The Mask of Sanity Page 7

  He had visited Disney World twice previously—once at the age of nine, when his father had still been alive, and a second time, seventeen years later, while Amanda was pregnant with Jessie. The second trip had been principally business, a brief stint of rest and relaxation after attending a weeklong cardiology conference in nearby Kissimmee. During that stay, they’d spent very little time in the theme park, and exerted most of their energies on the king-sized bed inside their hotel room. In contrast, on this holiday, Amanda was determined that the girls sample every ride in the Magic Kingdom, and taste every exotic culinary delicacy at the Epcot Center, and have themselves photographed on the lap of every animated character along Main Street, USA, who proved capable of sitting down. They played miniature golf atop the deck of a replica pirate ship, watched a one-armed Seminole “warrior” wrestle an alligator, kayaked along the banks of Lake Tohopekaliga. During these coordinated excursions, which often involved bathroom breaks and temper tantrums, Balint found himself agreeing with Sugarman: he and Amanda did parent phenomenally well together. They were an excellent team—although if this was teamwork, his wife did far more than her share of the work.

  Balint also arrived at another realization. He woke up before dawn one morning, while Amanda was still sleeping, and watched her breathing for nearly an hour. She looked so helpless as she slept, so much more vulnerable than the nononsense voice of authority who, when awake, delivered commands about which toys to pack as though she were ordering a bayonet charge. While she was unconscious, a lunatic might sneak through the window and strangle her, he thought, and the notion—as remote and irrational as he knew it to be—left him feeling empty and unsettled. His second realization, in short, was that he loved his wife immensely.

  One of Balint’s favorite hobbies had always been people watching. He enjoyed relaxing inconspicuously in a public place and speculating to himself about what was transpiring in the opaque minds and hidden hearts of passersby: which of his fellow human beings was contemplating suicide, or suffering from auditory hallucinations, or plotting to embezzle funds from the till at his firm. Yet as he waited opposite the Hall of Presidents, nibbling fried dough with his daughters while Amanda arranged tickets for a paddleboat excursion, he found his suspicions much darker than usual. If a potential serial killer lurked inside him, what atrocities were these other innocent-appearing strangers capable of perpetrating? Might that grandfather in the fishing cap be a future child molester, grooming that little boy for a dungeon cell? Were those obese sisters stockpiling explosives in their attic? Of course not. Among all of these cheerful, corn-fed heartland families, he was likely the only one with murder on his mind. To Balint’s own surprise, that realization didn’t alarm him. Instead, the distinction actually made him feel good about himself—proud of his ability to think outside the box.

  On their final night in Orlando, they attended the monthly fireworks show above Liberty Square. The evening proved chilly and Amanda insisted upon bundling the girls in matching windbreakers. Phoebe hid behind her mother’s knees, afraid one of the ersatz Continental musketeers might shoot her; Jessie darted around the pavilion wishing strangers a “Happy Fourth of July.” Amanda tucked her hand under Balint’s elbow, something she hadn’t done in ages.

  “It reminds me of Cape May,” she said.

  He instantly knew exactly what she was referring to: an Independence Day display they’d attended the summer before their wedding. That had seemed a perfect evening, just the two of them together, possibly the high-water mark of their romance.

  “That was a long time ago,” he answered.

  They stood in silence for several minutes, the pyrotechnics bursting overhead, and then Amanda asked him the most unexpected question—the sort of question that he’d never imagined she might carry inside her: “Do you think I’m a good wife?”

  The wind rustled the holly topiaries. A baby wailed in the crowd.

  “How can you even ask that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I was just wondering.”

  He rubbed her neck affectionately. “Of course you’re a good wife.” He meant this too, in spite of her affair with Sugarman. “And a fantastic mother.”

