Fear itself: a novel Read online

  “Your job is to go through these transaction records one account at a time. The names have been redacted and code numbers substituted. If you find any unusual deposits, or pattern of deposits, write the code number down on a sheet of paper.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Do you really think somebody who’s spying for the Russians is going to deposit the payoffs into his checking account, for crying out loud?”

  “No. If I thought there was a chance in Hades of that, I’d assign a real agent to the job. And who said anything about Russians?”

  Uno, due, tre, quattro…

  2

  Eight miles high, somewhere over Kansas, Pender turned to Sid Dolitz. “Well?”

  Sid polished off the last of his crab cocktail, took another sip of complimentary champagne, and patted his lips with a linen napkin—he always flew first class. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Why would I be kidding? I’m sitting next to the man who invented profiling.”

  “I think Brussel, Teten, and Mullany, among others, might have something to say about that.”

  “But they’re not here,” Pender pointed out.

  “If they were, they’d tell you only an idiot would try to come up with a psychological profile based on such flimsy data.”

  “Give me a flimsy profile, then.”

  “I don’t do flimsy,” said Sid.

  Pender waited him out.

  “Okay, okay. Assuming it’s the same perp, assuming all the alleged suicides are really homicides, and with a caveat the size of your enormous ass, here’s a shot in the dark: antisocial personality disorder, more commonly known as psychopathy, but compounded by a phobia disorder, manifesting counterphobically.”

  “And now for the English translation…?”

  “Here’s my theory: As a psychopath, our man’s biggest problem is boredom.” They were taking the killer’s gender for granted: serial poisoners aside, at a conservative estimate, ninety-seven out of a hundred serial killers are male. “Psychopaths characteristically demonstrate abnormally low cortical arousal levels, so they’re constantly in search of stimulation. Extreme stimulation: in order to reach the same level of satisfaction and enjoyment you or I might achieve from watching a good movie, your average psychopath has to torture a cat or get into a fistfight. And as for reaching the levels of cortical arousal the normal person gets from any activity they’re passionate about, like sex, or at our age, golf—”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Pender.

  “—the psychopath might have to actually murder somebody. But here’s where it gets interesting: given that the victims all had different specific phobia disorders, and taking into account the manner of their respective deaths, I think it’s highly probable that our man is a phobophobe.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fear of fear: a phobophobe is afraid of fear itself. But this subject’s phobia would seem to be manifesting counterphobically—in other words, he seeks out that which he’s afraid of—which in turn fits hand in glove with the psychopathy: he fights his boredom by feeding on fear.”

  “Sounds like one scary sonofabitch,” said Pender.

  “He’d probably be very gratified to hear you say that.”

  “I don’t want to gratify him, I want to catch him.”

  “You’re retired.”

  “Not technically.”

  “You’re not on active duty.”

  “A mere technicality.”

  “You’re really going to go through with this?”

  “Bet your ass.”

  “A word of advice, then: Don’t underestimate this man. The original name for psychopathy was manie sans délire, which means ‘mania without delusion.’ He may be crazy as a shithouse rat, to use the technical term, but his mind is at least as clear and focused as yours. Probably more so, considering the amount of booze you’ve been putting away lately.”

  “You think I’m drinking too much?” Pender was genuinely surprised.

  “For a small county in Ireland, no. For one man, yes.”

  3

  On Wednesday morning, Simon Childs attempted to soften the blow by taking his sister to the Denny’s in Emeryville for a breakfast that would have felled a lumberjack, before breaking the news that he had to go away again for a little while.

  “How long?” she asked, as morosely as she could with a mouth full of hash browns.

  Simon leaned across the table and wiped the corner of her mouth—she hated for him to do that in public, but was too depressed to protest. “It’s just for a day or two—tops. And here’s the good news: I talked to Ganny Wilson this morning—if you want, you can stay with her until I get back.”

  Missy brightened. “Peachy keen. I love Ganny.”

