Wallflower j-3

by William Bayer

  Tool worked; it could settle old accounts. Soon there would be fulfillment of a long-held cunning dream. Diana, riding home in a deserted subway car, felt the same dizzy exhaustion she had felt years before when she killed the female members of her family. It's hard and exacting work, but it has its pleasures, she reminded herself, as the train swayed side to side, hurtling through the tunnels.

  An hour later, having bathed and changed, Diana presented herself at Beverly's bedroom door, ready to report every detail of her outing.

  Beverly sat in her usual chair, the portrait of her mother looming above. She beckoned the girl into the room. Diana stood at stiff attention, and the debriefing ceremony began.

  At one point in the recitation, when Beverly inquired whether Tool found it necessary to conjure up an actual character in her life in order to bring herself to kill the homeless man, Diana raised her eyes for a moment to the face on the painting. Smiling knowingly to herself, she answered respectfully: "I took your advice, Doctor. I thought of Mother."

  You were very pleased with Tool for the way she recruited Jessica. And Jessica herself made a particularly lovely patient. If only you could harness her energy, you wished, as she droned on about seeing her father die in an exploding car. If only you could send her on missions, you yearned, as she explained how for years she couldn't bear to look out a window when someone was about to drive away.

  There was a special quality she had, one unfortunately that Tool lacked.

  It was the quality of seeming untamed, perhaps even being untamable. You knew you'd have to use drugs if you were ever to train her to do your bidding. The very notion of channeling her aggression, disciplining it so it could serve your purpose, definitely excited you. You had some delicious daydreams about that during several of her sessions, in which you imagined her being broken by degrees. Undoubtedly she stimulated such fantasies because she was so strong and competitive.

  Whenever you saw her, you got the kind of charge you imagine a horse trainer gets when confronted with a powerful Thoroughbred filly. Yes, it would he a real pleasure to make a champion out of this one, to teach her to kill for you on command. And it was her very inaccessibility on that level, the fact that you knew you could never make her into a tool, that fueled your "what if9" fantasies and made seeing her in sessions such a pleasure.

  Two women, Beverly Archer and Diana Proctor, stand toe to toe inches apart. Both are short, just a little more than five feet tall, but while Beverly is middle-aged and pudgy, Diana is young, lean, superbly conditioned, and extremely strong. Beverly's arms are flabby;

  Diana's are roped with muscle.

  Yet it is the weaker older woman who dominates the stronger, younger one. By the force of her intellect and the power of her dream she had made Diana her slave. And behind Beverly there stands always the life-size portrait of Victoria Archer, pushing, goading her daughter to forge Diana into the tool of her vengeance.

  The room where they stand is an oversize bedchamber situated on the second floor of Beverly Archer's Manhattan house. The painting of Victoria Archer takes up a large niche opposite the bed. It is illuminated with a reddish glow similar to one cast by the spotlight at the notorious Fairmount Club Lounge in Cleveland, Ohio, scene of Victoria Archer's greatest triumphs as a singer. During her nightclub singing career, red was Victofia's trademark color; she had naturally red hair, always wore a crimson dress, her entrances were keyed with a red spot, and pink light played upon her face while she sang. But her daughter's trademark color is different. She is just now in the process of explaining the difference to Diana. "You are my knight," she tells the girl, "and as such, you must wear your lady's colors."

  "What are your colors?" Diana asks humbly.

  Beverly glances up at the image of her mother, then back to Diana.

  "Black, all black, black on black," she responds.

  Diana Proctor, wearing outdoor clothing purchased out of a catalog from L. L. Bean and a nondescript light brown wig, proceeds as instructed to Grand Central Station in New York City, boards a noon train, then sits quietly with her backpack at her feet until, an hour and forty minutes later, the train pulls into New Haven, Connecticut.

  At a storefront near the railroad station, she rents a standard-size Chevrolet for a two-day period, telling the friendly clerk she intends to drive into Vermont to view the magnificent autumn foliage that has been well reported in the newspapers and on TV. She will most likely spend the night in a motel up there, she says, and then, getting an early start, return the car late the following morning in time to catch her 1:00 P.m. train back to Providence, where she is a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design.

