“[Psychopaths]
exhibit a cluster of distinctive personality traits, the most significant of
which is an utter lack of conscience. The number of psychopaths in society is
about the same number as schizophrenics, but unlike schizophrenics, psychopaths
aren’t loners. That means that most of us have met many.”

Dr. Robert Hare
, 20
^th-21
^stcentury criminal psychologist

“The nature of some of their offenses
can be so unbelievable that to normal people…we have to have an explanation.
One of the most common explanations is, ‘They have to be crazy.’ But
psychopaths are not crazy. They know right from wrong. If they were standing
on a corner next to a police officer and wanted to commit a robbery, they would
know not to do it as long as the officer is standing there.”

Mary Ellen
O’Toole
,
FBI Supervisory Special Agent

“One of the things that the medical
students with whom I’ve worked have noted is that they’re shocked at how
normal
psychopaths look, and how engaging they are. I do not know one clinician that
has not at one time been fooled by a psychopath. [Psychopaths] can read an
audience, or an individual, very well. While psychopaths appear to be speaking
about themselves, they are constantly monitoring the facial expressions,
responses from others, and other cues, and they will then ‘tailor’ what they
say to see if they can get the response they want.”

Dr. Greg Saathof
, FBI Consultant
Psychologist

“We know that in some people who have a
very high IQ, there is a cost associated with this high mental functioning.”

Dr. Paul
Thompson
,
Neurologist

It
wouldn’t have mattered which street they took home that night, it was going to
end the same way. Later, when Kaley was huddled in a dark corner with her
sister, a victim of violence, she would know this.

It wouldn’t have
mattered if the man behind the counter at Dodson’s Store hadn’t shorted them and
required Kaley to return to the store, either. Somehow she knew that, too.
But the lack of math skills from the man behind the counter
had
served
one purpose. It had put them in sync with perhaps the only force in the
universe that could have saved them. The Lunatic. She knew this, too.

Kaley knew these
things in precisely the way most people thought they knew things, but really
didn’t. She had known them her whole life. Just as she somehow knew that her
mother would not be alive for her wedding day. It was as self-evident to her
as a scratch at the back of her throat meant the weather was about to change.
Well, something else told her other things. She didn’t pretend to know what it
was, but it was there. She had become so accustomed to it that she often
forgot it was there, and lived to regret it.

Tonight was such
a night.

In years to
come, she would kick herself and hate herself for not paying more attention to
this thing, what some foolishly called female intuition. But Kaley knew it
wasn’t just listening to the tone in someone’s voice that told women the
intentions of a man or another conniving woman. No, her “charm,” as her grandmother
had called it before she died—God rest her soul—was a thing that had nothing at
all to do with visual or auditory cues.

She did not
listen to her charm that night, though it was there, all around her. She felt
it even as she stepped out of the house with her little sister in tow. That
would hurt the most. In the years ahead, between the times when she would be
testing LSD and other mind-altering drugs to give her mind something to play
with besides the guilt, she would never forget the soft, secure touch of
Shannon’s hand in hers. The touch would signify sisterly trust that would
never be broken, no matter what had happened to them. But so simple a thing
would linger with Kaley forever: the way a seven-year-old girl could hold her
big sister’s hand and just trust that no harm could come as long as she clung
to that Anchor.

But all of those
horrors were in their future. Presently, they were two sisters stepping out
into the night. As they stepped out of the house, Kaley eased the door closed so
that it didn’t squeak and slam, waking up their neighbors. Beltway Street was
quiet this time of night. It might’ve been eerily quiet to some, but the girls
knew it too well. Beltway Street had been their home since their dad left them
there. (Nobody knew where he’d gone. He went out for drinks with his buddies
one night and never came back. Somebody said he was in Denver now, working at
a Costco.) It was here that they had developed their own world of imagination,
one that Kaley was just starting to grow out of at twelve, but one that she
still visited with her sister. Again, to maintain that Anchor, which was all
important at this stage in their life. Their mother was addicted to meth, what
Shannon so innocently called “meff”, and hadn’t taken an interest in either one
of them for a couple years now.

“We’re gonna
play ninja spies, okay?” she said presently. “That means we have to stay close
together—”

“I’m the White
Ninja!” Shan declared. For a reason that would remain forever obscure to Kaley,
Shannon had developed a fascination with late-night kung fu theater on TV, and
had learned to find lots of those kinds of movies on YouTube and was now
obsessed with one called
White Ninja Meets Shaolin Crane
. She wanted to
be the White Ninja all the time now.

“All right,”
Kaley whispered. “But keep your voice down. You’ll—” It was at this point
that Kaley first felt it. It started as a creep at the back of her neck,
crawled up to the very top of her head, causing her hairs to stand on end. It
was there for all of a second, and then retreated immediately. “You’ll wake
the neighbors,” she finished. “Ninjas are
silent
. Remember? Jeez!”

“We have to get
meff?”

Kaley paused at
the end of their small yard and looked at her sister. She smiled, despite her
displeasure with her sister’s pronunciation. “It’s
meth
. And no, we’re
not getting any meth for Mom. She gets that on her own, remember?” But Shan
didn’t remember. So far in life, things that were put to lips and made smoke
were always meth. Their mother was inside smoking cigarettes, and had given
Kaley money to go and get some things from Dodson’s Store, the only thing
opened this late at night in the Bluff.

Shannon had
witnessed the exchange of money between Kaley and their mom, but hadn’t yet
developed the understanding that they were too young to fetch cigarettes for
Mommy. Interestingly, though, Kaley had come to realize she
wasn’t
too
young to buy
meff
, though she never would—in years to come, she would
buy a great many substances, but never that.

It was easy to
buy anything in the Bluff. It was a relatively small area, only about 1 ½ square
miles, but teeming with people leading the tail end of their disastrous lives.
Though she was only partially aware of it at this stage in her life, Kaley had
determined to leave these 1 ½ miles behind her someday. Tonight would cement
that resolve.

“Watch out!”
Shan shouted, pulling back on Kaley’s hand.

“Ninjas don’t
shout—”

“You almost
stepped on it,” Shan whined.

Kaley looked at
where she was pointing. A beetle was scuttling across the sidewalk. Shannon
cared for all the creatures of the world, even the nasty ones. Kaley had too,
once, but was starting to grow out of it.

They hustled
across the street, Shannon putting one hand behind her and crouching as she had
seen the White Ninja do. Kaley felt stupid playing along, but sometimes in
order to get her little sister to go along quietly, she had to play ball. They
moved past Stephanie’s house, and Shannon briefly pulled Kaley into the shadow
of the plastic garbage bin beside the decaying picket fence in the front yard.
Here, Kaley indulged her little sister while she pretended to hug a wall and listened
for bad ninjas to go past. Then, all at once, Shan stood up and yanked her big
sister’s arm nearly out of socket and took off in a crouch again.

“Slow down!”
Kaley said. In that moment, she saw it. She saw it crystal clear. It
happened in a flash, and was over before she could think on it. The low-ceilinged
basement where they would be held was as real as the touch of her sister’s
hand. Indeed, in this charmed state, she could tell that Shannon was nearby,
though not touching. She could smell…onions? And there was
screaming…screaming from another room—

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