  “And Ganny loves you, too. But she’s pretty old, you know.” At least eighty by now. “You’re gonna have to be good, not give her any trouble.”

  “No mischief,” Missy promised solemnly. But inside, she was giggling. Ganny Wilson didn’t care about mischief, only matches.

  “Just so long as you don’t burn the house down, Princess,” she used to say. “Everything else, Ganny can fix.”

  Two hours later, after helping Missy pack her pink valise and dropping her—and Tweety—off at Ganny Wilson’s little cottage in the West Berkeley flats, Simon had to upwardly revise his estimate of their former housekeeper’s age: the doddering old black woman looked to be closer to ninety.

  It was worrisome, no denying that—sometimes Missy could be a handful, even for a caretaker in her prime—but as the Mercedes rolled across the Bay Bridge, top down, radio blasting Vivaldi’s ubiquitous Four Seasons from all eight speakers, Simon reminded himself that Dorie hadn’t left him much choice. He had to get to her before she talked to the FBI—or to anybody else, for that matter.

  At the thought of Dorie, Simon’s pulse quickened again for the first time since Wayne Summers’s death. Ever since their first meeting at the convention, he had been so looking forward to playing the fear game with her—saving the best for last, so to speak. Would it be better, he wondered, to buy several masks at one store, or one mask at several stores? And if so, where?

  He was still mulling that one over when the classical station cut to a commercial. Simon pushed the seek button, heard Tab Hunter crooning about young love, first love on the oldies station, and quickly punched seek again. He didn’t want to hear anybody romanticizing about young love, because his first affair, with Nervous Nellie Carpenter, had resulted in the worst beating of his life.

  On the other hand, if it hadn’t been for his involvement with Nellie, Simon might never have discovered his life’s path, his obsession, the only sure cure for the blind rat, and, except for Missy, his only reason for living, so perhaps old Tab wasn’t so far off after all.

  4

  Ed Pender was not a religious man, but the feeling of awe and wonder that overtook him as he stepped up to the eighteenth tee at Pebble Beach was nearly overwhelming. The deep green of the fair-way, the roundness and whiteness of the ball, the orange sun poised at the edge of Carmel Bay—it was a moment of perfection in an imperfect world.

  And Pender, jet-lagged, two months shy of fifty-six years old, fifty pounds overweight, and twenty-three strokes over par up to that point, was Jack, was Arnie, was Tiger, facing one of the greatest character tests in the wide world of golf. Play it safe, lay up right, take a makeable bogey, shoot a hundred. Or take a chance—a big chance, with his tired legs and duck hook—blast it over the water, go for the par, break a hundred.

  He had to go for it, of course. Just don’t hook, he ordered the ball as he went into his backswing. Don’t hook, don’t hook, don’t—

  Whack, quack, splash.

  “Take a mulligan, kid,” urged Sid, who was far enough ahead to be magnanimous. “Nobody has to know.”

  “I’d know,” said Pender, as his caddy sadly handed him a new ball—he’d placed a side bet on the bigger, younger guy w
ith his fellow caddy.

  Dorie Bell—who despised golf in general and the exclusionary, land-grabbing, prodevelopment, water-wasting bastards at Pebble Beach in particular—was putting the last touches on her painting of the sunset around the time Pender was hooking his drive at eighteen into it.

  She worked with her palette in her lap, brush in her left hand, cloth in her right hand, and a stout walking stick leaning against her easel, with which to keep the dogs away. It wasn’t the best sunset she’d ever done—got the water, got the sun, missed the pearl-pink blush of the abalone sky by a mile. Sunsets were difficult—you had to work fast and capture the color values on the fly—but they sold well, at least for Dorie, whose plein air oils sold for between five hundred and five thousand dollars each, depending on the size of the piece. When they sold, that is—but Dorie couldn’t complain. She wasn’t making a fortune, but she was making a living, which was more than most artists could say.

