went on and on.
Carl shrugged. At least she wasn’t going to give him the third degree about himself, asking if he’d gone to college or what kind of job he had. As if it were any of her business. And she couldn’t very well sneer at his car, considering the dump she lived in. And so what if his clothes were Kmart polyester? She was no prize herself, with her skinny bird legs and those stupid old-lady glasses. Those granny glasses. What made her think she was so special, going on about her stupid hobbies and never asking one word about him? What made her think she was better than him?
“I have one album of old Christmas cards and valentines,” she was saying. “Would you like to see that one? I keep it here in the coat closet.”
She edged past him as she got up to get the postcard album. Her wool skirt brushed against him like the mangy fur of a cat, and he shuddered. Her whining voice went on and on, like the meowing of an old lady’s cat, and the closet door creaked when she pulled it open. Carl smelled the mothballs. He felt a wave of dizziness as he stood up.
She was standing on tiptoe, trying to reach the closet shelf when Carl’s hands closed around her throat. It was such a scrawny little neck that his hands overlapped, and he laced his fingers as he choked her. He left her there in the dark closet, propped up against the back wall, behind a drab brown winter coat.
Before he left the apartment, he wiped a paper towel over everything he had touched, and he found the dating service card with his name on it propped up on the bookcase, and he took that with him. His palms weren’t sweating now. He felt hungry.
Carl was not so nervous this time. It had been several days since his “date,” and there had been no repercussions. He had slept well for the first time in months. The old stifling tension had eased up now, and he smiled happily at Ms. Erinyes. He had been here before. He tilted the straight-backed chair, his mouth still creased into a semblance of a smile.
Ms. Erinyes did not smile back. She was concentrating on the open folder. “I see you are applying for another match from our dating service, Mr. Wallin. Didn’t the first one satisfy you?”
Carl wondered whether he ought to say he hadn’t found the woman to his liking, or whether he was expected to know that she was dead. The newspaper item on her death had been a small paragraph, tucked away on an inside page. Police apparently had no clues in the case. He smiled again, wondering if they’d ever show photos of the crime scene anywhere. He’d like to have one to keep, to look at sometimes when the nightmares came. He thought of mentioning it, but perhaps Ms. Erinyes had not seen the death notice.
Carl realized that there was complete silence in the room. He had been asked a question. What was it? Oh, yes, had he liked the previous match arranged for him? Finally, he said, “No, I suppose it didn’t work out. That’s why I’m back.”
The director set down the folder and stared across the desk with raised eyebrows and an unpleasant smile. “Didn’t work out. Oh, Mr. Wallin, you’re too modest. We think it did work out. Very well, indeed.”
Carl kept his face carefully blank, wondering if it would look suspicious if he just got up and walked out. Slowly, of course, as if he couldn’t be bothered with such an inefficient business.
Ms. Erinyes went on talking in her steady, slightly ironic voice. “Perhaps it’s time we revealed a little more about Matchmakers to you, Mr. Wallin. Most of the time, you see, we are just what we say we are: a dating service, matching up poor lonely souls who are too afraid of AIDS or con artists to pick up strangers on their own. People don’t want to risk their lives or their life savings in the search for love. So we provide a safe referral. Ninety-nine percent of the time that is all we do; ninety-nine percent of the time, that is quite sufficient. But sometimes it is
“Con men?”
“Occasionally. We can usually spot them by their psychological profiles. And of course we do a criminal record check. I don’t believe I mentioned that to you.”
“So what? I’ve never been arrested.”
“Quite true. You are a different kind of danger to our little flock.” Carl shook his head, but Ms. Erinyes tapped his folder emphatically. “Oh, yes, you are, Mr. Wallin. Our questionnaires are carefully designed to screen out abnormal personalities, and we are very seldom mistaken.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” said Carl. He wanted to walk out, but something about the fat lady’s stare transfixed him. She was a tough old bird. Like his grandmother.
“There’s quite a bit wrong with you, I’m afraid. Not that we’re blaming you, necessarily, but on this particular scavenger hunt, you come up with every single item: abuse in childhood, alcoholism in the family, lower-middle- class background, illegitimacy, cruelty to animals. Oh dear, even a head injury. And the answers you gave on our test questions were chilling. I’m afraid that you are a psychopath with a dangerous hatred for women. There’s no cure for that, you know. It’s very sad indeed.”
“What are you talking about?” said Carl. “I never-”
“Just so,” said Ms. Erinyes, nodding. “You never had. We know that. We checked your criminal record quite thoroughly. But the tendency is there, and apparently it is only a matter of time before the rage in you builds up past all containment, and then-you strike. An unfortunate, unbeatable compulsion on your part, perhaps, but all the same, some poor innocent girl pays the price of your maladjustment. Usually quite a few innocent girls. Ted Bundy killed more than thirty before he was stopped. But how could we stop you? The deadly potential was there, but, as you pointed out, you had done nothing.”
Carl glanced at the closed door that led to the receptionist’s office. Was anyone listening behind that door, waiting for him to make a fatal confession? He had to stay calm. He hadn’t been accused of anything yet. Besides, what could they prove with all this crap about psychology? There were no witnesses, no fingerprints. He had made sure of that. The girl had no friends. It had taken two days to find her body, and the police had no clue. Carl’s palms were sweating.
The director had taken a piece of paper out of the manila folder labeled WALLIN, C. It was Carl’s drawing of the stick figure woman with no mouth. “Not a very attractive opinion of women, is it, Mr. Wallin? I’m afraid there’s no way to alter your mind-set, though. We could not cure you, but we had to stop you. That’s the dilemma: how do we prevent you from slaughtering a dozen trusting young women in your rage? That is always the difficult part-making the sacrifice, for the good of the majority. We don’t like doing it, but in cases like yours, there’s really no alternative. So, we found a match for you.”
Carl sneered. “Her? Miss Mousy? I’m supposed to be a dangerous guy, and you pick her as my ideal woman?”
“Precisely. It was not a love match, you understand. Far from it. Although, I suppose it was ‘till death do us part,’ wasn’t it?”
Carl did not smile at this witticism. He thought of lunging across the desk, but Ms. Erinyes simply nodded toward the corner of the office, and he saw a video camera mounted near the ceiling. He had not noticed it before. Still, they had no evidence. Let the stupid woman talk.
“It was definitely a match,” Ms. Erinyes was saying. “Just as we get the occasional killer for a client, we also get from time to time his natural mate: the victim. Patricia Bissel was, as you say, a mouse. Shy, indifferent in looks and intelligence-and, most important, she was suicidal. Her childhood was quite sad, too. It is unfortunate that you could not have comforted each other, but I’m afraid you were both past that by the time you met. Patricia Bissel wanted to die, perhaps without even being aware of it herself. Did she mention any of her accidents to you?”
Carl shook his head.
“She fell down the stairs once and broke her ankle. She ran her mother’s car into a tree, when she was sober, in daylight on a dry, well-paved road. Twice she has been treated for an overdose of medication, because-she said- she had forgotten how much she’d taken.”
“She
“She was quite determined, I’m afraid, and through her own fatal blunders, she would have managed it, or- worse-she would have found someone else to do it for her. If not a psychotic blind date picked up in a bar, then an abusive husband or a drunken boyfriend. Since the accidents had failed, but the suicidal impulses were still strong, we concluded that cringing, whining little Patricia was going to make someone a murderer. Why not you?”
“Maybe she needed a doctor,” said Carl.
“She’d had them. Years of therapy, all financed by her long-suffering mother. Medicine can’t cure everybody,
