Blood on Their Hands

by Lawrence Block

  “Oh, we can be sure,” Max said. “Remember what we just saw? A graveyard in the basement. He’s up to no good. I’m certain of it. And I’m here to put an abiding stop to his quiet evil. Forever. Come with me.”

  I followed him to an entrance. Befitting a rural practice, the door was unlocked.

  Max placed his gloved hand on the pistol in his pocket and patted it.

  Sweat had appeared on my forehead and began trickling down into my eyes.

  As he opened the door, I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Steady, Max. Please. Think. Don’t do this.”

  He shook his head. “This time, I’m not sitting back and just letting the story unfold before my eyes. I’m taking action. I’ll end this suffering in its dark tracks.”

  I made sure the door shut softly behind us, then trailed Max into an empty exam room. The vet was just around the corner, whistling to himself.

  I made a vain attempt to grab Max’s arm, but he shrugged me off with amazing ease.

  And then, suddenly, we were face to face with Dr. Jones.

  He was six feet tall, thin as a summer cornstalk, and had salt-and-pepper hair, cut curiously like Moe Howard’s.

  Amazingly, when he saw we had slipped into his death chamber, he smiled.

  “Hey, how ya doin’, Max?” Dr. Jones said, letting the death rod hang at his side. “Nice evening, isn’t it?”

  Max grinned, and I heard his teeth chattering. “We are fine, Dr. Jones, but I presume that the animals to whom you are charged to heal are not so fine. In fact, I daresay that the animals in those cages are doomed.”

  He nodded and smiled wistfully. “You’re right. When I see these strays show up at the pound, it reminds me of how irresponsible most people are. Truth be told, I have more respect for these creatures than I do for the people who brought them in.”

  Max brandished his pistol. “Enough of this. Take us into your basement of death.”

  Dr. Jones initially smiled, but then seemed to notice the murderous look in Max’s eyes. “What is this about?

  “It’s about delivering a bit of justice to this world. It’s about avenging helpless animals who are being tortured by a subtly insane sadist.”

  Dr. Jones cocked his head like a hound. “Are you one of those animal liberation people? I mean, if you are, as far as I’m concerned, you can take these strays, let them loose, do whatever you’d like. I get no pleasure out of euthanizing them.”

  Max aimed his pistol straight at Dr. Jones’s head. “You heard me. Take us to the basement.”

  “Why? There’s nothing in there.”

  Max chuckled. “I beg to differ. Tonight, my colleague and I came and had a look. There’s much to see down there, testament to the suffering you’ve caused to those who are powerless to defend themselves.”

  The blood left Dr. Jones’s face, rendering it the color of ash.

  Still gripping the euthanizing rod, he turned and headed toward a door, opened it, and flicked on the basement light, then began slowly walking down the steps.

  We followed.

  When he had reached the bottom of the stairs, Dr. Jones said, “My God! What is this?”

  He went up to one of the numerous dirt mounds that we’d seen through the window and kicked it. A small, dark mote of dust floated into the air, then eddied into nothingness.

  “I have no idea what these are,” Dr. Jones said. “No idea at all.”

  “I’ll tell you what they are,” said Max. “They are the graves of animals who were loved by their human companions. Tell me, Dr. Jones, where is my Phil? Where is my Suki? Where are the small creatures who cherished me without hesitation, who told me I’m alive by their very presence? Are they here?”

  Dr. Jones dropped the rod to the floor. “What the hell…”

  Hatred seemed to trill from Max’s mouth when he said, “I’ve never even heard of such a level of vicious abuse in my fifty-odd years of practice.”

  Dr. Jones laughed quietly. “Abuse? Max, you sound crazy. Are you serious?”

  Max raised the pistol and fired toward the ceiling. The explosive sound caused all three of us to jump.

  “What do you do to the poor little souls?” Max demanded. “Do you skin them, experiment on them, bury them alive—?”

  ‘‘I what? Why, I’ve never—”

  “Shut up! I won’t hear any more from the likes of you. I entrusted my loved ones with you and you killed them! You took away the last joys in my life.”

