The Dark

by Andrew Neiderman

  “No.”

  “We were, and we felt it was a very important work. Now that he’s gone . . . I’m sure he would want you to continue the work.”

  “I’m afraid I have enough to do and—”

  “Don’t decide now, Doctor. I’ll give you a copy of the partial manuscript and you’ll decide then. Henry would want you to have it, I’m sure. He would want it to be yours.”

  “Doctor Flemming collaborated with you on a work?” Grant asked, not hiding his skepticism now.

  “Well, not collaborating so much as using me as the source for his material.

  “Doctor,” Bois said, smiling widely again, “you are going to have to face the fact that I am real. The people I influence commit real crimes. They’re in the papers, in police reports, on the evening news. I’ve made them infamous. I’m a significant subject for a new work, a new and exciting theory.”

  Grant nodded.

  “I see. Have you done anything between our first session and now?” he asked.

  Bois stared at him, deciding. Then he relaxed, folded his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes.

  “I couldn’t help it,” he admitted. “The opportunity presented itself.”

  “What opportunity?”

  “I convinced a woman to kill her mother-in-law before she wasted all her resources on her health care. Her mother-in-law lived alone, but was sinking into that quagmire of confusion known today as Alzheimer’s disease. It was only a matter of short time before she would have to be institutionalized, and as you know, that would be at great cost, consuming her assets, assets our sweet little housewife had been counting on.

  “So,” he continued, “as you can see, I didn’t have to do all that much instigating. The seed had already been well planted by her own need,” Bois added. “I merely assisted on this one, gave her support and helped convince her she was doing the best thing. I helped her throw off the shackles of guilt.”

  “What did she do?” Grant was almost afraid to ask.

  Bois shrugged.

  “Overdosed her dosage of nitroglycerin. That, I’ll admit, was my suggestion,” Bois added with pride. “She had the will, the intention, but she lacked imagination. If you want to confirm it, Doctor, the victim’s name is Mosley.”

  “I see. Was her daughter-in-law one of your clients, someone you give financial, legal consultation?”

  “That’s not the sort of question you should be asking as a doctor, Doctor. As a policeman, maybe.”

  “I’m just trying to understand how you get into these so-called opportunities.”

  “I told you. I’m compulsive. I go looking for them. And you know what, Doctor?” he added with that wry smile. “I’m never disappointed. How about you?”

  Grant smashed the hard, small racquetball with a fury that made Carl Thornton shake his head. Carl lunged and missed because the ball ricocheted with surprising speed. He caught himself before he slammed into the wall, and turned to watch Grant retrieve the ball.

  “Terrific,” Carl said. “Whatever you’re eating, give me some. That’s game point.”

  Grant wiped the sweat from his brow and looked through the glass wall at a rather shapely young woman in a tight gym outfit. Carl saw the direction of his gaze and smiled.

  “Libido going into overtime, Doctor?”

  “Please,” Grant said. He walked to the side to put his racket in its case.

  “What?” Carl was at his side.

  Grant paused and looked at the wall for a moment. Then he turned to Carl.

  “We sit there and we listen to their fantasies, sometimes in vivid Technicolor, graphic, and we’re supposed to be neutral, asexual, objective, so unaffected that we can analyze them, prescribe therapy or drugs, and then go off to other appointments, our own lives as if none of it happened.”

  “So?”

  “I’m having trouble with my schizophrenia, Doctor,” Grant said. “My split personalities are beginning to merge.”

  Carl laughed.

  “Occupational disease.”

  “You, too?”

  “All the time. I’ve even had the same nightmares some of my patients have had.”

  Grant shook his head.

  “This is more. It’s really getting to me.”

  “That why you’re so hyper?”

  “Probably,” Grant replied. They walked out together and paused to get some bottled water. Then they sat in the lounge. The Club, as it was known, was one of L.A.’s most prestigious. Entry fee was fifteen hundred dollars and the monthly fee was two hundred and fifty dollars, miles above any of the gym club chains. But the cost restricted the clientele to an array of successful producers, actors, lawyers and doctors, businesspeople, and those who had inherited fortunes. And that was what these people wanted—to be with their own economic, social, and political kind.

  The truly wealthy in L.A., as everywhere else, moved from one cocoon to another, wrapped in their luxurious automobiles or limousines, draped in their designer clothes, protected and pampered. For them there was another level to everything, a higher, privileged level, whether it be medical treatment, justice, or even psychiatric evaluations. Running through their philosophy was the underlying, demonstrable principal that anything and everything was achievable or possessable for a price, even a clear conscience.

  “I have this new patient, one of Henry’s former patients,” Grant continued.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jules Bois.”

  Carl thought a moment and then shook his head.

  “Don’t recall Henry mentioning him. What’s he do?”

  Grant laughed.

  “He . . . instigates people to commit immoral or illegal acts.”

  “For a living?” Carl smiled.

  “You know,” Grant said, turning to him, “I can’t pin him down on that. He claims he has a law degree, but doesn’t practice law.”

  “That definition fits lawyers. Sorry, Maggie excluded.”