  It's a cool Sunday afternoon in mid-October. As Diana drives her rented car into the Connecticut countryside, the sun glitters, and the sky, an intense shade of blue, makes a brilliant backdrop for the foliage now nearly at its peak. The passing woodlands, clusters of maple, oak, and ash, are russet and gold. Fallen leaves, in a multitude of hues, coat the lawns of homes, and trees, arching overhead, cause the sunlight to dapple the worn macadam roads.

  Diana's route, as traced by Beverly Archer on an Automobile Club map, takes her through the picturesque towns of Woodbury, Roxbury, and Washington Depot. She refills her gas tank at a Shell station in New Preston, then continues west, along the edge of Lake Waramaug, finally arriving at the town of Kent, Connecticut, a little past 4:00 P.m.

  Here she parks in a shopping center lot, takes a stroll, stops at a coffee shop, where she devours an egg salad sandwich and a large glass of Coke. After eating, she returns to her vehicle, hitches on her backpack, then proceeds to hike her way out of town. Shortly after crossing the Route 341 bridge, she passes the campus of the Kent School, an exclusive preparatory boarding school bordering the Housatonic River.

  Within an hour she arrives on foot at the main entrance to Macedonia Brook State Park.

  It is 6:00 P.m. when Diana enters the park, relieves herself at one of the portable toilets set up near the entrance, then quickly follows a trail heading north directly into the woods. Since the sign at the entrance instructs hikers that the park closes officially at sunset, Diana wishes to disappear into its wilderness as quickly as possible.

  Twenty minutes of rapid walking bring her to a small stone bridge that spans Macedonia Brook. But instead of crossing it, she consults her compass, turns off the trail, and begins to follow the water on a vector south through uncleared brush. Once she is certain she is alone, invisible to other hikers who might still be lingering on the trails behind, she unloads her backpack, takes a long sip of water from her canteen, then proceeds to strip off her brightly colored hiking gear and wig and change into her all-black executioner's garments. When she is fully dressed for the work she has come to perform, she hoists her pack up again, then follows the roaring brook back to the southern edge of the park.

  Here, abutting the wilderness, sits a nicely renovated white clapboard farmhouse. Only a hedge of bushes, a wire deer fence, and an old stone wall separate this residential weekend retreat from the parkland.

  In a place she carefully selected at the height of summer two months before, Diana takes off her pack, then sits upon it. She will wait at least four hours before moving closer to her prey. As darkness falls, the lights in the house come on, first in the kitchen, then on the front porch, then in the living and dining rooms. From time to time the forms of two men can be seen passing by uncovered windows or silhouetted against the translucent curtains that protect the rooms on the upper floor. As evening wears on, cooking smells, including the aroma of roasted lamb, reach Diana from the house. Sounds reach her, too: conversation; laughter; recorded music; television news. She waits patiently until the smells and sounds subside, until the downstairs and finally the bedroom lights go off. Then she stands, stretches, and carefully straps two bolstered ice picks to her forearms, and her usual glue and wallflower pack around her waist.

  The moon, showing a three-quarters face, illuminates the woods
. Diana climbs over the ruined stone wall that separates the park from the property belonging to the house. Using a pliers, she separates a portion of the deer fence from a tree, slips in, makes her way through the hedge, then emerges finally onto cleared land.

  Crossing the lawn, she resembles an apparition, her black clothing blending with the shadows cast by the trees, her shaven head, reflecting moonlight, shining amidst the darkness all around. In the forest behind an owl hoots. The only other sound is of rushing water, a tributary of Macedonia Brook that crosses the property to cascade over a small waterfall on the far side of the house.

  Diana has no difficulty entering the premises. On her reconnaissance visit over the summer she discovered a ground-floor lavatory window with a broken lock. Lynxlike she pulls herself through this opening, then drops silently to the tile floor inside. The owners, brothers, own no pets. This night, she is grateful, she will not have to kill any dogs.

