The Mask of Sanity

by Jacob M. Appel

  Balint was in the process of planning the final murder, which he’d decided should take place in Connecticut, when he received an unexpected office visit from Etan Steinhoff. The rabbi, as always, had a pretext for appearing without warning. “They’re opening a new gift shop in your atrium,” he explained. “The public relations folks thought it might look good to have a rabbi on hand for a blessing.”

  Rabbi Felder, Balint was certain, had never prayed over a gift shop.

  “Sometimes I think this hospital has become a giant public relations firm that happens to provide medical care on the side,” observed Balint. “May I ask: Is there a proper blessing for a gift shop?”

  “There is a proper blessing for everything,” said the rabbi. “Gift shops, camels, wallpaper, even non-Kosher meat.”

  “How about serial killers?” asked Balint.

  Steinhoff looked him over as though he had just walked off the moon—and then he flashed a broad smile. “That was a joke, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re catching on,” answered Balint. He glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. “Now what can I do for you today?”

  “May I sit down?”

  Balint said nothing. Steinhoff took his silence as an invitation to seat himself.

  “I fear I come bearing bad news,” he said. “About Project Cain.”

  “Let me guess. The parents aren’t sick enough—so you want me to start poisoning them on the sly.”

  The rabbi mulled over his offer for a moment. “Not at all,” he said. “The parents are sick. But they’re getting their medical care elsewhere. Emergency rooms, church-run programs. So we’ve decided to pull the plug on the free clinics. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you . . .”

  “Not the end of the world,” said Balint—although, to his surprise, he found himself mildly disappointed. “I guess Cain wasn’t able, you might say.” He paused a moment and added, “That, just so you know, was also a joke.”

  The rabbi forced a smile that evaporated instantly.

  “We’re not giving up on Project Cain. Far from it. We’re only shutting down the clinics,” explained Steinhoff. “We’ve found a much more effective way to lure the children into our ‘supplemental mothering’ sessions. Free sneakers. Between Nike and Reebok, I now have enough donated footwear to shoe every indigent child in New Jersey.”

  Balint laughed—the first time he’d laughed in many months. Possibly the first time he’d had a genuine good laugh since his car had collided with the dachshund.

  “Is something funny?” inquired Steinhoff.

  Balint shook his head as he regained his composure. “It was how you used ‘shoe’ as a verb. Like you were shoeing horses. Struck my funny bone for some reason . . .”

  “I see,” said Steinhoff. He clearly didn’t. The rabbi scanned his cell phone for a moment and stood up. “Are you all right, Jeremy? If you’d like to talk about your marriage—or about anything at all—I want to renew my offer.”

  “No, thanks. But there is something you can do for me, rabbi.”

  Steinhoff’s dark eyes glowed eagerly. “Anything.”

  “How about a new pair of sneakers?”

  A look of deep disappointment suffused across the rabbi’s face, as though Balint had denied the omnipotence of the almighty God or had taken to worshipping idols.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “If we have enough.”

  Steinhoff was already out the door when Balint called after him: “You didn’t even ask me for my shoe size!”

  AS BRUCE Sanditz had promised, the executive director of the American College of Physicians did phone Balint the following week to invite him to their upcoming banquet in Manhattan. “I do apologize for the short notice,” she explained, “but some members of the board of directors wanted to postpone—on account of the Choker.” The organization had apparently conducted an informal survey of its district committee leaders and discovered that nearly half refused to attend any event in New York City while the serial killer remained on the loose. “If you can’t come,” added the executive director, “we fully understand. I assure you that your decision will have no effect on whether you win the Wenger Award.”

  Balint surged with pride at the knowledge that his petty spree had the power to impact the lives of so many of his colleagues.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said. “If you think I’m afraid of some nutcase with a spool of green ribbon, you don’t know me . . .”

  “That’s wonderful. I wish more of our members shared your outlook.”

