safer not to be seen anywhere near here; on the other hand, how safe was it for a woman to wait for a bus downtown at night? She might be mugged—or worse. With some relief (since it was not mere self-indulgence), Mildred opted for commonsense over economy.

  “I suppose it seems strange for a woman to be down here at night,” she ventured.

  The driver glanced at his rearview mirror. “Your car break down?”

  If she said yes, would he offer to call a tow truck? Besides, she had told the dispatcher she wanted to go to the Green Macaw. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! Mildred reflected. Honesty is infinitely the best policy. “No, I had a difference of opinion with my, my date as to his driving, so I got out. Please take me to the Green Macaw.”

  The driver twisted his head around to look at her—fortunately, they were sitting at a red light. He was an attractive young man. “That’s where the action is on a Friday night,” he commented.

  “That’s where my car is,” Mildred retorted, so he would not think she was the kind of person who went out looking for “action,” then blushed. Even she had heard that if there were a hundred cars parked in the Green Macaw’s lot at the height of the evening, there would still be fifty cars left when all the customers were gone. To cover her embarrassment, she said, “You must know all the. . .well, places where the action is.”

  He laughed a little. “Only by taking people to them.”

  Mildred was pleased. She had always suspected that cab drivers might be lowlifes who spent their spare time in pool halls or bars. “What do you do in your spare time?” He really ought to be making something of himself. She would suggest that he apply at the community college. . .