Tenderness (5 page)

Lieutenant Proctor said, “You’re a menace to society, Eric. Because you are incapable of feeling. Have you ever really felt anything? Sad? Or sorry? Sorry for what you did to your mother, your stepfather? Sorry for anything at all? In fact, have you ever even felt happy? That’s what makes you a psychopath, Eric. You are incapable of connecting with other people. Emotion, that’s what connects us all. Without emotion, without feeling, we’re animals.”

“I read somewhere that swans mate for life, Lieutenant. Must be some kind of feeling involved there, some kind of emotion. Maybe animals know more about emotions than we give them credit for.…”

Eric liked these verbal games with the old lieutenant. He knew he could talk circles around him. His gift of gab was actually for the lieutenant’s benefit. Ordinarily he didn’t have much to say to anyone, especially in this place. Talking to the old man, baiting him now and then, broke the monotony of the facility.

“Stop playing games, Eric. You know very well what I mean about lack of feeling.…”

Ah, but he had felt bad about the girl at the mall. Holding her limp body in his arms afterward, cradling
her gently, he had seen that her makeup was too heavy. His fingers stroked her long black hair. He opened her mouth and counted five fillings. But he had no time for further inspection because footfalls reached his ears, along with the crackling of bushes being pushed aside. Someone was nearby and coming closer. He crouched down, the girl beneath him, stilling himself, listening to the crunch of footsteps passing by and then receding, growing faint. Then silence again, except for the distant sounds of cars on the highway. He sighed with relief and vowed to be more careful in the future.

It had been so easy to lure the girl away from the mall. First of all, he had dropped the limping act once he followed her out the door. Outside, in the chilled twilight air, he had spotted her waiting at the bus stop. No one else was in sight. He approached her and turned on The Charm. Ever since he was a little kid, The Charm had worked wonders. That smile, along with his blond hair and blue eyes. When he smiled, something happened to his eyes. His eyes seemed to smile, too, sort of glowed. Irresistible. He had watched The Charm happen when he studied himself in a mirror.
What a sweet little boy
, he heard people say when he was just a child. And later:
a great-looking boy you’ve got there, Mrs. Poole
. Eric was tall and slender. At fifteen, he was almost six feet tall. Girls
flirted with him at school but he didn’t respond. Boys stayed away from him and he didn’t mind. He preferred to be alone. He found himself reflected in other people’s attitudes. Basked in their admiration. Or seemed to. Yet not everyone was affected by The Charm. Some people were indifferent. Some people he could not win over. A teacher now and then. People who regarded him with indifference or simply turned away, unimpressed, even suspicious. Maybe a store clerk or a bus driver. Specifically, Ginger Rowell, whom he’d asked to the Spring Dance in the eighth grade. He’d had no inclination to go to the Spring Dance, but his mother kept hounding him about it. “Everybody wants to go to the Spring Dance,” his mother insisted. “Everybody normal, that is.” Which stung him. Normal? So he asked Ginger Rowell. Who was nothing special although pretty and energetic and a cheerleader. She looked at him with cool appraising eyes and said: “No thanks.” Humiliating him, leaving him staring in disbelief as she walked away. So he had learned early on that there were people who did not respond properly to The Charm and he stayed away from them, ignored them, set them apart from his life, as if they did not exist.

His mother was a puzzle to him. She usually looked at him with the tender eyes of love. Always kissed him goodnight, a kiss that left a moist spot
on his cheek. He dimly remembered good times when he was a small kid and they’d cuddle in bed. But he didn’t like to think of those times after Harvey came along. Once in a while he caught his mother studying him, eyes narrowed, as if she were regarding a stranger.

He was always a dutiful son. He kept his room clean. He made no fuss when she sent him on errands even when it was inconvenient. He never played his CDs too loud. He was not insolent, never answered back when she said stupid things. She had a habit of saying everything twice:
It’s cold out. It’s cold out
. Or
Did you have a good day at school today? Did you have a good day at school today?
He put up with that, sometimes joked with her about it, didn’t let it get on his nerves. But it got on Harvey’s nerves. A lot of things got on Harvey’s nerves. Eric was the major thing. They hated each other at first sight. Amend that: Eric did not hate him. Harvey was not worth hating. He was such an ugly specimen of humanity.
What does she see in him?
That was the question to which Eric never found an answer.