  Dorie painted until the light was gone, then slipped the canvas into the slotted box she used to transport wet paintings; it took two trips to load her gear into the back of her old Buick Roadmaster station wagon. She drove straight home, grabbed a bite to eat, and was upstairs changing when the doorbell rang. Musical clothes, she liked to call it: she’d start trying on outfits at least an hour before a social occasion, and whatever she had on when her date arrived or when she absolutely positively had to be out the door was what she’d end up wearing.

  Tonight’s winning entry was a simple but elegant ensemble: man’s blue denim shirt (top two buttons open; no, three; no, two), tucked into a pair of Wranglers as soft as chamois and older than dirt, held up by a wide leather belt with a silver rodeo buckle a sweet young cowboy had given her, back in her sweet young cowboyin’ days.

  “Be right down,” Dorie called, checking herself out in the full-length mirror behind the bedroom door. Not bad, she decided, then asked herself why she was even fussing. It wasn’t like this was a date or anything—not by a long shot.

  To tin—flash a badge—or not to tin, that was the question for Pender. It felt so weird, so unbalanced, to be standing on a stranger’s doorstep without a badge case in his hand. He had transferred his old DOJ shield—eagle, scales, blindfolded Justice in a pageboy haircut—to his wallet, to be used in the event of emergencies, such as getting pulled over for speeding, but he knew he had no business flashing it here. This wasn’t an official visit, just a favor for a friend.

  As soon as the door opened, Pender knew he’d made the right decision. Dorie Bell was tall, striking, and buxom, with cornflower blue eyes, and although her long braided hair was a youthful brown, he could tell by the deep-scored laugh lines at the corners of her eyes that she was close enough to him in age that if things seemed to be tending in that direction, he could make a pass at her without feeling like a dirty old man. Not that that had ever stopped him before. And a pass would definitely have been out of the question if he had tinned her.

  “Ms. Bell?”

  “Agent Pender. Come on in.”

  “Maybe you’d better call me Ed—I’m not here in an official capacity.” Out of habit, he started to take off his hat, a brown Basque beret, as he entered the vestibule, then changed his mind and left it on—he was still a little self-conscious, not about his skin head (he’d started going bald at eighteen), but about the ragged, trident-shaped scar transecting his scalp—a souvenir from an earlier serial killer investigation.

  “In that case, call me Dorie.” She remembered to lock the door behind them; for a Carmel native, locking up was something that took a little getting used to. “And what exactly does that mean, anyway—’not here in an official capacity’?”

  “Like I told you on the phone, I’m more or less retired—Agent Abruzzi’s taking over the investigation. But when I mentioned to her last night that I was going to be here, she asked me to stop by and check in on you.”

  “Check in, or check up?”

  “Both,” Pender admitted readily—the woman still might turn out to be crazy, but she was clearly no dummy.

  “It’s all right, I don’t mind. I’m just glad anybody’ s willing to listen to me at this point. Where should we do this?”

  “Wherever you’ll be most comfortable.”

  “How about the kitchen?”

  “Ideal,” said Pender. “My mother always said the kitchen was the most important room in the house.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “I’m an Appleknocker,” he replied; then, receiving a blank look: “Cortland. Upstate New York. And you?”

  “Right here.”

  “You mean Carmel?”

  “I mean right here, this house.”

  “No kidding? That’s unusual, this day and age.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Dorie. “My friend Simon, in Berkeley, is the only other person over fifty I know who still lives in the house he was brought up in.”

  As he followed Dorie down the hallway toward the kitchen, Pender found himself mentally humming the first few bars of “Something in the Way She Moves.” Over fifty, he said to himself: you’d never know it from this angle.

  5

  Like his sister, Simon Childs was almost always ravenous. Unlike Missy, however, Simon had his looks to consider. And he liked to maintain that hungry edge: satiety led to boredom; boredom led to the blind rat.