  Suddenly, I stepped in front of Max. He wasn’t used to my being assertive with him, and thus paused long enough for me to easily grab the pistol from his hand.

  “Elliot,” Max said, “what are you doing? I told you, back at the office, that this was my task. I didn’t want you here.”

  “I couldn’t have missed this, Max. You see, I set this up. All of it. I set you up.”

  “What are you saying, my boy?”

  “I’m not your boy!” I shouted as I felt my facial features stretching into something approaching derangement. Then, seeing Dr. Jones beginning to back away toward the stairs, I aimed the gun at him. “Stay put, you! I’m not done with either of you. I haven’t even started.”

  Max spoke again, and this time his voice trembled. “What is this all about?”

  “It’s about using your own skills against you, Max, using your own certainty to control you, to right a wrong. Can’t you see it? Or is the perception I created for you imposing itself without resistance? Dr. Jones doesn’t torture or kill animals. I’m sure he’s a very nice vet. Over the years, you’ve spoken so warmly about him, how he took care of your cats. He’s never consulted with me at all, Max, never even set foot in our office. After my plan formed, I sneaked out here with a shovel last night, sneaked into the basement and created these little mounds of dirt. They aren’t graves at all. But you see, perception is all, just like you’ve always said.”

  “You orchestrated this?”

  “Every bit of it. I threw a monkey wrench into your pathology by bringing up Candy Lorber—thus introducing insecurity and self-doubt into you—and then I presented a door to resolution by telling you Dr. Jones was a cat torturer. Under the circumstances I created, you had no choice but to take action.”

  “Why? After all I’ve done—?”

  “Shut up! Do you want to know what you’ve done? You’ve all but adopted the son of Candy Lorber. That’s right. That was my mother you abandoned to die, the woman you couldn’t take time to comfort, the lady who had to shoot up a college campus just to tell the world she hurt.”

  He was stunned by my revelation. “She was your mother? My God, she never would tell me the name of her son.”

  My voice trembled as much from grief as rage. “I was in college when she died, the very college where she lost her life. My life was adrift until that night. But once I knew what you’d done to Mom, I had a goal in my life. What is it you wrote? ‘One must always—always!—establish and pursue goals that forcefully embody the theme of one’s existential magnum opus.’ I established and pursued one central goal: revenge. After changing my name, I sought you out, begged for your help, and thanks to you, I earned my doctorate in psychology and joined your practice. And you know what’s kept me going all this time? Well, I’ll tell you. It was the knowledge that this moment would come. It was just a matter of fashioning your perceptions for you. Drawing your life map. Perception is everything, Max.

  “So you see how perfect it is?” I continued. “I’ll shoot Dr. Jones here. Then I’ll inject you with the euthanizing fluid. It’ll look like you killed Dr. Jones, but he managed to valiantly fight back. The police will find two dead bodies. Case closed. And of course, then I inherit your practice.”

  “Oh, my boy,” he said, pity informing his voice. “You were right in quoting me about certainty. It is the grand salve, and also the greatest illusion.”

  “Exactly. Ironic that it turned out to be your downfall.”

  He shook his head and smiled sadly. “No, my son, it w
as your downfall.”

  He took two steps toward me, arms outstretched like he was going to hug me.

  I aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  “You see, Elliot,” Max said, “I had only one bullet in the gun and, as you saw, I fired it into the ceiling. It was a blank, to boot. Just for show.”

  “But—”

  “No, Elliot, now I talk. You underestimated my clinical and personal acumen, it seems. I’ve seen your deterioration these past months. I’ve seen you trying to manipulate me, so much so that I decided to feign a bit of encroaching Alzheimer’s. That way, if you were intent on nefarious deeds, you’d feel freer to show your true colors. And you did, in spades. The fact is, as soon as you told me Dr. Jones had consulted with you, I simply called him up and explained my suspicions about you. He volunteered that he’d never consulted with you, and he was kind enough to play along tonight. You see, I knew you’d want to be here when I came, although I admit I didn’t know you wanted to kill me. I just assumed you wanted to put me in an embarrassing trap, then take over the practice. You disappoint me, my son.”

