Hollow Man

by Mark Pryor

  “How long is this for?” I asked.

  “They're trying to keep these rotations to a year, give or take a few months. A year is the goal, though.” He scratched the back of his head and squinted. “I'm not being facetious, but technically this is a promotion. As far as your résumé goes, that is. You'll be second in command over there, under Maureen but senior to the three other juvenile prosecutors.”

  “A promotion.” I needed deep breaths to stop myself from throttling the messenger. “I'll be handling shoplifting, weed-smoking, car-breaking little punks instead of real criminals. I'll get a pay cut and will share an office with a dork. How the fuck do I apply for a demotion?”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry.” He looked up, like a hopeful child. “I gather the workload is much lighter. Less stress and all.”

  “I know this isn't your fault, Cherry, but that won't stop me plotting your miserable death as I stare out of my window on those interminable, but low-stress, days.”

  “Yes, well.” He stood and smoothed down his trousers, a tiny smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I suppose my demise is far from imminent then.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Funny thing, really. They're all interior offices down there. You won't have a window.”

  There's a coldness that settles around my heart when my life starts to slide in the wrong direction. It's a physical sensation, not an emotional one. I don't really do emotions, you see, not like most people. I can feel some of them, ones like anger, disappointment, and lust. Emotions that begin and end with me, those I can feel, but my life is generally governed by logic, reason, and manipulation. Emotions that tie me to others, like compassion, love, or even fear, those I don't feel. I pretend to, of course, I've been pretending since I was a kid, and my success in life depends on me wearing the right mask at the right time.

  So when Cherry walked out of my office, I wore the hangdog, poor-me face that he expected, lowering my eyes so he couldn't see the dead space in them that held visions of a knife slicing through the wrinkled skin in his neck, covering his crisp, white shirt with blood, and severing his exposed windpipe. I wanted to release that inner demon that I kept locked up and hidden away, to look the other way and feel nothing as he sought revenge for trashing the one part of my life I'd made something of, my job.

  I wanted to be, just for once, the psychopath that I am.

  Just to be clear, and despite the occasional white-hot flash of temper, I'm not one of those psychopaths. I don't have any desire to hurt or kill people. I see no gain or benefit there, so my inclinations are not of your TV slasher, world-domination, sexual-sadist types. The urge to hurt people bubbles up sometimes, and I'd feel essentially nothing if I acted on it, but I only feel the desire to hurt when someone has ignited my anger. Even then, I don't act out. My lack of impulse-control has gotten me in trouble before, and I know that psychopaths have a habit of repeating the same mistakes, so I've made a powerful effort to blend in and live as normally as possible. I don't hide in the bushes looking to do harm. I camouflage myself alongside the CEOs, politicians, and lawyers who pretend every day, like me, to be empaths (that's the term I use), faking it in social situations while taking advantage every which way in business.

  I also prefer the term “sociopath” because it has fewer connotations of evil and violence.

  If it helps, picture a huge parade in your hometown, a procession of bands and floats and fun, all colors and music. It'll be made up of happy people, sad people, funny people, and fools. They're experiencing the joy of community, a shared celebration made more meaningful by being together.

  I'm not in the parade. I'm one of a handful of people looking out of a window as you go by, watching, learning. Trying to understand. Some of the people in the overlooking windows are ready to do you harm, but I'm not. I could if I wanted, but I want to fit in, not go to prison. I'm a leopard, yes, and while I'll happily sit in my tree and watch people with cold, dispassionate eyes, I don't kill. I just don't.

  I followed Cherry's orders and drove down to my new digs midafternoon, heading south over the Congress Avenue Bridge to the part of town that was the center of my after-hours world. The tourists would be along in a little while, leaning over the balustrade like gargoyles to wait for the nightly display: a million bats in search of food, an epic swirling, switching cloud of black that funneled low along the river into the dusk for forty minutes or more.