  “It’s all right. He only says he’s an adviser, financial, et cetera. He obviously has money.”

  “Jules Bois?” Carl said.

  “He was part of that group you identified as Henry’s newest patients, remember? Tall, dark man, good-looking.”

  “I was probably in a daze by then and never noticed him. What about him?”

  “He’s uncanny, very sharp. It’s almost as if he’s analyzing me sometimes, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I get that feeling when I go home and talk to my wife,” Carl said.

  Grant laughed but then grew serious again. “He has a way of making me think about things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Like I started to say . . .”

  “Promiscuous things?” Carl asked. Grant nodded. Carl shook his head. “No big deal. I’m telling you. We’ve all had that happen time in and time out. You recognize it for what it is and get past it.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had this happen so often or so strongly before.”

  Carl smirked.

  “Maybe you’re just a bit frustrated, Doctor. Has Maggie been very busy lately?”

  “Very.”

  Carl shrugged.

  “So. Solutions are often more obvious than we think. Go home, Doctor. Get laid.”

  Grant laughed.

  “Is that what you do?”

  “I prescribe it for myself. Instead of two aspirins,” Carl said. He stared at Grant a moment. “Maybe you want to give more thought to my offer. I can use you and you’d be a full partner, Grant.”

  “Thanks, but I still like being on my own. It’s less complicated.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “No,” Grant said, nodding, “it doesn’t.” He sipped some more water. “Carl, you had no idea that Lydia and Henry were having serious problems, did you?”

  “He never mentioned it to me, but Henry could be like that, hold in his own troubles so well you never knew they were there.”

  “When was th
e last time you spoke to him?”

  “Day before he died,” Carl said.

  Grant looked up.

  “Did he mention writing a new book, developing a new theory?”

  Carl thought a moment and then shook his head.

  “No. Why?”

  “This patient claims he was the star subject.”

  “Oh. Well, you know how secretive we all can be when it comes to original ideas,” Carl said.

  “Um. You’re friendly with Henry’s associates, too. Did any of them ever mention Lydia being upset about him?”

  “Not a one,” Carl said. “It was something Henry had kept well contained in his own house. He thought he could handle it, I guess.”

  “I’m sure his son Thackery told me Lydia had complained to one of the associates about Henry. Apparently he was upset she went out of the house with it.”

  Carl smirked.

  “You believe that, something Lydia said? Look at her, for God’s sake.”

  “Yes, her symptoms cry out. Henry must have noticed, had to have noticed. The funny thing about that is Henry always emphasized how important it was to recognize your own limits and seek additional help and advice,” Grant muttered. “Why didn’t he do so? He was too involved to be objective about his own wife’s problems, right?”

  “Ain’t that always the case,” Carl said, smiling. “We’re the last to follow our own good advice. Got to get going, buddy,” he added, and gave Grant a playful punch on the shoulder before heading for the lockers.

  Grant sat there a while longer, thinking. While he did so, a very attractive brunette, wearing a body suit so tight that the only secret left was for her gynecologist to discover, paused at the watercooler. She leaned over and plucked a cup from the sleeve, her cleavage deepening as she did so. His eyes never left her and she knew it, throwing him a flirtatious smile that sent a warm feeling up his inner thighs.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she?” Bois said. Grant whipped around. There was his patient in a sweat suit, wiping his brow with a towel.

  “What are you doing here?” Grant fired.

  Bois looked puzzled for a moment. He shrugged.

  “Getting a workout. What else do you do here, Doctor?” Bois asked, and then turned to watch the sexy brunette cross the lounge.

  “I meant . . . you joined this club?”

  “No, but maybe I will. A friend of mine, an attorney, brought me along as his guest.” Bois jerked his head toward the weight room. “He’s pumping iron. I thought it might be you sitting here and then, when I saw how fixed you were on what was at the watercooler, I knew it was you.”

  “Anyone with testosterone would have looked at that,” Grant said.

  “Sounding defensive, Doctor. Not good for a psychiatrist,” Bois said, laughing.

  Grant rose.

  “Sometimes it’s good to forget who you are and what you do for a while.”

  “Oh, I agree. Absolutely, and practice that religiously.” Bois looked at another young woman, this one in shorts as abbreviated as the ones Deirdre Leyland wore. Grant looked, too. “So many attractive women here, Doctor. The pickin’s are certainly not slim, eh?”

  “I happen to be a married man, Mr. Bois. My pickin’ days are over.”

  “Nothing wrong with window-shopping, Doctor. It stirs up the appetite for a real sale.”

  Grant just stared.

  Bois laughed.

  “I better get back to my exercise or my friend will send me to Cleveland. I’ll see you soon, Doctor.”

  Grant watched him leave and then he glanced at the girl in the abbreviated shorts. He gazed after Bois again, his heart pounding as hard as it had during racquetball, and then he hurried to the lockers like a man fleeing from a truth he didn’t want to face.

