by Dan Wells
Forman nodded. “How much of this were you planning to tell us?”
“Only the parts that have a bearing on this case,” I said.
“And how much is that?”
“None of it.”
Forman nodded again. “Dr. Neblin was found dead across the street from your house. You were covered in his blood, though you claim you were trying to help him escape the Clayton Killer. That all seemed pretty believable, especially given that you were the one who called the police that night. But this . . .” He tapped the paper. “This changes everything.”
“Now that I’m a sociopath I’m suddenly a suspect? Isn’t that some kind of disability discrimination?”
Forman smiled. “Yes, he does suggest that you may have sociopathic tendencies, but there’s a lot more than that in here. Neblin points out several major changes in your behavior after the killings started last fall. Changes that could be read, in a certain light, as being common to the behavioral shift between a potential killer and a practicing one.”
I wanted to protest immediately, to tell him I was not a killer, but I stopped. If I protested too much I’d look guilty. It might be better to go straight for the sarcastic approach.
“You’ve got me,” I said. “I killed Dr. Neblin. With an axe. Dipped in poison.”
“Very cute,” he said, not smiling, “but no one is accusing you of killing Dr. Neblin.”
“Most people don’t use poison,” I said, ignoring him, “because they think a big axe blade can do the job on its own. And they’re right, but I say they have no style.”
Forman shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands out. “What are you doing?”
“Confessing,” I said. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“Dr. Neblin wasn’t killed with an axe.”
“Then it was a good thing I put that poison on there.”
Forman studied me, as if he was watching for something—or listening, to something only he could hear. After a moment he said, “Did you ever want to kill anyone?”
“You’re going to have to arrest most of Clayton County if wanting to kill someone is suddenly a crime. They practically lynched one of the suspects, you know.”
“I was there,” he said, and an odd look came into his eyes. “Mobs can make people think and feel some pretty crazy things. Your case is different, though, as I think you have to admit.”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible, like I was letting him in on a joke instead of protesting my innocence. “I’d be pretty stupid to come straight in to the police station if I had.” I knew as soon as I said it that it was a bad argument—serial killers often involved themselves in their own investigations. Edmund Kemper even volunteered at the police station, and was good friends with most of the cops on his case. I waited for Forman to call me on it, but he didn’t mention it.
“What fascinates me the most,” he said, almost to himself, “is that I didn’t see it earlier.” He was furrowing his brow and scrunching up a corner of his mouth, which usually meant the person was confused. “I’m a criminal profiler, John—I identify sociopaths for a living. How were you able to hide it from me?”
Because of my rules, I thought. I don’t want to be a killer, so I have rules to help keep me just as normal as everyone else.
Well, normal on the surface. Somewhere inside, Mr. Monster was just waiting for me to make a mistake. And so, it seemed, was Forman.
“I’m not really a sociopath,” I said, hiding behind the definition. “I have Conduct Disorder, which is much less developed. People my age almost never become serial killers.”
“Almost never,” he said, “but sometimes.”
“I was in therapy to deal with it,” I said. “I follow strict rules to help me avoid temptations. I’ve been completely open about my involvement in this case, and I’ve involved you at every step of the way. I’m trying to be the good guy here, so don’t hold this one thing against me.”
Forman stared at me for a while, for much longer than I expected, then grabbed a notepad and started scribbling something on it.
“Thanks for the tip about the killer’s coat,” he said, then tore off the note paper and handed it to me. It was a phone number. “If you remember anything else you don’t need to bother coming in; just call.”
He was sending me away, and I still hadn’t learned much of anything about the new corpse. I thought about asking another question, but it was too dangerous—he was letting me go now without any further questions, which meant I might have convinced him I was innocent. There was no reason to rouse his suspicions again by asking questions about a corpse.
I took the note, nodded, and left.
“How could you do this!” Mom shouted, pacing back and forth in the living room. I was sitting on the couch, wishing I were somewhere else. “After everything we’ve done—after all the rules and the therapy and everything we do to help you fit in, now Agent Forman thinks you’re a suspect.”
“Technically, therapy was the main culprit here,” I said.
“The main culprit was you,” she said, stopping and staring at me sternly. “If you’d never gotten involved with this to begin with, the FBI wouldn’t even know who you were.”
“I was trying to help,” I said, for what seemed like the millionth time over the past five months. “Was I just supposed to sit there?”
“Yes!” she shouted. “Yes, you can just sit there—you don’t have to right every wrong you see, just like you don’t have to run out in the middle of the night so a killer can chase you home.”
So that’s what this was really about—she was afraid that I was going to chase another killer and get myself killed. How many fights had we had about this? I rolled my eyes and turned away.
“Don’t you ignore me,” she said. She walked around into my new field of view, her eyes wide and imploring. “I’m not asking you to never help—you know I want you to be a good person—I just want you to stay away from certain things. It’s one of our rules, even: ‘when you think about killing, think about something else.’ Anything else. But don’t run out and get right in the middle of it!” Her face fell and she grimaced. “I just—I can’t believe you did this!”
“And I can’t believe you’re asking me to stand by while people get killed,” I said.