  After the bat show, the tourists would either head north into downtown or walk south onto South Congress Avenue proper. Known as SoCo, it was Austin's hippest street. Its cafés and boutique stores, its food trailers and western-wear shops, all kept the sidewalks hopping during the day. The bars, restaurants, and clubs brought crowds in by night. I'd played several gigs at the Continental Club, an Austin institution that sat near the bridge and right where everyone wanted to be. I was just the opener for other acts but loved the club's mix of customers, especially the girls—the pretty students from the University of Texas who mingled with the tattooed Austin originals, the lean chicks who were there for the music first and the hookups second. They were the ones who didn't mind buying their own beer or sharing their weed, not that I dared partake of the latter. Self-control issues and drugs don't mix well, and no one approves of a dope-smoking prosecutor. The perky UT girls were quicker to go home with the musicians but quicker to move on, too, once they'd figured out where you were on the talent pecking order. There was always someone else above you, prompting apologetic texts and awkward moments at some crowded club a week later. Awkward for them and not me, of course, their discomfort being my own form of post-coital revenge, something I enjoyed watching but never felt. If only they knew that I rather admired such cold-blooded calculation.

  It wasn't just the girls I enjoyed. The almost-palpable energy was why I loved SoCo, all of Austin really, the rat race of the music business with its club owners, promoters, and self-appointed agents, all trying to rip us off and make us play with the same breath. Even the fans were ruthless, clapping and hollering their support but looking into their beer bottles and margarita glasses when the tip jar appeared. It wasn't glamorous, not like it should have been, but when you were in the middle of it, playing your songs and making music for strangers, the grubby and superficial elements of the music business faded away and left you with the energy of the moment, that pounding, strumming rush of time that swept over and intoxicated those pouring out the music, as well as those drinking it in.

  That may sound odd coming from a sociopath, a little emotional, perhaps. But don't make the mistake of thinking that we don't feel things, because we do. And we're not all the same, either. Music happens to be one of those things, maybe the only thing, ever to have reached through and touched me. Not in a traditionally emotional way—songs have never made me cry, but they can provoke a visceral reaction that is as emotional as physical. Imagine standing beside a speaker at an AC/DC concert. Sure, you'd go deaf, but before that, every physical sensation imaginable would seize and shake your body. You wouldn't respond to the music with normal emotions but with ones battered out of you in a physical way. For me, music can do that without the need for massive volume. It's the thin, knifelike feel of a guitar string under my fingertips or the repetitive, sexual thump of a drum beat. Classical music, too, allows me a soothing escape into a symphony, a forest of sound where each note or instrument is a tree I can hide behind. And just because I don't cry at a Celine Dion song, don't think I can't appreciate her technical range or the mathematical precision of her chorus. Music, as you might have gathered, is what makes me most human. It may not take me all the way there but, on the nights I get to play or lose myself in listening, it's a bridge into your world and is perhaps the only real connection we'll ever have.

  But it wasn't just the music end of SoCo that drew me.

  Farther south from the bridge, a mile or so away, SoCo's original character began to show, where the boutiques and bistros made way for burrito stands and barred-up liquor sto
res. Two years before, I'd been on a ride-along with the cops down there, a two-night prostitution sting. The first night, undercovers posed as Johns to clear the yellow-skinned, scrawny whores from the area. The second night, the female cops dressed the part and wandered the streets, luring in slack-jawed punters without having to compete with the skanks they purported to be. It was an old-school, north–south divide, and in the name of progress the battered flop houses were being bulldozed and the scrub-patch junkies were being picked on by the cops and shunted slowly but surely away from downtown. No way in hell you'd see the crack whores from that end anywhere near the Congress Avenue bridge, not unless they had a bat fetish or, more likely, were broke and broken, looking to jump.

  My new home, the Juvenile Justice Center, or JJC, was located on a side street at the crease where SoCo started to blur, where hip turned to hapless and the few tourists who wandered this far down started to clutch their purses and look nervously at passers-by.

