Wallflower j-3

by William Bayer

"Who was she?" His voice sounded strange to him, raw, hoarse, a mere whimper that sent pulses of pain shooting through his brain. He tried to sit. "Who?" he demanded.

  "Take it easy, Frank. Lie back. She was the girl downstairs, the one who rented the basement apartment. She'd been Archer's patient in Connecticut."

  Connecticut! What the hell was going on?

  "But was she… the one? You know. was she-?"

  Kit was nodding. "Sure looks that way. I just got off the phone with Aaron. they went through her apartment, found ticket stubs, ice picks, caulking guns, glue. Suilivan's shitting in his pants. Because you solved it, Frank. You did it, you brilliant son of a bitch! You solved Happy Families!"

  "Archer, she-"

  Kit shook her head. "She didn't know anything. That's what she says. The girl was fixated on her, and…"

  He felt his eyes starting to close. He struggled but couldn't keep them open. Kit's voice was distant now, as if in the back of a deep cave. "Rest, Frank. We'll talk later. Aaron'll be here soon. He'll explain…

  When he woke nauseated and agitated in a darkened room, there was a moment of clarity. "You solved it." Had Kit actually said that? was it possible? How could he have solved it? How?

  7

  Diana Proctor, braced like a West Point plebe, stood rigid in the garden just outside the window. Back arched, eyes forward, head straight, chin down-in this exaggerated posture her nose was but inches from the glass.

  Beverly Archer, sitting in the consulting room, glanced at her and smiled. The rain, running down Diana's young and ardent face, streaked her cheeks like tears. The girl's hair, cut close and hutch, hung limp like wet black yarn. Her gray T-shirt, bearing the word TRAININC; in small block military letters, clung sopping to her rib cage and chest.

  What a sight! You'd think the poor thing would have to move, but there she stood still as stone just as she'd been ordered. She was shivering; no surprise, since she'd been standing out there for nearly forty minutes and still had twenty more to go. Rain or shine, a sentence was a sentence; an hour had been decreed, and an hour would be served. A fat little alarm clock, standing on tiny feet, was perched upon the windowsill. Diana's eyes were fastened to its taunting face, her features frozen, locked. That, too, had been ordered.

  If the eyes were permitted to drift, the strings of control would weaken. In a matter of this kind control was everything. Obedience and control. to Beverly the glass between them, transparent yet impenetrable, symbolized their relationship: intimately bound yet separate and apart.

  Here she sat within, sheltered and warm, flipping casually through a magazine, while Diana stood less than a foot away, braving the elements as she performed her penance. The polarity was perfect, Beverly thought, and best of all, Mama would approve.

  She remembered: Mama zippering her into an oversize snowsuit, then pulling the collar up above her head so her face was encased as well.

  "Better be good, Bev, or I'll zip you up forever…

  She glanced again at Diana. Poor girl! But Diana craved hard discipline, reveled in it. It was discipline that had made her strong, that would make of her a perfect steely tool. With a person like Diana, discipline was the only way. Break her; control her; then build her up again. Take the raw killer rage and forge it to your need. Train her; teach her obedience; then she will serve you and Mama, too. Then she will be better than a bullet, better even than a knife.

  She remembered: "Learn to be an archer, Bev," Mama said. "Find your arrow, sharpen it up, string it to your bow, and let it fly. It'll travel far and true, hit your targets again and again…

  Beverly rose from the black Eames chair, set down her magazine, and moved to the window. She stared straight at Diana, trying to distract her, make her eyes flicker a moment from the clock. Not a blink. Good girl! Beverly was proud. Perhaps Diana's nipples twitched a little against the drenched gray cotton of her shirt, but her eyes, disks of sky blue ice, held firm.

  Twenty minutes later Diana, trembling, stood before Beverly in the office. Her skin, so very pale, glistened with rain and sweat.

  "Tonight you learned something," Beverly said. The girl nodded.

  "What?"

  "That I can do it," Diana whispered, still shaking with chill.

