Stone Shadow

by Rex Miller

  The tap dance was fairly effective but they weren't buying it without music so Eichord ended up having to get on the horn and have the ballet orchestrated by McTuff, and finally he got them pulled out of his thinning hair, if not clean back to Austin, and by midafternoon, when he had an appointment with a psychiatrist named Sue Mandel, they'd left. He figured Sue to be a tough old gal in her fifties, hair pulled back into a bun, about five feet tall, Dr. Ruth only more severe-looking.

  He was tired and muttering under his breath about the “scum-wad bureaucrats” and the time-wasters and the fumblers and bumblers and depradations and degradations and the furriers and scurriers, and the rest of them nasty folks, when he walked in and old Sue slapped him on the back with a hand like a catcher's mitt.

  “Jack?” Sue said with a big smile, in a voice an octave deeper than his own. Sue was a guy.

  “You're Sue Mandel?"

  “One and the same, pally. Pull up a toadstool.” The shrink was six feet tall, went about 210, and had a blue beard. But truthfully Eichord scarcely blinked an eye at it. By now he was used to the constant confusion of this ever-changing and unpredictable murder case. It was a case where he'd met the most beautiful woman he'd ever made fantasized love to and she spelled her first name like a man's, Noel as in Coward, so why not a shrink named Sue?

  “You're a big name around here, bub. I've been reading up on your activities since the Lonely Hearts case. Proud to meet you."

  “That's good of you,” Jack said. He liked the guy. The guy had taste even if he did have a shitty name.

  “I'm sure you want to know about our friend"—he vaguely gestured in the direction of where Ukie was kept under lock and key—"right?"

  “Sure do."

  “Nobody would love to tell you more than yours truly. Problem is I can't be sure. We've talked a lot. He has deep-seated problems. He has the self-esteem of about the level one might expect in light of his record as a KSP, but the big question—are the intense anxieties and frustrations enough to trigger the mass murders? No way to know. The results of the tests are inconclusive. The polygraphs are too inconclusive to base any judgments on himself is a skizzy kind of character who does a lot of role-playing, but he's a terrorized and subjugated personality the nightmares—let's call them—the thing that shows him the graves—that figure is very real to Ukie. He believes that someone is capable of controlling his mind and whatever it is must be very powerful."

  “Just for the sake of argument, Dr. Mandel, could such a thing as a neural pathway exist?"

  “Sure it exists.” He smiled. “But let's define what a neural pathway is. It's not a concrete tunnel that a brain railroad runs on, where your thought goes at 2:55 every afternoon to catch the train home. Forget pathway. Call it a thought plateau where certain types of empathic rapport transcend ordinary understanding. You stand there and the back of your neck gets a signal from your brain and the hairs bristle and when you turn around somebody is watching you. Coincidence. Maybe. Or maybe instead of a sixth sense or eyes in the back of your head we say your brain went into a higher thought plateau. A place it normally doesn't function in. And the supernormal thought level allowed you to make a supernormal appraisal of a situation—based on an assessment of probabilities or circumstances or situations that normally would not occur to you."

  “Could a subject, say under hypnosis, be placed on that level of understanding by another person's will? That is to say could another individual implant the proper suggestions so that at given times, in response to whatever stimuli had been programmed, that other person could cause you to think on that plateau?"

  “It's not likely but it is within the realm of possibility. If two persons were very closely attuned—and I mean to the extent that, they sometimes felt they could ‘read the other one's mind’ as the saying goes-and one of these parties is strongly dominant to the other, there's a very real possibility that someone who was highly susceptible to that sort of thought manipulation would be placed in a position where they would subconsciously allow the subjugation of their own will and the implementation of thought by the other party. I know of few documented examples of it in anything resembling clinical studies, but I wouldn't rule it out."

  “What about his description of the tall man who stands in the shadows? Is this a real person?"

  “I'd say the person is very real to Ukie. He could be real. And if a closely attuned person was capable of the kind of thought-image projection we're talking about, it might be that he or she could project a shared reality rather than an imagined projection.

  “My feeling, however, is that it could be what we could term, an extremely heightened reality. If I was capable of manipulating your thoughts on that sort of level—let's say that I could force you to picture me standing on this desk and flapping my arms like wings and jumping off the desk. Admittedly a ludicrous image. But what would the heightened reality appear to be in the mind of the recipient? Would it be possible for me to coerce you into thinking you visualized me flying from the desk? Truthfully, I'm not sure. But my sense of the thought manipulation thing is one of sharing a mental picture of a heightened reality."

  “But I thought—I mean, this is just layman language and I may have it all wrong—but I thought like a person couldn't be hypnotized against their will or made to do something bad that they wouldn't have found morally acceptable. I realize all this is oversimplification but isn't thought manipulation the same thing essentially as hypnosis?"

  “No, that's not precisely right. But first off here, I think we're getting a little cumbersome with the plateau as a metaphor. In the broadest sense we're talking about superimposed personalities-where one is extremely dominant and one equally subservient. If the dominant of the two is supremely aggressive, sociopathic, antisocial, angry ... If he has the desire to punish ... If you counterpoint this with an individual who has a desire, suppressed or not, to be punished, you have a formidable scenario potentially. The dominant one can be enormously fearsome and consciously abominated by the passive one, but beneath that layer the passive individual in fact welcomes the aggression, you see."

