Kill the Next One

by Federico Axat

  “How sad. So, did he go to prison?”

  “The government revoked his passport, and he was arrested once in Japan on that account during a stay there. He had nowhere to turn. It was Iceland, where he had played that first championship match with Spassky, that sort of took pity on him and granted him citizenship. The images of him when he was transferred to Reykjavík make an impression on you. He died there in two thousand and eight.”

  “He never got treatment? From what you say, he was suffering from acute psychosis.”

  “I don’t know. The interesting thing is, he isn’t the only brilliant chess master who has had severe paranoia. There have been several cases. Not caused by playing chess, of course, but it does appear that these individuals’ mental structure isn’t the ideal sort for coping with such an illness.” Laura added with a nervous laugh, “Chess is a little paranoia-provoking in itself. You constantly have to be anticipating threats that might never materialize, and the possible variations are virtually infinite. Brilliant chess minds analyze those variations, the possible moves, one after another, each one leading to limitless ramifications. Apply that same structure off the chessboard and the result is catastrophic.”

  “I’m not sure I completely understand. Do you think something of the sort has happened to McKay?”

  “The recurrent characteristic in players like Fischer is that they stop playing from one day to the next. Others retire but they keep playing as amateurs—exhibition games and such. But the ones who show signs of schizophrenic or paranoid behaviors simply quit. And what I suspect is, in their cases a sort of transference is occurring. The mind continues to calculate variations; it just can’t suddenly stop cold—that’s all it has ever done! These prodigies started playing when they were young children, and when they no longer have the game to play, they take the game off the chessboard. The odd thing in Ted’s case is that he quit as a teenager. He lived a normal life for twenty years, until the process suddenly started up.”

  “Maybe it was latent in him, and when reality led him into using the same logic, it reactivated his old thought structures. Whatever problem he had, that must be what set the mechanism in motion.”

  “Quite likely. Ted has gone through two well-differentiated cycles over the past few months, one inside the other, and each cycle has repeated several times. Maybe ‘cycles’ is the wrong word. Call them ‘variations,’ perhaps.”

  “Have you found any documented cases of this?”

  “Only theories with little scientific evidence to back them up.” Laura looked at her half-eaten salad. She had been talking with such enthusiasm, she had once more forgotten about it.

  “And you think the horseshoe is what shook him out of the cycles, like it’s an anchor in reality or something.”

  “Exactly. When he left the first cycle, he conceived the second—a new variation. Closer to reality this time, though it, too, was unreal. In the first cycle, for example, Ted wasn’t aware of his wife’s cheating. In the second, he realized that things weren’t going well between them.”

  Laura looked at her watch.

  “Should we be going?” Marcus asked.

  “They’re expecting us in half an hour, but it’s not far.”

  “Who’s expecting us?”

  “You’ll see. So far I’ve been staying pretty far ahead of Ted in what he knows, and I still know a few things he hasn’t found out yet. But there are lots of details I can’t understand, and one of them is the role Edward Blaine plays in all this.”

  “You don’t think he simply used the information he heard about that case on the TV news? I mean, it was a famous case, and then his mind used that information to concoct the profile of the person he was supposed to kill.”

  Laura nodded.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I thought. But today, as I was reading through the transcriptions of our sessions, there was something that jumped out at me. Something that might help us figure out if it’s just what you suggest or if there’s a more complicated connection.”

  “Such as what? Don’t leave me hanging!”

  Laura stood up.

  “Come on. I’ll explain it along the way.”

  38

  It was perfectly reasonable to assume that Ted, like everybody else, had learned the details of the Blaine case from newspaper and television reports. Amanda Herdman’s murder was front-page news for weeks. The victim’s sister, a publicity seeker named Melissa Hengeller, had gotten a journalist at the Boston Star to publish her account; it had quickly spread from there. It contained the ingredients of an attractive story: a grisly murder (at first police said that the murder weapon was a hammer) and what seemed like an unexpected twist, with the not guilty verdict for Blaine. After the verdict, Hengeller hired an expert to investigate her sister’s death, gather new data, and comb through the existing evidence. What he found was hair-raising. There was no actual science behind his hypothesis that the laundry heat vent located directly under Amanda’s apartment had kept her corpse warm enough to cause an error in the estimated time of death, but the discovery was certainly a surprising turn in the case. The revelation led to cross fire between Hengeller’s expert; the lawyers for the defense, who were now defending his acquittal; and the prosecutors, who wanted only to cover their asses. Public opinion was divided, though most believed the sister’s version of events.

  Blaine’s house had been put up for sale, and Laura had made an appointment with the real estate agent to see it. She had called him that very morning, on a hunch, and the fellow had told her it was her lucky day: he was in the area and would be glad to show her the house that afternoon. Laura agreed, suspecting that he was lying about being in the area.

  “Hey there! Jonathan Howard.” The agent introduced himself with a smile that matched his likeness on the sign staked in the front yard.