  A muttony aroma, which she smelled earlier outside, still permeates the interior. Passing through the kitchen, she notices an empty wine bottle on the counter. She presses her hand against the front of the dishwasher, feeling a familiar warmth. Then, pausing at the kitchen window, she stares out across the lawn. She can see the hedge she passed through on her way in, but the woods behind are lost in darkness.

  The first step of the old stairs creaks when she places her foot upon it. It will not be possible, she understands, to ascend and make her kills silently one at a time. She hesitates. Unfortunately there is always an unexpected complication. This time it's the bedrooms. The house is old, eccentrically built and renovated, and thus difficult for her to map out in her mind. She tries to visualize where the bedrooms will be in relation to the top of the stairs. On the basis of observations made earlier from the woods outside, she comes up with a reasonable guess.

  Still standing on the first step, she works out a strategy. She will rush up, execute the brother in the bedroom on the left, then wait for the other brother to come into the first one's room to see what the commotion is about. Doctor will want to know about this, and myriad details more: what it felt like to rush up the stairs; how many steps it took to reach the bedroom from the landing; the position of the first brother in his bed; a description of his nightclothes; whether his window was open; the smell of him; the sounds he makes (if any) as he dies; how he looks when he's stripped for gluing; the exact size and shape of his genitals; the feel and weight of them in her gloved hands.

  Diana, coiling to attack, prepares herself to take mental photographs of all that will transpire. She has proposed to Doctor several times that she bring along a camera to document details. But Doctor wants no part of mechanical documentation. "You are my camera," Doctor has said. "It's your point of view, the killer's view, that interests me. Not that of a neutral machine."

  The sound of a cough from the second floor. Diana freezes on the first step. Perhaps one or both of the brothers are still awake.

  But no difference-she has killed awake people before.

  Suddenly she leaps, taking the stairs two at a time, bounds off them onto the springy pine floor of the landing, twirls martial arts-style, then barges through the half-open doorway to her left. A blubbery middle-aged man, lying naked in his bed, is in the process of raising himself up as she bursts in.

  "Who the hell-?" She notes the explosion of fear in his eyes as she punches at him with her fist, violently knocking back his head with the blow. Before he can recover, she thrusts her first ice pick up through the exposed portion of his throat, then shoves it with all her force deep into the soft tissue of his brain.

  She hears a sound, turns, sees the second brother standing in the doorway. Their eyes meet for a moment, and then he flees. She is at his heels as he rushes into the bathroom, then desperately attempts to shut her out. She aims her foot at one of the door panels, kicks full force, splintering the wood. The man, middle-aged, paunchy, balding, backs up against the toilet. He stares at her and at her ice pick, terrified. She stops all motion, meets his gaze.

  "You must be Stu MacDonald," she said softly.

  The man shakes his head. "I'm Jimmy. That was Stu in the other room."

  Diana shrugs. "Doesn't matter. He's gotten his. Your turn now."

  "What do you want? What are you going to do?" Jimmy MacDonald whimpers hoarsely. "Please, miss, there's money in the house. Art objects. A valuable coin collection. I'll give you all of it if you'll go away, spare-"

  Diana shakes her head. "No mercy tonight," she intones.

  Jimmy nods. "Yes, I see that. No mercy… He tries to speak calmly in the hope that by so doing, he will gain himself several extra seconds of life. "Could you at least tell me why, miss? Why you want to hurt us?"

  "Doctor."

  "Doctor? Who's the doctor?" Jimmy becomes angry. He screws up his eyes. "What the hell kind of doctor are you talking about?"

  "Dr. Beverly Archer."

  At first Jimmy's eyes cloud with confusion. Then a small flicker of remembrance ignites som' ewhere deep within.

  "Bev Archer? But that was so long ago. Must be twenty-five years. Surely she doesn't still think.,. because it wasn't us, you know. It was set up. She ought to talk to her-" Jimmy shakes his head. "Bev can't still be angry over that." Oh, she's angry!

  Diana feigns an attack with her second pick, then waits for Jimmy to raise his hands in a posture of defense. When he does, she punches at him through the opening, hitting him hard in the center of his stomach.

  As he chokes and doubles over, she stabs him through the window of his right eye, then thrusts her pick deep into the mushy substance within his skull.