“That is not what this is about!” she shouted. “This is about staying out of trouble—”
“Which is going to leave other people in trouble,” I said. “I went outside that night to try to save our neighbors from a killer.”
“And it was very brave, and it was very stupid. You don’t chase a killer for the same reason that you don’t run into a burning building.”
“You just stand outside and listen to the screams?”
“You call the police!” she said. “You call the fire department, you call the paramedics; you let the people who know what they’re doing do their job.”
“It was a monster, Mom, the police couldn’t have—”
“John—”
“You saw it!” I screamed. “You saw it with your own eyes, so stop pretending it wasn’t real! It was a monster, with fangs and claws and I stopped it, and instead of a hero you’re treating me like I’m crazy!”
“We don’t talk about that—”
“Yes we do!” I felt a sharp pain every time she denied it, like a knife in my chest. I could feel a hole inside of me growing wider, deeper, darker—the need to kill, unsated for so long, growing harder and harder to resist. “I can’t pretend it wasn’t real any more than I could sit here doing nothing while it killed everyone we know!”
“We don’t know for sure—”
“You saw it!” I shouted again. My eyes felt hot. “You saw it! Please don’t say you didn’t; please don’t do this to me.”
She fell silent now, staring at me. Watching. Thinking.
The phone rang.
We stared at it. It rang again.
Mom picked it up. “Hello?” She listened for a
moment, shaking her head. “Just a minute,” she said, then covered the mouthpiece and looked at me. “This discussion is not over,” she said. “I’ll be right back so we can finish talking about this.” She uncovered the phone and walked into her bedroom. “Just a moment, ma’am,” she said, and closed the door.
I left immediately, struggling to sneak out quietly when all I really wanted to do was smash something. I ran to my car and started the engine, pulling out in a wide curve to head back out of our one-way street. Mom was watching through the curtains, shouting something through the glass but not coming after me. Did she think I was running away, or did she know the real reason?
That I was leaving to stop myself from hurting her?
The roar of the engine was dark and hungry, like a beast breaking free of a cage. Mr. Monster wanted to ram every car he passed; to run over every person he saw; to wrap the engine around every pole on every corner in town. I fought him back as I drove, keeping my hands steady and the speed low.
There were times when I needed to be alone, but more important than those were the times when I wanted to be alone but knew it was a bad idea. Alone—on the shores of Freak Lake, lighting fires at the warehouse, hiding outside of someone’s window—I couldn’t trust myself. Not tonight. I needed other people, and I needed the ones who wouldn’t judge or threaten or condemn. What I needed was Dr. Neblin, but he was gone forever.
Brooke? Her presence would probably calm me down, but how long would it take, and how much would she see in the meantime? I couldn’t risk horrifying her, not when she was finally starting to like me. I could visit Max, and sit back while he droned on about himself, or his comics. But he was sure to eventually start talking about his dad, and I didn’t want to deal with that tonight. Unfortunately, that was pretty much everyone I knew.
Except for Margaret. I turned and headed toward her neighborhood, taking deep breaths and driving slowly. I didn’t want to risk an accident, and I didn’t want to let reckless speed become a temptation to slam the car into a target of opportunity. Margaret was the happy one in the family; the simple one, the rational one. We could all talk to Margaret because she never took sides and never started fights. She was our refuge.
When I pulled up in front of her apartment I could see her through the window, talking on the phone. It was probably Mom, warning her that crazy old John was out causing problems again. I swore and pulled away again. Why wouldn’t she leave me alone?
There was one place I was sure to get away from her: Lauren lived just a few blocks away, in an apartment of her own. She and Mom hadn’t spoken since Mother’s Day, and only barely spoke before that. There’s no way Mom would call her, and if she did Lauren wouldn’t answer.
I paused in front to look for Curt’s truck, but he wasn’t there, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. This was not the night to seek him out; I needed to stay calm and forget all about the bodies and the investigation and everything. I parked and walked into the complex, trying to remember which apartment was hers. I’d only been here once before. The stairs were crumbling concrete slabs embedded in a rusty metal frame, and the brick walls burned red in the early evening sun. It was either the third door or the fourth . . . the third door had a rolled-up newspaper thrown against it, wrapped in dirty plastic. I skipped it and knocked on the fourth.
Lauren opened the door, and her mouth smiled almost as soon as her eyes widened in surprise—almost as soon, though not quite.
“John! What are you doing here?”
“Just driving around,” I said, concentrating on breathing slowly and evenly.
“Well come in,” she said, standing back and gesturing inside. “Make yourself at home.”
I stepped through the door and into the room, unfocused and uncertain. I wasn’t here for anything specific, just because I needed to be somewhere, and this was the only place to do it. Now that I was here, I didn’t know what to do.
“You thirsty?” asked Lauren, closing the door.
“Sure,” I mumbled.
Her apartment was clean and bare, like a well-kept shell. The kitchen table was scratched, with the veneer peeled back in places to expose the plywood beneath, but it was washed and spotless, and all the chairs matched. The glasses in her cupboard were few and mismatched, and the water from the tap sputtered erratically when she turned it on. She handed me the glass with a smile.