  Sometimes he overdid it, though—his lean belly was rumbling by the time he reached Monterey. With nearly an hour to kill before nightfall, he decided to treat himself to a crab feast on Fisherman’s Wharf. Window table at Domenico’s, otters, seals, and sea lions providing the entertainment, dramatic lighting courtesy of the setting sun.

  It didn’t come cheap—fortunately money had never been a consideration for the heir to the Childs Electronics fortune, especially after his trust fund kicked in at age twenty-one, leaving him enough money to smoke, snort, pop, tweak, and inject himself half to death in a vain attempt to stave off the blind rat.

  But again, Simon was lucky: unlike most addicts, he figured out it wasn’t working before it killed him. And luckier still, he had something that did work—the fear game. He still enjoyed weed, whites, and wine, as well as the occasional milder psychedelics such as MDA or Ecstasy, and a rainbow array of downers and sleeping pills that were as necessary to him as oxygen, but for the most part, fear was Simon’s drug of choice. Other people’s fear, that is—he liked to think of himself as fearless.

  Simon lingered over coffee and dessert until the last of the color was gone from the sky. He tipped his waiter well, but not lavishly enough to make himself memorable, and stopped into the Wharf’s General Store on his way back to the car to buy a cute little sea otter for Missy’s stuffie collection.

  Then it was time to get to work. Simon drove south to Carmel and parked the Mercedes downtown, where it would be less conspicuous, leaving himself a ten or fifteen minute walk uphill to Dorie’s house, where he and Missy had stayed when they came down for a visit in late June. The three of them had explored the Aquarium in Monterey, driven down the coast to Big Sur, and on their last day, toured the lighthouse in Pacific Grove, where the docent had given Missy the honor of striking the big bell with a wooden mallet—seventh heaven for the old girl. She had earned it, though: the trip was her reward for having been left alone with her attendant for a week while Simon was in Chicago.

  All the excitement and exertion, however, had nearly proved fatal to Missy. No more road trips, her doctors had ordered when she was released from the cardiac unit at Alta Bates. Only by putting her on a regimen of quiet and diet, they said, could Simon count on another year or so of his sister’s company. And as always, they assured him that a heart transplant was out of the question—Down syndromers her age weren’t even on the protocol.

  Four months later, it still made Simon furious to think that a donor heart would go into the garbage before they’d put it into Missy’s chest. But this was no time for anger, he reminded himself as the roof motor whined
and the top of the Mercedes closed out the stars. With forced calm he hung the temporary handicapped placard (obtained after Missy’s heart attack) from the mirror post so he wouldn’t get any tickets that might be used as evidence against him, then locked up the car and set off at an unhurried pace through the quaint streets of Carmel-by-the-Sea; just another tourist, dressed in black, with a shopping bag over his arm.

  As he strolled, Simon went over the layout of Dorie’s house in his mind. Two bedrooms upstairs. Living room, first floor front; kitchen back left, studio back right. Look for the lighted room—the frugal Ms. Bell never left a bulb burning in an empty one. Easiest access would be through the studio door on the right side of the house—he’d noticed the broken lock on his previous visit.

  Almost there. One more steep uphill block. Simon pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head as he turned the corner. Second house in. Casual glance to the right as he strolled by. Housefront dark, curtains drawn in the living room, blinds drawn in the front bedroom, her bedroom.

  He cut across the lawn, sauntered around the side of the house as if he belonged there. The kitchen lights were on; Simon raised himself up on his tiptoes and peered over the high windowsill. Dorie was there, all right, but she wasn’t alone. Big bald guy in a brown beret and baby blue Pebble Beach sweatshirt sitting across the kitchen table from her—if the man had chosen that moment to look up, their eyes would have met.

  Simon ducked back down, squatting behind the ceanothus bush below the kitchen window. His heart was racing, and his stomach felt the way it had back in his high-risk, rock-climbing, Harley-riding, skydiving days, when he’d sought out physical danger as an antidote to the blind rat and learned that the effects of adrenaline, like those of drugs, were only temporary; the rat inevitably returned, ten times hungrier than before.