  The building itself was modern, a large and well-lit atrium with rows of bolted-down, plastic chairs where the juveniles and their families waited to go into court and receive, so I'd been told, a stern finger-wagging and a gentle slap on the wrist. I didn't know the number code to get into the secure side of the building, which housed the DA's offices and the probation officers, so I waited by the reception desk for Maureen to come and get me.

  Maureen was Indian by birth, with light-brown skin and very black hair. She was petite, wore a lot of dark purple, and spoke in a clipped accent that sometimes sounded English, sometimes not. I'd been told she was industrious, plain-spoken, and didn't micromanage her lawyers. I approved of all three qualities, especially the last two. Unfortunately, no one had mentioned to me her lack of humor.

  She shook my hand, hers a tiny little thing that I didn't want to break.

  “Welcome, Dominic, I've heard a lot of good things about you.”

  “That's unlikely,” I said cheerily. She shot me a sideways glance that lingered too long. It may have been a cultural thing, or maybe she was generally curious about her new colleague. But there are some people who see past the mask, people who are immune to the charm and wit, at least to some degree. I don't know if it's because they are like me or if it's because they are so empathetic that they sense my lack of it somehow. It's like I'm hollow. I can hide that from most people, but some seem able to hear the emptiness. I don't know if that's true, really, because I've always done my best to stay away from those people, just to be safe. Of those I'd worked with so far, I suspect Cherry came the closest to seeing the gap in my soul, but I don't think he ever considered the possibility that I am what I am. The few people in my life who've figured it out have told me it's a frightening realization to come to, so maybe people like Cherry stop themselves before getting there.

  Maureen led me through the security door, saying, “The number is four digits and changes every time someone comes or goes from the DA's office or probation. One-six-seven-five, right now.”

  “Got it.”

  Immediately inside, she waved a hand to her right. “My office.”

  “Ah, yes, nice window.” It looked out over the parking lot, good to know if I was planning an early escape or late arrival.

  A conference room was next to her office. “We use this to meet victims and witnesses or have them wait here during trials.”

  “So you do have trials, then.”

  “Bench trials only. The judges are lenient here and so no one ever wants a jury trial. Hasn't been one in fifteen years.”

  That's what I'd heard, and I was unhappy to confirm the rumor. Theater closed.

  My office was around the corner on the left, a narrow space about the size of a walk-in closet. And no windows. Inside to the left was Brian McNulty's desk. He wasn't at it, and in the far right corner was mine, apparently. The walls were cream-colored and bare, sporting an occasional black dot that told me someone had once pinned up a picture or print. I briefly wondered whether anyone would mind if I put the classic prisoner's slash marks on the walls, crossing off each day that I survived down there.

  “Small but functional, and you'll have Brian to talk to.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “I see.” She turned and looked at me. “This can go one of two ways. You can spend a year down here sulking and moaning like a baby, in which case it'll seem like two years and everyone will hate you. Or you can appreciate the lighter workload, the reduction in stress, and the proximity to good lunch places.”

  “Can I take a day to decide?”

  Another blank look, then she said, “Brian has a trial tomorrow. He's interviewing a witness at her house right now, so if you don't mind helping out, I'd like you to prep one of his other witnesses.”

  “Happy to. Where and when?”

  “Our conference room, and now.” She nodded at the bookcase carrying notepads and pens. “I'll see if he's here and bring him to the conference room. It's a simple assault case, one kid punched another and the officer, our witness, pulled surveillance tape and recognized the kid who started it.”

  She didn't wait for an answer, so I picked out a notepad and a pen and wandered back to the conference room next to her office. It wasn't a real conference room. No large table dominated the space. Instead, sofas and chairs backed up against the walls, and two coffee tables sat in the middle. A television was bolted to the wall, its remote nowhere in sight.

