Deficiency

by Andrew Neiderman

  "Every great stride in history, in progress came at some cost," Garret said. "I regret what he's done of course, and that's why I'm pleading with you to help me find him so we can stop it."

  "You just don't want anyone to know what you've created and what responsibility you bear," she told him, her eyes narrow and steely.

  "All right. Let's say that's my motive. The result will be the same, won't it? He'll be brought to an end before he does any more damage. For Christ sakes, woman, you're a doctor. You're supposed to care about people." She turned away from him.

  "I don't know that much. I'm not holding back," she said after a moment. "I told you exactly what Kristin Martin was unable to say. The bartender at the Hasbrouck Tavern was able to give the police a more detailed description. That's all I know," she practically spit at him.

  "Putting that picture in the paper was a big mistake. It will drive him off. He might be gone already and I won't know where to go until he takes another victim."

  "How do you find out so quickly?" she asked.

  He looked at her.

  "That's not important. We've got to go see this bartender. I told you. The police won't know what else to ask her, what to look for," he said.

  "If you try to speak with her, she will think you're him, it, whatever," Terri pointed out.

  "That's right." He smiled. "That's why I need your help. And don't ask me something stupid like why don't I just go to the police. You know the reason why I can't do that. Will you help me or won't you?"

  Terri looked at her watch.

  "I'm already seriously late for my office visits thanks to you."

  "You'll find a way to explain it. Look, surely you realize this is more important than treating some flu and arthritis problems."

  She sat thinking a moment.

  "When are you going to let that policeman out of the trunk?" she asked.

  "We'll go back, get your car, and let him wake up in his uniform," he promised.

  "Get me back to my car," she said. "I need to use my phone." He studied her face.

  "If you betray me, I'll disappear and believe me, no one will believe a word you say and no one will be able to track me down or my work. All you do is permit him to take more lives. You'll attend more funerals."

  "All right," she said. "I said I would help you. I'll help you. Drive." He started the engine and turned the car around.

  "Someone who has decided to devote her life to medicine, to helping people, shouldn't be so unsympathetic," he muttered.

  "Oh, I'm sure you have only altruistic motives for your research, Dr. Stanley," she replied dryly.

  "If in the end the result is we benefit mankind, what difference will that make?" he fired back. "Yes, I have to compromise to get the necessary funding and protection, and I have to promise great profits to these people, but it would be naive to think that hasn't been the story since the first cave man corporation invested in a new and better wheel.

  "You more than anyone know how opportunistic and profit-driven our best pharmaceutical companies are, and last I heard, doctors don't take jars of peaches for their services any longer."

  "Whatever," she said. "The time for philosophical debating is long over apparently."

  "Precisely," he said.

  Hyman got on the phone himself when she called in from her car. While she spoke, Garret Stanley went behind the building to free the patrolman. When he returned, the policeman was dozing in the front seat and back in his uniform. Garret was back in his own clothes as well.

  "I'm sorry, Hyman," she told him, "but it's not something I can prevent."

  "What are you doing, Terri?"

  "I don't have time to explain it all, Hyman, and frankly, I don't know if I can. I'll call you as soon as I am able to do so," she said. "I promise and I'm sorry, really. You'll just have to trust me."

  "All right. I'll cover for you here, but please, please be careful." Garret Stanley brought his vehicle next to hers. When she hesitated, he turned his hands palms up and nodded at the police car.

  She got out and into his car.

  "Do people at this tavern know who you are?" he asked.

  "They might."

  "I thought so. That will help enormously," he said and she drove out of the hospital parking lot, looking back once in a rearview mirror toward Curt's floor, imagining to herself just how wild he would become if he had even an inkling of what she was doing.

  He was able to remember a time when anticipation was a sweet thing. It was almost as if a bell went off inside him then and a clock began ticking. As vague as time was, he realized that it wasn't very long ago when it was always that way. There was a signal to go hunting, but without the intensified urgency he now experienced. Or should he say, suffered, because he didn't enjoy it, not at all. He felt like an addict in withdrawal, writhing in agony, ready to claw up the walls in fact.

  Something within him was clawing up his walls now. In his imagination, he saw an ugly, rodent with sharp talons stripping away his flesh, leaping from side to side and crying with a piercing shrill metallic sound that reverberated through his bones and into his head. He actually put his hands over his ears and pressed as hard as he could to stop it. That didn't work. Only one thing would work. Every living thing enjoyed some pleasure when it fed as long as it wasn't in the midst of starvation where gorging of food and nutrition took place. Once, he had participated in a sweet sexual fine dining. Now, he was like a ravaging beast who would eat away its own body.

  He blamed it all on the amount of energy he had expended killing the ugly motel owner. The intensity of that struggle drained him of more than he had imagined. That realization added anger to lust and he returned to the corpse to deliver a revengeful kick at the dead man's jaw. It looked as if it cracked. Of course, that wasn't enough to satisfy him. He had to go elsewhere for what he really needed.

