Strangers (23 page)

“But, aha!” Kevin said, as he wrote the word
Superego
in the third small circle, “The superego, last component of the personality to develop, is basically the conscience. Here we learn from parents, from authority figures, from our own experience in society. The superego limits what the ego is free to do to gratify the raw, aggressive wants of the id.”

Kevin drew an “X” over the superego circle. “Zip! The psychopath isn’t burdened with one of these. That means he’s free to do what he pleases—and that’s anything he thinks he can get away with that will make his id purr with happiness.”

Rob Gretsh, the
long haired
young man who often posed the most difficult questions, raised his hand. “What causes someone to become a psychopath?”

“Hmm.” Kevin Bollender slowly nodded. “That’s a wonderful question, Rob. Too bad I don’t have a wonderful answer. Instead, I can give you all kinds of theories. Yessir, psychology is loaded with hypotheses, variables and theories!

“Here’s one: If a kid is raised in conditions of near-total rejection and neglect, he could become a psychopath simply in order to survive without becoming psychotic.
His coping behavior’ is lying, cheating, stealing, and so as a child, he learns to get what he wants and needs in the most cunning ways.
As an adult, he goes into the world doing the same thing, following the pattern that has been successful for him.

“Then we’ve got the theory that psychopathy, like any other form of mental illness you can name, is caused by a chemical imbalance. That’s a popular notion. You know, ‘better living through chemistry.’ The chemists are sure that once they determine the formulas, they can turn
a
schiz, a paranoid, or a psychopath into Norman Normal. That means’ that many of my colleagues who make fifty bucks an hour and up will have to get themselves honest jobs!

“And here’s another theory for you. I guess you could call this the ‘Bad Seed’ concept if you’d like. Just the way some people are born to be tall, a psychopath is born to be psychopathic. Maybe the mass murderer with a tattoo that reads ‘BORN TO RAISE HELL’ is showing he has real insight into who he is and how he got that way!”

Rob Gretsch couldn’t accept the last concept. “Uh-uh, that’s blaming it on Fate. That kind of thinking is right out of the Dark Ages!

Kevin shrugged. “Actually, the idea belongs to Carl Jung, and he’s right up there with Freud and Adler.”

People totally without a conscience,
Beth thought.
People who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, or Lincoln, Nebraska, or Clearwater, Florida or right next door, doing what they wished without the slightest consideration for others, without fear of law or morality—without guilt.
Considering the number of psychopaths who might be on the loose was not, Beth reflected, the way to develop a sense of trust in your fellow man. And yet the subject was intriguing. She had a question.

“How can we tell if a person is a psychopath?”

Kevin said, “That’s extremely difficult to determine. The psychopath seems to be normal—in fact,
super
normal. He’s a terrific actor. His relationships with others appear to be intense and involved but are actually cold, calculating, and without any emotional intimacy.

“So the only time a psychopath reveals himself is when he acts in illegal and immoral ways. He’s the charming con man who sells the sweet old lady the Brooklyn Bridge. He’s the regular churchgoer who steals every penny from the church’s building fund. Or he’s a bluebeard who murders twenty wives before he gets caught. And that’s a specialty for psychopaths: murder. It’s a chance to exercise total dominance over another human being.

“I’m saying, then, that we can recognize ‘moral imbecile’ only when we have proof of his actions.”

“There’s no, oh, predictive test or anything?” Beth said. It seemed there ought to be. A tendency toward schizophrenia, for instance, could frequently be shown by a standard projective test that psychologists had employed for years.

“I’m afraid not,” Kevin said. Then, laughing, he added, “Oh, maybe God does put the brand of Cain on ’em, but it doesn’t seem He gives others the ability to
see
that mark. So it’s only when the psychopath’s actions have been found out that we have proof of the psychopathic personality.”

“But if psychopaths are so smart,” questioned Rob Gretsch. “
right
at the genius level,
do
they get caught?”

“They do indeed,” Kevin said. “You’ve heard the old expression, ‘Pride goeth before a fall.’ After he’s had a number of successes, the psychopath comes to believe he’s invulnerable, much too clever to be caught by the police or found out by anyone. He gets careless, makes mistakes without realizing it or takes chances he previously would have avoided. Then, zap!”

It was all fascinating—and frightening, Beth thought. Anyone, anyone at all, the mailman, the bank teller, the television repairman
—Doctor-Lawyer-Indian Chief
!—
could be…

No! The thought was there and she did not want to think of it, did not want it to emerge because that would give it a touch of credence, bring it into the realm of possibility, and it was the out-and-out craziest
(and so terrifying!)
thought she had ever had,
would
ever have…

And vowing she would not think it, she of course
did
think it, the horrifying totality of it expressed in a single word hiss—whispered in her mind:

Michael!

She recalled when she was a child, maybe five, perhaps not that old. Late one winter night, a terrifying idea had jerked her from sleep, led her to walk down the hall to her parents’ room. She silently stood at the door, studying them, wondering
Can
I be sure they are really
Mom and Dad?
Illuminated only by the soft silver of the moon that seeped in through the west window, the two people in bed—
Mom and Dad
?—
did not look right, did not seem to be the same people they were during the day. For weeks after that, she stared at them when she thought they weren’t noticing
,
trying to be sure they were not the pretenders that sleep and moonlight had made them seem.

