“You have no core beliefs?” she asked.
“Sure. A short list, as vague as I can make it, not written down anywhere. Let’s see. Kind is better than cruel—I’m sure of that. Loose is better than rigid. Love is better than indifference. So is hate. Laughing is the best. Not laughing will kill you. Alone is okay. Not alone is way better. That’s about it…and in my life so far there’s not a single one of them that’s always been true.”
She was looking thoughtful. “And that’s why Zandor is more comfortable around you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Because I may not know much, but at least I know everybody is an asshole.”
“Huh?”
“Everybody alive knows, deep down, that they’re an asshole. And they are. I defy you to name anyone who ever lived who wasn’t an asshole. Being one comes with having one. But nearly everybody is such an asshole, they think assholes are a minority. They think they’re one of a mere handful of them—so they work like crazy to keep anyone from finding out their secret shame: that they’re one of the assholes. I came to terms with being an asshole twenty or thirty years ago. Since then I’ve been working on being a pleasant one.”
Half a klick or so of silence. Then: “I have to say I think you’ve achieved it.”
I had to laugh. I think it was the first thing she ever said to me for that purpose. When you find a cactus, water it. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Anyway, the more you can relax said sphincter, both literally and figuratively, the closer Zudie will be able to approach you without wanting to bang his head on the floor. And pot helps with that.”
“I guess we’re not going to be meeting face to face, then,” she said, and went back to her useless, suspenders-and-belt taping of the wrong side of the road.
About half an hour later, as we were passing through Whistler, she asked, “How did he ever manage to keep people far enough away when you were in college with him?”
“Well, he was a lot less sensitive back then.”
“Still.”
So I explained about Smelly. Or tried to. It took awhile; she kept asking questions that made me back up two steps and try again. I think I finally succeeded in giving her a pretty good picture of Zudie as I had first known him, and the ways we had worked out to cope with the unique problems he presented. But I failed completely in explaining why I had bothered. She simply could not understand how I could have tolerated something so profoundly offensive as foul odor, and in retrospect I could not really explain it myself.
“I guess,” I said finally, “part of it is that until Zudie came along, I was always the weirdest guy in the room. Next to him I looked practically normal. I knew what it was like to be him, at least a little more than other people did. I knew what it was like to be loathed for things you couldn’t help—and I could tell his stench was something he just couldn’t help, even though I didn’t have a clue why not.”
She spotted a possible turnoff, and started taping. I slowed to help. “Back then you never figured out he could read minds?”
I resumed speed. “By the time we went our separate ways I guess I suspected it. But no, I didn’t really know it until a few days ago when he came crashing back into my life and told me. Because he’d just met the devil himself.”
She nodded. “That’s about what it would take to get me to open my mouth, if I were Zudie.”
“I keep coming back to him in my mind,” I admitted. “Allen, I mean. Part of me thinks it’s too glib to just write him off as the devil. But I just don’t know what else to do with him. What makes a man become so inhuman? Or was he ever human to start with? Do you know anything about serial killers, Nika?”
“A little,” she said. “I studied under an expert for a little while. Not long enough, but—”
“Wow—Kim Rossmo?”
“You know him?” I had impressed her.
“Uh, yeah. Know of him, at least. He got screwed.”
“God damn right he did.”
A few years ago, Vancouver had, ever so briefly, a Chief of Police competent and fit to preside over a world-class police force, named Ray Canuel. Unfortunately he didn’t get one. Perhaps I can convey both how good he was, and why he never had a chance of lasting more than a year, simply by reporting that his very first official act as Chief was to march in the city’s Gay Pride Parade. Before the old boys’ network turfed him out of there, Chief Canuel promoted the best criminal profiler in North America—Kim Rossmo—the first Canadian police officer with a doctorate in criminology—from constable to detective-inspector, and let him set up a criminal profiling unit that won acclaim and awards around the world. Rossmo was so good, the RCMP had to stand in line behind the FBI, CIA and NSA to talk to him. He was so good, in fact, that there began to seem some danger he might actually solve the single greatest disgrace haunting the Vancouver Police Department, and catch the sick bastard who’d been picking off local prostitutes like game birds for the past decade or two. Fortunately, relentless police work managed to turn up a bullshit pretext to fire Detective Inspector Rossmo, just like the chief who’d hired him, before such shame could come to the city’s finest. There was no serial killer, the department insisted angrily. Any more than there was a drug supermarket a block from police headquarters. The hooker killer kept working for several more years, burying a total of 67—known—victims on his pig farm in Picton, before he finally tripped over his own dick and carelessly provided the police too much evidence for even them to ignore.
“Did he give you any kind of handles on someone like Allen? What sort of weaknesses or blind spots he might have?”
She took her time answering. “I don’t think so. If what Zudie’s told me is true, he doesn’t fit any of the patterns I’m familiar with. Nobody’s genes are that defective, nobody’s childhood could be toxic enough to account for him. I don’t know any pathology or circumstance or combination of them that would—that could—produce something like him. I don’t think Detective Inspector Rossmo does, either. I don’t think there’s ever been one like Allen before.”