He thought of his mother and Ginger Rowell as he held the limp body of the girl in his arms. He pictured Ginger Rowell lying close to him like this, but he immediately rejected the image. Ginger was small and blond; this girl was tall and dark. Anyway, Ginger had seen something in his
eyes that Eric knew existed and he could not fault her for that, despite the humiliation. His mother had caused the humiliation when she had forced him to ask Ginger to the dance. For the first time, the glimmer of what he would someday do to his mother and Harvey, like the winking of a distant star, appeared in his consciousness.

As Eric lay beside the girl, ignoring the cheap perfume in his nostrils, he sighed with contentment. Finally, he laid her gently to rest in the bushes, carefully brushing back a strand of hair from her face. That black hair. Her left arm fell loose, pale and fragile. For some reason, he trailed his mouth along her flesh, so warm and moist against his lips. Bliss filled him. He had never known such tenderness before, his body trembling with it. He knew that he must find it again.

“Your plans, Eric. Do you want to discuss them?”

The old lieutenant’s voice had gentled. “Where you’re going, what you’re going to do. You’ve had no visitors here. Haven’t had any mail for a long time …”

Eric had been deluged with mail when he first arrived at the facility. Letters from kids who thought he was some kind of hero. Or a martyr or a victim. Most of the mail from teenage girls, who also sent pictures of themselves, cheap photos
made in machines at the malls for a dollar. Some letters had lipstick kisses on them, promises and pledges.
I
will wait for you forever
. Letters and postcards from skinheads, neo-Nazis, grotesques, and freaks that Eric tossed aside without answering.

After a while, he stopped reading the letters and postcards. Had never answered them in the first place and had ignored requests for his autograph. He distributed to the other inmates the gifts he received, homemade cakes and cookies, elaborate handmade greeting cards, neckties, a few boxes of condoms. The inmates clamored for his letters, so that they could write to the girls who’d sent them, but Eric refused to hand them over. Why inflict these sorry specimens, these losers, on poor, unsuspecting girls? Which did not earn Eric any points from the other prisoners, despite the candy and cake he turned over to them. Eric viewed his fellow prisoners with indifference. He didn’t want to make friends. Or enemies. He simply wanted to be left alone, to avoid stupid conversations, to serve his time without trouble or fuss of any kind. Which was easy. As the only murderer in the facility, he lived, for the most part, separately from the other prisoners. He shared classrooms, details, and meals with them. But his room was in a different wing of the facility. He took his recreational activities alone, strolling the grounds by himself when
other prisoners were inside. He was not allowed to participate in team sports, watched baseball games from his second-floor window. He enjoyed his solitude. Most of the other prisoners were stupid, caught for petty crimes that anyone with intelligence wouldn’t commit in the first place and certainly wouldn’t be dumb enough to be caught doing.

His case had drawn national attention when authorities attempted to try him as an adult for the murders of his mother and stepfather. It was two months after his fifteenth birthday. He had remained silent during the frenzy of publicity, granted no interviews, made no statements. When he allowed himself to be photographed, he was careful to smile for the camera, not the smile of The Charmer but a sad, wistful smile that he calculated would soften his image. The clincher came when he faced the cameras outside police headquarters after his arrest. Slowly and deliberately, he pushed up his sleeves and revealed the scars from the cigarette burns on his arm, the bruise that remained from his broken arm. The wounds were silent and compelling evidence of the abuse he had received from his stepfather, abuse that, he told his interrogators, his mother had not only condoned but encouraged.

Support for him came immediately, not only from the freaks who sent him letters and gifts but
from college professors, newspapers as far away as Boston. They had played right into his hands. None of those who supported him cared to look deeply into his case, letting a few scars on his arm and a sad smile convince them that he had been done wrong.
Kill Your Parents and Become the Victim. What a wonderful country
, he thought.