  She e-mailed him a formal invitation that afternoon, and two weeks later, he checked his coat at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and accompanied Delilah into the mezzanine ballroom. His parents had arrived earlier in the day by commuter rail, taking his daughters to see the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. Now the six of them sat together at one of the head tables, along with the two other finalists and their respective spouses. By any impartial assessment, the other candidates’ accomplishments dwarfed his own. Dr. Feig, an infectious disease specialist, was the whistle-blower at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who’d leaked to the press the details of Operation Cobalt, a Cold War-era protocol during which the military tested biological weapons on unsuspecting African American peanut farmers in Mississippi. Dr. Sestito, another cardiologist, had personally rescued sixteen children from a hospital in California when its pediatric ICU caught fire during an earthquake. The woman was gorgeous, in addition to brave, despite the striking burn scars on her hands and forearms. Even after his late boss’s tip-off, Balint didn’t see how he could eclipse these two for the prize.

  Balint relished having Delilah at his side. Unlike Amanda, she didn’t dominate the conversation; in fact, she spent most of the event entertaining his daughters, allowing him an opportunity to chat with his fellow honorees. The salad course had already been served when talk shifted to the Emerald Choker.

  “We almost didn’t come,” said Dr. Sestito’s husband. “As it is, we’re flying out first thing in the morning. There’s no reason, as I see it, to take unnecessary chances.”

  “See, Jeremy,” Balint’s mother chimed in from across the table. “Henry and I aren’t the only ones who are worried.”

  “We’ve agreed not to go anywhere alone while we’re here,” added the husband. “Not even the bathroom. And we left our twins back in San Diego.”

  “They’re twelve,” said the wife. “They were so disappointed.”

  Balint’s mother commented that leaving the children behind in California was the correct choice. Delilah, meanwhile, showed Jessie how to fold the wax paper from the breadbasket into origami swans and cranes.

  “I hate to stick my neck out,” said Warner Feig, the whistle-blowing ID specialist. “But I’m going to have to disagree with you about risk. Flying here from California was far more dangerous than actually being here—and the danger of crashing in a commercial jet is still only several million to one. If you’ve made any high-risk decisions this week, the most hazardous was probably driving to the airport.”

  Balint had been thinking precisely the same thing, but he was glad he hadn’t been the one to derail the conversation. An awkward silence followed. Fortunately they cleared the salad plates a few moments later, and the master of ceremonies, a Nobel Prize winner in physiology, stepped to the front of the room.

  “It is now my privilege,” he declared, “to introduce the first winner of the Donald S. Wenger Award for Ethics in Medicine . . .”

  The academy had staged the event to mimic the Oscars, even placing the winner’s name inside a glistening silver envelope. Until the final moment, Balint expected that Sanditz had been misinformed—that either Feig or Sestito had won. And then he found himself the center of attention, walking toward the head of the ballroom on a cascade of applause.

  The Nobel laureate shook his hand, whispered a few inaudible words, and made room for Balint at the microphone. As he repeated the phrase thank y
ou, a hush fell over the crowd. And then, out of the silence, arose the question of a small child:

  “Did Daddy win?” asked Phoebe.

  Her high-pitched voice carried across the silent banquet hall. All eyes shifted from the cardiologist to his daughter. Balint could not have scripted the moment better had he planned it long in advance.

  “Yes, princess,” he answered from the podium. “Daddy won.”

  The exchange drew enthusiastic cheers and laughter from the audience.

