“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 wanted to die?” said Carl.
“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, Mr. Wallin. Nice of you to care, though.”
Her sarcasm was evident now. Carl’s eyes narrowed. He was beginning to feel himself losing control of the interview. The tension was seeping back into his muscles, knotting his stomach, and making him sweat more profusely. “You can’t prove a thing, lady!”
Ms. Erinyes’s sigh seemed to convey her pity for anyone who could be so obtuse. “Did our brochure not assure you that we had years of experience, Mr. Wallin? Years.” She withdrew a half-letter-size envelope from his folder, and took out a stack of photographs. “We are not a shoestring operation, Mr. Wallin. You have been observed by a number of Matchmaker employees, who took care that you should not see them. Here is a nice telephoto shot of you entering Patricia Bissel’s apartment building. A concealed camera snapped this one of you knocking on the door of her apartment. Didn’t the number come out clearly? And there are the two of you in the doorway, together for the first and last time.”
Carl stuck out his hand, as if to make a grab for the pictures.
“Why, Mr. Wallin, how rude of me. Would you like this set of prints? The negatives and several other copies are, of course, elsewhere. You do look nice in this one. No? All right, then. Where was I? Oh, yes, the police. So far they have no leads in the Bissel case, but I think that if pointed in the right direction-your direction, that is-they could find some evidence to connect you to the murder.”
Carl had the closet feeling again. He knew that he must be a good boy and sit quietly, or else the feeling would never go away. “What are you going to do?” he asked in his most polite voice.
Ms. Erinyes put the pictures back in the envelope and slid it into Carl’s folder. “Ah, Mr. Wallin, there’s the question. What shall we do? We’ve spent the past week looking into your background, and there is no doubt that you have had a rough life. Your grandmother-well, let’s just say that some of your rage is entirely understandable. And it’s true that Patricia was self-programmed to die. So for now, we will do nothing.”
Carl exhaled in a long sigh of relief. He could feel his muscles relaxing.
The director shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Mr. Wallin. You understand, of course, that this cannot continue. You have no right to take the lives of people who don’t want to die. So we will keep the evidence, and we will watch you. If you ever strike again, I assure you that you will be caught immediately.”
Carl returned her stern gaze with an expressionless stare. The director seemed to understand. “Oh, no, Mr. Wallin, you won’t try to harm any of us here at the dating service. For you, it has to be passive, powerless women.”
She stood up to indicate that the interview was over. “Well, I think that’s all. You won’t be coming here again, but we will keep in touch. You were one of our greatest successes, Mr. Wallin.”
Carl blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You were going to be a serial killer, but we have stopped you. Oh-one last thing. We will keep your description in the active file of our computer. If anyone should come in with your particular problem-the urge to kill-and you happen to fit his or her victim profile…” She shrugged. “Who knows? You may find yourself matched up again.”