He was not exonerated, of course, simply because he had confessed to the murders. But the scars and the millions of words from professors and columnists and editorial writers caused the authorities to try him as a juvenile instead of an adult. Which meant that he would be placed in the jurisdiction of the state Department of Youth Services, serving his sentence in a youth facility instead of a state prison. He would be set free, without restrictions, at the age of eighteen, three days from now. And here was the old lieutenant swallowing his anger, asking him his plans.

He had not talked to anyone, counselors or advisors, about what he would do, where he would go when the facility’s doors closed behind him on Friday. He hadn’t talked about his plans simply because he did not have to. His freedom was complete and unconditional. He would not be on parole or probation. His records would be sealed. He would not have to report to anybody or account for his future actions. He
did
have plans, of course. Long-range plans. Which were nobody’s
business. But his immediate plans were different. Telling the old lieutenant about them would serve a useful purpose.

“I’m going to live with my Aunt Phoebe, in Wickburg, up in Massachusetts, until I decide what to do about the future.”

The lieutenant looked skeptical.

“She’s never visited you here. Does she know about your plans?”

“Aunt Phoebe doesn’t like to travel and I didn’t want her to see me in this place. We’ve been writing to each other. I was allowed to make a long-distance phone call to her last week. She said she would be glad to take me in. She’s my mother’s sister.”

“Any job prospects? You finished high school here, earned your GED. You did very well in the machine shop.…”

Eric hated the machine shop. Had caught on fast to the demands and intricacies of tool and die making but did not plan to earn his living that way.

“College maybe. I just want to pace myself for a while.”

“The news media will be a factor, Eric. You’re going to be hounded. They’ll be waiting for you when you step out of here. They’ll follow you to your Aunt Phoebe’s place. They’ll be on the watch night and day. You’re the last of a breed, Eric.
Things are changing on the outside. New laws are being passed. Stiffer penalties for juveniles who commit serious crimes. More of them are now being tried as adults—”

“That has nothing to do with me, Lieutenant,” Eric interrupted. He knew that it was time for him to make his pitch, to resurrect The Charm, and convince the old cop that he had changed.

“I want to make something of myself,” he said, allowing the wistful smile to appear. “They say your body changes every few years. Well, I came here just turned fifteen and I’m leaving at eighteen and I’m a different person. The kid who killed his mother and stepfather was somebody else. I want to make a new start.…”

Too much charm? Or too little? Had he sounded sincere?

The lieutenant gazed at him steadily for a moment without expression. He stubbed out his cigarette in a glass ashtray, tried to rub the ashes off his tie but they remained. Probably from an earlier cigarette. He reached for his beat-up old briefcase, opened it, and extracted a big yellow pad with ruled lines. He scrutinized a series of scribbles on the pad, frowning. Then began to read in a flat, toneless voice:

“Laura Andersun. Fifteen years of age. Body found in bushes near Greenhill Mall. Strangled. Sexually assaulted, probably after death occurred.”

Then looked up, straight into Eric’s eyes.

So much for The Charm
, Eric thought. So much for sincerity.

“That’s old stuff, Lieutenant. I was never charged with Laura Andersun’s death. Questioned, yes, because it happened the same year my mother and stepfather died. A big coincidence. But no charges were brought. There was no motive.”

“Psychopaths don’t need a motive,” the old cop said.

“Witnesses reported the girl was being followed by a cripple,” Eric said. “Someone with a bad leg, someone who limped.”

“A bad leg, a limp can be easily faked,” the lieutenant said, voice still flat, deadly.

His eyes returned to the pad.

“Betty Ann Tersa,” he recited. “Sixteen. Disappeared six weeks after Laura Andersun’s death. A month before your mother and Harvey died. Still missing. But believed dead.”

Eric was genuinely surprised and kept his face blank, stilling himself. No one had ever questioned him about Betty Ann Tersa. Her name had never been mentioned to him. He kept his eyes away from the pad, did not want the lieutenant to see him searching for another name, a third girl, that no one knew about.

“Betty Ann Tersa,” Eric mused, allowing the
name to form on his lips and bringing back that moment of tenderness behind the dump, her black fragrant hair in his mouth. “Her name is vaguely familiar,” he said. Her name had appeared in the newspapers at the time, and denying that knowledge would only make the lieutenant more suspicious. “Didn’t she live someplace out on the West Coast?”