He didn’t check.
For Donny Baxter, the next few seconds were surreal.
He opened the door and began lowering himself into the car, and Kline began sitting forward, hands at the ready. Donny settled back into the seat and reached for the door; at the same time, Kline brought his hands above Donny’s head, as if preparing to spring a guess who? surprise. The two men moved in tandem, like a pair that had practiced together for countless hours. Each movement was fluid. Donny Baxter neither heard nor saw anything amiss until the stainless steel wire was already around his neck, snug like a collar. The entire process took less than three seconds, start to finish.
Kline spoke before Donny had a chance to react. “If you move or say a single word, you’ll be dead inside of a minute.”
Donny Baxter, in a remarkable show of sangfroid, did not move. Did not say a single word. His breathing quickened, but Dr. Kline did not hold this against him. Donny assumed that he was being held up for the drug money he had made that afternoon. So after a few moments of stillness, he began moving his hand – ever so slowly – towards his right front shirt pocket.
“Put your hand down, Don.”
Donny did as he was told. Kline made some adjustments in the back seat, and the steel wire drew briefly tighter. Donny Baxter uttered a short, surprised gurgling noise, but nothing more.
“Whoops,” said Dr. Kline. “My fault.” The Voice was gone, and he was speaking in his normal register. He was also feeling wonderful. Energetic. And happy.
The creative phase.
“Here’s the situation, Don. That’s a length of 200-pound-test, picture-hanging steel wire wrapped around your neck. So don’t strain against it. You’ll lose. The wire is looped, at both ends, around the wooden dowel of a good, old-fashioned toilet plunger. Strong, thick shaft. Bought it yesterday. I’ve removed any slack in the wire, so if I twist the plunger rod in either direction – ”
Donny made another choked, half-gasping sound.
“ – the wire draws tighter. Neat, right? As you can imagine, the length of the plunger gives me significant leverage. I’m not positive, but I think I could take your head off with this thing.” He sat forward between the seats and looked Donny in the face for the first time. “I think I could do it with just two fingers. It’s physics, you know.”
Donny’s eyes went wide with recognition. His broad cheeks, tanned brown from hours outside in the sun, flushed red. “Oh my God. When did you gehhh – ”
The smallest turn on the wooden dowel of the plunger, and Donny Baxter stopped in mid-sentence. Kline sat back, releasing the pressure slowly, and Donny’s breathing resumed. “No talking, Don. Not unless I ask you a question.” Kline began rummaging through his backpack. “Do you understand that rule? You can answer.”
Donny remembered to avoid nodding, and thus saved himself some pain. “I understand,” he said.
“Good. You’re going to do fine. I just need to ask some questions.”
Donny tried to relax. Questions were okay, he told himself. He could handle questions. He would invent answers, if it came to that.
“Put your hands back here,” Kline said. “Behind the seat.”
Donny did as he was told, and he felt his thick wrists being wrapped tightly together with more wire.
“Great!” Kline was almost laughing. This manic, creative phase was his favorite, and his voice was light. “This is going to be terrific! Just give me a minute to get some other stuff arranged back here, okay?”
Unsure as to whether a response was called for, Donny Baxter made a quiet, affirmative humming sound. He kept his large head as still as possible, and waited while Dr. Kline tinkered in the backseat. Donny’s eyes scanned the now empty parking lot, searching – praying – for one of the local cops to show up. They were always making sweeps of the high school. Harassing him, scaring off his customers.
Where the fuck are you now, Officer Shaw?
“Okay!” Kline said. “First things first. Special earphones for you, Don.”
Donny twitched briefly at the sensation of cold copper on his skin. Dr. Kline made several careful loops, wrapping both of Donny’s ears with nine inches of copper. “Good. Now, first question.”
“I’ll tell you anything you need to know,” Donny blurted out suddenly. “Anything. Just ask me – ”
“DONNY!” Dr. Kline gave the plunger a quick twist, and Donny’s eyes bulged. “You need to be quiet.”
