Mindkiller

by Spider Robinson

  Norman brought them up to date, beginning with Lois’s first request for a separation and including his botched suicide, Maddy’s arrival and disappearance, and subsequent events. The Bear interrupted frequently with questions, Minnie more seldom.

  “Argyle, Barrington area, huh? Pedestrians around there all night long on a Saturday.”

  “And a little bit of residential. Enough so that a scream could not go unheard.”

  The Bear nodded. “Two blocks over nobody’d pay any attention. But right there it’d cause phone calls. And you’re sure she didn’t know anyone in Halifax well enough to get into a car with them at 1:00 A.M.?”

  “No one in North America. Except Charlie, who was occupied.”

  “And alibied by many witnesses,” Bear clarified. “So, that leaves two possibilities.”

  “Psycho cabbie or rogue cop.”

  “Right. Nowhere except in the crap I write do you take an armed and able-bodied citizen off a public street with no fuss at all. Only a fool would try it. And from what you say, she could take care of herself. You checked out both angles?”

  Norman produced a file folder from his desk, took two sheets of paper out, and gave one to each. “This is the poster I put up everywhere a cabbie might conceivably see one. It’s got a good recent picture, her description and the circumstances of her disappearance, and my phone number. While I was putting them up I questioned all the dispatchers and half the drivers in town. I pieced together people’s memories and accounted for every driver seen in that area during that time, with some computer assistance.”

  “That leaves a cop.” The Bear frowned. “Hard to track.”

  “Sergeant Amesby at Missing Persons brought up that theory before I could think of a graceful way to phrase it. He’s been running his own check with a lot better data, and he comes up empty too.”

  “Yeah, but is he really looking?”

  “I’ve been living in Amesby’s pocket for months. I know him. He looked.”

  “A cop with no partner can fake his whereabouts.”

  “Not so Amesby couldn’t catch it. Believe me, Bear, he’s good.”

  “Most fortunate. We’ll dismiss the notion of a citizen in a cop suit.”

  “That he sewed himself, right.” He passed them the rest of the folder’s contents, mostly press clippings and blowup facials of Madeleine taken over a period of fifteen years. “The firm she worked for in Zurich supplied some company videotapes with footage of Maddy in them, and I had stills made.”

  “You got terrific coverage,” Minnie observed.

  “Saturation. A woman named Saint Phillip has been very helpful. No woman in the Maritimes has died mysteriously without a paragraph mentioning that police do not believe this case is connected with the disappearance of Madeleine Kent, followed by a three-paragraph synopsis. I’ve been on all three local stations and the CBC twice each. Lots of results, none worth talking about.”

  The Bear finished off the joint and lay back thoughtfully into the chair. “Well,” he said, gazing at the ceiling, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, et cetera. So a total nut pulls up to the curb, shoots a total stranger in the head with a silenced gat—”

  “In the back of the head. She went armed, and she was fast.”

  “Right. Yanks her into his car before anybody comes around the corner, and departs at a moderate speed, takes her out up into the maples. He’s local, woods-wise enough to find a spot where no one will walk—which is much harder than a city killer could imagine—and he’s immensely strong, because he can haul the corpse of a pretty big woman to that spot without aid. In the dark. Oh, goat berries, I don’t believe it for a second.” He grimaced ferociously.

  “Wait a minute,” Minnie objected. “Why does it have to be woods, just because there’s so much of ’em around here? How about that business from your last, darling? The newly poured concrete?”

  The Bear nodded. “And the psycho who happens to have unrestricted access. You will recall that I didn’t put my own name on that one.”

  “But I mean what about some urban or suburban disposal site?”

  The Bear looked pained. “Darling, this was summer.”

  “Oh. That’s right. Well, what about the harbor?”

  “Darling, remember how many summer Friday nights we tried to find a spot along the water uncrowded enough to make love? Imagine trying to dump a corpse. You might pull it off—but would you bet on it?”