  4

  Grant was surprised but happy to see Maggie’s car inside when the garage door opened. He drove in and hurried into the house. The hum of a blender drew him to the kitchen. When he looked in, he saw her wearing an apron and reading a cookbook. She looked up and smiled.

  “Hi. Got finished early today and thought I’d try again to be Suzy Homemaker.”

  Grant folded his arms and leaned against the jamb. As he watched her work, he envisioned the girl back at the gym and then thought about Deirdre Leyland, recalling her describing how she liked to be naked while she worked in the kitchen, with her lover of the moment sitting at the table watching.

  “It makes everything I make more delicious,” she had told him during her last office session. Her gaze had slid softly over his face, making him feel self-conscious about the flush her images had brought to his cheeks.

  Maggie turned and smiled. “What?”

  “You turn me on when you do domestic things,” he said.

  “What?” She put her hands on her hips. “Since when?” She held her smile. To Grant her face looked polished, like glass.

  “Since a moment ago,” he said.

  She laughed, and the way she turned her head and revealed more of her soft, inviting neck sent a warm flow up his thighs. He stepped up behind her and put his arms around her waist before bringing his lips to that neck, following the line of it to her shoulders. She squirmed as the tingle rushed down her spine.

  “Grant, how am I supposed to make dinner?” she asked, her own breathing quickened.

  “Forget food,” he said. “We’ll live on love.”

  She laughed and turned around to meet his lips. It was a long, passionate kiss, his tongue thrusting against hers, something he rarely did. She pulled back to look at him. His eyes were intense, piercing.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. I think I have horn-o-mania,” he jested, and scooped her up before she could retreat. She shrieked with surprise as he carried her out of the kitchen, through the living room, to the bedroom, and dropped her on the bed, unraveling his tie the moment his arms were free.

  “Grant, what are you doing?”

  “You’ve heard of matinees? Well, this is a double feature,” he bragged. His shirt was off. She backed away, still half smiling, still half stunned.

  “Grant, I’ve never seen you like this.”

  His smile deepened, but Maggie thought the look in his eyes was different. It was lustful, ravenous rather than loving.

  “Prepare yourself for an erotic experience you won’t soon forget,” he said.

  “I left something on the stove.”

  “Let it burn. No, let us burn,” he added. He was practically naked. When he lowered his briefs, she saw he was fully aroused.

  “Grant, you’re mad,” she said as he crawled toward her.

  “Doctor’s orders,” he replied, and was at her. She realized he was not going to postpone it, but he was so impatient with her pace taking off her clothes that he tore off a button. She started to protest, but he brought his mouth down over hers, driving her head back and against the pillow. Then he sat between her legs and began kissing the inside of her thighs, working his way to her vaginal lips.

  She moaned with the unexpected pleasure, complacent until she heard him laugh, but a laugh so unlike him, she had to brace herself on her elbows to look at him.

  “I know what you like,” he said, smiling up at her, his eyes practically luminous. His expression resembled more of a sneer than a smile, full of arrogance. Before she could object, he was at her again, this time with such vigor and energy, her heart pounded with fear and surprise more than it did with erotic stimulation.

  “Wait,” she cried. “Move these pillows and—”

  “No time for that,” he said.

  He rose over her and brought his erection up with such force and accuracy, she lost her breath for a moment. He laughed again and then pressed his mouth over hers, sucking and driving his tongue into hers as he churned and pumped, holding her arms down and then reaching back to scoop under her thighs, lifting her legs so tightly she couldn’t move. He pressed on, grinding, moaning. When she looked up at him, she saw his eyes were practically turned inward.
He looked like he was about to pass out. She waited until he came, groaning, falling over her, gasping.

  Then they were quiet. Maggie’s heart was pounding against his, which was pounding just as fast and as hard.

  “Now I know what it feels like to be raped,” she said after she caught her breath.

  He didn’t reply. He turned to roll off her and lay there on his back gazing up at the ceiling.

  “You didn’t like that?” he finally said.

  “No. I never had the chance to like anything. You were pinning me down and twisting me like I was made of clay.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “What got into you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” He looked at her and smiled. “I guess it was watching you at the stove in your apron.”

  “It’s not funny, Grant. You frightened me and you hurt me,” she said, rubbing her thighs. “You should have seen yourself; you wouldn’t have recognized yourself.”

  “Really?” he said. He gazed at himself in the mirror as if to see if it really was him.

  She sat up and began to get dressed. Her anger made the veins in her temples more prominent. Her jawbone was taut, her teeth clenched. He felt remorseful and reached out to touch her softly, but she pulled away as soon as he made contact.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I guess I’ve been having a bad day.”

  “Why take it out on me?”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  She paused and looked down at him.

  “What’s wrong? What happened today?”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  She stared at him a few moments, thinking.

  “You saw that patient again, didn’t you?” she asked. His eyes widened. “Well?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s part of it, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” he reluctantly confessed.

  “Can you talk about it or . . .”

  “Yeah, I can talk about it, if you really want to hear this stuff.”

  “Something tells me I had better make myself a drink first,” she said. “Let’s go out to the bar.”

  “What about your Suzy Homemaker recipe?”