  RIDING HIGH on his successive triumphs—first the chairmanship, then the ethics award—Balint determined to conclude his killing spree as soon as was feasibly possible. In fact, he even considered quitting while he was ahead—leaving the death toll at six and hoping the discovery of Jane Johnson’s body proved enough to distract the authorities from the death of Warren Sugarman. If only Putnam and Mazzotta had been investigating the crimes alone, he might actually have done so, although he recognized that scaling back on his plan was precisely the sort of corner cutting that had landed his bloodthirsty predecessors in the slammer. If anything kept him on track, it was fear of Ralph Spitford. Balint sensed that the sheriff was far too shrewd an opponent to underestimate. He’d seen through the extra ribbon, hadn’t he? And during a recent television interview, he’d already noted that the Johnson murder didn’t fit the same profile as the earlier slayings. “One possibility is that we’re dealing with a second perpetrator,” said the no-nonsense lawman, noting the killer’s shift from middle-class suburbanites to a runaway teen. “The other possibility is that the Choker has decided to play it safe. Why he would do that, we cannot speculate. But I assure you we will find out.” That very night, Balint resolved that he’d have to sacrifice one more middle-class suburbanite to protect his ass.

  Delilah’s final trimester of nursing school was nearly over—and with it Balint’s window of opportunity to disappear unnoticed for many hours at a stretch. So on a Friday afternoon, he canceled all of his patients, claiming a sore back, and drove north through the Bronx and Westchester County into Southern Connecticut. Balint wore his final pair of disposable latex gloves over his trusty leathers and carried the last strands of green ribbon loose in his pocket. While he drove—windows down, Golden Oldies on the radio—he savored the carefree pleasure of a man on the final leg of a long and exhausting journey. So the journey hadn’t turned out precisely as he’d anticipated. What mattered was that he’d ended up far better off than when he started. If he hadn’t set out to kill Sugarman, who could say that he’d have ended up living with Delilah? Or that he’d have been appointed the youngest department chairman in the Laurendale-Methodist Hospital’s 146-year history?

  Balint pulled off I-95 at the Cloverdale exit. He inched his way through the local business district—past upscale boutiques and a pizza shop and a funeral parlor with a hearse parked out front. Along one of the side streets, he caught sight of two women in sweat suits power walking. He circled the block—hoping that they might separate—and when he returned, the women had stopped exercising and stood chatting in front of a Tudor-style residence with a freestanding garage. The garage door stood open, displaying only one vehicle. In an upscale community like Cloverdale, where two or even three cars was the norm, this was a strong indication that his target was returning to an empty house. In preparation for his attack, Balint pulled the Mercedes to the curbside.

  Balint watched from the rearview mirror as one of the women continued her power walk, while the other, a chubby matron in her forties, advanced up the path that separated the garage from the house. He fingered the ribbons in his pocket. It was now or never, he knew.

  He reached forward to shut off the radio. At that very moment, the DJ broke into “Earth Angel” with a bulletin. “We have breaking news,” announced Brother Charlie. “I repeat: we have breaking news. A suspect has been positively identified in the Emerald Choker slayings.” Balint dared not breathe: he waited for the world to learn the identity of the serial killer—unsure whether the name revealed would be his own.

  A moment later, the audio feed cut to Sheriff Spitford. “We’ve had the suspect in custody on a different charge for over a week now,” he said. “We possess DNA evidence linking him directly to a pair of strangulation homicides in Wisconsin in 2007. In addition, we have an eyewitness—a granddaughter of the couple killed in Cobb’s Crossing, New York—who has positively picked our suspect out of a lineup as the man she saw parked near her home on the morning that her grandparents were murdered.”

  Spitford said the man’s name. Balint had never heard of him.

  A journalist asked Sheriff Spitford how certain he was that his officers had the right man in custody and whether the suspect had acted alone.

  “One hundred percent certain,” answered Spitford. “And yes, he acted alone.”

  A perverse instinct urged Balint to kill one last time anyway, in order to prove Spitford wrong. He would have given almost anything to see the officer backtracking the next day in humiliation. But the key word was almost. What Balint wasn’t willing to sacrifice was his freedom, or the future of his daughters. So that meant his killing spree had to come to a close. Instead of murdering a stranger, he’d be driving out to Lake Shearwater and discarding the last of the ribbon underwater. He removed the gloves and slid them into his pocket; these too would have to go into the lake.