  He went back out front and gazed at the motel units. The plain-looking woman and her mother had not emerged from their room yet. They were still resting before dinner. Well that was a pleasure he couldn't have. He couldn't rest before his dinner. He envied them for their calmness, their toleration. To be able to sleep and put off feeding was a wonderful thing. His envy quickly turned into resentment. Why should they have this power, for that was what it really was: a power?

  The most skillful and effective hunters were the ones that had the strength to restrain themselves, to take their time, to study and wait and pounce when it was most advantageous to do so. Look how tigers and lions, even household cats, quietly stalked their prey, every part of them poised and strung, their bodies loaded and ready to fire, but their power to restrain keeping them from pulling their own triggers.

  It frightened him to realize he was losing that. For the first time since he had escaped, he was afraid, and not of something out there, something hunting him. No, he was afraid of himself, of betraying himself, of making serious mistakes. He wanted to take time to think and plan and do this with intelligence, but that damn beast inside him wouldn't give him a moment of quiet.

  He nearly ripped the motel office door off its hinges when he opened it and stepped out. Fall evenings fell faster. They were into daylight saving time. Stars had already appeared to put periods on every sentence of daylight left. Nocturnal creatures were stirring. Birds stopped their aerial gymnastics and went wherever birds went when the sun dipped below the horizon. The lights of the motel, on a sensor, began to flicker and go on. He could feel all living things turning, some on their backs, some on their stomachs. The prey of night predators scurried for cover. Little hearts pounded. Fear, like some thick syrup, began to flow in alongside the shadows that crept over the highway, under trees, and around the motel structure itself.

  As Shakespeare had written, Graveyards yawned.

  He was ready.

  Whether he liked it or not, he was ready.

  Full of resolve, he started toward the unit, the little beast within him at least pausing with that damnable anticipation.

>   Erna Walker awoke from her nap and was up. She went to the bathroom and debated taking a quick, hot shower. The unit was adequate, but far from the quality of bedding and furniture she and her mother were accustomed to enjoying. In fact, it took a great deal of consoling and extra effort to get her mother to calm down and take a nap once she was confronted with this room. Erna had to take off the faded pillow case on her mother's bed and wrap one of her clean white blouses around it. Her mother refused to undress.

  "I don't want these dirty sheets and this dirty blanket touching my skin," she said. "Look at the grime around the baseboards and on the windowsills. Was this room ever cleaned? And that bathroom, Erna.... I'm sorry I have to pee. Uggh," she said shaking herself as if merely talking about it all gave her a terrific chill.

  The room reeked of cigarette smoke, too. It was embedded in the walls and the faded, worn carpet. She chided herself for not continuing on until they had come upon a more well-known motel chain, but she had taken a wrong turn here and a wrong road there, and she was very lost. She should never have listened to that gas station attendant who had assured her the detours and shortcut would save them hours and hours. Not wanting to let her mother know just how lost they were, she had thought it better to pull into a place for the night, rest, and have a good dinner. In the morning the world would look brighter and they would both have renewed energy.

  Her mother carried on so much about the poor quality and the lack of cleanliness of this unit that Erna did some of the same things: wrap a blouse around her pillow and sleep in her bra, panties, and nightgown. She had managed to get some good rest, however, and now concluded that a quick, hot shower would probably restore her spirits even more. Mom was still fast asleep. Why not do it?

  The unit didn't have a separate shower stall. She had to manipulate the faucet on the tub to get the water to come out of the shower head. The pipes groaned and then the water began to trickle out faster and faster. It took a while to get it warm enough, however.

  After it was, she undressed and stepped gingerly into the yellow stained tub, shivering, but finally enjoying the warm water over her shoulders, down her back, and then over her breasts and stomach. She used her own soap. Mother wouldn't travel without her own soaps and shampoos, and for once, Erna thought she had been right about that sort of detail.

  She wasn't under the shower long, but it was enough to satisfy her. Stepping out carefully, she reached for the bath towel. It smelled as if it had been hanging on the rack for months, but she was soaked and had no choice. After she dried herself, she thought she would need another shower as soon as possible but in a cleaner motel or hotel.

  Just as she reached for her panties, the bathroom door opened. Expecting her mother, of course, she turned slowly and confronted the motel manager, naked, his penis erect, pointing up at her like a purple finger of accusation. The sight was so startling and shocking, she couldn't manage a sound. Her throat closed, and then a sort of croaking finally emerged.

  He put his right forefinger up.

  "Don't scream or I'll go out there and smother your mother to death," he threatened.

  She was frozen. Neither of her arms would move.

  "Down," he said pointing at the floor. "Down," he repeated. He seemed to rise above her, to expand and grow wider every moment. She whimpered like a terrified puppy and did as he ordered, folding her legs and sitting on the cold, cracked white tile. Then he walked around behind her and knelt. She had the towel pressed against her breasts, her hands clenched so tightly, she could feel her fingernails cutting into her palms, even through the towel.