  The killing done, Diana calmly switches on lights in order to examine her handiwork. Jimmy lies on his side, ruby red blood pulsing from his eye socket across the white tiles and into the grout lines of the bathroom floor. In the bedroom Stu MacDonald lies sprawled out on his back, half on, half off his bed. Diana takes mental pictures of their positions, for she knows the kinds of questions Doctor will ask.

  Both killings together have taken her a total of ninety-seven seconds.

  Not bad, she thinks, for such a complicated house. Moreover, she has engaged for the first time in actual dialogue with a quarry, a unique experience she is eager to share. Even as she prepares the brothers for gluing, she imagines the keen expression that will transfix Doctor's face when she describes the confusion slowly giving way to recognition in Jimmy MacDonald's frightened eyes.

  An hour later, having glued up both brothers and collected two new trophies of her hunt, Diana drives one of their vehicles, a gray Jeep Wagoneer, back into the town of Kent. When she emerges from the Jeep, she is wearing the same nondescript light brown wig and L. L.

  Bean hiking clothes she wore earlier in the day. She transfers her backpack into her rental car parked in the shopping center lot, then, careful to observe all traffic regulations, drives back across the Route 341 bridge, continuing this time into New York State and on to a preselected spot far off the main road where she can park safely, curl up, and get some sleep.

  The next morning, on her way back to New Haven, Diana decides to make a brief side trip. She does so in full knowledge that should she confess this unauthorized detour to Doctor, she will be severely punished. s Nonetheless, passing so close to Derby, Connecticut, he feels the need to look again at Carlisle Hospital. The place means much to her. Having been incarcerated there on account of the ax murders of her mother, grandmother, and sister, she spent five relatively happy years in intensive therapy before a judge signed an order for her release. Departing from her designated route, she follows the side road that leads to the institution, then stops her car a hundred feet from the main gate, turns off the ignition, and stares in through the sturdy wire fencing that surrounds the grounds. Far in the distance, between the red-brick main treatment building and the gray cinder-block residence known as A, she makes out a small group of young men an d women playing touch foothall in a field. they are much too far away to recogni
ze, a good thing, too, since she knows well the awkwardness of meetings between former patients and patients still confined.

  As she watches, a man exits the door of the main treatment building and walks to a second building, which houses the manual therapy shop, Diana recognizes this person on account of his stride. He is chief psychiatrist Dr. Carl Drucker, a gentle man with merry eyes and a funny, pointed beard who, in her last months at Carlisle, assured her she was cured.

  Now something bittersweet wells up within Diana as she remembers Dr.

  Drucker's kindness and watches the young people in the distance at their play. She thinks nostalgically of the years she spent in this institution, happy, lighthearted years. And although she acknowledges the enormous debt of gratitude she owes to Doctor for her release, there is a side of her that wishes she were still locked up inside.

  Tears well in her eyes as she recalls her life here, how she was permitted to wear her hair long, to roam freely about the grounds, to meet, talk, perform, and make friends without having always to ask permission in advance. Now in the city every moment of her life existence is regulated, bounded by Doctor's demands to perform missions and bring back trophies of her kills. Am I free now? she asks herself. She doesn't know the answer. But peering through the locked gates of Carlisle, she fondly remembers carefree days within.

  There is but an hour of light left after a warm October day, an Indian summer day in Manhattan. Two young women, one short and dark, the other tall and blond, stand on a bluff in Riverside Park overlooking the Hudson River. Although both wear workout clothes, tank tops and running shorts, the taller woman's garments are brightly colored, while the shorter one's are totally black.

  The short dark-haired girl is holding a bow. She has notched an arrow in its string and is demonstrating the pull to her taller friend.

  Very slowly she pulls the arrow back. At full extension she holds it poised for flight. She stands this way for what seems an eternity, both hands steady, the bow not moving, and then, very slowly, she raises the bow upward in an arc so that the arrow is pointed directly at the sun. Again she holds her position. Then, suddenly, she lets the arrow fly. For a moment it shows black against the dark orange solar disk. Then it disappears from sight.