  “Can you point me toward a clinical book to help me understand this phenomenon?"

  “Not offhand. The problem is it isn't a scientifically suitable subject. An intangible field like that—and one where there is so little hard evidence of its real existence—is not one to draw a multitude of clinicians. There just isn't much reliable information or research that has been documented. You could research the psychiatric abstracts that would be a way to get some reference material. There's an enormous amount of interest in it, obviously. I seem to recall, oh, maybe fifteen years ago reading about some covert research project into the subject of thought manipulation by one of the hush-hush government agencies, but I don't think much came of it."

  Dallas

  The other one is thinking and feeling. I see what you're going at of course but, no, I'm not sure that would hold water."

  “Why not?"

  “It's somewhat farfetched. Not impossible, but we could create ANY sort of hypothetical. Example: Ukie. Highly intelligent. Very bright. Fails repeatedly in his efforts to, as he says, ‘become a star.’ Craves adoration. Respect. Wants attention. Needs it to placate his forever-wounded sense of self. Hey, folks, look at me. Admire ME. The folks don't give him the attention or the admiration he needs. They rebuke and criticize him by making him FAIL. They withhold his precious stardom from him. He lashes out in anger. First by forcing his sexual attentions on strangers. Rubbing up against women in the public conveyance. Showing himself in the crowded store. Picking up a woman and raping her. Who's to say if Miss Scannapieco was the first or the twenty-first? Lots of rapists don't get talked about until they get caught. Lots of victims don't come forth."

  “Yeah."

  “So now we have a possible profile of a guy who is getting away with murder. That's what he says to himself. He's raped X numbers of women, forced his ATTENTIONS on them, paid them back for not gi
ving him the respect and adulation he needed. He's getting away with murder. He can do anything. If I can rape and get away with it, why not do whatever I want? I'm smarter than your average bear. Fiendishly clever in fact. I'll show ‘em. I'll start killing them and burying the bodies. Then they'll be sorry they didn't treat me like a star."

  “So it sounds like you're saying—"

  “I'm just saying Ukie could be guilty of murder. COULD be. I'm saying he's clever and antisocial enough to have killed, and disturbed enough in theory that he could in effect convince himself of a mythologized tormentor so that he could fool us. It's not a wholly unlikely scenario. Playing the devil's advocate."

  “I'm confused again,” Eichord said, and Sue Mandel puffed up his cheeks in an enigmatic smile and flipped the end of his tie like in the Laurel and Hardy movies. “Another fine mess, huh?"

  “I dunno.” Jack shook his head at the futility of it.

  “For openers, let me lay all this on you.” He shoved a stack of papers in Jack's direction.” Herrrre's Ukie. In all his laid-back hyper, I-did-it, I-didn't-do-it glory. These are test results, Observations. They're not quite the same as test scores. You passed. You didn't pass. The Rorschach. Gestalt. Ways of measuring the things that have pulled Ukie's behavior off the pattern of the norm. Ways of seeing how he looks at life. How he projects himself onto his happenings. If he knows right from wrong. Values his own life or yours—that sort of thing. Best I can say overall is, the results are still inconclusive. You can take a look. Feed it into the meat grinder and see what kind of hamburger you get."

  “Okay."

  “Okay."

  It was a long drive back to the motel and Jack found a station playing big bands and that made it a little less Painful. Basie, some ancient Woody, a band that sounded like Tadd Dameron or one of those cats from the Birdland years and a drummer who seemed to be banging on a table with a ruler, a bittersweet swig-era, punctuation mark as he drove, and he stopped and bought a fifth and picked up a bucket of ice on the way to his room.

  He opened a can of the dog food and took it outside and gave it to dog and ran a fresh bowl of water. And of course the fucking dog was nowhere in sight. He should have known the beast wouldn't be sitting there waiting for a loser like him. He slammed the door on the day, poured a full glass over a couple of rocks, killed it in four five sips. Built another, sat on the bed, kicked off his shoes. Said aloud to the empty room as he reached for the glass, “Well, shit. Let's get drunk and be somebody,” downing the Daniel's and melting ice and tasting something else, a nagging and nameless uncertainty.

  Highland Park

  They began in the living room, papers strewn around her, both of them formal and businesslike. Each working hard to cover any base that might help Ukie's seemingly disastrous legal position. Covering all the trivial tidbits of fife that make up one's past. The modest surroundings of orphanage and foster home had given both of the twins the desire if not the will to achieve. But there the identical biochemistry somehow lost its ability to influence and shape their lives.

  “I wonder,” she thought aloud, “how is it that two identical twins, each with the same potential gifts, can end up so differently. Where did you two first start differing in your achievements?"

  “Ooooooeeece,” he sighed quietly, “that's going to have to go so far back into our childhood."