  He brought his arms around her and took hold of her wrists, pulling her arms down. She started to resist and he said, "I will. I'll smother her." She relaxed her forearms and her arms were straightened. Immediately, he cupped her breasts and pulled her back against him. She heard him breathe deeply, suck in air through her hair, his mouth on her head now. In small increments, he lowered her farther and farther until she was on her back between his legs and looking up at that pulsating penis. She closed her eyes. He seemed to whimper himself, but more like something that had been overwhelmed with its good fortune. She felt him move over her, turn, and then lift her legs. She didn't want to open her eyes. She wanted to keep them shut the whole time and will this not to be happening. She thought if she looked at him, if she captured an image, it would haunt her forever. Perhaps if she kept still, kept herself apart from all this, it wouldn't become a redundant nightmare and it wouldn't destroy her.

  He entered her in one swift, driving motion and for a long moment, he didn't move. She even hoped that was all he wanted to do and now he would withdraw and go, but suddenly she felt herself being drawn to her own sex, being pulled down as if she were going to be absorbed into his penis and be gone. It was a terrifying, unexpected, and unnatural feeling, not anything like she had ever been able to envision, nor anything like she had read. All of the pains and feelings common to mankind were registered somewhere in her brain. She knew what it was like to be stuck with a pin, cut, bruised, punched, kicked, scraped, chaffed, all of it, but this came from a place beyond human experience. That was her only thought, because soon after, she felt herself falling and spiraling downward into a darkness that was again unlike any she had known. She made a small, ineffective effort to extricate herself, and then she surrendered quietly to her own inevitable death.

  On the way out, he paused at the old lady's bedside. She groaned and turned with discomfort. When she opened her eyes, she saw him standing there, but he was like a vague, gray shadow. It confused her and she scrubbed her cheeks with her hands for a few moments. He hadn't moved.

  "What is it?" she cried.

  "Something is wrong with your pillow," he said. "It's alive. There's something inside it, some creature or creatures inside it."

  She couldn't move.

  This dirty pillow?

  He reached down and pulled it slowly out from under her head. She started to call for Erna when he flipped the pillow in his hands and put it over her face. Unlike the Martin lady, she didn't struggle as much as she flailed about and he didn't toy with her as he had with the tourist house owner. He had no reason to and no patience for it. This old lady died quickly, and then he threw the pillow aside and walked out, closing the unit door behind him.

  He felt okay, but not as perfect as he was accustomed to feeling after a feed. It bothered him and it angered him. This wasn't going right. Something was wrong. It wasn't fair. He walked back to the motel office and paced for a while. He wasn't even hungry and he knew he should be that. His juices should be flowing.

  I'm dying, he suddenly thought. I need something more. I need it now. I'm out of control.

  And for the first time that he could ever remember, he was in as much panic as all of his victims had been.

  The crowd at the Old Hasbrouck Inn usually began to build by late afternoon as it was. Paula Gilbert's horrible death stirred far more interest in the tavern than usual, however, so by the time Terri and Dr. Garret Stanley turned into the lot for the restaurant, the bar was full and there were a half dozen tables already occupied. Darlene was working as hard as she did on a weekend night and she was very annoyed about it.

  When he saw the number of cars there, Garret Stanley drove around the building and parked in the rear.

  "You'd better go in there and bring her out here," he told Terri.

  "And how am I supposed to do that?"

  He reached into his pocket and peeled seven one-hundred dollar bills off his fold.

  "Offer her this. I'm sure it's more than she's making weekly in there. Tell her I'm a private detective. Tell her anything," he said sternly, "but get her out here." Terri hesitated a moment. His penchant for rage rang an alarm bell in her mind. He saw it and softened his expression.

  "Look," he said. "Be logical, Doctor. This is why I've bothered with you in the first place. If I walk in there, people who might have seen that picture in the paper will think it's me and create
a scene even before I get to speak with the bartender. Naturally, she's going to wonder why I don't come in with you. This just helps alleviate those concerns," he said waving the bills. "Money is and always will be the great convincer."

  Slowly, she took the bills from him.

  "I don't want to frighten her," she said.

  "After she's out here, just leave it all to me," he added. "I don't want to frighten her either. If I do, she won't be of any value to us, now will she? We're running out of time," he added, directing himself to her hesitation. She looked at him, opened the door, and got out. He reached over to keep her from closing it and looked out at her.

  "Remember, Doctor, there are innocent lives at stake, deaths we can prevent," he warned.

  She nodded and turned to the rear door of the tavern. As she walked toward it, she debated. She could call Will Dennis. She could have policemen around this place in minutes, but what would that accomplish? Even Will said he would have little or no chance of convicting the man of anything more serious than impersonating a policeman, while, if this story were true, the real killer would be out there raging on, each death her responsibility.

  On the other hand, she still had this instinctive feeling that Garret Stanley wasn't exactly all he claimed to be. This was the man who had attacked Curt, after all, and had incapacitated a policeman. How far would he go?

  The conversations in the tavern were so loud and spirited that the music of the jukebox was nearly inaudible. Seconds after she had entered, however, many people stopped talking, looked her way, and then began again with even more energy and interest. Griffy, who recognized her first, left the two men he was talking with and approached her quickly.

  "Dr. Barnard, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, what brings you here? I hope it wasn't someone complaining about our food," he added smiling.

  "No," she said. "I need to talk to your bartender, Darlene."