  Norman suddenly smiled. “You know, except for Amesby, you two are the first people I’ve spoken to since Maddy left that don’t use euphemisms. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  The Bear grinned back at him. “Damn straight. Not many people are understanding enough not to be understanding. You, for instance, are not one of those offensively oversolicitous hosts, who fusses about making sure one’s glass is full and offering one coffee and such.”

  Norman shook his head sadly. “How can you live with such a snide bastard, Min?” He got up and headed for the coffee-maker.

  “I beat him regularly.”

  “Damn straight,” the Bear agreed. “I keep thinking: this time I’m gonna fill that straight.”

  “You fill practically anything, dear.” They grinned lewdly at each other.

  “I’m about ready to fill a straitjacket myself,” Norman called from the kitchen. “You two still take cinnamon?”

  “Yeah.”

  He came back with three coffees and cake on a tray. “So what all this comes d—what are you doing?”

  The Bear was lighting another joint. “Dr. Withbert’s famous bluesectomy procedure. First get nuked with good friends, then…haven’t we done this before?”

  Norman hesitated. It was a Friday night, but…“I’ve been keeping myself on a short leash the last few months. The accumulated stash—”

  “Is what we came a thousand miles to drain,” Minnie said firmly. “Listen to the doctor.”

  “Remember the Ukrainian proverb,” the Bear boomed. “‘The church is near—but the roads are icy. The tavern is far—but I will walk carefully.’ How long has it been since your last confession, my son?”

  Norman remembered, and set down the coffee. “Gimme that joint.”

  “So what this all left me with,” he went on a few puffs later, “was the natural logarithm of one.”

  “I still like the rogue-cop idea,” Bear said, gulping coffee. “Who else could be confident of getting away with it?”

  “Maybe,” Minnie said, “but the trouble with any psycho theory, cop or civilian, is that psychos usually aren’t one-shots. They keep on performing until they get caught. But you say there’s been nothing with a similar MO—”

  “Psychos make their own patterns, my love,” the Bear said drily. “Maybe he takes six months to wind up to each one. Maybe he’s wealthy and does this in a different city each week for sport.”

  “I don’t buy either one,” Minnie persisted.

  “So what’s left?”

  “Well, if it’s not a flat-out killcrazy, it’s got to be someone she’d lower her guard for. Norm, how would she react if, say, a carful of women offered her a lift?”

  “She’s like me, she loves to walk. It was a beautiful night. She’d spent the last ten years in Europe, Minnie. I don’t think she’d accept a ride from any stranger.”

  “Hey,” the Bear said, sitting erect with some difficulty. “How about that? Somebody from Switzerland?” He frowned again. “He locates her at 1:00 A.M. on a Friday night without asking memorable questions of anyone she knew here. Bear, you are a jackass. Forgive me.”

  Norman squinted at the Bear. “That last joint get you high?”

  His old friend recognized the beginning of a litany that had been written in the jungle years before, grinned, and gave the antiphon. “Nah. You?”

  Norman frowned and stuck out his lower lip. “Nah.”

  The Bear shook his head sadly. “Cheap weed.”

  “Blacksk
in man give me bad deal.”

  “Burned again.”

  “Yeah, Sarge.”

  “Only one thing to do.”

  “Check.”

  The Bear produced the pack, and they chorused, “Smoke some more!”

  Minnie had endured all this with patience and, since she had not heard it in three years, some amusement. “Count me out, thanks. I’m not about to try and keep up with you two.”

  But by the time the third joint was half consumed, the smiles had faded and the topic remained. “I kind of liked the Switzerland angle myself. She was hanging around with some very comfortably fixed people, and she dropped a few teasers about an unhappy affair. But Amesby’s got some friends at Interpol that he respects, and anybody Amesby respects I respect, and they come up empty. As near as we can learn, no one she dealt with in business had any motive to have her kidnapped or hit. It wasn’t that kind of business. Electrical supply, micro-electronics widgetry and software, related items. They have an excellent reputation, as a stodgily honest old firm, just big enough to be unambitious. Harbin-Schellmann is the name, I think. They were sorry to see her go, but not that kind of sorry. Anyway, as you say, a Swiss hit squad passing through town would be bound to leave spoor. So that’s out too.” He took the last toke, held it awhile with his eyes closed. “So I consulted a couple of psychics.”

