Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman - Edward Lee.wps

by phuc

That's why she couldn't wait to get home.

  At home the fantasies are real.

  When she gets home, she goes into Daddy's Room.

  Where Maxwell Platt is waiting.

  Blind.

  Deaf.

  Dumb.

  But still alive and waiting.

  She didn't glue his eyes shut like the others.

  She used tape.

  Because sometimes she wants him to see.

  Now she peels the tape off.

  The autopsy pin glimmers.

  "Here's something I want you to see," she says.

  She can see his skull beneath his face.

  (II)

  "Do you believe in vibes?" Spence asked.

  "Of course not," Simmons replied with a smile. "I'm a psychiatrist."

  Spence sat down as if exhausted. He explained to the doctor: "This morning Kathleen Shade rushed out of her apartment and took off in her car. Then she waited two and a half hours in a pay lot on Connecticut Avenue."

  "How do you know? You followed her?"

  "Well, no," Spence said. "I had Central Commo DF her vehicle."

  "Shade doesn't sound like the kind of woman who'd give the police consent to put a DF

  transponder on her car."

  "Well, she didn't actually give consent. I just "

  "Took it upon yourself."

  "For her own safety, for Christ's sake."

  "Of course," Simmons remarked. His smile settled back with him in his chair. "Be careful, Jeffrey."

  "To hell with careful," Spence came back. "She's my only real link to the killer and now she's being distracted."

  "Distracted by what?"

  "By her fucking uncle. That parking lot? It's right across the street from her uncle's bank. She knows the guy's going to blow town soon. I think she staked out the bank. I think she kidnapped the guy."

  "What makes you think "

  "Because I checked with the bank. Her uncle didn't make a withdrawal, but his car's still on the street. A ragtop Cadillac with temp tags he bought a couple days ago."

  "It could be a coincidence, Jeffrey. Is Shade's car still in the parking lot?"

  "No," Spence said, disgusted. "A couple of hours ago it took off down New York Avenue and drove right off the district DF grid. I got no way of knowing where she is, but I'm certain and I mean dead certain that she's got her uncle with her."

  "Vibes?" Simmons asked.

  "Yeah, vibes. All the pieces fit, at least."

  "So you're angry. Shade's uncle is distracting her from your serial killer case."

  "I'm beyond angry. I'm so pissed off I feel like I'm going to have a goddamn stroke. Sooner or later the killer's going to contact Shade again, probably to arrange a meeting. And when that happens I have to know exactly where Shade is or I'll lose everything. And how can I know where the fuck she is when she's driving off the goddamn district DF grid with her goddamn uncle?"

  "Don't be so vulgar, Jeffrey," Simmons advised. "It's not like you. And try not to be so selfish.

  There are perhaps more important things in Kathleen Shade's life than your homicide investigation. Such as resolving the traumas of her past. Put yourself in her place. It isn't her fault that her uncle happened to be paroled the same week that your killer decided to have a psychotic episode and start murdering people in your jurisdiction."

  Spence smirked.

  "And, really," Simmons went on. "What reason could Shade have for abducting her uncle?"

  "I don't know." Spence's eyes thinned. "Shit, she's got a gun. Maybe she wants to kill him."

  "That's ridiculous, Jeffrey. Kathleen Shade is a magazine writer. She's not a killer."

  (III)

  "I'll kill you," Kathleen asserted. She pressed the barrel of the pistol hard into Uncle Sammy's lower right side. "If you try anything funny, I'll empty this gun in you. I swear I will."

  "Kathleen, please. Look, you've "

  "Be quiet and drive!" Kathleen yelled.

  "Drive where?" Sammy very quietly inquired.

  "Just keep going down 50. I need to be away from the city. I need to clear my head and think."

  For the first hour, she'd forced him to drive obliviously about the city, then ordered him to head out New York Avenue, which had long since changed into Route 50. She seemed jittery, confused. But one thing that never wavered was the barrel of that .38, wedged into Sammy's side.

  If she pulled off a shot, he knew, the bullet would take out his kidney and turn his small intestine into ground meat. But

  She's not that crazy, he considered. Or is she?

  Sammy clammed up down 50, past the Bowie and 301 exits. Then he dared to speak:

  "Kathleen, think about what you're doing. I did my time, I'm a free man with civil rights. You can't just grab people off the street at gunpoint. You'll go to jail. And you say you'll kill me?

  Jesus, Kathleen. You do that and they'll put you in jail for 25 years at least."

  "You think so? You're not a free man, Sam. I don't care how much time you did. You're a child pornographer and a pedophile. And you're the guy who raped me for 10 years, remember? A child? I could blow your head off right now in cold blood, tell the jury that you tried to rape me again, and that would be that. You don't think they'd believe me? You think I'd go to jail for killing a pedophile?"

