Sociopath (6 page)

2

Café
Molisse was on the corner of the western entrance to Main Street in Park City across from an art gallery. I had to park up the street and paralleled between a truck and an Escalade. I got out and felt the afternoon sunshine on my face and stood for a while and breathed the clean air.

Walking down the main strip, I glanced into the various shops. I passed a new age store that advertised for in-house psychic readings and an ice cream parlor with a 1950s style soda fountain behind the counter. Intermingled with the quaint and small was the luxurious
, stores where a single shirt cost over nine hundred dollars and a suit could run into the tens of thousands.

Park City was a town centered on one event: the Sundance Film Festival. Any other time it was quiet and had a small
-town charm. But during Sundance movie stars and rock stars and porno queens and writers and directors and poets would descend and turn the city inside out. Nightclubs and bars that didn’t exist during the rest of the year would open up, parties would occur every night, and the streets would be mobbed with tourists and locals trying to hob-nob with celebrity. As if a chance encounter in the street were a story they could tell their children years later.

I had gone once and it was
overwhelming, the noise and the crowds and the desperation hanging in the air. I left early after watching only one film about a disturbed filmmaker who was attempting to document his slipping sanity with a film crew following him around at every moment of his life.

Several cars sped by and didn’t stop for me. I waited until it was clear and sprinted across the street
as a red Lexus nearly clipped me.

The café was dimly lit and smelled of
coffee and pastries. It appeared more like a coffee shop that happened to serve food than a restaurant. The space held a lot of bookshelves overflowing with paperbacks and the walls were lined with soft recliners and fake leather couches. The hostess was flirting with one of the waiters since there was only one couple and a single man seated in the entire place. She saw me and came over, smiling at the last possible moment and saying, “Hi, how many in your party?”

“Just one.”

She sat me in the back near the kitchen and I had a view of the entire café. A bar was on the far side with a bartender in a black vest and white long-sleeved shirt. He was cleaning the bar and stocking liquors and checking the napkins and straws. At the other end of the café was a lone man in a sports coat with a laptop open and stacks of cash that he appeared to be cataloguing.

“Hi,” the waiter said, “my name is Richard and I’ll be taking care of you today.
Our menu is mostly soups and sandwiches but our pastries are made fresh every morning by Chef Joshua.”

“No, thanks. Just a grilled cheese if you have it.”

“We don’t, unfortunately. We have primarily artisan sandwiches but we can probably get you one of our sandwiches without the meat.”

“
That’s fine.”

“Great
, and did you want a side salad with that?”

“No, and just water to drink. Thanks. One question
, though: is that the manager over there?”

“Oh
, that’s the owner but, yeah, he manages the place too.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“No problem. Your food will be out in a minute.”

I waited until he
left and then stood and walked across the restaurant. I sat across from the owner and his brow furrowed.

“That seat’s taken.”

“I just had a quick question for you,” I said. “Did Tiffany’s parents know she was working under the table for you?”

The man froze. It would
have almost been comical if it wasn’t the context it was.

“
I’m not with the IRS and I don’t really care that you were paying her under the table. I’m trying to find the man that killed her.”

“So, hypothetically, if I did employ her, what would that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. I just want to rule everything out.”

“Are
you a police officer?”

“No.”

“Well, then I don’t have to talk to you, do I?”

“No.
But if it matters you don’t have to talk to the actual police either.”

“
I think I’d like you to leave.”

“Ther
e’s no reason for her to work under the table, is there? She wasn’t a felon, so it wouldn’t be against policy to hire her, and she was able and capable of working. She could have worked part time and you’d avoid benefits.… It’s funny, I just can’t imagine why an owner would risk federal tax fraud charges just for one employee? Can you?”

He glared at me
and I held his gaze. I didn’t need to say anything. Silence was often the most effective form of questioning.

Whatever they had going on was implied and I could be wrong or right, but he wouldn’t know. The question was
, would he risk it?

“What do you want to know?” he said evenly.

“She didn’t have a car. Was it her boyfriend that picked her up every day?”

“She didn’t work every day. She just worked Fridays and Saturdays. And yeah, it was her boyfriend that would come and get her.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about being afraid of someone? Maybe receiving hang-up calls or running into the same person in different places?”

He shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”

“Any customers that paid her too much attention?”

“Every customer paid her too much attention. Did you see any pictures of her before
… well, before all this?”

“No.”

“She was a knockout. Pure and simple. I was the one that kept telling her she had to go to California and use her looks for something other than serving fat tourists ham and Brie. She was really shy though, and insecure. I don’t think she saw how good-looking she was.”

I thought of my own ex-wife. “They rarely do.”

“Yeah,” he said, tapping a pencil against the table. “So we done?”

“What was her shift?”

“Noon to four.”

I nodded. “Thanks for your help.”

I ate and, surprisingly, the sandwich was delicious. After I finished I left a twenty percent tip and nodded to the owner as I left.

Stepping back out into the sunshine, I glanced up across the street to an office building
—though the office buildings here didn’t look like office buildings. They looked more like log cabins with multiple stories. At the top of the building was a sign for Helix Financial & Commodities with a simple black and white logo which didn’t seem to fit the building.