“Really? Jesus.” That was dismaying.
“Except in the movies. Hannibal Lecter. Fu Manchu. That’s just what I mean: he’s more like an archetype than a real person. A genius ghoul. A brilliant monster. In real life, monsters tend to be morons, brutal goons like the Pig Farm guy or Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“Ted Bundy?” I countered.
“Bundy only looks brilliant compared to other serial killers. Trust me, he was an idiot. Just a glib one. But this Allen—the way Zudie tells it, he’s a Picasso of pain. Aristotle of agony. A genuine evil genius. I didn’t think they existed.” She frowned and thought some more. “I’m not saying he’s unique, necessarily. But if there are others like him, I suspect they usually tend to gravitate toward jobs like Official Torturer for a tyrant, where they don’t get studied.”
“Part of the downside of being such a successful species,” I said.
“I don’t follow you.”
“When you have nearly six billion people in the world, it simply stops being possible to say what behavior is and is not human. I mean, if somebody is a one-in-a-million freak…that means we have thirty-five just like him right here in Canada. And another three hundred and some odd down in America. A one-in-a-billion freak like Dahmer, there are enough kindred spirits left to form a basketball team.”
“There’s no telling how many Allens there are in the world right now, is there?” she said.
I gave it some thought, and winced. “No. All we really know for sure is how many have happened to pass within a few hundred meters of Zudie in the last fifty years. And we have no way of knowing whether he’s the Einstein of his kind, or just run of the mill.”
She literally shuddered.
“What?”
She shook her head and turned away as if to tape a possible turnoff.
“Dammit, Nika, what?”
Slowly she faced forward again. “I just wonder how m
any of them have found each other on the fucking internet already. Maybe they have a chat group.”
I was sorry I’d pressed her. That thought soured the whole rest of the ride back to Vancouver. I kept telling myself, and Nika, that anyone who hated as volcanically as Allen did would hate another Allen most of all, but I never quite convinced either of us. Just about all we knew about Allen, besides his grim hobby, was that he was into computers.
11.
I was willing to drive Nika all the way back into town to the cop-shop parking lot, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I admit I didn’t struggle much. So instead I stopped at Horseshoe Bay and got in line for the ferry home to Heron Island, and she took the bus from there to downtown Vancouver.
As soon as I was parked in line—a long one; the commuters were going home, now—I used the new cell phone I’d bought that morning to phone my old cell phone. Zudie answered so quickly I knew he’d been waiting for my call. I told him we had plenty of tape for him to look at. “Do you have a VCR out there on Coveney?”
“Of course.”
“Compatible with these tapes?”
“Russell, you consulted me before buying the gear, remember?”
“Sorry. It’s been a long day of driving.”
“I wish you had a boat. I could get started right away.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I know a guy who has a place over on the north side of the island, where nobody lives. He’s a Buddhist monk and a poet, and this funky hideaway cabin of his is accessible in exactly two ways: by small boat, or by this seriously gnarly woods trail that winds about a mile and a half downhill through leg-breaker country. I’m certain there’s nobody within, oh, a kilometer in any direction. And he’s in Thailand right now.”
“That sounds promising. How do I find it?”
“Well, it’s between Apodaca Point and Eagle Cliff Beach, closer to the point than the beach. The cabin’s right on the water, tin roof, tall chimney. No others near it. There’s a crummy little half-crumbled dock, marked by a big white styrofoam float so you can find it at dusk. Once I get off the ferry at Bug Cove, I could be there in another…well, call it forty-five minutes if I don’t break an ankle.”
“I’ll find it,” he promised.
And kept his promise. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I didn’t make it onto the next ferry sailing, and so had to wait another hour. (Part of living on an island is that all ETAs are plus or minus at least one hour.) That made it late enough by the time I started down that trail that it took me nearly twice as long to negotiate as it might have in better light.
But Zudie was there waiting for me when I got to the place, up on the second floor balcony where a quirk of landscape allowed us a view of the setting sun to the west. “Your Buddhist friend is very special,” he greeted me. “He’s at home in his skin.”
“Wow,” I said, “you can tell that? Amazing. I don’t really understand how your gift works, I guess. Is it like his thoughts leave echoes, or something?”
He stared at me. “I used my eyes,” he said gently.
“Oh.” I felt foolish. He was right: one look around told you the man who lived in this stark Zen place needed no distractions from himself, the way the rest of us do.
“How did you and Constable Nika get along in a small enclosed space all day?”
I shrugged. “Not bad, considering.”
“Considering?”
“She thinks marijuana is a dangerous drug.”
He sighed and nodded. “I found it extremely unpleasant to be within a hundred yards of her.”
“We worked it out.”
We stood side by side and watched sunset approach. “To be fair,” I heard myself say, “she’s not really so bad. Considering what she is, and where she comes from, she could be a lot worse.”
“Yes,” he said. “She could.”
“George of Jungle have secret weapon: Dumb Luck.”
Another minute of silence. Then: “Do you think she’ll really insist on trying to bring him in for kidnapping?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know. Will she?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because she doesn’t know.”