  "Well, I guess you got a point," Sammy conceded. Yeah, she sure as shit does. He changed the subject. "At least tell me what this is all about. What are you gonna do with me?"

  "We're going to talk," Kathleen said. "Take this next exit."

  Sammy veered the T Bird right. The exit emptied out onto Davidsonville Road, and what faced them then was one of those PARK & RIDE commuter lots. "Pull in there," Kathleen instructed.

  "Drive way around the back and park."

  She's not gonna snuff me, Sammy concluded. There's no way she's got the balls...

  Sam silenced the rest of the consideration. He was sweating. He parked in the rear of the lot, between a pickup and a station wagon. Then he turned off the ignition.

  Kathleen brushed damp hair out of her eyes. "In your vast experience, Sam, how many children have you had sex with?"

  "Aw, Christ, Kathleen, I "

  "How many!" she lunged forward and shrieked.

  The gun was poking into his side.

  Sammy gulped. "I don't know "

  The gun dug deeper, her hand turning white around its grip. "All those sick films you made, you always got a piece of the action, didn't you? I'll bet you've raped hundreds of children over the years, Sam. Isn't that right? Hundreds?"

  It probably had been hundreds, but what could he say? "I never hurt any of the kids, Kathleen."

  "But I was your regular, wasn't I? Between ‘runs,' whenever my father was out of town. Wasn't I?"

  Sammy's head spun. "You don't under "

  Kathleen cocked the pistol and jammed it further. "If you don't answer me, goddamn you, I swear I'll "

  "Yes! Yes!" Sammy yelled. "You were...my...regular."

  Kathleen grinned maniacally. "Yeah, your regular kiddie fuck. It takes a big man to brainwash a little kid so he can have sex with her. But I wasn't the only regular. I know that now."

  Sammy's gaze slackened. "What are you talking about?"

  "I know all about it, Sam. Your little hidey hole. The common law wife you addicted to heroin and turned into a prostitute. A woman you brutalized for years, offered up to your degenerate film friends, debased, tortured, raped just for kicks."

  Sammy's mouth gaped.

  The heat was cooking him. She insisted on keeping the windows up, the air conditioning off. But worse even than the heat were her words...

  "But she had a daughter, didn't she, Sam? A little girl just like me. And you raped her too, between your porno runs, when you weren't busy raping me. It's true, isn't it, Sam? You had a daughter, and you did the same thing to her that you did to me. Right?"

  "Kathleen, I don't know where you're getting all this sh "

>   "Don't lie to me, you goddamn bastard!" she screamed, "Or I'll " The pistol jerked up. The hammer fell

  BAM!

  A round went off right in front of his face: a flash like a fireball, a hellish concussion. The driver's window blew out, raining safety glass. Sammy hunkered down in the seat, his teeth gritted, flashburn on his cheeks. He urinated in his pants.

  "Yes!" he admitted. "Yes, there was another girl! For God's sake, Kathleen, please don't kill me!"

  "You raped your own daughter," the words croaked through particulate gunsmoke. "For what? 10

  years? Fifteen?"

  Sammy could only nod, gulping.

  But when the smoke spread, Kathleen's face reappeared a total transmogrification. Calm now, not hysterical. Completely in control.

  The bitter gunsmoke had changed her from a mad dervish to a complacent angel.

  But the angel still wielded a gun.

  And spoke profanities. "You motherfucking asshole."

  She put the hot barrel to his nostril, cocked the hammer again.

  "And now, Sam," she informed him. "You're going to tell me where that other girl lives."

  (IV)

  A wonderful brain job.

  He convulses, then dies.

  The bright skull beneath his face goes out.

  The autopsy pin drips dark scarlet cranial blood.

  She's so excited, she gets a little carried away.

  She uncuffs him and puts him on the floor.

  She slices open his abdominal wall with an Arista #22 scalpel.

  She eviscerates him.

  She pulls it all out, rejoicing.

  She saws off his arms and legs.

  She crudely cuts around his cranial dome with 15 tpi post mortem saw.

  She takes his brain out of the glistening vault of bone.

  Puts the brain on the floor.

  And

  squish

  steps on it.

  Another corrupter scourged from the earth!

  But then her mother comes in, railing.

  No, no, honey! What have you done!

  "But, but "

  My God, what have you done?

  She begins to cry like a baby.

  She's a killer baby.

  "But you said skulls mean death!"

  But not him! her mother shrieks. Not him!

  | |

  Chapter 36

  (I)

  Spence got bored driving around, and there was nothing to do back at the office. According to his surveillance unit, Shade had not returned to her apartment. Central Communications, likewise, reported no incoming calls, nor had Shade's vehicle reappeared on the district DF table. Spence was in limbo.

  My whole life, he considered, is in limbo.