  Dr. Jones reached down and picked up the euthanizing rod.

  Instinctively, I prodded the pistol in his direction before it occurred to me that other than throwing it at him, the gun was useless.

  “Drop it,” said Dr. Jones, and I did.

  Max said, “Sit down, Elliot.”

  I lowered myself to the sodden floor and crossed my legs Indian-style.

  Dr. Jones leaned forward and pressed the euthanizing rod’s needle against my sternum.

  “I am truly sorry for you,” Max said. “For the life map you created back when you were in college was utterly false. Tell me, Elliot, what made you think that I abandoned your mother, that I didn’t care what happened to her? Did you read it in a tabloid?”

  I lifted my eyes to his. “No! That’s what Mom told me. I saw her in the hospital before she died. I was with her...

  Max shook his head. “As I said, I’m truly sorry. Your mother, Elliot, was a master manipulator, much more adept at it than you are. And it seems her last act in life was to manipulate you.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, then spat at him.

  He calmly removed a handkerchief and wiped the spittle from his pants. “If you’d just told me the truth when we first met, told me she was your mother, I could have helped you.

  “Elliot, your mother was filled with hatred. Hatred for the world, hatred for the therapists who hadn’t helped her, hatred for her family. And hatred for the son she bore out of wedlock, the son she never wanted, the son she wanted to kill because she perceived him as having ruined her life by his very birth. Hatred for you, Elliot. What she threatened that night was to kill you. When I tried to reason with her, she cut her wrists, then attacked me and ran from the office. I called the police, but they didn’t find her until they’d received word that she was rampaging on the campus, where she’d gone to find and kill you.”

  “You’re lying,” was all I could manage to say, but even then I felt my world crumbling about my shoulders.

  Patting me on the shoulder, Max said, “I’m sure you believe I’m lying. Certainty is a curse, is it not? Elliot, that night I called the police because I was concerned about her...and about you, though I didn’t even know your name. I’ve never spoken or written about it because I wished her family no more pain. But you could have read the police report, Elliot: I told them what happened that night. You could have attended the inquest. You could have read the interviews with me in the newspaper accounts. You could have talked with me. I could have helped you.”

  I felt like I was melting. “I didn’t think I needed to know any more. I’d already talked to Mom. I knew who was responsible.”

  “I know, my boy, I know,” said Dr. Deguise, “and it seems that you have two choices here. You’ve already attempted murder, technically speaking. And if you attempt to attack us, I suppose Dr. Jones can inject you with the euthanizing fluid. The gun has your fingerprints on it. The police will find one body, the body of a misguided soul in this basement who tried to kill an innocent veterinarian and a world-famous psychologist.”

  “Do I have any other choices?” I asked, feeling as though I were shrinking into fetus-hood with each passing second.

  “Of course you do. In life, there are always other choices.” And then Dr. Maxwell Deguise interlocked his fingers and recited it like a liturgy: “‘One must always—always!—establish and pursue goals that forcefully embody the theme of one’s existential magnum opus.’

  “What is your story to be, Dr. Elliot Albert?” he asked me.

  When I began writing Dr. Deguise’s biography, how was I to know that A Trail of Mirrors was ultimately to be my story?

  I only became truly conscious last week. Apparently I lapsed into a catatonic state that night, under the weight of the knowledge Dr. Deguise had shared about my mother. Until I woke up, I sat here in the psychiatric hospital, being fed by aides, and led from bed to dining room and back again.

  I have replayed our visit to the Konner County Veterinary Clinic a thousand times, and written more pages about my mother than I can imagine. But it doesn’t help.

  Perceptions die hard, if they die at all.

  The story my mother told me that emotion-laden night in the hospital room has so embedded itself into me that now, one hundred twenty days after my involuntary admission to the psychiatric unit, it remains as crisp and vivid as if it had happened to me. As though I had been there.

  Could my mother have hated me so profoundly and never expressed it directly to me? Could she have wanted me dead?