  "Do what? Go on, girl-speak." Beverly intentionally tightened her lips to make her mouth appear authoritative. "That I can do as I'm told." "And that's important. Why?" "Because there'll come a time-"

  "Maybe soon." I -soon, when you'll order me-" to perform a mission." 'Yes. And then I must perform it exactly as you tell me. "

  "Without deviation." "Without any deviation. And then I must return, stand before you as I'm standing now, and report to you everything I did." "Everything, accurately, in scrupulous detail." "In the most scrupulous detail," Diana affinned. "And so your task tonight-?" "was to show I can obey you without questioning, that I'm capable of doing what you tell me, exactly-" "And correctly." "Yes." "to serve me and obey." Diana nodded. "Serve and obey." The girl drew in her breath. When she spoke again, she lowered her eyes, as was her habit whenever she uttered an opinion of her own. "I believe tonight I have shown you I can," she offered hesitantly.

  Beverly smiled, rose, stood before Diana, patted the girl gently on the head. "Yes, my dear. We're coming along nicely now." She toyed a little with Diana's stringy, dripping hair. "Down to your room now, off with those nasty garments, towel your hair, put on something nice and clean, then join me in the bedroom for a cup of tea."

  At Beverly's gesture of dismissal, Diana raised her eyes, gleaming with incipient tears. "Thank you, Doctor," the girl whispered, then, quick as a cat, scooted from the room.

  Afterward Beverly stood alone in the office, thinking about the next phase of Diana's training, the next degree of obedience she would instill. The control must be remote, she thought. Following orders with me hovering about is easy. Total submission beyond my sight-that will be something else.

  She had always believed that the concept came to her on a certain rainy afternoon when she was fifteen years old, came just after a crack of lightning revealed the inky blackness that lay beyond the fine, tight gray fabric of the sky.

  A romantic fantasy most likely, although perhaps it really had come to her then, at least in some rudimentary form. She knew well from her studies of human psychology that life-changing ideas often seem to strike like bolts delivered from above.

  But it was not as if she were actually seeking some means of reprisal at the time. Nor was she worrying over one or another slight the way she so often did. Quite the contrary. So perhaps it was because she wasn't trying to figure out a way to squash her enemies that a method of revenge came to her, heaven-sent if you will, and then, of course, it was so perfect, so beautiful she had no choice but to devote the remainder of her life to seeing if it was actually possible to bring it off.

  Get someone else to get them for you. There it was in a nutshell, so to speak, and, like so many great notions, startlingly simple once you thought of it.

  But there was a special element to this particular notion, the craft and cunning of it that always made her smile. The thin, tight, knowing, masking, taunting smile that said she knew something the others didn't and was harboring a plan that would see them all in hell. No matter what you do to me, the smile said, no matter what you say, what insults you heap, what humiliations you force me to endure, in the end I'll get you back, and now, even as you torment me, I know exactly how I'm going to do it, too. Yes, that's what her thin, tight, knowing, masking, taunting smile said.

  Mama knew. "Be an archer," she said. "Find an arrow; string it to your bow."

  Mama, of course, had been playing with words, making a pun out of their name. What Mama meant was, go for the weak spot, which had always been Mama's way. But Beverly thought her own approach was far more cunning. Find someone else to do your dirty work. Get yourself a human tool It took her years to find Tool, and when she finally did, the moment she laid eyes on it was one of the most ecstatic
of her life.

  There she is! she said to herself. That's her! I can see it now, can see her doing all the things I've been dreaming of. Yes, no question, that's her, I know it, she's the one!

  Then she peered at the girl a second time to make sure she was right.

  It wouldn't do to pick out the wrong person just because so many years had passed and she'd grown impatient to settle up her scores. She'd waited this long; another year, even another decade wouldn't matter if Tool was right. But on second look, and third! and fourth!, she was still convinced the girl was perfect. The tool she'd been looking for had been delivered. Beverly felt her head surge with power the way she imagined the cockhead of some prehistoric man had once swelled with potency when he stared at a rock and realized for the first time that he could use it to crush a rival's skull.

  It had been a gray day, the kind of sad, wann, unbearably humid day when the sky's the color of old pewter and the air's so close your brain feels soggy and your joints begin to ache. The kind of day when you don't feel like meeting new people because even the sight of the ones you already know drives you up the wall. You want to scream, that's the kind of day it was, but you don't, don't show even a smidgen of your pain because you're a professional, a shrink, a clinical psychologist, certified and sane and socialized and analyzed, so you just smile your thin, tight, masking smile and go in to meet the new patient.