  Laura shook hands with him.

  “Hello. Laura Hill, and this is Marcus, my husband.” She turned to give Marcus a bare hint of a mischievous smile.

  “Wonderful!” Howard gushed as they walked to the property. “This house is quite the find, as you’ll see. Do you…do you two have kids?”

  “Yes, one,” Laura immediately answered.

  “Marvelous. Are you from around here?”

  “No. But we’ve heard the history of the house,” said Marcus, playing bad cop.

  Howard’s face fell for a fraction of a second, but his smile instantly resurfaced.

  “Oh, that. Yes, the guy had to leave. But he didn’t live here long, and anyway, he was only a renter. Fortunately, though, people are very understanding, and it’s drawing a lot of interest now. After all, it’s not like the, um, the unfortunate incident took place here, is it?”

  Laura defused the situation.

  “Of course not. That’s what I keep telling him.”

  Howard was right about one thing: it was a beautiful house. That much was easy to see even with the house completely empty, and it was difficult to imagine a despicable character like Blaine living here. For a moment Laura performed the mental exercise of picturing the place with her own furniture. They did a quick run-through of the house, and one of the first things Laura and Marcus verified was that there was, indeed, a guest room on the first floor. Did that confirm Ted’s story of having been there? Possibly.

  They came to the master bedroom, on the second floor, and Laura turned her attention to the agent, who walked across the room toward a huge closet and asked them to follow him. He undoubtedly thought the closet would be an important selling point with Laura, because he went overboard here, showing it off with melodramatic gestures, asking her to imagine her shoes on the shelves, her dresses and other clothes in the various compartments, her jewelry in a jewel box under the mirror. Her eyes grew wider with every comment, though for different reasons than Howard supposed. Ted had told Laura in one of their sessions that he had hidden in the first-floor guest room because there wasn’t anywhere to hide in the master bedroom, yet here was this gigantic wal
k-in closet, a perfect hiding place in which to wait for Blaine. This proved what she already suspected: Ted had never entered this bedroom.

  “Mind if I take some pictures?” she excitedly asked, pulling her phone from her bag. “I want to see my sister’s face when she gets a load of this.”

  “Please do!” Howard urged her.

  Marcus, ready to get out of the closet, gave her a quizzical look.

  When they were downstairs again, Laura dragged Marcus to the guest room.

  “Can I talk with my husband alone for a minute?”

  “Of course!”

  Howard went outside.

  Marcus looked at her.

  “What’s with taking pictures, Laura? And what are we supposed to be talking about?”

  She crossed the room, opened the closet door, and knelt to see the underside of the shelf. She froze.

  “What is it?” Marcus went over and knelt next to her.

  There was Buzz Lightyear. The Toy Story sticker that Ted had described during his sessions. The one that glowed in the dark.

  “Close the door,” Laura said.

  Marcus complied. They both knelt against the back wall of the closet, like a couple of kids playing hide-and-seek. Marcus hardly had time to wonder what the real estate agent would think if he came in right then and found them in there.

  With the space totally dark, Buzz’s outline glowed softly. Laura opened the closet door.

  “I can’t understand it,” she said as she walked out.

  Marcus stood up and went after her.

  “What can’t you understand?”

  “That sticker. It’s just the way Ted described,” Laura said, perplexed. “Until I saw that, I was convinced that the Blaine episode was a product of his paranoia, that he had never been to this house. The details of the upstairs bedroom contradict his story, but that sticker…It proves he really was here, shut inside this closet.”

  “You told me he murdered Blaine in his story. Obviously, that never happened.”

  Laura thought it over, pacing back and forth in the empty room.

  “In the first cycle he killed him, in the second he didn’t.”

  “Maybe he meant to kill him,” Marcus hazarded.

  “This makes no sense,” she said softly. “Ted’s being in this house is a piece that doesn’t fit with anything else—”

  A knock on the door made them start.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Hill! Is everything all right? I’m sure we can negotiate a lower price if you’re interested in the house. I can talk to…”

  Laura opened the door. She glared at the agent, pretending to be upset.

  “My husband isn’t convinced,” she growled. “Apparently his is the only opinion that counts around here.”

  She walked around the agent and stormed to the front door.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marcus said. And he was completely sincere.

  “If there’s anything you’re unsure about, we can fix it. The sellers are willing, I’m sure.”

  Marcus put his hand on the agent’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry for wasting your time. I really am.”

  39

  It was his first night in the room he would be sharing with Dawson. Ted was grateful to be alone at this moment. Lying on the bed, he contemplated the gray forms in this unknown territory, especially the two desks, one on either side of the single window. The photo of Holly and him with the girls stood out on his desk. It had been taken three Christmases ago, when their marriage was still working. Though the moon threw only enough light for him to see the frame, Ted could recall every detail in the photo and even conjure up the moment when it was taken. They were all smiling except Nadine, who was pointing to one side with a touch of horror. The camera had been set on automatic; Ted had programmed it and run to take his place, and just then Nadine had noticed the neighbors’ cat, which often visited them in search of a bite to eat, running off with one of the fish fillets Holly had fried up for dinner. Nobody but Nadine had noticed it, and her shock at seeing the cat’s sudden raid was captured for all time. Ted had kept the photo in his study ever since.

