Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

“What do I do now?”

“Let me think.” She closed her eyes. After a moment she opened them and said, “I think you’re going to have to tell us what you’ve done.”

“You already know.”

“You’re going to have to tell everyone. You’ll tell us about all the women you’ve killed, from the one eight years ago to the one last night.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes. You have to.”

“And then what? You’ll decide how to punish me?”

“No, Mark. I told you you didn’t come here to be punished.”

“Then what? Why did I come here?”

“For the same reason everybody else did,” she said. “Did you think you were so special?” She got to her feet. “Give me your hand,” she said, “and we’ll rejoin the others. You’ve got a long story to tell.”

At Sara’s instruction, they formed a great semicircle in front of him, sitting with their legs folded or stretched out full-length. He sat by the side of the fire, waiting. At a nod from Sara he got to his feet and faced them.

He said, “My name is Mark. Sara says I’m supposed to tell you my story. I’m a killer. In the past eight years I’ve murdered a hundred women.” There was a collective intake of breath. “A hundred and one women,” he said, and turned toward Sara. “I don’t know where to start.”

“With the first woman.”

“She was a prostitute in Kansas City. I went with her to a motel. I hadn’t intended to kill her. She said something that made me angry and I hit her and knocked her out. Then I thought of killing her to protect myself, and I did, and it was very exciting. I enjoyed it, I loved it.”

“Tell us how you did it, Mark.”

“I strangled her. With her blouse.” His eyes were closed. He couldn’t meet their gaze. “Now what?” he asked.

“Tell us about each of them, Mark.”

“I can’t remember everything.”

“Yes you can. No one ever forgets a thing. It’s all in there somewhere, every book you ever read, every person you ever met. I’ll help you remember.”

He took a breath. “The second woman,” he said, and he felt Sara walking around in his mind, opening cupboards in his memory. “The second woman,” he said, and her image came into his mind, “was a student at KU. That’s the University of Kansas, that’s in Lawrence. She was hitchhiking. I asked her to get something from the glove compartment, and when she leaned forward I grabbed her head and slammed it against the dashboard until she was unconscious. I took her into an unplowed field and killed her the minute she regained consciousness.” He could smell the tall grass and hear the chirping of crickets. He could feel her fear and resignation as she saw death coming. “I strangled her. I used my hands. At first I couldn’t kill her, but then I got the right grip and, and I killed her.”

“And the third woman?”

“I don’t remember.” A nudge within his mind, a shift, a clearing. “She was working late in an office. I was in the building to see somebody and he had forgotten the appointment, his office was closed. I was on my way out and I saw her at her desk. She looked very scholarly, she had aviator glasses and a short haircut, and she was bent over a deskful of papers. I went in and asked her if she had a key to the men’s washroom, and when she turned to get it I picked up a letter opener from the desk…”

And the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth. And the twenty-sixth. And the fortieth.

And on and on and on.

Early in his recitation, a woman named Ardith sprang to her feet and cried out that she could not listen to this. She made her way out of the semicircle and headed off through the trees. Bud and Martha caught up with her and got her to lie down and breathe.

As Mark continued telling his story, more people went into hyperventilation. Sometimes this was preceded by an emotional outburst. One woman said she had been a rapist’s victim, another that her father had abused her sexually. In each case, the person wound up on the edge of the semicircle, lying down, breathing, with someone on hand to monitor the process.

Women were not alone in reacting in this fashion. Men, too, found themselves launched into emotional upset by Mark’s story, and it didn’t much matter whether they were newcomers or veteran walkers. Dingo, the outlaw biker, stalked from the circle while Mark was telling about a schoolteacher he had killed with a hammer; moments later he was lying on the ground at the foot of a tall tree, his whole body rigid, his breath locked in his throat, while Kimberley sat on her haunches beside him and stroked his forehead and soothed him and made sure he continued to breathe without interruption.

Sometimes, when something dramatic occurred in his audience, Mark would stop talking. But when the drama subsided and the person involved was off to one side breathing, he would pick up his narrative precisely where he had left off. The memory he needed was always available to him. As he finished reporting each act of murder, the memory of the next was immediately at hand, sometimes with a little mental nudge from Sara. He described some women at length and others not at all, told the manner of killing in a few words or a paragraph. Often he found himself recalling things of which he’d had no conscious awareness at the time, and once in a while he would fall silent, struck by something he’d just heard himself say. No one interrupted those silences, and after a time he would resume speaking.

It was fully dark by the time he finished. He told of how he’d decided not to kill T.J. and had had to struggle with himself to keep from murdering her anyway. And he told about the woman at the gas station, and how he’d driven the kitchen knife clear through her body. And then he was done.

The fire was a heap of glowing coals. Guthrie approached, put some more wood on it. Flames sprang up. Guthrie went back and sat down again. Mark was still standing, facing them.

Sara said, “Well, what are we going to do with Mark? Shall we turn him in to the police?”

“No,” someone said.

“Why not? Look at all the crimes he committed.”

“What can the police do with him? Lock him up?”

“If he’s locked up he can’t commit any more crimes,” Sara said. “Mark, are you dangerous? Will you kill again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could you kill now? Look around you. Is there anyone here you could stab or strangle?”

He shuddered. “It makes me sick to think of it,” he said. “But I did it before. I did it over a hundred times.”

“You’re not that person now.”

“But where did that person go? Isn’t he still inside me?”

“Yes, indeed he is. Well, what could we do with you if we don’t turn you in to the police? Earlier you said you wanted to die. What does everyone think? Should we kill Mark?”

“No.”

“No, we don’t kill people.”

“No, Mark is our brother.”

His throat knotted at that last remark. He felt an ache at the back of his throat, fierce pressure behind his eyes.

“Should Mark kill himself?”

“Mark is done with killing. He’s killed himself a hundred and one times, isn’t that enough?”

Sara sighed. “They won’t let you die,” she said. “And it’s just as well. You didn’t come here to die. You came here to be healed, the same as everybody else.”

“To be healed from killing?”

“To be healed of all that’s ill within you. That’s the real reason everybody does everything. Why do you think you killed those women?”

“Because I enjoyed it. Because it thrilled me, because it brought me pleasure.”

“And why do you think that was so?”

“Because—” He looked at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because I’m a monster.”