Fear itself

“First rate,” replied Linda, though it seemed to her that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ought to have something better to do with his time.

“There’s a problem, though.”

Linda waited; then she realized that McDougal wanted her to state the nature of the problem. “Childs is still at large.”

“Which is where Liaison Support comes in. You’re on point-you’ll be coordinating the investigation. I want you on it from now until Mr. Simon Childs is either dead or in custody. Because if he starts killing people again, this thing can go south fast, and we’ll lose all the ground we’ve gained.”

“Not to mention all the people he kills will be, like, dead,” said Linda.

McDougal lowered his chin again and peered at her over the rim of his reading glasses for what seemed like an eternity. “Know who you remind me of?” he asked eventually.

“No, sir.”

“Pender-you remind me of Pender.”

“Thank you, sir, I-”

“He’s a major pain in the ass, too. Which is another reason I want you working this case-to keep him off it. When it comes to serial killers, Pender’s like nature-he abhors a vacuum.”

“I understand.”

Linda started to hand the newspaper back; McDougal gave her a little keep-it wave. “Tell Ed it’s for his scrapbook. And one more thing…” He reached under the desk and came up with a handsome blackthorn walking stick with an ivory handle and a ferrule of thin, beaten gold. “This is his-I gave it to him in seventy-five, that time he took a bullet for me. He loaned it back to me last year, when I had my old football knee replaced. I haven’t used it in months, though-would you give it back to him, thank him for me?”

“Sure,” said Linda, taking the cane. It was both lighter and stronger than it looked, and the ivory grip was delicately mottled, like mutton-fat jade. “I didn’t know Pender’d been shot.”

“It’s a good story-you ought to get him to tell it to you sometime. If he offers to show you his scar, though, I’d respectfully decline.”

Linda, stubborn to the end, deliberately avoided using the cane when she pushed herself up from her chair after McDougal dismissed her, or taking advantage of it as she left the office, but on her way back to the car she found herself leaning more and more heavily on it. And although it was a little too tall for her, it made enough of a difference-she felt so much more stable, and was better able to clear the ground with her toes-that when she reached the DOJ-AOB, she didn’t think twice about using it on the short walk to the first elevator, or the long walk from the second elevator to her office.

By then it was a done deal-Linda was hooked. The first time she tried to make it to the ladies’ room unaided, she had to go back for the cane-walking without it now felt like tottering along a tightrope in a high wind-and by the end of the day, Linda and her cane were inseparable.

Which, Linda realized belatedly, was probably why McDougal had given it to her in the first place. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that Pender and/or Dolitz might have had something to do with it as well. Sneaky bastards that they were.

6

Lying on his back, glued to the bottom of the tub from the back of his shaved scalp to the skin of his ass and testicles, with his arms and legs splayed out and glued to the sides of the tub, even the slightest shift of position is excruciatingly painful for Nelson. He can’t move, he can’t sleep, and worst of all, if there is a worst, with his lips sealed, he can’t even scream.

And unlike Wayne Summers, Nelson Carpenter has no imaginary cello to play, no Bach suites committed to memory. For most of his life he has focused his attention and his energies so intently on his phobias that he has no other real interests, no driving passions, no inner resources to draw upon in order to distract himself from this waking nightmare. His only respites come during the spells of panic-and-sleep-deprivation-induced psychosis that overtake him for ever-lengthening periods of time, at ever-shortening intervals.

Small wonder, then, that by late morning Nelson is spending most of his time in a long hallucinatory doze, reliving the death of Simon’s grandfather over and over again. It doesn’t get any easier, either, starting with the shame of being caught in flagrante when the old man walks in on the boys during a meeting of the Horror Club.

Meeting-that’s what they still call it, anyway, though by this point in their adolescent development an observer would be hard put to distinguish the game they play at every session from a good old-fashioned homosexual tryst. Nelson, in fact, would be just as happy to skip the horror phase entirely, but Simon seems, not just to enjoy it, but to need it: no horror, no sex, Nelson has learned, and wearing as it is on his psyche, he is willing to put up with the former for the sake of the latter.

So here he is in Simon’s room late one Friday afternoon in December of 1963, a few weeks after his thirteenth birthday. It’s dusk, the curtains are drawn, the room is dark except for the conical beam of Simon’s eight-millimeter Bell and Howell projector and the flickering black-and-white images of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari unspooling against the back of Simon’s bedroom door, and the only sounds are the crepitating whirr of the projector and the muffled, rhythmic grunting of the boys humping on the floor so the squeaking bedsprings don’t give them away.

And that’s how the old man finds them. Once again, lying glued to his bathtub, Nelson hears the film clicking through the Bell and Howell, smells the characteristic projector odor of hot bulb, warm celluloid, and burnt dust, sees Grandfather Childs standing in the shockingly open doorway with an appalled expression as the images from the film flicker, wavy and distorted, against his white shirt front, his ashen face, his glabrous scalp.

The worst beating of Simon’s life begins then and there, as Nelson scrambles for his clothes and dashes out of the house half-naked, past an openmouthed Missy and a frowning Ganny Wilson. Not that old man Childs would dare lay a finger on him-his father’s a lawyer and none too fond of his neighbor. Nelson is barred from the premises forever, though, and Simon is forbidden to contact him-also forever.

Forever lasts two days, which is how long it takes for Simon to recover enough from the beating to be able to leave his bedroom. They meet in Nelson’s old tree house; Simon shows him his bruises and makes him swear an oath of revenge. It’s all very dramatic, but a little hard for Nelson to take seriously.

Not Simon, though: Simon is deadly serious-and he has a plan. Everybody has a weakness, he tells Nelson, a crack in their armor; everybody’s afraid of something. In the old man’s case, it’s fire: Grandfather Childs is deathly afraid of fire. They’ll have to be very, very patient, though, Simon informs him-they’ll have to wait two whole weeks, until Missy goes home with Ganny for her pre-Christmas sleepover.

Lying in the bathtub thirty-six years later, Nelson relives it one last time. He’s in his own bedroom, waiting for Simon’s call. He’s trying to study, but his eyes skim the print of his American history textbook uncomprehendingly. The phone rings; he snatches it up before his parents can answer. “Hurry up,” says Simon-that’s all, just the two words and the click of the receiver in Nelson’s ear.

The onset of Nelson’s acrophobia is still a few years off; he has no trouble climbing out his bedroom window, cutting through the backyard and across the patio to Simon, waiting at the back door.

“He’s in the shower,” Simon whispers urgently. Everything’s ready-they’ve dry-run it a dozen times in the last two weeks, when the house was empty. As they race through the kitchen, Simon grabs the box of safety matches from the drawer next to the stove; Nelson grabs the big turkey-roaster pan from the cabinet under the counter and the newspaper from the kitchen table, and races up the wide stairs after Simon, who’s already emerging from his room carrying his straight-backed metal desk chair. They hurry down the hall and through the open door of the master suite. The moment is electric; even Nelson is more excited than afraid as he helps Simon jam the chair under the knob of the bathroom door; on the other side of the door he can hear the shower running.

“Care to do the honors?” Simon whispers. Nelson shakes his head. Simon gives him a suit-yourself shrug and takes the newspaper from him, rolls it into a cone, lights it, and as it begins to catch, carries it over to the wall socket where Grandfather Childs’s prize Tiffany lamp is plugged in. After unplugging the lamp, scorching the plug,