  Or had Max all along planned to scuttle me out of the practice, to use my youth and enthusiasm until it threatened him, and then to dispense of me like trash through his masterful manipulations?

  A terrifying thing in this life, I have concluded, is uncertainty.

  It’s nearly as terrifying as certainty.

  I received a letter this morning. Its postmark suggested to me that it was mailed by Max. It read:

  Dear Max,

  If you don’t see fit to take responsibility for your son, I’ll take drastic action. Mark my words. You can’t hurt me anymore.

  Candy

  A tiny typewritten note was stapled to the letter:

  Our own lives have become clear, have they not? We must talk soon, Elliot.

  Love,

  Dad

  How do I go about revising my life story?

  How can I ever know if it’s finally true?

  I wonder where they keep the razors here.

  Along for the Ride

  Aileen Schumacher

  “You working mighty close to the edge, babe. In case you ain’t noticed, it’s a hell of a ways down.”

  Lee ignored Jack-off-Jake and kept pounding nails. She didn’t need pointers from anyone, hadn’t needed any for a long time now.

  Silence never fazed Jake. “You got some dynamite curves, Lee-baby, but if you take a dive, ain’t none of them curves big enough to hitch you up to any scaffolding on the way down.”

  Fat Frank stepped off the construction elevator at the right moment to hear the jive, had to throw in some of his own. “If you’re gonna fall down this elevator shaft, Lee, you holler. I’ll run throw myself on top of this contraption, cuz honey, you can fall on top of old Frank anytime.

  Luke was watching a concrete pour fifty feet away, had to yell to be heard. “You telling us you can actually run, Frank? If you somehow manage to get your fat body on top of that elevator, let me know. I’ll heave a bag of cement over, just so you can practice having something land on top of you.”

  Lee could take care of herself. Still, it was nice to hear Luke’s words.

  Young, black, female, working high-rise construction, the concept of a male-dominated industry held no meaning for Lee. Her entire existence was defined by men—past, present, and future. Lee had never experienced, didn’t know, and didn’t expe
ct anything different.

  “You’re not just pretty, Lee, you’re smart,” Mo used to tell her. “Don’t ever forget that. You’re gonna do something special someday.”

  Mo was right about that.

  Sixteen-year-old Mo had lied about his age to save Lee from going into foster care when their crack-whore mother finally had the decency to die. They had four good years together, carving out a life for themselves in a Miami neighborhood where cops never came alone.

  Mo didn’t hold with drugs, gangs, or slacking on the part of his twelve-year-old sister. Lee made good grades, kept house, and babysat whenever she got the chance. There was no slacking on Mo’s part, either. Most of those four years, he worked three jobs at a time.

  Mo wasn’t around a lot, but Lee knew she could depend on him. Mo always kept his promises, and he told Lee that they would buy a car when she turned sixteen. She thought the day would never come, and she was right—it never did.

  Three weeks before Lee’s sixteenth birthday, a car hit Mo while he was crossing the street, coming off the late shift, working hospital security. The driver was drunk—he never saw Mo and Mo never saw him, so that part was a stand-off. But the driver had thousands of pounds of Jaguar wrapped around him; Mo only had his uniform. Mo died at the scene.

  Twenty-four-year-old Brett Rubin, heir apparent to Rubin Construction Company, went to court a month later. He didn’t have anything to say. His lawyer talked for fourteen minutes, then Brett Rubin walked away a free man.

  Lee knew exactly how long the lawyer talked because she timed it. Mo got buried in the past, then Brett Rubin defined the present.

  Lee couldn’t tell anyone about how long Rubin’s lawyer spoke and what happened, because she wasn’t supposed to be there. Forty-eight hours after Mo’s death, Lee listened to the social worker tell her how great foster care could be for someone in her situation. She didn’t say anything, just nodded, then walked through the kitchen on the way to her room to pack and grabbed the soup can where Mo kept their cash. In the bedroom, Lee dumped everything out of her backpack, stuffed in the cash and some clothes, then climbed out the back window.