  The Bear opened his mouth and then closed it firmly. Minnie only nodded. “What’d you get?” she asked.

  “The first one was recommended by the RCMP, they’d worked with him several times with pretty good results. He was about sixty and looked like a grocery store clerk, dressed like one, everything. He was very irritable, very disinclined to try and like you. That made me suspect he might be into something.”

  Minnie nodded. “Nurses have to learn that one. Patients are clients, problems you try hard to solve. You become their friend only if they’ve got to have one, and then you get chewed up some.”

  “I saw it happen with Lois. I think she got a shade too good at disassociating.”

  “We’ll carve that one next,” Minnie said firmly. “Let’s close up this one first. What did the psychic say?”

  “How much did he ask?” the Bear wanted to know.

  “He got every known salient fact out of me—he said straight out that as far as he was concerned his only talent was for having very reliable hunches, which required all available data at a minimum. He got things out of me about Maddy that I hadn’t known I remembered. Then he…well, it sounds anticlimactic, but he just seemed to sit there and think about it awhile.”

  “While you were watching?” Bear asked.

  “I saw him forget me. Except as part of the puzzle, I mean. After about ten extremely boring minutes he told me that Maddy was in a house, a private home, on the order of a hundred and fifty klicks from here. Direction uncertain. Two men were with her. He said he didn’t feel any hostility or violence or aggression in them, but their relationship to Maddy was not clear. He said she came through as so passive that she might have been drugged or simply ill. She had not been physically harmed or mistreated, and she wasn’t being interrogated. He said there was a large body of water right out in front of the house, but he couldn’t tell whether it was the Bay of Fundy or the Atlantic or what. One other house in sight nearby, uninhabited. He told me that it was a very beautiful spot, woods all around the house and a brook nearby that was unsafe to drink. He said he had not felt any fear from Madeleine. He apologized for the fact that all this information was perfectly useless, and he charged me fifteen dollars for an hour of his time.”

  “Do you think he was into something?” the Bear asked, leaning forward intently.

  Norman shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Bear. I was straining not to be skeptical, and I found I didn’t have to strain so hard. I’ll stipulate that he’s sincere. But I just don’t know. The damned evidence always turns out to be unobtainable, doesn’t it? But I keep getting this funny feeling. Like the story makes so little sense that it makes sense.” He giggled. “Does that make sense?”

  “It butters no parsnips,” the Bear said, sitting back. “What’d the second one say?”

  “The second one was recommended by some friends of Lois’s, which made it harder to be open-minded. But I was desperate. He religioned it up a good deal more. He said ‘cosmic’ and ‘universal’ a bit too often to suit me, but—”

  “So did Gandhi,” Minnie interjected.

  “Right. He shaved his head and wore fake Tibetan clothes from Eaton’s and one gold earring and he had no last name, but I have no really valid reason to sneer at any of those things either. And even if I did, nothing says a jerk can’t be psychic.” Norman rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He was strange. Kind of…well, I started to say ‘wild-eyed,’ but that’s not accurate. He looked…subtly wrong somehow, off-register in some indefinable way. You had the feeling that at any moment you would put your finger on it. It kept you just a little bit off balance, but he didn’t seem to realize that or exploit it in any way.

  “Anyway. His rap…” Norman consulted some notes from the folder. “He said she was in a motel, no idea where or how far away but definitely not in Halifax Metro. Two men were with her, and she loved them both very much. He thought they might be her brothers until I told him she had none but me. Anyway, she was not being held against her will, she very much wanted to be there and was having a wonderful time. She had not been in the motel for very long, she had been brought there recently from the country.”

  The Bear’s eyes flashed and he shifted his weight in the beanbag chair.