  My phone rang, showing a local number I didn't recognize. I always answered those, in case it was a club or bar requesting my services, though it rarely was. I recognized the voice on the other end before he said his name.

  “Hey, what's up, Dom? Brian McNulty here.”

  “Brian, how're you?”

  “Great. Welcome to the team. Hey, I'm interviewing the victim at her house. Did Maureen tell you about the cop?”

  “Yeah, I'm waiting for him now.”

  “Cool. Just make sure he's okay testifying. It's a simple case but I don't want him fucking it up.”

  “Why would he fuck it up?”

  “Because he's an Austin Independent School District cop. Rent-a-cop. Most of them are idiots.”

  “What do you mean, ‘rent-a-cop’? They're certified peace officers just like the sheriffs and every Austin PD cop.”

  “Hey, I figure if you're good enough to be a real policeman, then that's who you work for, APD. If not, you wind up sitting behind some desk on your fat ass, shuffling paper and keeping a bunch of jackass kids on the straight and narrow.”

  “You just described your own job, Brian.”

  “Yeah, well, yours too. Anyway, just checking in. You have my number now in case you need it.”

  “Great,” I said, and rang off. I looked up as a uniformed officer walked in, glancing about hesitantly until he saw me.

  “Holy shit,” I said, standing. “Otto, what are you doing here?”

  “I'm your witness, I guess.” He smiled and shook my hand. Right there, I should have known it, should have figured out that seeing him in that place, something bad was brewing. But Otto Bland lived up to his name, too nondescript to be any kind of omen I might recognize.

  He used to work at the DA's office. He'd started his career as a patrol officer and worked his way up to detective with the Travis County Sheriff's Office. After a couple of decades, he'd resigned or retired, and had come to work for us as an investigator. Each court had one and, while the work wasn't exciting or glamorous, it was safe and it paid well. Investigators located recalcitrant witnesses, served subpoenas, and ferried evidence from the police lockers to court. He'd been fired about two years ago and, depending on who you believed, it had been for laziness, sloppy work, or losing evidence. Specifically, two four-ounce bags of weed.

  “Working for AISD, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He sat on the green sofa, his bulk pressing into the foam and his gun belt cutting into his belly. The groan might have been for that, or for the sheer pleasure of being off his feet. He was larger than eve
r, and his skin had an unhealthy, gray tinge to it, only slightly lighter than the bags under his eyes. Brian was a jackass, but it looked like even a jackass could be right once in a while.

  “So how's life?” I closed the door to the room and sat opposite him, dropping my feet onto the nearest coffee table.

  “Honestly?” He shrugged. “It sucks. Remember when we met? I was a freakin’ detective.”

  “The Salinas robberies, right?”

  “Nailed those fuckers to the wall.”

  “Technically,” I smiled, “you caught them, and I nailed them.”

  An uncomfortable silence sat between us. Otto Bland shifted and the leather of his gun belt squeaked. I wanted to ask what happened at the DA's office but didn't feel like I could. I'd learned that when it comes to potentially embarrassing personal matters, empaths will usually squirm a little and then tell you the truth, hoping you understand. I never did understand, mostly because I wanted people to think highly of me, so it was my practice to lie about such things.

  “How do you like being a cop with AISD?”

  Doleful eyes turned to me, and his shoulders seemed to slump even farther. “Do you know what they make me do? Do you know how I start my job every day?”

  I shook my head.

  “I'm not at any of the regular schools, you see. They figured with my experience I could handle being at ALC. You know what that is?”

  “I just started here, didn't look through my acronym dictionary yet.”

  “Alternative Learning Center. It's where the kids get sent when they fuck up at school. When they fight or bring in shit they shouldn't. It's one stop short of juvenile court, and pretty much every kid you see here will either be at ALC already, or will go there once you've finished with him. It's basically a school for all the little shits in Austin.”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  “You know what my job is every morning?” he asked again. “They make me sniff their fingers.”