Night Chills

AGENT: Mark them up?

RICHARDSON: Mostly with his fists.

AGENT: How often does this happen?

RICHARDSON: Once or twice a year.

AGENT: How often does he see prostitutes?

RICHARDSON: He goes whoring the first weekend of every other month. Regular as you please. Like he’s a robot or something. You could set your watch by his need. Usually, he goes into Manhattan, makes the rounds of the leisure and health spas, phones a couple of call girls and has them up to his hotel room. Now and then one of them comes along with the kind of look that sets him off, and he beats the shit out of her.

AGENT: What look is that?

RICHARDSON: Usually blond, but not always. Usually pale, but not always. But she is always small. Five one or five two. A hundred pounds. And delicate. Very delicate features.

AGENT: Why would a girl like that set him off?

RICHARDSON: The Pentagon tried to force him into psychoanalysis. He went to one session and refused to go the second time. He did tell the psychiatrist that these frenzies of his were generated by more than the girls’ appearance. They have to be delicate — but not just in a physical sense. They have to seem emotionally vulnerable to him before he gets the urge to pound them senseless.

AGENT: In other words if he thinks the woman is his equal or his superior, she’s safe. But if he feels that he can dominate her—

RICHARDSON: Then she’d better have her Blue Cross paid in full.

AGENT: He hasn’t killed any of these women, has he?

RICHARDSON: Not yet. But he’s come close a couple of times.

AGENT: You said someone in the Pentagon covers up for him.

RICHARDSON: Usually someone from our bureau.

AGENT: How?

RICHARDSON: By paying the girl’s hospital bills and giving her a lump sum. The size of the pay-off depends on the extent of her injuries.

AGENT: Is he considered a high security risk?

RICHARDSON: Oh, no. If he was a closet queen and we found out about it, he’d be classified as a fairly bad risk. But his hangups and vices aren’t secret. They’re out in the open. No one can blackmail him, threaten him with the loss of his job because we already know all of his dirty little secrets. In fact, whenever he marks up a girl, he has a special number to call, a relay point right in my department. Someone is at his hotel room within an hour to clean up after him.

AGENT: Nice people you work for.

RICHARDSON: Aren’t they? But I’m surprised that even they put up with this sonofabitch Salsbury. He’s a sick man. He’s a real can of worms all by himself. They should stick him away in a cell somewhere and just forget all about him.

AGENT: Do you know about his childhood?

RICHARDSON: About his mother and the man who raped him? It’s in the file.

AGENT: It helps to explain why he—

RICHARDSON: You know what? Even though I can see where his craziness comes from, even though I can see that it isn’t entirely his fault that he is what he is, I can’t dredge up any compassion for him. When I think about all of those girls who ended up in hospitals with their jaws broken and their eyes swollen shut… Listen, did any of those girls feel less pain because Salsbury’s evil isn’t entirely his own doing? I’m an old-style liberal when it comes to most things. But this liberal line about compassion for the criminal — that’s ninety percent horseshit. You can only spout that kind of garbage if you and your own family have been lucky enough to avoid animals like Salsbury. If it was up to me, I’d put him on trial for all those beatings. Then I’d send him away to a cell somewhere, hundreds of miles from the nearest woman.

Dawson sighed.

He put the reports in the folder and returned the folder to the lower right-hand desk drawer.

O Lord, he thought prayerfully, give me the power to undo what damage he’s done in Black River. If this mistake can be remedied, if the field test can be completed properly, then I will be able to feed the drug to both Ernst and Ogden. I’ll be able to program them. I’ve been making preparations. You know that. I’ll be able to program them and convert them to Your holy fellowship. And not just them. The world. There will be no more souls for Satan. Heaven on earth. That’s what it’ll be, Lord. True heaven on earth, all in the shining light of Your love.

2:55 P.M.

Sam read the last line of Salsbury’s article, closed the book, and said, “Jesus!”

“At least now we have some idea of what’s happening in Black River,” Paul said.

“All of that crazy stuff about breaking down the ego, primer drugs, code phrases, achieving total control, bringing contentment to the masses through behavioral modification, the benefits of a subliminally directed society…” Somewhat dazed by Salsbury’s rhetoric, Jenny shook her head as if that would help her to think more clearly. “He sounds like a lunatic. He’s certifiable.”

“He’s a Nazi,” Sam said, “in spirit if not in name. That’s a very special breed of lunatic. A very deadly breed. And there are literally thousands of people like him, hundreds of thousands who would agree with every word he said about the benefits of a ‘subliminally directed society.’ ”

Thunder exploded with such violence that it sounded as if the bowl of the sky had cracked in two. A fierce gust of wind slammed against the house. The tempo of the rain on the roof and windows picked up to double time.

“Whatever he is,” Paul said, “he’s done exactly what he said could be done. He’s made this insane scheme work. But God, that has to be what’s happening here. It explains everything since the epidemic of night chills and nausea. ”

“I still don’t understand why Dad and I weren’t afflicted,” Jenny said. “Salsbury mentions in the article that the subliminal program would not affect illiterates and children who haven’t yet come to terms, however crude, with sex and death. But neither Dad nor I fit into one of those categories.”

“I think I can answer that,” Paul said.

Sam said, “So can I. One thing they teach budding pharmacologists is that no drug affects everyone the same way. On some people, for instance, penicillin has little or no effect. Some people don’t respond well at all to sulfa drugs. I suspect that, for whatever reasons of genes and metabolisms and body chemistries, we’re among the tiny percentage of those who aren’t touched by Salsbury’s drug.”

“And thank God for that,” Jenny said. She hugged herself and shivered.

“There ought to be more adults unaffected,” Paul said. “It’s summertime. People take vacations. Wasn’t anyone out of town during the week when the reservoir was contaminated and the subliminal messages broadcast?”

“When the heavy snows come,” Sam said, “logging operations have to stop. So in the warm months everyone connected with the mill works his butt off to make sure there will be a stockpile of logs to keep the saws going all winter. No one at the mill takes a vacation in the summer. And everyone in town who serves the mill takes his time off in the winter too.”

Paul felt as if he were on a turntable, whirling around and around. His mind spun with the implications of the article that Sam had read. “Mark and Rya and I weren’t affected because we got to town after the contaminant had passed out of the reservoir — and because we didn’t watch whatever television programs or commercials contained the subliminal messages. But virtually everyone else in Black River is now under Salsbury’s control.”

They stared at one another.

The storm moaned at the window.

Finally Sam said, “We enjoy the benefits and luxuries provided by modern science — all the while forgetting that the technological revolution, just like the industrial revolution before it, has its dark side.” For several long seconds, with the mantel clock ticking behind him, he studied the cover of the book in his hand. “The more complex a society becomes, the more dependent each part of it becomes on every other part of it, the easier it is for one