  There she sits, tense, coiled, twenty years old, five feet two inches tall, I 10 beautifully conditioned pounds, hair black like a witch's, eyes so hard and blue they make you think of ice. And yet there's something vulnerable about her, too, a visible yearning, a need, and you grasp at once she's got a craving you can satisfy.

  She's a murderess.

  "Another little murderess, Bev," Carl Drucker tells you as he hands you the file. Carl pretends to hold the folder as if it were too hot to handle, and his sheepdog's eyes twinkle when he enunciates "murderess."

  Carl always feigns amusement over the most dangerous patients, but he doesn't fool you. He's scared of them, so frightened he'd surely wet his pants if he had to be with one of them alone. Poor Carl.

  For all his training, evil still confuses him. He knows in his brain there's no such thing, there's only antisocial behavior, but he doesn't really know it the way you do, deep down in your gut.

  "Seems our new Missy Perfect chopped up monnny and granny, little sissy, too. The old story, Bev. Strict family. Religious nuts.

  Wouldn't let the girls watch TV, let alone go out on dates. Mommy was stupid. Granny ruled with the strap. So one day Missy broke, took the old wood ax, and chopped 'em up."

  Another twinkle from Carl. Better watch it, Carl. Don't want to end up on my list, do you?

  "Why the sister?" you ask. As if you didn't know!

  "Oh, Bev-why's the grass green? Jeez, you've been around. Sissy was there. She probably ragged her. 'Diana's gonna get it, Diana's gonna get it, neah, neah, neah!' So, while you're chopping the authority figures, you might as well chop up the taunting little bitch, too. But it's interesting, come to think of it, there weren't any men around?"

  Carl, stroking his wimpy mustache, assumes his Great Psychiatrist pose.

  "She went for the ladies, split their heads, then gave 'em each a couple of chops between the legs. Split, split, split. She's a little sickie, I can tell you. Sue Farber tried talking to her, couldn't even get close. We thought you'd do okay with her, though. More your type, Bev. Wanna give it a shot?"

  Sure. Why not? It's what you do for a living, work with disturbed young females all day long, and you know the offenders aren't that much different from the nice polite college kids either. The bottom line is usually pretty much the same, a snake ball jangle of angry sexual confusion working its way out through eating disorders and, in this case, good old matricide.

  "You'll take a look?" You nod. Carl's eyes twinkle. "That's my girl. Diana Proctor's her name." He strokes his wimpy mustache. "Good luck, Bev. And don't take any sharp instruments in there with you. Heh-heh-heh."

  Poor Carl. He knows they're all incurable. He knows he's running a warehouse for psychotics and the state's rehabilitation policy is so much crap. Hell, you're lucky if you can get one of them to construct a coherent "feelie" in the of shop, let alone relate to you on a therapeutic basis. But Carl doesn't care. He's beyond all that. He's a proper civil servant now. Maybe there was a time when he wanted to save the world, effect great cures, write up great cases, apply psychiatric theory to social problems, reform penology, rehabilitate irreversibles. But he gave up on all that long ago. He thinks you've given up on it, too, doesn't know that you're here looking for a tool and that in about five minutes you're going to find yourself one in young Diana Proctor, murderess.

  How did she know? Even now she couldn't tell you, though Diana had been in continuous training with her for more than a year, and there'd been five years of weekly therapy sessions before that, before she could get her out of Carlisle and under full-time supervision.

  It was the whole gestalt, she often told herself, recalling the moment of their first encounter, so clear in her mind it could have taken place within the hour instead of years before.

  It was her need, she reeked of it, she told herself. I could smell her hunger the way you smell bread in a bakeshop. She'll be my tool And so now she has become…

  It was one of those mysterious encounters that takes place once in a lifetime if a person is lucky, like finding your dreamboat sitting beside you on a tour bus or like accidentally pressing the shutter of your camera at the very moment a prominent politician is assassinated.

  Of course, it wasn't that accidental. She'd been working at the hospital all those years just waiting for the right tool to come along.

  Diana was perfect. The hard part would be to get her out.

  Shhhh. Here she comes now. Up the stairs on tippytoe, just like a little lynx. She pauses in the bedroom doorway, silhouettes herself the way you trained her against the light of the hall. An elegant black form against a warm yellow rectangle, waiting, waiting for your order.