Oh, she had been one silly kid!

And wasn’t she still the same silly kid, thinking that Michael…

She welcomed the question that came to her mind in response to the classroom discussion she was only half-hearing. If she were seriously thinking about this question, focusing her entire mind on it, then she could not be considering anything else
—Michael! MichaelTheStranger
!—
and she
was
not
thinking about anything else. She had something to ask Kevin, and only after she had done so did she feel the embarrassment that came from not having first raised her hand and being recognized.

“But all that psychology knows about the psychopathic personality,” she said, “comes from studying the psychopaths who
have
been caught. Isn’t that right?”

“True enough,” Kevin nodded. “And all we know about any of the individual mental illnesses comes from studying those who have been identified as being mentally ill. So… I’m not sure I get your point.”

Beth’s mind was racing. So was her heart. She felt the heady elation of intellectual discovery and challenge, one that she had experienced so many years ago in college and then had not known again during her brain’s “dormant years.” She stammered, striving to express herself clearly.

“Isn’t it possible that there are psychopaths who are not detected and might never be found out? They’d be even smarter and shrewder than the others, real super-geniuses. They…”

She paused. She wasn’t sure where her ideas were going and she feared following it to a dead end or a corner, a corner where the dunce would have to—stand with her back to the class.

Kevin Bollender frowned, his brow wrinkling. He smoothed his moustache, first the left side then the right. Then he said, “That’s very good.” He smiled, and when he spoke his tone was jocular but genuinely complimentary. “What you’ve given us, Beth, is what psychologists love: a theory. We can call it Beth Louden’s Theory of the Unknown Psychopath.”

For the remainder of the class session, “The Unknown Psychopath” was the topic of conversation. Could he exist? Did he? What possible evidence might be found throughout history?
In philosophical works?
(Rob Gretsch mentioned Nietzsche and his
Ubermensch,
the Superman who was above “the law” that governed the masses. No wonder the Nazis had made Nietzsche their philosophical justification.) In today’s news paper headlines and 10 o’clock TV newscasts?

When the class ended, Kevin Bollender asked Beth if she would wait just a moment. “I want to thank you,” Kevin Bollender said. “I mean because of your sharp question, there was a lively discussion tonight instead of a lecture, one of my patented ‘Bollender’s Boring Bombasts.’”

“I…I just had something to ask,” Beth said. She realized she was blushing, felt a flare of heat on her cheeks that reminded her of schoolgirl days. It was embarrassing, she thought, to be praised for having an idea, especially when you were not exactly accustomed to having your intellect complimented. Beth felt uneasy—
Actually, excited—happy uneasy
talking to Kevin Bollender, listening to him commend her for her question and then say, “We could talk about this some more if you’d join me for a drink.
say
, in the cocktail lounge just down…”

Because she was taken aback, without time to think it over—Beth said what she really wanted to say.

“Yes.”

— | — | —

THIRTEEN

CLAIRE WYNKOOP was nestled comfortably in her living room’s upholstered wing chair. A book lay open on her lap, but she had read no more than a few pages when the words ran together. Claire’s head was bowed. She thought she really should remove her bifocals before they fell off but somehow it didn’t seem worth the bother. She was pleasantly warm, as though the chair were an enfolding cloud, and she could feel the regular beat of her heart throughout her arms and legs. She was not asleep but she knew she wasn’t far from it.

Across the room, atop the antique sideboard, the compact phono-radio that Beth and Michael had given her for Christmas five years ago, was tuned to an easy-listening FM station. Claire thought that every song, whether performed by the twin pianos of Ferrante and Teicher, the 101 Strings, or the Johnny Mann singers, had a lulling sameness. It would be perfect music to doze off by, music that might give her good dreams.

It was 8:30 Friday evening, and for the first time all day, Claire Wynkoop relaxed. She’d awakened that morning with a headache that was not really a headache. At the library, she had listened to
that
sound, the vibrating tuning fork in the center of her brain.

It had been a day that promised premonition, a tense, uneasy, and just out-and-out bad day. Why did the future insist on forcing glimpses of
itself
on her?
she’d
asked herself today as she had so many times previously. She was quite content to live in the here and now. There should be impregnable territorial lines separating past, present, and future.

She wondered if she were asleep yet. No, she couldn’t be. She could still hear the music…

Music that grew louder, then louder still. It filled the room, reverberated in her mind. Gone now was the soothing, floating lyricism, the gently rippling stream rhythm. The music was fiercely, unrelentingly atonal: blaring horns, strings pain-screeching beyond the highest notes of the octave. There was a chorus, voices that yowled fury, unreasoning anger, and hate.

Claire’s head flew back. Her glasses had slipped to the very end of her nose and she peered over the top of them. She gripped the arms of the chair.

She saw the future.

Michael!
He was standing still. His hazel eyes stared at her, but his face was otherwise utterly expressionless, a blank.