  He sat in his unmarked which he'd parked nose out in an alley right next to Hearsay's, the singles bar where the killer had picked up Jonathan Duff. Three times city uniforms had asked him what he was doing, and he'd merely flashed his badge and stated: "Spence, Major Case Section. Get back on your beat." The officers had obliged without argument.

  Rush hour came and went. The humidity rose as the temperature hovered. Across the street a panhandler with a trumpet brayed old tunes into the dusk. Spence would've run him off but he liked the music. Before him the city shifted identities: work to play. As the sun descended, revelers in droves poured out of parking garages to take their places in the surrounding bars.

  Maybe I should go into one and have a drink, Spence thought. But then he remembered that he hated alcohol. To his right was a Thai restaurant. He grabbed a carryout order of stuffed chicken wings and some weird eggroll sort of things full of curry and chopped softshell crabs. When he got out to put the empty cartons in the trash, a sign on the city wastebasket read THE POLICE

  ARE YOUR OPPRESSORS! I'll show you some oppression, Spence thought and nearly laughed.

  Nearly.

  Back in the unmarked, he flipped through the new '90s Woman. The table of contents befuddled him. "10 New Surefire Ways To Tell If He's Sincere." "Fight Back! Sexuality As Your Ultimate Weapon." "Liposuction: Fact Versus Fiction." Here was a short story by someone named Thiel, an allegory depicting men as balls and chains. More articles on feminism. Eventually Spence turned to the "Verdict" column.

  Kathleen Shade's picture appeared at the top: a subtle off smile, ruminant yet suspicious eyes, brunette bangs cut blade sharp. If I were straight, Spence wondered, would I be attracted to her?

  He doubted it. He knew that, on the inside, she was as unhappy as he. Besides, I wasn't sexually abused as a child. What would they talk about on a date, for instance? What would they do?

  What would she expect of him? Emotionally? Sexually?

  Thank God I'm a celibate gay, he decided.

  Dear Kathleen:

  I just broke up with my eighth boyfriend. He didn't take it well. He yelled that I was making a big mistake, that I was selfish and immature, and that I had no sense of adult priority. I told him that I didn't know what I wanted, and that I couldn't stay in the relationship because I haven't yet discovered what I'm looking for in life. Then he yelled back (in public, right on the street!) "With me you were going someplace, but you're not going anywhere now but down! And if you don't know what you're looking for by now, you're never going to know!" The reason this bothers me is because I have this horrible feeling that he's right. When does a woman know what's she's looking for?

  Disordered

  Dear Disordered:

  Regarding your former boyfriend, forget him. By saying such spiteful things to you he's only elucidating his own selfishness and immaturity, not to mention his lack of consideration for your honest feelings. Men like that are best left out with the garbage. And as for your current emotional perplexion, I think you need to reverse your methods of anticipation. It is no flaw for a woman to acknowledge that she doesn't know what she's looking for in life. This, instead, is an honest and very real insight. By whatever designs, influences, etc., you may be looking for things you only think you're supposed to want. The best way to deal with this sort of crisis is to do what I do. Don't try to find what you're looking for. Instead, let what you're looking for find you.

  Spence could not decipher this at all. Is it just me? he wondered. Women's ideologies, at least to him, seemed like a foreign language. No wonder men could never understand women.

  Pedestrians sauntered by, peering in through the windshield. A few laughed. Am I funny? he wanted to say. You think I'm funny, huh? I'll show you funny, you bunch of overdressed yuppie punks! He glanced back at the article, trying to apply Shade's cryptic counsel to himself. What am I looking for?

  I'm looking for Kathleen Shade, and I ain't finding her.

  At that moment the radio scratched static. "MCS Field Unit One, are you 10 8?"

  "Yeah," Spence said into the Motorola mike.

  "Ready for 10 89 transfer to Central Communications operator." Static crunched like potato chips. Then: "This is Central Commo. You there, Lieutenant?"

  "Yeah," Spence said.

  "Shade's vehicle just came back on the DF board."

  | |

  Chapter 37

  (I)

  Kathleen had waited in the commuter lot for hours, every so often changing gun hands.

  "Kathleen," Sammy had asked. "What the hell are we doing?"

  "We're waiting," she'd replied.

  "Waiting for what?"

  "Nighttime."

  Sammy thought he'd go nuts sitting there in the hot car with her piece sticking in his side. She never said how she knew so much about that part of his past: the junkie whore and her little house, and the kid. Nevertheless, she knew it all. But Sammy couldn't imagine why it seemed to mean so much to her.

  What's she after?

  When full dark slid across the sky, she ordered him to start the car and take the interstate back towards D.C.

  "How did you find out all that stuff?" Sammy asked.

  "Shut up."

  "Why do you want to go
there?"

  "Just shut up, Sam. Shut up and drive."

  Sam drove.