The tall man stared at Hanna, and something behind his eyes changed. “Left,” he murmured to himself. “It’s there. On the… on the other side.” He paused and looked to his right. Then he began turning. He turned in place, to his right, all the way around past 180 degrees to 270 – a three quarter turn – so that when he stopped, he was facing gate 11. “And there it is,” he said. His eyes lit up. “Right where it should be.”
Hanna leapt from her chair. “Yes!” she shouted, and she had never been so happy. “Right there!” She felt like kissing someone. Anyone. She ran over to Franklin’s booth and planted him one, right on the lips.
Franklin froze in the middle of counting out a customer’s change. “Well, I don’t…” Franklin began, then stopped. He looked at Hanna Dee and grinned. “I guess I’ll be starting this over, then,” he said, throwing the money down into a pile.
Hanna Dee Corley laughed and went skipping back to her own booth.
Dr. Nathan Kline proceeded quickly to gate 11, where the bus to New Hampshire was waiting for him. He knew that he would need to find a seat within the next two minutes, before his left side deserted him altogether. He had never experienced this sort of multi-phase problem before, with so many symptoms occurring at once, but for a first try at interacting with the real world, he thought it had gone very well. The important thing was to avoid making a scene, and in this he believed he had more or less succeeded. He was on his way, after all. On his way to Concord, New Hampshire. And then, after that, to Dartmouth. At last.
He didn’t notice the man sitting in the opposite corner of the terminal, the man with the eyeglasses and the tweed coat, watching him carefully.
Kline’s List
1
From Getting to Know Patient Nathan:
I have read so much, in the papers and the magazines, about how senseless Dr. Kline’s murders were. About what a madman he was. “A ruthless, mindless psychopath,” they called him. But there was nothing senseless about what Nathan did after he left Clancy Hall. Not one thing.
I understand that my opinion in these matters is looked upon with skepticism. Because I am conflicted, the papers would say. After all, I am the one who set this “psychopath” loose on the world in the first place. And yes, he killed other human beings. With malice aforethought. Even with brutality, as some have said. And I agree that there is no excuse for these things. Kline deserves every bit of the anger directed at him. He was a cold-blooded murderer, in the end.
But – and you may accuse me of dealing in semantics here – it was never senseless. Never mindless. At least, not in the way that I use those words.
Have you read the police reports yourself? Have you seen the names Kline had on his list?
Have you thought about why?
I have.
And it all makes perfect sense.
2
Dr. Kline enjoyed his bus ride up to New Hampshire, and he was sorry when the USA Coach pulled into the little terminal on Stickney Avenue in Concord. It had been nice to just sit. To watch the New England scenery go by. As if he were a teenager on his way to camp. Or college.
There were errands to run now. First to the Bank of America on North Main, where he made the maximum allowable single-day cash withdrawal. He grinned when the money came riffing out of the machine. Dr. Levoir had assured him that his account would be unfrozen – he was being released, after all – but it was still a relief to see the stack of twenties come shuffling into his hands.
As he stepped back from the ATM, the world began to turn around him unnaturally. Dr. Kline compensated almost without thinking. He kept his eyes fixed on large, distant objects, just as a ballet dancer would spot the back of a recital hall between pirouettes. He walked the six blocks to the Centennial Inn on Pleasant street without anyone giving him a strange look.
Months of practice at Clancy Asylum.
Thank you again, Dr. Levoir.
The man behind the desk at the Centennial might have noticed something unstable about the tall, gangly figure who walked through the door that afternoon, but he didn’t see any reason to comment. Not when the man put down two nights in advance. In cash.
Kline went to his room as quickly as he could without risking a fall. He made it to the bed with perhaps thirty seconds to spare. Soon after he lay down, the ceiling above him began to spin with authority. To spin fast. As though his bed were attached to a huge, turbo-charged Lazy Susan. He closed his eyes and waited.
The phase cleared an hour later, and Dr. Kline sat up on the bed. He went through a series of practiced movements designed to detect the onset of any obvious motor-related deficit: proprioceptive, hemi-inattentive, vestibular. Everything seemed normal. He could touch his nose with both hands. He could follow his own finger as it moved past his face. And he could probably… yes. He could stand up.
He looked around the room, continuing his diagnostics. His own name came to mind easily, as well as what he was planning to do. There was no sense of dread in his chest. And he could both recall and understand the phrase ‘I am not aphasic.’ Then it occurred to him that he had taken 820 steps from the bus stop to the Inn, and that if he were to repeat that number 12 more times –
Ah.
Analytical phase. Good. This would be a perfect time to go shopping. He was confident that he could get what he needed and be back within the hour.
Probably closer to 54 minutes, actually.
The desk clerk almost missed the tall man go sweeping through the lobby. He looked up from his portable television just in time to see someone – it might have been the old, bony guy from an hour ago – walking briskly out the door. The clerk would tell the police later that he had thought it was strange. Because the guy who came in earlier had looked like he was about to fall down. The man on the way out, though – he was moving.
“He looked… focused,” the clerk would say.