Next to that building was a hotel with a ski store on the ground level. I went inside and perused and bought some sunglasses. The clerks were both condescending and rude but they certainly accepted my money quickly and without fuss. I thanked them and they didn’t say anything as I turned and left.

Today was Thursday. Tomorrow, I would be back here and sitting in the café. He had met her somewhere. So much of the killing seemed planned that he had to have thought about it before. Somewhere, he had daydreamed about her. About the things he would do to her. And I thought this café was as good a place as any.

THOMAS FISCHER

I woke
not knowing where I was. Occasionally that would happen without cause. I turned over in the bed and looked out the patio glass doors that I had left open and onto the forest that I knew surrounded my home. Nude, I rose and went out onto the patio and urinated over the side to the ground ten feet below.

The party
the night before had been quite the fucking bore. People mingling forcefully, all attempting to think of something witty to say to each other, something that convinced others that they indeed had value aside from the size of their bank accounts, most of which had been inherited from parents.

My date, a brunette with short hair and wide, crimson lips, withstood the onslaught of the old rich
douchebags hitting on her the entire night by having an air of insolence. I glanced over several times and saw her sipping champagne and ignoring men who were attempting with all their might to convey with a single sentence not only their ivy league educations, but the number of companies and employees they had under them.

I left her alone, careful to show her I was indifferent. At one point she came up to me and I put my arm around her waist and she pushed me off without looking at me.
The bitch would pay for that.

“Can you just take me home?” she asked, after receiving a text. No doubt from the artist boyfriend I knew she had.

“Sure.”

As we drove, I forced her to give me head. It was arousing in an odd way and it made me laugh several tim
es, particular when I climaxed onto her face and she had to wipe it off with the expensive silk scarf she had wrapped around her neck.

She sobbed quietly in the passenger seat as we drove, her eye beginning to swell and a trickle of blood coming down over her lips
from the puffy nose I gave her when she’d refused to go down. I dropped her off and she got out and slammed the door and stormed toward her home. I could see her boyfriend waiting on the porch. He saw her face and they exchanged a few words and he ran at me.

Normally, I would have gladly broken his head open, but I was tired and glutted from sex and caviar and champagne, so I figured why bother. I drove away with him chasing me down the street, swearing and looking for something to throw. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I laughed so much I couldn’t stop and I had to pull over. I kept laughing until my stomach pained me so badly I had to think about something else. Something less humorous. Work. Work always seemed to take the humor out of a situation. So I thought about the various tasks that required completion the next day and soon the humor faded and I was able to drive home.

I slept in the nude with the windows open, hoping to hear the coyotes that haunted these hills at night. Black bears were frequent visitors as well
, but they had developed a deep fear of humans and wouldn’t come near the homes. But I would hear them grunting along their paths on the hillside.

By morning I didn’t feel refreshed in any way. I
’d only had dreams in black and white and they’d awoken me several times. I felt groggier than when I went to bed and thought that perhaps I would have felt better had I stayed awake the entire night.

I showered and
donned an Armani suit with a pink polo shirt and black loafers with no socks. I placed a pink pocket square in the jacket pocket and slicked back my hair with a Parisian sculpting gel I’d had imported from a little store that made the gels and soaps they sold.

I chose to drive the Cheyenne and went into town. I did one loop around Main to see who was out, but it was ten in the morning and there was hardly any movement
, much less crowds. I parked in reserved parking at the entrance to my building and went inside.

Elevators sounded constricting so I chose to take the stairs to the top floor and saw the massive gleaming sign for Helix Financial
& Commodities behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Morning
, Karen.”

“Morning. How was your night?”

“As expected. How was yours?”

“Pizza and
Modern Family
. What else?”

“You should go out with me some
time. I can show you the sights.”

“The sights
in Park City? I grew up here.”

“No, I don’t mean here. I’ll take you to Vegas. That’s where you go to have a good time.”

“Hmm. I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll take that as a maybe.”

I walked past her through the glass doors into the main foyer. She wouldn’t go out with me. She was a lesbian and thought that somehow I didn’t know. So it was always enjoyable to ask her out and watch her squirm for answers. On the one hand, she didn’t want to reject the CEO of the company. On the other, she felt uncomfortable telling me she was homosexual. Probably because she hadn’t come out to her family yet as she was only nineteen.

I
wound my way past the conference room and saw a meeting taking place. I checked the calendar on my phone: I had scheduled this meeting. Sneaking in through the back, several people turned to me and smiled and I smiled too. The lights were dimmed and Roger, one of my account managers, was going through a PowerPoint about Libya’s interim government’s stance on oil futures and trading with the West.

I paid attention for only a few moments before noticing Silv
ia’s slit in her skirt. She was seated next to me and with her eyes turned toward Roger didn’t notice that I was looking. Her legs were smooth and white with just enough tan in them not to be pale. Musculature was visible in both calves and thighs and her ankles were pronounced with a single vein coming around them. They were perfect.