  "Come in, my dear. Feeling better?"

  The little thing nods as she scampers toward you. The tai I ends of her wet hair, slicked straight back, comb lines visible, cling seductively to her sinewy little neck. She sits down on her stool and helps herself to a cup of tea. You watch her as she blows on the hot liquid, smile at the sight of her pink little tongue as it darts out between her lips to test the temperature.

  "I'm going to reward you for your very good obedience, Diana. Tomorrow at dusk you'll enter Central Park, dressed in black, dressed to kill.

  You'll carry two bolstered ice picks strapped to your arms and several bulletin board-type pins, you know the kind, with the little colored knobs on the ends."

  The lynx nods eagerly.

  "The first part of your mission will be to pick out a person on one of the paths. Your target should be alone, big, male. A jogger would be fine, but a walker or an ordinary tourist will do as well.

  Stalk him for at least fifteen minutes. Make sure he's the one you want to hit. Then, when you see an opportunity, execute an attack. Don't kill him; just stab him with one of the pins. A quick jab in his rump will do the trick. But remember, it won't count unless it makes him squeal. Approach from the back; stick him; then retreat and lose yourself in the woods. Move rapidly toward the West Side.

  Go to some stores; hang out awhile; then take a bus back. Don't come home on foot. So, girl-think you can do all that?"

  The little lynx smiles. "Piece of cake."

  "Is it now? I guarantee it won't be so easy. A hundred things can go wrong. Pick on an off-duty cop and you're in trouble. He'll shoot you if you don't run fast enough. Or what if your target shouts for help and there happens to be a Good Samaritan around the bend? See, you have to think of everything, analyze the mission. Tell me, what are your most important decisions?" Lynx gazes up at you. Her ice blue eyes burn with predatory lust. "Choosing the target," she whispers. "A
nd deciding when to prick him."

  Smart girl! Sometimes you're so proud of her you want to kiss her all over. But instead you stroke her head, pet her the way Mama used to stroke and pet you, offering affection in exchange for loyalty and obedience. What the tool needs is tough love, not sex; sex she can provide for herself.

  "Okay, go on back down to your room now, lie on your bed, close your eyes, and think the whole thing through. Remember, he's got to squeal. You'll take my little tape recorder with you, so you can bring me back some proof. Wear rubber gloves, of course, and leave the pin in. That'll slow him down in case he's the pursuing type.

  He'll have to pull it out first, and by then you'll be gone in a puff of smoke. So, tomorrow night?" "Please, yes, Doctor," the little tool begs.

  The plan was to make Carl think it was his idea, that recommending Diana for release had never crossed your mind. Sure, you'd done wonders with the little murderess, vacuuming out her brain, servicing and reinstalling her superego, instilling remorse for her evil acts and a strong desire for redemption. You'd even made her into a leader in the wards, a girl the others turned to for settlement of minor disputes.

  And she'd become virtually indispensable in the hospital library, not to mention earning straight A's in her extension courses in library science. The little murderess has proved herself reliable, trustworthy, contrite, but no, Carl, it has never occurred to you she should be released.

  "Jeez, Bev…" Carl turns away, starts stroking his pointy little beard. The wimpy mustache wasn't enough; this year he sees himself as Freud. "I mean, what're we doing here if we're not preparing them for release? Isn't our purpose to save their broken little souls?"

  "Yes, of course… You furrow your brow. What a hoot, but you have to appear sincere. "Don't forget, Diana committed three murders, Carl. She axed her own mother. The public won't stand for it if all she's got to do is spend five years in cushy old Carlisle." I 'Think so, Bev? I'm not so sure myself."

  You can't believe it! He's actually thought the whole thing through! 11… those kinds of objections, you know, don't come from the public. It's the survivors who usually put up the stink. they write the judge. they lost their loved ones, and the killer's got to pay." Carl twinkles. "But here," he says, "we've got a unique situation. There are no survivors. There aren't any cousins, aunts, anyone who cared for any of them or even gave a rusty shit. Diana finished off her whole family. So what I anticipate is a quiet hearing in the judge's chambers with a sympathetic prosecutor going along. Let's go to the wall for her, Bev, and, while we're at it, show the state we can do what they pay us for.