  “And now you’ve ended up here,” he told the photograph.

  He continued looking around incredulously, unable to believe where he was. But unlike over the previous days, when he had felt an utter lack of belonging, now he felt he was in the right place. The videos Laura had shown him in the assessment room had affected him deeply, he had to admit. He had fallen into a trap set by his own mind; he couldn’t blame himself. But now he was making progress, wasn’t he? That’s why Laura had shown him the videos…

  Maybe she had already played them for you three dozen times before this.

  He again addressed the photo. “No. She was showing them to me for the first time.”

  He had to have something to hold on to.

  Accepting that he was in the right place was an important step. And now he felt it. He felt he needed Lavender if he wanted to continue getting better, if he wanted to understand why his mind had concocted those alternate realities.

  The cycles.

  What lurked behind them?

  To think that his daughters hadn’t seen him in months—that was another idea that would take some getting used to. How had the idea of ending his own life crossed his mind? Leaving them behind…It was inconceivable. Now he saw that clearly.

  “Whatever has happened to Daddy, he’ll overcome it and get better,” he said, leaning slightly forward, looking straight at the photo. “For your sakes.”

  He smiled.

  But an instant later the smile vanished, as if by magic. He jumped from the bed in terror. A valve was opened…He ran out the door and into the corridor. The lights were out and all was silent. Ted felt an urge to yell for McManus at the top of his lungs, but then he remembered that McManus wasn’t on duty that night. He reached the end of the hall, where the nurse on duty was watching TV. Ted hadn’t met this one before, or he thought not, and indeed she seemed pretty startled to see him standing there. She grabbed the walkie-talkie from the desk and pressed the button, ready to speak.

  “No, no,” Ted reassured her, exhibiting his empty palms. “There’s nothing wrong. I just need to talk to Dr. Hill. It’s important.”

  The nurse put the radio down, but she still regarded Ted with mistrust.

  “You can talk to her tomorrow,” she said. “For now, back to bed.”

  “It can’t wait. She told me so. She told me I could call her if I needed to talk with her. She told me that—she really did.”

  There was a mixture of entreaty and horror in Ted’s eyes that the nurse had rarely seen in all her years at Lavender Memorial.

  40

  Laura’s living room really was a mess; she hadn’t been making it up. Marcus was astonished to see files scattered all across the carpet, newspaper clippings, a half-finished cup of coffee. She smiled, amused.

  “Told you so. Walter’s with his father. And when Walter is with his father…” She made a gesture that took in the entire room.

  “But why on the floor?”

  She laughed.

  “Childhood habits. My sister and I shared a room. We only had one desk and she had claimed it for studying, so I studied on the floor. I liked it. I kept it up at college.”

  Laura piled up some documents and carried them to the living room table.

  “This case has you obsessed.”

  “Cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  Minutes later they were drinking their coffee and eating doughnuts at the table. Laura was deep in thought.

  “Laura, tell me how it is that the patient constructed Blaine’s murder. That’s the part I understand the least of anything you’ve told me.”

  “Until I saw that sticker at Blaine’s house I was sure Ted’s dream about murdering him had no basis at all in reality,” Laura explained. She riffled through the folders she had piled up on the table. “Look at how many newspaper clippings I have about the case, all
from the period before Ted was admitted. The logical supposition was that his mind was parroting a case that was in the news.”

  “But how did he incorporate it into his delusion?”

  “He thought he had joined a suicide club, an organization for people who wanted to commit suicide, which had recruited him. Their aim was to ease the grief of their loved ones by making their suicides look like murder. Each member would kill the next one on the list. The price of joining the chain was to take revenge for an unjust death—a sort of vengeance.”

  Marcus wrinkled his nose.

  “That’s pretty complicated. But fascinating.”

  “Definitely. There are three characteristic elements that link the first cycle to what really took place. The first is the suicide. I’m certain that Ted intended to take his own life at some point; he may have even attempted suicide. Then there’s his family’s grief. He stressed that point so often, it shows how his thinking about the consequences of his suicide have affected him. The third element, the most puzzling, is his visit to Blaine’s house. That’s the one that doesn’t fit.”

  “I was just about to say, if the man from that organization—what’s his name?”

  “Lynch.”

  “If Lynch had simply suggested camouflaging the suicide as a murder, everything would make sense. But why ask Ted to kill somebody else?”

  “I don’t know. And now that we know Ted really did go to Blaine’s house, and possibly hid there as he said he did, in his first cycle…I don’t know what to think. He clearly had to have gone there for some reason.”