  ON THE flight home, Balint had already shifted gears from devoted father to aspiring killer. He’d taken pains to establish an alibi for the following Saturday, informing Amanda he planned to attend a daylong continuing medical education symposium at the hospital. It was one of those events where you could sign in at eight A.M. and then vanish for the remainder of the day—which is precisely what Balint intended to do. Since the course was also open to nurses and physician’s assistants, he imagined Sewell Auditorium would be filled to capacity, and that nobody would notice his absence. He could easily drive to Cobb’s Crossing, complete his mission, then return to the hospital in time to pick up his certificate of completion. Or, should he get delayed, they’d mail it to him. If Amanda knew about his plans in advance, he guessed that she’d schedule a tryst with Sugarman for the same afternoon, eliminating any chance that she might phone him during his absence.

  Only one barrier stood between Balint and his objective: a nagging fear that he might panic at the last moment. What if he chose a target, secured his fingers around the victim’s neck—and then lacked the fortitude to seal the deal? Didn’t one-third of soldiers fail to discharge their weapons in combat? The first deed would truly be the most risky, because there was no way of gauging for certain, in advance, whether some inner moral demon wouldn’t still his hand at the final second. And yet, deep down, Balint didn’t think of himself as the sort of man to freeze under pressure. As a teenager, he’d once rescued a beachgoer from a rip current—diving fully clothed into the surf at Cormorant Beach while on spring break to pluck the woman from the tide—so he had a promising track record. Of course, that effort had involved saving a life, not ending one, but the difference was really just a matter of perspective. In addition, he claimed six deer and a full-sized bull moose to his credit, as well as countless quail and grouse, all amassed during hunting trips to Wyoming with his college roommate, and not once had he shied away from pulling the trigger. One could never be certain about anything until it happened, but Balint felt the odds favored his nerves.

  On Thursday, he rescheduled his afternoon patients for the following week, then drove out to the cabin at Lake Shearwater. He hadn’t been to the site that late in the season ever before, and to his dismay, he discovered that several distant fishing lodges were now visible through the barren oak forest. Dead leaves covered the stone path. The cabin itself displayed no signs of recent human exploration. Balint was hit with the insight that when it snowed—which was an inevitability in the Onaswego Hills—anyone visiting the structure would leave tracks on their approach. That left him two options: Either work around the elements, maybe take home enough ribbon to last for several crimes; or buy a pair of larger shoes, possibly with a distinctive soleprint, and discard them afterward. He’d figure all that out later, he decided. He likely had another few weeks, at least, before any chance of a lasting snowfall.

  Balint retrieved the spool of green ribbon from the steamer trunk and clipped off a piece roughly twenty-four inches long. Then he slipped the trim into a small ziplock bag and secured it inside his wallet. During the entire process, he wore latex gloves over his own leather pair—precisely as he intended to do when committing the murders. Before he departed, he filled the used outer gloves with pebbles and tossed them into the lake. Balint felt a tad like a surgeon himself as he completed these tasks, but also as though he had embarked upon an adventure. In an alternate universe, he told himself, he’d have written detective novels.

  When he arrived home—the ribbon safely stashed inside his slacks pocket—he discovered the front door stood partially ajar. It was past six o’clock. In the living room, Amanda sat comforting an unfamiliar woman. The stranger looked to be about their age, or maybe a few years younger, with a mane of frosted hair and high cheekbones. She was sniffling in
to a tissue. Balint’s arrival seemed to startle her.

  “The front door was open,” he said—mostly to fill the silence.

  “Sorry. It’s been a crazy afternoon,” answered Amanda. “This is Sally Goldhammer, our new neighbor.”

  Sally offered him a thin smile.

  “Sally has had something of a fright. Her adorable daughter managed to run off, and she’s been playing upstairs with Phoebe and Jessie since three o’clock, while Sally had the police out searching for her.”

  “Abby’s only three,” added Sally Goldhammer.

  Amanda hugged her arm around Sally’s shoulder while the neighbor sipped hot chocolate from a mug. “The girls were playing mommy and child. It was actually the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen. They have no idea how much stress they’ve put everybody through.”

  “Tim is going to kill me,” said Sally. “He’s always on my case about keeping a better eye on her, but I’m just scatterbrained. I really do try. You have to believe me . . . Maybe I’m not cut out for this, after all.”

  “It happens to the best of us,” said Balint.