  As he started to talk she was aware that she was wondering if Laurindo, over their softly strumming his unamplified, open-string Spanish guitar in the background, was the right music. My God, the RIGHT music. She's working with an accused murderer's brother and selecting music like she'd brought a date home. And this hunk sitting there in his tailored shirt and slacks that looked like they'd been painted on, why couldn't he be wearing a baggy old suit, cuffed trousers showing an inch of white skin above short socks? Why couldn't he be another Ukie and be sitting here in his cranberry double-knits and white belt? But Joe Hackabee was something else again. She blinked and took a deep breath and shook off this thing she was feeling.

  '—having to work and I'd been luckier and found something at Holman's Ice Cream, and it was manna from heaven—you see you made minimum wage but you got all this precious OVERTIME every third week and you saved a lot of money because the ice cream was tree.” She smiled. “So to a kid—you know, this was a kid job, a bunch of little squirts working under some teenage tyrant they'd found as the kid version of a shop steward—anyway, it was such a great job to find. All the kids we knew wanted to get a job at Holman's. And of course I got Bill a job there. They were always losing kids, having to fire them or whatever, and I probably wasn't, there a week before somebody quit or was let go, and I naturally spoke up. They'd ask you—now this is serious business and we don't want you bringing somebody in here who steals or is lazy or treats the customers poorly, and I promised that Bill was great, and they said okay they'd give it a try and they liked me so they took him too."

  “What happened?"

  “You asked how twins can end up differently and I don't know. We were alike in so many physical ways but INSIDE we always seemed to be at odds. He wanted it handed to him and I knew you had to work for it. They said he stole. Holman's. And it was like a little trial. I recall one Saturday morning. Funny. I still remember this so vividly. The boss kid called us all in"—he smiled wistfully—"and he said it was about Bill. He'd been accused of taking some money. ‘I don't remember how much—it couldn't have been anything—maybe the till was a dollar short but that was a major offense. And he said we were to tell him if Bill had taken it. Passing little scraps of paper around like secret ballots to vote on his guilt. A little jury. If only we'd had you there to defend him, huh?"

  “Yeah.” She was hanging on every word.

  “And of course, needless to say, a little boy jury of his peers found him guilty as hell."

  “Kangaroo court."

  “Probably not even that. We didn't get to examine the ballots so the boss kid could have dumped on him. He was out. But we were still close as you'd expect identicals to be. I told them to jam the job"—he shook his head disgustedly—"left a perfectly neat job at Holman's Ice Cream to go out and look for work with Bill. And we found the next job together. Vorchardski's Nursery, I'll never forget. It was poor money and they worked you like a slave but we thought it was great because you got to work outside.

  “We both envisioned being these all-star twin jocks one day, at the time we both loved baseball and we were extremely conscious of working hard to get in shape. But it's one thing to fantasize about working hard and another to actually do it."

  “Was U—Bill a lazy boy?"

  “Ummm. Not lazy precisely. He just had his head on a little tilted if you know what I mean. He'd stay up all night scheming or working on some way to scam somebody but as far as out there in the hot sun with a trowel and a handful of peat moss, huh-uh. He'd bitch to me about how crummy the wages were or whatever and I'd be out there enjoying it, working away, and I guess one of the bosses saw what he was like and they axed him immediately. I don't think he lasted ten days. That was the beginning of our problems. Right there at Vorchardski's. I wouldn't quit this time. I needed the money and I didn't particularly love the place but I couldn't see quitting. The was furious with me. I was disloyal. I was the cause of all his problems."

  “Did he get another job?"

  “Not for a long time. He fell in with a pack of street kids but that didn't work out either.” He chuckled at the memory. “We weren't very tough. Neither of us. We always talked our way out of fights. And I guess the gang found him out soon enough. But I think he got tired trying to find empty redeemable bottles to sell to the drugstore, and he got some terrible job. He wiped off cars for a used-car dealer. I remember the rags had some sort of chemical on them and he would break out. His skin was broken out all the time. Anyway"—he laughed his mellow laugh—they found him in the backseat of an old car reading comic books and fired him."

  “Oh, no."

  “Yes. A
nd it was a succession of jobs. He'd GET these great jobs. You know, it's like he could convince the personnel people to hire him, and he had some great jobs for a kid—one he got with a tablet company I remember he was bragging about the wages it was really impressive. And he'd keep the jobs a week, two weeks, he just couldn't “hang in there."

  “Were you still close?"

  “Sure. But looking back I think that was the beginning of the real resentment. I can recall to this day how irritated and disappointed he was with me because I didn't quit out at the nursery to be out of work with him again. I think that incident cut him pretty deeply. I'm not sure Bill ever forgave me for it."

  He kept telling her about Ukie's young life. About the girls they both took out. And as he talked Noel began to get an impression of sibling rivalry that was nurtured and reinforced by Ukie's failures to overachieve as Joseph had, and a pattern of compensation in erratic and antisocial behavior. As Joe talked she began questioning the possibility of whether or not Ukie might indeed have been the one who had committed those murders. But the pattern she was seeing was something else. It was one of hostility and frustration, but it seemed to her that it would be insufficient as a foundation to spawn a mass murderer.

  They eventually moved into the patio, a closed-in, glass-walled solarium and dining area on the side of the house, and he raved about her home while she served coffee to herself, Perrier to Joe.