And the cop would look up with doubt in his eyes. “You got that from watching his back?”
“That’s what I said, right?”
Dr. Kline returned to where the bus had dropped him off. The terminal was next to a string of cheap restaurants, a huge department store with no name on the front, and a hardware store that had been modeled to resemble a Home Depot. He headed into the nameless place first. The only salesman he could find was a slouchy teenager in Birkenstocks, looking as though he didn’t want to be bothered. Kline flagged him down.
“I need a backpack, please. It should be light – not more than five-point-six pounds. And I need a capacity of at least three thousand cubic inches. Single compartment.”
The teenager looked at him for a beat. Then he pointed. “Larger packs are on the far wall, right-hand side.” Kline nodded and went to make his selection. He did not linger.
Hardware was next. The Home Depot clone was clean and well-stocked, and Kline double-checked his mental list as he scanned the isles. He also kept count of the number of steps he took per breath, updating the average ratio continuously. He did this because it was fun to keep track of such things. That, and because he was curious to know whether the mean and median ratio values would begin to converge, despite fluctuations in his heart rate and oxygen consumption. He suspected that they would converge. Asymptotically, of course.
The salespeople in this store were helpful. And quick, which Dr. Kline appreciated in his hyper-literal state. They showed him where to find the copper wire, the toilet plungers, the DC power inverters, and the wall-mounting sets for hanging oversized mirrors. Oh, and the portable nailers. With the .22 caliber cartridge included. No outlet required.
The Hilti nailer, a specialized piece of equipment, was the most expensive item by far, though not the heaviest. The DC power inverter held that honor. The toilet plunger, on the other hand, would take up the most space per unit weight. Kline would have liked to create a comparison chart with these characteristics, but there wasn’t time. This phase would pass soon, and the numbers would lose their charm.
He paid with
a credit card – it worked just as well as his ATM card had – and then zipped everything up inside his new North Face Explorer backpack. He still had a few hundred cubic inches left in the pack. There was plenty of room for a car battery.
The man at the Meineke Car Care center was friendly. He wanted to chat.
“Died on you, huh?”
“Died?” Dr. Kline smiled. “No, not quite yet. Soon, though.”
The man nodded. “Just buying a backup, then?”
“Backup….yes. Is this the most powerful battery you sell?”
“Oh, sure. Get her up in the middle of February, that one. Turn over an old diesel block like flipping a burger. Start a ’79 pickup just on guts, you know? You could – ”
“Good. I’ll take it.”
“All right, then.”
“And I need a lockout kit. With an air wedge and a reach tool.”
The attendant’s demeanor cooled a few degrees. “Um. Thing is – those are only for sale to tow-truck companies, law enforcement, or registered locksmiths with documentation of – ”
“Yes,” Kline said, taking the roll of cash from his back pocket and peeling out five twenty-dollar bills. “Of course. But I don’t have time for that. I just need to get into my car.” He put down a sixth twenty. “You understand.”
“Well, sure. I guess I do.”
He made it back to the motel in just under 53 minutes. The desk clerk was taking a bathroom break, and he didn’t see the tall man come in. Dr. Kline went up to his room and spread his purchases out on the bed, like a child gloating over his Christmas bounty. He had only minutes before the next phase, and that wouldn’t be enough time for any real prep work. So he went to the phone and dialed a number he had looked up before leaving Massachusetts.
A young voice picked up at the other end.
“Is this the Baxter residence?” Kline asked.
“Uh-huh. You want Donny?”
“No, don’t bother Donny right now. I’ll call back.”
Indifference on the other end. “Okay.”
He hung up and returned to the bed, where his supplies waited. The DC inverter would need some modifications – the fuse, if it had one, would need to be bypassed, along with any other safety mechanisms – but everything else was going to be easy.
Now, if he could just get lucky on a phase.
As he stood there, the items on his bed seemed to take on a new quality. He could sense a texture, somehow. The roll of copper wire, so clean and cold when he had picked it up at the store, seemed more alive than before. As if he could taste it, even from a distance. And the stainless-steel picture-hanging set had changed, too. The metal had turned harsh. Bitter.
Dog phase, Kline thought.
Every item in the room now had a distinct odor, a flavor of its own. The new backpack reeked of leather and plastic, and he could smell the fresh rubber bell of the toilet plunger as if it were wrapped around his head.
And Lord, the bed mattress.
That mattress had cradled a thousand tired, unwashed bodies. It almost knocked him over with its stench. The dog phase often made Kline’s stomach turn, but he could work through it. His natural technical aptitude, while not up to the standards of his analytical phase, would be good enough for the modifications he needed. He moved the power inverter from the bed to the small desk by the window, and he opened the window as wide as it would go. Concrete and exhaust fumes rushed in like poisonous gas, but both were better than the smell of the mattress. He sat down in the little wooden chair, and set to work.
The inverter was easier to modify than he expected.
It was not until the next afternoon that Dr. Kline was ready to go out again. He suffered through one particularly long and terrifying memory hole that night, and the fear was made worse by surroundings that really were unfamiliar. Several hours passed before he could remember himself. As always, the dread lingered, even after the amnesia itself was gone. He remembered, after a while, why he was lying alone in a tiny, ugly motel room. But the knowledge did not comfort him. He could not relax until the sun came up. Then he fell asleep. Finally.