  Sally Goldhammer’s parenting skills were the last thing he wanted to worry about at the moment. He listened politely while Amanda proposed strategies for revealing the episode to the woman’s husband, an international banker away in Europe on a business trip. “Or you could not tell him,” suggested Amanda. “Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “It might be for the best,” continued Amanda. “It’s your decision, obviously. But if I had told Jeremy about every time our girls did something dangerous, he’d have had a nervous breakdown ages ago. He doesn’t have any clue how many near misses we’ve experienced over the years.”

  “Let’s keep them near misses,” interjected Balint.

  Their neighbor sniffled again. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Tim and I don’t have any secrets between us.”

  As far as you know, thought Balint.

  He excused himself and poked his head into Phoebe’s bedroom, where both his princesses greeted him with hugs. Abby Goldhammer wrapped her arms around his right leg, as though it were a tree trunk, and refused to let go—a gesture he feared might not be appropriate age-level play. She was an undersized, sickly looking tyke with a small face and enormous eyes, of the sort that, in adolescence, might either prove beautiful or syndromic. Either way, the girl’s genetic health would have no bearing on his own existence. To Balint, Phoebe and Jessie mattered above all else: his ultimate legacy, the guardians of his image after his death. Other people’s kids were just so much window dressing and clutter. He retreated to the kitchen for a glass of Merlot.

  Later, after coaxing Sally Goldhammer and her daughter out the door and narrating a bedtime story about mermaids, he followed Amanda down to the laundry room, and asked, “Have you really had near misses that you haven’t told me about?”

  Amanda laughed. “You’re worse than she is.”

  “Well, have you?”

  His wife continued transferring brights from the washing machine into the dryer. “Do you really think I ever let the girls wander off without noticing? No, I have not had any near misses, thank you very much. Oh, except we used to have a third daughter—I forgot to mention her to you—but she was carried off by an escaped baboon.” Amanda added fabric softener to the dryer. Her tone turned serious. “I feel genuinely bad for that woman. She isn’t cut out for this.”

  “A lot of people aren’t, I suppose.”

  Amanda shut the lid of the dryer. “At least we are. Both of us. Whatever else happens, we’ll always have that.”

  D-DAY ARRIVED.

  Balint awoke at six A.M., showered, shaved, changed into his tie and sport jacket, and left the house shortly after seven thirty. His daughters were still asleep; he kissed each on the nose and the forehead. Amanda had come downstairs briefly to join him for a cup of coffee, or more accurately, to watch him drink a cup of coffee, but she claimed that she intended to return to bed until ten. He had little doubt that by noon the girls would be under the supervision of Ellen Arcaya or Betsy Sucram—or even, God help them, Sally Goldhammer—and that Amanda would be on her back in Warren Sugarman’s bachelor pad. Get all your goddamn philandering in while you can, Sugarman, he thought, because your days are numbered.

  It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and the turnpike teemed with early Christmas shoppers headed into Manhattan. A few cumulus clouds drifted harmlessly across the western sky, but the day loomed otherwise clear and mild. A perfect day for a killing, reflected Balint—its arrival, on that particular morning, a testament to a truly wrathful and beneficent God. He crossed the George Washington Bridge before nine o’clock and took the Cobb’s Crossing exit off the interstate at precisely 9:47. A few moments later, he pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping center—a pharmacy, a pet store, a restaurant called Maia’s Dinette—and removed his necktie and jacket. Next, he slipped the ribbon from his wallet, holding the ziplock bag loose inside his pocket. Finally, he tore open a packet of latex gloves, appropriated from a hospital he’d lectured at in California, so the package couldn’t be traced back to Laurendale-Methodist, and he slid the gloves over the leather pair he already wore. The blood quivered in his arteries; malarial throbs of heat cascaded through his temples. All that remained was to select a target—and to act.

  Balint cruised toward the college, past a bustling plant nursery and a sign for the municipal dump, then veered onto a tranquil street of two-story, wood-frame Victorians. The sidewalks were nearly empty; on one of the front porches, two athletic young men smoked cigars. Along the next block, there wasn’t a human being in sight. Balint didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He followed the curve of the road, driving slowly, the Mercedes weaving farther from the avenue. He had forgotten how quiet suburbia could be during daylight hours—even on weekends: jack-o’-lanterns rotted on veranda railings; a wheelbarrow waited for attention in a flowerbed. His concern had been encountering too many people, an excess of pedestrian traffic; how ironic it would be if his plan failed for lack of a victim.