The pressure eased off, and Donny breathed again.
“Donny, you’re going to be quiet, right?”
“Right,” Donny gasped.
“Okay. Back to business. Here’s quiz question number one.” Kline paused, then began speaking in a sing-song, game-show tone of voice. “Let us suppose, Don, that we have a brand-new, DieHard truck battery rated at two thousand cold-cranking amps. What would happen if the leads of such a battery were connected, by means of copper wire, to someone’s ears?”
“Oh, Jesus, I don’t know but listen I’ve got money you can have and – ”
“Donny?”
“What?”
“Trick question. You’re already connected.” Kline held up the huge battery so that Donny could see it in the rearview mirror. The copper wires were securely connected to the positive and negative terminals. Donny shuddered.
“Oh.”
“The answer, as you can see, is that nothing happens. And do you know why?”
Donny would have shaken his head, but he restrained himself to avoid being cut by the steel wire around his neck. “No,” he said, feeling not quite relieved. “Why?”
“Because human skin has a remarkably high natural resistance to current, Don. Especially your skin, which is so dry after being outside all day long. I’d say you’re rated at somewhere around three or even four thousand ohm. Cuts the amps down to nothing. Very fortunate for you.”
“Uh… yes.”
“Yes indeed, Don.” Dr. Kline removed the copper coils from Donny’s ears. “But what if… bear with me for a second, okay?”
Donny heard more tinkering in the back. He checked the rearview mirror, but Dr. Kline was making his preparations too low to be seen.
“Remember to keep still. Okay, Don?”
“Okay, but what – ?”
The sound of the Hilti nail gun firing was very loud inside the car. That, and the sensation of a two-inch roofing nail driving through the right side of his skull, convinced Donny Baxter that he had been shot. He did not lose consciousness, however – he was clearly not dead yet – and so he began bellowing with pain and outrage.
Using the wooden plunger dowel like a volume knob, Dr. Kline twisted gently until Donny’s yells were reduced to gargled sputterings. “Quiet, Don. Quiet. You’re fine.”
Donny did not feel fine, but he did seem to be alive. And he couldn’t see any brains splattered on the windshield, so apparently he had not been shot. Not by a bullet, anyway. When the wire loosened enough for him to breathe again, he forced himself to stay silent. His face trembled with the effort.
The next blast from the Hilti was not as shocking as the first, but the pain of another roofing nail embedding itself in Donny’s skull – through the back this time, just to the left of the seat’s headrest – was no less intense. He managed to keep his mouth shut, but he could not stop the muted groaning that welled up from his chest. It made his whole body shake.
“So you see, that’s how we get around that little difficulty,” Kline said cheerfully. “We wrap the copper wire around a couple of nails, and then we put the nails under your skin. Way under, in this particular example.”
Donny Baxter felt his concentration beginning to fail him, but he was past caring. “Listen,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s over seven hundred dollars in my pocket. Just take it and go. Take it and do whatever you – ”
Dr. Kline closed the circuit at the DieHard’s positive terminal, and he watched Donny’s body go rigid as electricity coursed through him. He waited a few se
conds, and then removed the copper wire from the battery post. The current stopped flowing, and Donny’s muscles relaxed.
Kline continued as if Donny had not spoken. “With the contact points under the skin,” he said, “your ohm rating is lower. Considerably lower. And it hurts.” Kline sighed. “I damaged your brain with that last one, Don. Not very much, but still.”
“Why – ” Donny took a slow, shaky breath. “What are you trying to – ?”
“Shhh. Pay attention. Last few questions, coming up. We’ve talked about electricity, but what about drugs?” Dr. Kline sat forward. His mouth was right next to Donny’s ear, and there was a thin line of blood tricking down from the nail embedded there. “What if someone wanted to run an experiment, Don? A very delicate experiment involving electricity and the brain. And what if, in addition to electricity, that experiment also involved a small dose of stimulants?”
