John D. MacDonald
Mr. Killer
She would have waited until Jamie came home except that the lock looked just like the one that had been on the secret box she had owned when she was a child. And after she lost the key to that secret box playing baseball, the lock had yielded to a paper clip bent just so.
So she took a paper clip from Jamie’s desk and took the tin box and sat on the floor, because it was always easier to do hard things while sitting on the floor. It was all because somehow the darn bill for the insurance premium had disappeared; it was truly disheartening the way bits of necessary paper could scoot out of sight in such a small house.
Jamie was very much of a child, she thought, with his locked tin box, but of course the policy would be in there and the number would be on the policy. The company had mentioned that they liked the policy number written on the premium checks, and with the bill for the premium gone, it was a logical place to look. Having started to make out the checks, it was a nuisance to have to stop and wait for Jamie to come home and unlock his stupid little box.
She remembered Jamie objecting to the insurance on the grounds that she certainly had more than enough money even if neither of them ever worked. But the insurance man had been nice, and when he talked about retirement income he reminded her of the things Dads used to say. It was comforting to hear talk of that kind again because Jamie, of course, didn’t speak in those terms.
It was silly, in a way, to think of a retirement income for Jamie when she would always be around with him and there was more than enough money. But after a few payments you were silly not to keep up the policy, and it cost only five hundred twice a year.
She put her tongue in the corner of her mouth and sat cross-legged, jiggling the bent paper clip in the keyhole of the box until it gave a satisfying little click.
Jamie had the darn box packed full. It was dim in the middle of the room. So she picked up the box and took it over to the window and put it on the schoolmaster desk so she could poke through the papers and find the policy.
In the matter of the box Jamie was surprisingly neat. There were big Manila folders, all labeled in Jamie’s oddly cramped writing. It didn’t seem right that such a big guy should write so small. The folder labeled “Insurance” was there, and the only thing in it was the policy she wanted. She copied the long number on the top right corner of the check, hoping that it wasn’t too long overdue.
As she put the insurance policy back — in the folder she saw another folder with her name on it. Fan. She stopped suddenly and felt all soft and ridiculously feminine. She wondered what on earth Jamie could have in a folder with her name on it.
She decided it would be fair to peek, and if it were very sentimental, she wouldn’t tell him she knew until the time seemed just right. An anniversary or something.
She took a look out at the driveway and thought that if Jamie came home unexpectedly there’d be the sound of the tires popping on the gravel and she could jam the folder back.
She gasped as she opened the folder. Sheet after sheet of Jamie’s tight little writing. She thought, He must be writing a book about me or something.
The first sheet was in a funny outline form. The date was in the left margin, neatly underlined. “August 4, 1948.” Why, that was three days after the wedding!
“Place — Glen Springs Hotel.” That was the honeymoon place. A fine place. A happy place.
“She brought with her a sweat shirt given her a year before, on her nineteenth birthday, by a boy from a college in Omaha. There was a big O in the front and she calls it her ‘nothing shirt.’ She told me she wears it when she feels like nothing at all, and when I remarked that it was a little dirty, she said that it would be bad luck to have it laundered. It would spoil the way it worked. She said there was nothing like labeling yourself when you felt like nothing at all and then, of course, you would get over it quickly.”
Fan smiled. Poor stuffy old Jamie. He had been so bewildered by her at first.
“September 10, 1948. Party with friends of hers named Lawrence. She drank very little. Mrs. Lawrence had a new fur coat which she considered a bargain. She showed it to Fan who spread it on the floor, took off her shoes and stockings and walked on it, saying to Mrs. Lawrence that it looked ‘so darn fluffy and all, and besides, before I buy a coat like this I always do this because you can tell better.’ But she seemed unable to explain what she could ‘tell.’Ю”
Jamie had acted so embarrassed that night, she remembered. But Mart Lawrence had understood.
She went on to the next page. Neat dates in the left margin. She frowned. Maybe it was for a book. Life with Fan. Something like that. And yet there seemed to be something oddly wrong with the way it had been written. So cold.
“She came home and said that she had bought a merry-go-round. It turned out that it was in bad repair, but she had the idea that the horses could be taken off of it and painted white and set on the knoll behind the house to look as if they were running in a herd. It was with the utmost difficulty that I managed to talk her out of this aberration.”
Fan heard her own nervous laugh.
Incident after incident. She thought, If anyone read this they’d think I was absolutely mad! But completely!
She did not read any more of the incidents. The last sheet was carefully labeled “Summary.” Many words were scratched out and new words written in. It seemed to be a sort of draft.
“Since I married this woman I have grown increasingly convinced that she is dangerously unstable. I have attempted in every way to get at the roots of her instability, hoping thereby to help her achieve integration. But it would, appear that there is a deep-rooted cause that will defeat any amateur efforts. Therefore I am submitting this entire report to the institution in the hope that it will enable...” The next few words were crossed out.
She thought, This is some sort of stupid joke. It must be.
Quickly she turned back to the last incident which he had recorded. It bore the day before yesterday’s date.
“She complained that the kitchen knives were dull. Last night I sharpened them for her. She watched me and seemed almost too interested, testing each one on the ball of her thumb. When I finished the largest carving knife, she took it and held it so tightly that her knuckles were white. She stared at the blade and said, ‘This is my pet. I call this one Mr. Killer.’ I feel she is approaching a stage where she actually will be dangerous.”
The folder slipped out of Fan’s hand, swooped to the floor, the papers separating and fluttering down.
She remembered that she had said those words. But Jamie had it all wrong. Completely wrong.
She sat on her heels and picked up the papers and carefully put them back in the folder. As she stood up, the hem of the red dress caught in her heel and she ripped it badly. She wanted to rip the papers and hear the sound of them tearing. But what was on the papers was in Jamie’s mind and you couldn’t rip anyone’s mind in that same way.
She sat on the floor and worked at the box with the clip until the lock clicked in reverse and the lid was again firm. With an odd consciousness of guilt, she wiped the box clean with the skirt of the ruined dress and then realized that the box was too clean and Jamie wouldn’t be looking for her fingerprints. So she put fingerprints back on the shiny surface and put the box back on his study table, remembering that it had been at a certain angle away from the wall.
In the bedroom was a full-length mirror and it was suddenly important to look at a woman with such dire possibilities. She smiled experimentally at the girl in the mirror and thought that it was very nice to have become reasonably attractive after such a horrid and scrawny and straggly beginning back in the days when it would have been so much nicer to have been a boy.