She glanced over at me and grinned awkwardly and I forced a smile and she turned away.

I was still staring at her when the lights came on.

“Any questions?” Roger asked. “Okay, unless Thomas
has something to add….”

I shook my head. “That was great. Thanks for that
, Roger. So just a reminder we’re pushing Schiller Exports this week. The price per share is reasonable but the buy-in is thirty thousand minimum. Hit your upper middle-class clients, some of your retirement funds, but don’t pass this on to your big dogs. I have a feeling it’s going to tumble in the next few months.”

Roger looked around. “All right, let’s go sell some oil.”

Everyone stood and walked out. Everyone except Roger, who came and sat next to me.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You take melatonin like I recommended?”

“No, I forgot to pick some up.”

“It’ll help. Without sleep you’re mor
e prone to disease, irritability, depression, everything.”

“You don’t want to talk about sleep with me, Roger. What is it you need?”

He rubbed his forehead with one hand and said, “It’s Mark.”

“What about him?”

“He gave me his two week notice last night. He’s leaving for GE in New York.”

“Why would he possibly want to live in New York?”

“Thomas, did you hear what I said? Mark is leaving. He’s the best damned account rep we got.”

“Why’s he leaving?”

“He says you’re cruel to him.”

I laughed. When I saw Roger wasn’t laughing as well, I stopped.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Thomas, he says you tease him about being gay.”

“So what? I tease Jason about being black, I tease Linda about being Muslim …”

“And you can’t do that.
Look, I’ve known you a long time and know you’re one charming dude when you want to be and one serious asshole when you want to be too. Can we just have a little more charming and a little less asshole at the office?”

I put on my best fake smile. Outwardly, I was showing him he had gotten through and I’d be happy to do what I could to help. I knew he liked me, as most people did. I was the perfect friend, the perfect lover,
the perfect boss. I became what they wanted to see and only once in a while would my mask slip and reveal the twisted wreckage underneath.

“For you, Roger, anything.”

“I appreciate it. Thank you. Now, when we going golfing?”

“This afternoon?”

“Can’t, client meetings. Tomorrow after lunch?”

“You’re on.”

I waited until he left before standing. My head and upper body caught in the projector’s light and it cast a black shadow on the wall. It was the perfect depiction of myself: nothing on the inside. People would comment to me all the time how charming I was, how witty, how full of life. My ex-girlfriend had told me that her parents loved me more than she did. I was just the right mixture of handsome and successful and mysterious to be appealing.

But I knew the truth. I had no delusions about it. I was the shadow. I was an outline with a dark center that I could never penetrate. And because of this center I couldn’t see the centers of anyone else.
So I became what they showed me. When I met a person—and I’d met enough people to have a statistically valid sample of the population—I knew that no matter who they were or where they came from, they would like me.

I would become like them
, sometimes unconsciously, but most of the time with an eye toward ensuring that I appeared sympathetic and agreeable. They would think of me as a friend and I wouldn’t know the first thing about how they related to the world, what their hopes were, their dreams, their relationships, their inner thoughts, their motivations … human beings were all a mystery to me.

Two years ago I watched as a woman’s husband drown
ed in a pool. He hit his head and sank to the bottom and none of the lifeguards had been paying attention. The woman was hysterical and weeping uncontrollably and I couldn’t figure out why. She was relatively decent looking, not ugly and not pretty. She would find another husband. What did it matter whether it was the corpse at the bottom of the pool or some other loser she found at the grocery store or gym?

It fascinated me the entire length of the day
. I drove home, and as I went about my nighttime routine, tried to mimic the sounds she’d been making, the frantic cries for someone, anyone, to do something to save her husband. It wasn’t easy, but it was something that had to be perfected.

I walked out into the hall and past thirty or so cubicles and another dozen offices. Mine was the corner office with the frosted glass walls. I walked in and
shut the door behind me. A remote control was on my desk and I pressed a button and the stereo mounted on the wall turned on. I opened iTunes on my computer, which was connected to the stereo, and played some Coltrane.

Just as I was relaxing in my chair with my feet up on the desk, someone knocked on the door and broke my concentration.

“What?” I said.

Char, one of our staff, poked her head in. “Mr. White is here to see you, sir.”

“Tell him I’m not in.”

“Um, I think he saw your car outside. He knows you’re here.”

“Where is he?”

“In the foyer.”

“Send him back in five minutes.”

She left and I sighed and turned the stereo off and exited the office. Another staff was near my office, Alexis something, and I went to her. “Phillip White is going to go into my office and see that no one is there. When he does,
tell him I went for a client meeting with someone else and won’t be back until the afternoon. If he says my car is here, tell him the other person drove.”

“Sure, Mr. Fischer.”

I took the back door and went down the emergency exit, which was nothing more than a little winding staircase locked away next to the parking garage. It echoed loudly and with each step you grew more disoriented as you weren’t exactly certain where in the descent you were.

Getting down the stairs and opening the exit door, I glanced both ways before slinking out and crossing the street. Café
Molisse was there and they had the best espresso in the city. I went inside and sat down.