There was a flash of understanding on Donny Baxter’s face. Understanding, and a fresh jolt of fear. “No, I – ”
“What if someone happened to be selfish?” Kline went on, ignoring him. His voice was rising now. “What if someone didn’t care about the consequences of his actions?”
Donny could hear the tension building in Kline’s voice, and he tried to interrupt. To make eye contact. To do anything. But Kline was on a roll. “What if someone turned out to be a fucking drug dealer?” He was shouting now, and the noise was deafening inside the car. “What if someone borrowed a bunch of equipment from the lab, and then used it to cook up a fucking batch of methamphetamine?”
“I swear I didn’t…” Donny began.
“YES YOU DID!” Kline shouted, and connected the battery again. Donny’s body jumped, and Kline let him feel it for a slow count of five. When the current stopped flowing, Donny began speaking immediately.
“STOP OKAY yes, I did.” He was breathless from the electricity, and sobbing in between his words. “I know, I’m sorry. But I needed the money, and that equipment was perfect. Meth is like gold now. Like gold. I couldn’t… I didn’t know the equipment was so important. Anyway, I only borrowed it. What’s the big deal?”
Kline sat back and nodded slowly, like a disappointed father. After a moment, he turned his attention to the setup in the back, reorganizing the wires to include the DC power inverter in the circuit. One battery terminal was left unconnected. “Of course you didn’t know,” Kline said as he worked. “But it would have been better if you had just stolen the equipment, Don. You brought it back, and there’s the real problem. That crap from your crystal-kitchen got mixed in with what I was supposed to take. You see, Don? The impurities created a neurotoxin effect. What should have been a delicate stimulant turned into a fire-cracker in my head. And then there was the substandard device construction, which induced a relapsing behavior…” Kline shook his head. “But never mind. That part wasn’t your fault. The point is this: the equipment you borrowed was important.” Kline nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “And you fucked it up.”
Donny tried again: “But I swear to God I didn’t know – ”
“Quiet, Don. We’ve been through all that, and we’re moving on. All right?”
“Um. Okay.”
Donny tried to tell himself that Kline was calming down. At least he wasn’t shouting anymore.
Maybe my punishment is over. Maybe we’re coming to end of this.
He was mostly right.
“Okay, next question,” Kline said, sounding cheery again. “The human body can withstand 10 times as much direct current – the kind that comes straight from a battery – as alternating current. The DC hurts, but the AC is much more dangerous. Do you know why?”
Donny didn’t want to respond, but he feared the penalty for non-cooperation. “No,” he said hesitantly. “Why?”
“This is why.”
Dr. Kline closed the circuit. The power inverter took the direct, 12-volt power in the DieHard battery and converted it to an alternating-current flow oscillating at 60 Hertz, suitable for household electric appliances. What had simply been painful to Donny a minute ago suddenly became lethal. The AC interfered with the electrical signal paths in both his pulmonary and cardiovascular systems, and his lungs and heart locked solid.
They would never work again.
Dr. Kline sat forward. He spoke quietly while Donny asphyxiated. “This is a little bit what it felt like,” Kline whispered, “when I was using my TMS device with that crystal shit of yours in my system. Like having my brain put in a fucking deep-fat fryer.” He nodded, and waited a beat. “I set this up very carefully, Don. So that you could share the experience. I hope you appreciate it.”
Kline sat back.
Donny didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Deprived of both oxygen and blood circulation, he was dead in less than a minute.
Donny Baxter’s body was found the next morning by the school secretary, Ms. Shen, who was usually the first person to pull into the parking lot each day. She had arrived early, as always, hoping to get some work done before the rush of students could destroy her concentration. Ms. Shen was not a nervous woman, and she did not cry out when she saw the body. She touched nothing, walked straight into the school building, and called 911.
When the police got there, they found an elaborate set of electrical equipment connected to the dead man, whom they recognized immediately. Donny Baxter was a well-known meth dealer in the neighborhood. A repeat offender.