“Oh.” Great. “Well, if you want my guess, I think she’ll come through when it comes to the crunch. I think she’ll talk herself into shooting the son of a bitch by the time we have the chance. But I can’t be sure.”
“I really hope you’re right,” he said.
“Me too.”
“Because there’s no way in hell the two of you together can take Allen, if you give him the slightest chance.”
“Jesus, Zudie!”
“I’m serious, Russell. Trust me on this, all right? Backshoot him, the second your sights bear, or I promise he will kill you for days. Longer days than you can possibly imagine.”
Suddenly the sunset wasn’t pretty any more. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “My Maglite batteries are nearly shot.”
Zudie said, “I’ll call you when I spot the place on this tape.”
“‘When,’ not ‘if’?”
“If you shot it, I’ll spot it,” he said.
We went down to the tiny dock together. He got in his little boat, cast off bow and stern lines, said “Thank you,” to a comment I had not made aloud, and went pooting away to the east. My Maglite batteries lasted just long enough, and half an hour later I parked in front of my home and got out.
I was surprised to discover how glad I was to be back home. I stood for a few moments looking at the place before I went inside, seeing it almost as if for the first time. For some time now, it had not really seemed an intrinsically great place to be. But it was, I suddenly realized, it really was—one of the nicer spots on an island so preternaturally beautiful that year in and year out, rich people traveled thousands of miles to stand around and envy us for living there. My house was not large, but adequate to my needs and very sturdy and sound; it didn’t let water in or heat out, all its gadgets worked fine, and its layout was agreeable. It was quite a nice house, really, when I thought about it. It was not its fault Susan no longer lived in it. It had done everything it could to keep her alive, just as I had.
And, I realized, if it had been a moldering hulk on a toxic-waste dump site it would have been a more agreeable place to be than the site I had spent the day searching for. From time to time, as we’d explored the mouths of possible access roads, I had allowed my imagination to dwell on what we might actually find at the end of the one we were looking for, once we had identified it. I had let myself picture the site, and the kinds of evidence we might find there—hoped to find there, God help us. Now, in this peaceful rustic spot, those images were hard to believe.
I went in the house and made myself one of the five meals I’d had the sense to learn from Susan before she left, I forget which one, and ate it, and put the ingredients away and the dishes in the dishwasher. Then I went out on the sundeck and drank coffee laced with Irish whiskey and listened to a Dianne Reeves CD I’d gotten myself for my last birthday while I watched the stars come out. There is no cruelty in her universe. At least none she can’t outsing. While she sang, time hovered. Vehicles went rumbling slowly by a few times, but only one even entered my driveway, and only to turn around; I never got a glimpse of it. Nobody called on the phone. I couldn’t remember what shows were on TV tonight, and didn’t give a shit.
All the shows I liked, I suddenly realized, were basically cartoon versions of the battle between good and evil. They palled now that I was involved in the real thing.
I found it amazing, as I sat there, how little I doubted that I was. Allen was a cartoon monster villain if ever there was one, and absolutely the only proof I had that he was any more real than Freddy or Jason was the word of a known whackadoo who claimed he could read minds. Sure, he’d produced proofs…but so has every carny huckster who ever worked that line. It’s not hard. I had spent my life refusing to believe in anything t
hat couldn’t be proven with a double-blind test—did I even have a theory for how telepathy could possibly work, let alone a way to test it? And even if Zudie was a telepath, where was it written that telepaths couldn’t be mistaken? How could I be certain whether what he’d seen in Allen’s mind was real, or a vivid fantasy racing through the mind of some nerd who thought he was dying, a porn version of Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”?
I was certain. And not because a tough-minded cop was convinced too, either. I just was. Because Zudie said he was. I knew he was a telepath. I’d known it thirty years ago.
As I mused, Fraidy stuck her head out from under the stairs at the far end of the sundeck, and cased the world.
I’ve already mentioned my cat Horsefeathers, but actually I have one and a half cats. Fraidy is the half. She was there when Susan and I came. She’s a feral cat, and terribly damaged. The most obvious symptom is her useless, milk-white right eye. Think what it must be like to be a predator and lack depth perception, to be uncertain whether objects are approaching or receding.
But if you watch her a while you can see Fraidy has even more profound problems. Her sense of smell is poor, for one thing: I’ve seen her have to hunt for the food dish if it’s been moved, and she has to get close to Horsefeathers before she positively identifies him and stands down from battle stations. But what’s actually remarkable is that she’s able to place him at all. I’ve been feeding her daily for many years, now, and she has never once let me come closer than three meters, despite numerous attempts and endless patience. Even Susan only managed to touch her once, for no more than a few gentle strokes, and Susan could charm a baby away from a glass of beer.
I don’t think Fraidy remembers who any human is, from one day to the next. I don’t think she has any long-term memory storage at all, except possibly for other cats. I think from her point of view, every night she identifies a chink in my defenses, boldly sneaks past my perimeter, robs me of a whole dish full of catfood that happens to be sitting there next to my own cat’s, and then makes good her daring escape while my attention is diverted. I can’t prove it, but that’s the way she behaves.
Very Bad Deaths Page 16
