The Never List

lives destroyed forever, and here it was, his hobby. Like stamp collecting.
    I could sense without looking at her that Tracy too was repelled. Neither of us could even speak. I was unable to comprehend how someone could be so drawn to the things I was trying so hard to shut out. Ray looked at our astonished faces and started to try to explain.
    “I know what you’re thinking. That this is a bit, well, strange. Please don’t misunderstand me. For a long time I wondered whether there was something wrong with me. But I think … I think … I just want to understand. I want to understand why people do these things, how it happens.
    “So many times people get carried away by passion, do things they never thought they’d do, and their whole lives change in an instant. Sometimes people are simply insane—mentally ill—and it isn’t their fault. But occasionally, just occasionally, there seems to be evil at work. Real evil. Like Jack Derber.”
    “You don’t think he is mentally ill, Ray?” Tracy perked up. She suddenly seemed interested. For the first time it occurred to me she was still looking for answers. I thought she had it all neatly analyzed and had moved past it. She always seemed to know everything, but maybe she still had her questions, her doubts. Just like me.
    “No, I don’t think he was ill. He—he was so calculating. Everything he did required such careful planning, such controlled action. I asked Sylvia about him.”
    He paused. I didn’t think he was going to continue. He looked away.
    “Please, go on,” I said. “It would … it would help us understand.”
    “Well, she only talked about him that once, when I asked. And afterward she begged me—begged me, I’m telling you—not to let anyone know she had spoken about him. I can’t betray that poor girl. I could never let her see her words in a book.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes shut, possibly to push away tears.
    “I won’t … I promise I won’t put anything in the book. But it might help us find her.”
    Tracy jumped in. “Yes, Ray. Maybe, without realizing it, you know something that could make a difference.”
    “Really? You think something she said so long ago could be useful? I do worry about where she is.”
    “Please, Ray. We just want to help her too.”
    Ray looked thoughtfully out the window and sat down in a recliner in the corner. We sat down on a small sofa along the opposite wall, shoving aside a pile of recent newspaper clippings about another missing girl.
    “Sylvia told me Jack was a genius. That’s why she married him. Because according to her, he had a vision of how the world could be something special and rare. Something only a few could understand, those who would let themselves be open to the true possibilities of experience. But it was more than what she said—it was the way she seemed at once so joyful and so terrified by it. I have never seen an expression like that before. Her face seemed … illuminated.”
    I looked at Tracy, trying to get a read on her. She was thinking hard, I could see. I wondered if, like me, she thought this didn’t sound like someone who had been entirely reformed. Someone who just wanted to get out of prison and live a quiet, ordinary life on a quiet, ordinary street. This sounded like a man with a mission. A terrible mission.
    As Tracy drove us back to the hotel that evening, she switched off the radio, her constant emotional cover, and we sat in silence for a moment.
    “So what do you think, Miss Rational Mind?” she finally asked.
    “About what? Kind of a lot to digest in there.”
    “I guess I mean the big question. Is Jack mentally ill? Or is he evil?”
    “What mental illness could he have?”
    “Well, at a minimum, the DSM-IV would tell you he is a ‘sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder.’ But what that means in terms of moral responsibility, I don’t know. Is he ill? Someone to be pitied, not feared? I think it makes a difference. A critical difference. In terms of, you know, ‘moving on,’ as they say.”
    “Moving on?” I didn’t even know what those words meant. And I wasn’t ready to explain to Tracy that the whole purpose of this journey was to find that out.
    “Yes, moving on. Not feeling those feelings anymore. Not being hardwired with whatever it was he did to us in there. Living a normal life. That kind of moving on.”
    She paused and glanced over at me quickly before shifting her eyes back to the