The forensics team was called in, and they were delighted by what they found. There were dozens of fingerprints in the car, most of them clean and complete. Easy to lift, too. An amateur could have handled the job. There were prints on the door. On the plastic casing of the DieHard battery. On the back of the seat.
Everywhere.
“It’s like this guy wants us to catch him,” one of them said.
After electrocuting Donny Baxter, Dr. Kline stowed the Hilti nail-gun in his North Face backpack and left everything else in the Honda. He didn’t need the battery arrangement any more. Or the power inverter. He wasn’t planning on doing any more brain-frying, and those things were difficult to carry.
He felt tired. The euphoria of the creative phase had left him, along with the adrenaline rush that had come from confronting and disposing of Donny. He was afraid he might lose control of himself if a bad phase hit him now, and he needed a place to sleep. But not at the inn. By the time he got back there, he might be mid-scarecrow phase. Or mid-memory-hole, God forbid.
Still, he wasn’t worried. He had planned ahead.
The little town streets at the outskirts of Concord’s downtown had almost no traffic at this late hour. Kline walked slowly, studying the cars parked at random intervals along the curb. The New Hampshire trees had started reacting to the cooler September weather, and some of the more delicate leaves had already begun to change and fall. Each parked car had a leaf or two on the hood, or on the roof.
Here was what he was looking for: a Buick station wagon with many more leaves on it. Looking neglected. As though it had been sitting in this one spot for several days. Or several weeks.
Kline stopped and fished for the lockout kit stored in his backpack. He slid the plastic corner of the air wedge into the seam between the Buick’s door and its frame, and gave the hand bladder several quick pumps. The wedge inflated quickly, and the car door bent outward just enough for Kline to slip the steel super-jimmy inside, hook the lock, and open the door. He stowed the kit and threw his backpack into the passenger seat. Then he sat down inside, closed the door behind him, and adjusted the driver’s seat to go as far back as possible.
It felt good to stretch out again. He was asleep in minutes.
His dreams were horrible. Worse than anything he had experienced since the accident. There had been plenty of bad dreams before, especially when they first locked him up, and of course when he was in detox, coming off Xanax. But nothing like this.
This dream seemed real.
He was back at Clancy hall, having one of his intervie
w sessions with Dr. Levoir. Except that this session was different somehow. He was dazed, and a little too happy. As if he were a young child being plied with sweet treats. Dr. Levoir was asking him questions, and he was answering. In detail.
“Tell me how all of this started,” Levoir was saying.
“We were studying autistics,” Kline said, a goofy half-grin stuck on his face. “Carlisle had always found them fascinating.”
Levoir nodded. “Go on. Tell me.”
And Kline did. Even in the dream, he was vaguely aware that he should be fighting it, shutting up and keeping this stuff to himself. But his mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. “We were looking for treatments,” he said. “As you know, there are over two hundred thousand people living with autism in the U.S. right now, and that number is going up every year. The current rate is something like one in every five hundred births. A new treatment would have been an instant success.”
“Did you have any luck?”
“Not even close. We were trying to come up with an atypical antipsychotic, something to compete with Clozaril or Seraquel, but we couldn’t get a handle on the side-effects.”
Levoir put on a supportive face. “That must have been frustrating.”
“Definitely. But it didn’t stop us. We went off in a whole new direction. That’s the beauty of university-funded research – you can change course right in the middle of things, and it doesn’t matter as long as you can publish something interesting at the end.”
“And so? Where did you turn your attention?”
“We got into savantism.”
Levoir smiled knowingly. “Rain Man strikes again.”
Kline found his doctor’s cynicism understandable. The movie Rain Man had convinced millions of Americans that autism was not just a developmental disorder, but some sort of undiscovered superpower. Anyone with autism was suddenly expected to be a savant. Autistic people were closet geniuses, the movie seemed to say, able to stroll into a casino, count and memorize the cards being dealt out of a six-deck poker shoe, and walk away millionaires.
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