He dreamed again of his wife and daughter. Both were more beautiful than before. Alexandra, especially. The image of her was clear and bright, like a picture taken under the noon sun. She called to him, welcomed him. Her skin seemed to glow.
He awoke suddenly, feeling as if he had slept through an important meeting. The sun came through the window and shone on his face. Through force of habit, he resisted the temptation to sit up, and instead he lay there and took stock of his mental state.
Someone was talking to him. Apparently the clerk downstairs had ratted him out. The police would be coming soon. There was an exotic nerve gas being pumped into his room through the vents. Spies were watching him through the television set. The government was trying to take over his brain with the help of the people who lived on Sirius-B.
Voices told him these things. Smart, honest voices. Kline almost smiled. The paranoia phase was such an easy one. Compared to some of the others, anyway. “That’s all in my head,” he said out loud. The voices protested, but Kline didn’t listen.
Ironically, none of the voices mentioned anything about a man with glasses and a tweed coat, sitting in a car outside Kline’s motel. Sitting so patiently, watching.
Kline got up from the bed and went to the little chair, where his backpack was waiting, loaded up and ready. It was time to pay Donny Baxter a visit.
He didn’t bother trying to be stealthy. An undernourished, 6’4” man cannot easily blend into the New Hampshire countryside, and Dr. Kline had never been any good at blending. Even before the accident. So when he reached Donny Baxter’s place, he walked up to the front entrance of the two-bedroom, vinyl-sided ranch house as if he were coming to visit old friends. He knocked, and the unlatched door swung open with the tired rasp of cheap metal hinges. Kline stood at the threshold and peeked inside carefully, like a neighbor stopping by to borrow a cup of sugar.
There was a boy sitting on the thin carpet, perhaps six years old, playing with a toy fuel-truck. He pushed the truck around him in an endless circle, making rumbling, truck-engine noises with his cheeks.
Dr. Kline smiled. “Hello, there.” He was in the middle of a Voice phase, and the words came out in full, stereophonic resonance. A beautiful sound, he thought.
The boy looked up and paused in his trucking maneuvers. He didn’t respond, which Kline found surprising. He tried again. “Is your brother at home?”
The boy frowned. “Why are you talking like that?”
“I’m a friend of Donny’s. Could you tell me – ”
“You sound weird.” The boy shrank back from the door.
“I’m sorry, I only want to… ”
“Stop!” The boy clapped his hands to the side of his head.
Dr. Kline stopped. He looked at the frightened child on the rug. The boy was wincing and covering his ears against the strange noise.
Kline held his breath.
What’s happening?
The Voice sounded the same as it always did. Nurse Bailer would have been on her knees by now, awaiting instructions. So why was this child – ?
Dr. Kline closed his eyes. Of course. The Voice worked with sexual attraction somehow. He didn’t understand the specifics, but specifics didn’t matter.
It would never work with someone this young.
He squatted down on the floor and began to whisper. The boy took his hands off his ears.
“I’m looking for Donny,” Kline whispered. “Could you tell me where he is?”
The boy pointed.
“Donny’s asleep?”
“No. Working.”
“In the other room?”
The boy shook his head and pointed again, with more energy this time. As if he were throwing a ball. “No, working. At school.”
“Okay,” Kline whispered. “Donny works at the high school?”
The boy shrugged. “I guess.” He returned his at
tention to his toy truck.
Dr. Kline had an idea of the sort of “work” Donny Baxter might be doing at the public high school, and it wasn’t teaching. He had seen the press clippings from the Hanover paper: Donny had been fired from Dartmouth Hitchcock for stealing supplies from the pharmacy storeroom.
Not the first time he’d done it, either, Kline thought. Just the first time he’d been caught.
It was a ten-minute walk to the high school, and Kline used much of this time to picture his daughter’s smile. Alexandra could look both serious and happy when she smiled, because her eyes always stayed so focused. So steady. She would forgive him, he thought. Surely she would. When all of this was finally done.
There were only a few cars left in the school parking lot this late in the afternoon, and he spotted Donny’s immediately. The same beat-up Honda, the same sagging muffler. It was the car Donny had been driving when he worked up in Hanover.
There were several ways to do this. He would check the vehicle first, and if it was locked, he could still –
But the door wasn’t locked.
It was an old car, and there were no valuables inside. Donny was probably half-hoping someone would steal it so that the insurance would take over. Dr. Kline opened the door and climbed in. He waited.
Twenty minutes after his old boss had snuck into the back seat of his Honda Accord, Donny Baxter closed up shop for the day. It had been a good afternoon for him. There were plenty of customers, and no trouble from teachers. No cops, either. It was dusk, and the light was low. With its tinted windows and charcoal seats, the inside of Donny’s Honda was murky. Still, the man sitting in the back seat was tall, and there was nowhere to hide. Donny could have seen him. If he had checked.
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