“Sorry there’s no ice.”
“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t really want the drink, but I took a sip to be polite.
“So what you up to?” Lauren asked, moving to the living room and flopping down on a couch.
I followed her slowly, feeling the tension that swirled inside of me slowly beginning to seep away. I sat down mechanically. “Nothing,” I said. “School.” I wanted to talk, but it felt better simply to sit here, saying nothing.
Lauren watched me for a moment, her energy visibly draining away as she studied my face. She spoke knowingly. “Mom?”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “It’s nothing.”
“I know,” she said, pulling her feet up onto the couch and resting her cheek on her knees. “It’s always nothing.”
I sipped the water again. There was nowhere to put the glass, so I took another sip.
“Is she still mad?” asked Lauren.
“Not at you.”
“I know,” she said, gazing at the wall. “She’s not mad at you either. She’s mad at herself. She’s mad at the world for not being perfect.”
Lauren was blond, like Dad, while Mom and I had jet-black hair. I’d always seen the two women as polar opposites, both in looks and personality, but in this light she looked more like Mom than I’d ever noticed before. It might have been the shadows in her eyes, or the way her mouth turned down at the corners. I closed my eyes and leaned back.
There was a knock on the door, and my insides twisted instantly back into a tight knot.
“That’s probably Curt,” said Lauren, jumping up. I heard the door open behind me, followed by Curt’s voice.
“Hey sexy—oh, Jim’s here.”
“John,” said Lauren.
“John. Sorry man, I’m crap for names.”
He walked around my chair and sat on the couch, pulling Lauren with him. I wanted to get up and leave, right on the spot, but something stopped me. I took a sip of water and stared straight ahead.
“Still quiet?” asked Curt. “You realize I’ve never heard him actually talk? Say something, dude, I don’t even know what your voice sounds like.”
There were so many things I wanted to say to him, so many insults and put-downs and threats I’d come up with since the last time I saw him. None of them came out now. I wasn’t afraid of anyone—I’d mouthed off to the bullies at school, I’d challenged an FBI agent right to his face, and I’d gone toe to toe with a demon, but for some reason I was completely cowed by Curt. Something inside of me went completely inert around him. Why?
“He gets a drink and I don’t?” asked Curt. “What, no love for the boyfriend?”
Lauren slapped him playfully on the shoulder and stood up to get him a glass of water.
“And put some ice in it this time.” Curt grinned at me. “Your sister’s like the lava queen—she’s probably going to put it in the microwave.” Lauren turned on the tap and Curt turned to yell into the kitchen. “Not water, babe, soda.”
“I’m all out,” said Lauren. “Shopping’s this weekend.”
“Whatever,” Curt called, then turned back to me. “She’s always forgetting something. Women, eh kid?”
That’s what it was—the thing that kept me down. It was all around him, in his words, his attitude, and even the way he smiled.
He was exactly like my dad.
It was the way he treated people, gregarious and cheerful but completely removed. Aloof. He was so excited about himself that there wasn’t room for anyone else—we were an audience for his jokes, and a mirror to reflect his actions, but we were not friends and we wer
e not a family.
And if we made our own actions instead of reflecting his, would Curt explode like Dad did? Did he yell at Lauren? Did he hit her?
“You still haven’t said anything,” said Curt, taking the glass from Lauren’s hand and settling back into the couch. Lauren snuggled up under his arm.
“I was just leaving,” I said, standing up. I couldn’t stay with him any longer. I stood there a moment, as if waiting for his permission, then forced myself to turn away and walk into the kitchen.
“You just got here!” said Lauren, jumping back up. “Don’t go yet.”
“Don’t let me scare you off,” said Curt.
I set my glass down on the table, then thought better of it and moved it to the counter. It had left a moisture ring on the table, and I wiped it away with my hand.
“We could watch a movie,” said Lauren. “I don’t have very many, but there’s . . . there’s that cheesy kid one Dad sent me for Christmas. The Apple Dumpling Gang.” She laughed, and Curt groaned.
“Please no!” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I have to go.”
“Now your movie’s scared him off,” said Curt, still lounging on the couch. “Hey Lauren, you want to get a pizza?”
“Bye Lauren,” I said, and hurried outside.
“Bye John,” she called, her voice higher than normal. She was worried. “Come back soon.”
Mr. Monster promised, silently, that he’d come back to visit Curt as soon as he could.
9
The night school ended, I stood in the bathroom and stared at the mirror, gripping the sink. Another teenager might have been looking at himself, I guess, or combing his hair or dabbing on some Clearasil or making his collar perfectly straight. It was the night of my date with Brooke, after all, and I needed to get ready, but that meant something very different for me than for anybody else. I wasn’t trying to look good; I was trying to be good.
“I will not hurt animals,” I said, ignoring the rule sheet and staring straight into my own eyes. “I will not hurt people. When I think bad thoughts about someone, I will push the thoughts away and say something nice about that person. I will not call people ‘it.’ I will not threaten people. If people threaten me, I will leave the situation.”