  A tap at the window of the Mercedes distracted Balint from his reverie. He looked up into the eyes of a cocoa-skinned female police officer. A pin on her lapel read: AUXILIARY COMMUNITY PATROL.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” replied Balint quickly. “I thought I was lost. But I’m not. I know exactly where I’m going.”

  “Good,” replied the officer. “Please drive safely.”

  He pulled away from the curb and did not look back.

  BALINT’S DIVORCE was finalized later that week. Amanda had called and offered him a settlement so reasonable that he could see no point in hiring an attorney. She wanted to divide their assets in half and to share custody of the girls: they’d switch between houses on alternate weeks. Her only other demand was that she retain the right to live in their house until Phoebe departed for college, at which point they’d sell the property and divide the proceeds. To Balint’s surprise, she didn’t ask for anything in the way of alimony or child support. “To be blunt, Jeremy,” she’d explained on the phone, “what I want more than anything is a clean break—to get on with my life. I’d rather die in the gutter than depend on you for anything ever again.” Her tone wasn’t angry or bitter, but unnervingly matter-of-fact, as though she were discussing various methods for classifying library books. Already their marriage seemed remote, almost inexplicable.

  Balint dropped by his former home early on Sunday morning to deliver the divorce papers himself. He also hoped to surprise his daughters, who weren’t expecting him until later in the day. Amanda opened the door in her fleece dressing gown. She did not look pleased to see him.

  “Really, Jeremy. You can’t just show up like this,” she said—making no effort to invite him inside.

  He handed her the divorce papers. “I thought you might want these.”

  Amanda glanced over the documents and nodded. “You should have called.”

  “Next time. Promise.” Balint stood on the front porch, the slate porch to which he technically still owned half the title, waiting for an offer to enter. His wife kept one hand clasped on the doorknob.

  “Do you want something else?” she finally asked.

  “Is it okay if I say hello to the girls?”

  Amanda’s expression hardened. “You’ll see them in four hours.”

  “Come on. I wanted to surprise them. Just this once.”

  At that moment, Balint noticed a flicker of motion behind Amanda in the foyer. Then a voice called out, “Is everything all right?” He recognized the polished baritone instantly, even out of context. It belonged to Etan Steinhoff. The rabbi appeared
to have taken Balint up on his suggestion to have an extramarital affair. What amazed Balint most of all was how little he cared: if Amanda’s relationship with Warren Sugarman had driven him to murder, now her sleepover with Steinhoff didn’t even get under his skin.

  “It’s nothing. Just my ex-husband,” Amanda called into the house. To Balint, she said, “Now isn’t a good time, Jeremy. I’m sorry. Please come back at one o’clock.”

  “Very well,” said Balint. “I understand.”

  He turned to go, then summoned the minimal Hebrew he’d retained from his childhood Sunday school classes, and shouted into the darkness: “Good morning, rabbi! Boker tov!”

  NO SIGN of the philandering rabbi remained when he picked up his daughters at the appointed hour. The girls hugged him simultaneously; now that they no longer saw him every day, his very presence had become a special occasion. Phoebe showed him her drawings of African and Asian elephants for his approval. “Can you see how the ears are different?” she demanded. “That’s because the African elephants are smarter.”

  “Obviously,” agreed Balint. “Does that mean people with big ears are smarter too?”

  Phoebe giggled. “No, silly. Only elephants.”

  On the spur of the moment, he decided to pay Amanda back for the way she’d treated him earlier. “I have a surprise for you girls,” Balint announced—when he was certain his ex-wife remained in earshot. “It’s actually your new stepmother’s idea,” he added—although technically he wasn’t yet remarried. “Delilah and I are going to take you to the zoo.” Let Etan Steinhoff try to compete with a stepparent who could produce giraffes and sea lions in an instant.

  So they all bundled into the station wagon and drove over the George Washington Bridge into New York City. The afternoon was mild for May; daffodils sprouted along the paths leading to the primate house and the aviary. Balint held hands with Delilah like a high school student on a first date. While the girls explored the children’s petting zoo, they waited outside the fence and kissed.