  At the end of a long driveway, he caught sight of a lanky coed fumbling with her keys outside a basement apartment. She’d propped her bicycle against a nearby drainpipe, and as Balint watched, she carried a potted cactus from the bicycle basket into the flat. The girl had left the door open behind her. He noted a stand of gardening implements—hoes and shovels—leaning against the nearby siding.

  Balint pulled the Mercedes to the curbside. He scanned the street: all remained still. As he’d suspected, the girl returned a moment later to chain up the bike. She wore sweatpants and a form-fitting top that exposed her bare midriff. Balint had taken advantage of her momentary absence to conceal himself behind a dumpster at the tail end of the driveway.

  His initial plan had been to follow her into the basement apartment—if necessary, to clobber her from behind with one of the gardening implements that rested only feet from the door. Yet as he was about to attack the girl from the rear, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the back door to the house itself also stood open. On closer inspection, he noted other promising signs: A teacup sat on the patio table. So did a pair of spectacles, resting atop a folded newspaper. In an instantaneous decision, for reasons that Balint never fully understood himself, he spared the coed. Instead he waited for the lucky girl to enter her apartment again, and then he climbed the back stairs into the house above.

  The vestibule opened onto a tidy kitchen of thirty-year-old appliances. Photographs of young children, obviously related, had been affixed to the refrigerator with magnets. One of the magnets read: “Have you taken your blood pressure pill today?” Another photograph depicted an attractive couple in wedding regalia. Balint warned himself not to be sentimental. He had a job to do. Nothing more. The sound of running water emerged from behind a nearby door, followed by the distinctive whoosh of a toilet flushing. He positioned himself against the adjacen
t wall—the side nearest to the hinges. That would enable him to see the occupant before the victim had an opportunity to adjust to his presence.

  When the door opened, a gray head of hair appeared at the level of Balint’s chest—and, in less than a second, he had his fingers locked around the owner’s throat. He squeezed with all of his power. The elderly woman emitted a sharp, gurgling noise, before losing consciousness. He released his grip, startled. The woman toppled forward, hitting her face against the linoleum.

  Balint stooped to his knees and squeezed the woman’s neck for another two minutes—timing the act on his wristwatch. Then he checked his victim’s carotid pulse: to his chagrin, he found that her heart continued to beat. It took another five minutes before the old lady finally arrested. By then, Balint’s hands ached from the pressure. But the deed was done. That was what mattered most.

  He quickly explored the rest of the ground floor. One spacious room, some sort of conservatory furnished with a piano and a harp, also contained a damask sofa that seemed suitable for displaying a corpse, so he dragged the woman’s body across the kitchen and through the foyer, up onto the cushions in the music room. Here too, photographs of small children cluttered both end tables. When Balint flipped over the woman’s body to elevate her head on the armrest, two listless brown eyes stared up at him. They struck Balint as more dopey than accusing. Her forehead bore several sizeable abrasions—probably the result of being towed across the carpet; the fall to the linoleum had partially crushed her nose. Other than that, there was nothing remarkable about the pasty, slack-jawed cadaver that had, only moments before, been living flesh and blood. With painstaking care, he unwrapped the green ribbon and wound it around her neck. Done. His nerves had held.

  But when he turned to depart, another pair of eyes greeted him. An equally ancient man stood in the doorway, aghast—shocked into paralysis. Only visual contact with Balint released him from his trance. He turned to escape. Miraculously, he did not scream—did not open his mouth at all. The old man had hardly retreated five yards when Balint pounced upon him and literally drove his skull into the hardwood floor of the foyer. A grisly crack reverberated through the house. Balint held his hands away from his own body as he choked the last wind from the man’s throat. Then he dragged the second corpse into the conservatory, laying it out on the floor beside the sofa.