AGENT: Is he considered a high security risk?
RICHARDSON: Oh, no. If be was a closet queen and we found out about it, he’d be classified as a fairly bad risk. But his hang-ups and vices aren’t secret. They’re out in the open. No one can blackmail him, threaten him with the loss of his job because we already know all of his dirty little secrets. In fact, whenever he marks up a girl, he has a special number to call, a relay point right in my department. Someone is at his hotel room within an hour to clean up after him.
AGENT: Nice people you work for.
RICHARDSON: Aren’t they? But I’m surprised that even they put up with this sonofabitch Salsbury. He’s a sick man. He’s a real can of worms all by himself. They should stick him away in a cell somewhere and just forget all about him.
AGENT: Do you know about his childhood?
RICHARDSON: About his mother and the man who raped him? It’s in the file.
AGENT: It helps to explain why he-
RICHARDSON: You know what? Even though I can see where his craziness comes from, even though I can see that it isn’t entirely his fault that he is what he is, I can’t dredge up any compassion for him. When I think about all of those girls who ended up in hospitals with their jaws broken and their eyes swollen shut . . . Listen, did any of those girls feel less pain because Salsbury’s evil isn’t entirely his own doing? I’m an old-style liberal when it comes to most things. But this liberal line about compassion for the criminal-that’s ninety percent horseshit. You can only spout that kind of garbage if you and your own family have been lucky enough to avoid animals like Salsbury. If it was up to me, I’d put him on trial for all of those beatings. Then I’d send him away to a cell somewhere, hundreds of miles from the nearest woman.
Dawson sighed.
He put the reports in the folder and returned the folder to the lower right-hand desk drawer.
O Lord, he thought prayerfully, give me the power to undo what damage he’s done in Black River. If this mistake can be remedied, if the field test can be completed properly, then I will be able to feed the drug to both Ernst and Ogden. I’ll be able to program them. I’ve been making preparations. You know that. I’ll be able to program them and convert them to Your holy fellowship. And not just them. The world. There will be no more souls for Satan. Heaven on earth. That’s what it’ll be, Lord. True heaven on earth, all in the shining light of Your love.
2:55 P.M.
Sam read the last line of Salsbury’s article, closed the book, and said, “Jesus!”
“At least now we have some idea of what’s happening in Black River,” Paul said.
“All of that crazy stuff about breaking down the ego, primer drugs, code phrases, achieving total control, bringing contentment to the masses through behavioral modification, the benefits of a subliminally directed society. . .” Somewhat dazed by Salsbury’s rhetoric, Jenny shook her head as if that would help her to think more clearly. “He sounds like a lunatic. He’s certifiable.”
“He’s a Nazi,” Sam said, “in spirit if not in name. That’s a very special breed of lunatic. A very deadly breed. And there are literally thousands of people like him, hundreds of thousands who would agree with every word he said about the benefits of a ‘subliminally directed society.'”
Thunder exploded with such violence that it sounded as if the bowl of the sky had cracked in two. A fierce gust of wind slammed against the house. The tempo of the rain on the roof and windows picked up to double time.
“Whatever he is,” Paul said, “he’s done exactly what he said could be done. He’s made this insane scheme work. By God, that has to be what’s happening here. It explains everything since the epidemic of night chills and nausea.”
“I still don’t understand why Dad and I weren’t afflicted,” Jenny said. “Salisbury mentions in the article that the subliminal program would not affect illiterates and children who haven’t yet come to terms, however crude, with sex and death. But neither Dad nor I fit into one of those categories.”