  “Right. Let’s see, right at that point he reversed himself a little on location, said the motel was definitely somewhere in the Annapolis Valley. I asked him how he knew and he said he ‘recognized the spiritual flavor of the region.’ He said she had just come from somewhere up over the mountain, very close to the Bay. He repeated that she loved and trusted the two men very much.”

  “Did he mention if they were Swiss?”

  “He said he couldn’t feel them at all directly, only Maddy’s perceptions of them. I told him a little about her background and asked if he could get their nationality, but all he could say was that she thought about them in English. All the rest of this, by the way, he gave me with no information whatsoever, using only a picture of her and a rosary of hers he had me fetch along.”

  “All he had to do was read a paper or watch the news,” the Bear noted.

  “I know, I know. He said he hadn’t, but who knows? But honestly, it was hard to picture him reading the crime news. Anyway, he—”

  “What’s this about a rosary?” Minnie interrupted.

  “He’d asked me over the phone if I had access to any small ‘religious objects’ belonging to the missing person. She had a rosary our mother gave her when she was a little girl, I’d run across it in her things. He said that would be fine, bring it along.”

  “Point for him,” she muttered. “Go on.”

  Norman consulted his notes. “That’s about it. Oh, wait, he said one man seemed to be the dominant one, smarter or stronger than the other. The other deferred to him. That was all he got, and for his fee he made me donate two hundred New dollars to the UN Disaster Fund. He wouldn’t take a cent himself.”

  “A motel in the valley…” Minnie said thoughtfully.

  “A week later,” Norman continued, “the first man called me back. He said he’d seen the same house again, in a dream this time. He said it was empty now, but it was a very clear night and so now he could make out New Brunswick on the horizon, pick out the lights of a large city against the sky.”

  “Fundy shore,” the Bear breathed. “Up over the mountain from the Annapolis Valley. It fits.” He interlocked his big fingers and played tug-of-war with himself; his triceps bulged, then relaxed. “No help. Blue sky pieces.”

  “Eh?”

  “You know him and puzzles,” Minnie said. “The two stories don’t contradict; they interlock pretty
good, like jigsaw pieces. But they’re blue sky pieces: no useful informational content.”

  “Except in context,” the Bear agreed. “Which we don’t have yet. I assume your Lieutenant Amesby checked with Valley RCMP?”

  “Sergeant. Of course he did—I tell you, the man is good at what he does. Good enough that I can’t understand what he’s doing in the Halifax Police Department. In addition to that, I had copies of the poster put in every bank, credit union, post office, and Liquor Commission outlet from Digby to Wolfville. Result: the cube root of fuck-all.”

  “Plus the number of sentient beings in Parliament,” the Bear agreed. He placed his knuckles together; this time it was his biceps that swelled alarmingly. “Well, my son, this is some hard bananas you bring me, but fortunately you’ve come to the right man. A trivial problem, really, although I can see that some of its subtler aspects might well have eluded a mere trained professional such as Amesby—or a workaday genius like yourself, Norman—for several months. ‘Watson, you know my methods?’”

  Minnie nodded. “Certainly, Holmes.” She turned to Norman. “He comes up with the cube root of fuck-all.”

  The Bear beamed. “Excellent, Watson. A very concise summary.”

  Norman felt all his breath leave him with a rush. “Bear, you don’t know how much I hoped you’d come up with a decent hunch,” he said bleakly. “I’ve gone over it and over it until my head spins, I wake up in the morning trying to make it make sense, and nothing. You two have got maverick and supple brains, and I was hoping you’d see something Amesby and I missed. Damn it, there is no probable answer. Least improbable would I guess be some variant of the random-psycho theory—and at this point I’m afraid I’d be grateful if I could just believe it and get started with the mourning. But it’s so bloody unlikely.” A brandy decanter stood nearby; he uncapped it and drank, passed the bottle.

  The Bear looked greatly distressed now. “Compadre, I’m sorry to say I don’t even have suggestions, and the day I can’t give bad advice…” He smote both thighs with his fists, hard enough to make the beanbag chair start violently.

  “I’ve got suggestions,” Minnie said.