Blind Pursuit

21

Our first session. The words stirred a cold queasiness in the pit of her stomach.

She wished she could see the man before her, read his face. Difficult to analyze him without the nonverbal clues that often spoke louder than even the most candid testimony.

Well, she would manage. Would have to.

With effort she forced her mind into clear focus. He would judge her skills by her performance in this encounter. If she was found wanting, she might not get a second chance.

“All right,” she said slowly. “I’ve read the newspaper stories you left me. I’d like to discuss what it was like for you when you did those things. What you were feeling each time you… kidnapped a woman.”

“Burned one, you mean. Kidnapping was merely an unavoidable preliminary.”

“Burned one. Yes.”

“Don’t be afraid to speak plainly. I can take it.”

He sounded relaxed, almost cheerful. That state of mind was unlikely to last.

Therapy was not fun. Though it might seem like a game in the beginning, it quickly turned serious and, often, uncomfortable. Her style of analysis was aggressive, probing; to save time, to compress months of work into hours, she made intuitive leaps and challenged the patient to keep up. It was a method that got results, but it didn’t always make for restful exchanges.

She wondered how he would react when the first nerve was struck.

“I’ll try to refrain from euphemisms in the future,” she promised. “Now tell me about this compulsion to kill. Does it come on gradually or all of a sudden?”

“Gradually.”

“How does it start?”

“With physical sensations. Coldness in my fingers. Heat at the back of my neck.”

“Do your fingers get numb?”

“No. They tingle.”

“Painful?”

“Disturbing, that’s all.”

“Any other symptoms?”

“Sometimes… I hear a sort of chiming. Distant. Like ringing in the ears but more elusive. Hard to describe.”

She frowned. The symptoms he’d described were suggestive of the aura phase that marked the onset of an epileptic seizure. She’d experienced similar reactions in childhood.

The notion that an epileptic might imitate Frankenstein’s monster, blindly wrapping his hands around a terrified maiden’s throat, was an irresponsible myth. But in the case of a profoundly disturbed individual, someone already showing homicidal tendencies, a prolonged status seizure of the partial or focal type-a fugue state-might permit his suppressed aggressive feelings to rise uncensored to the surface.

It was possible. But she didn’t intend to raise that hypothesis with him, at least not yet. If he believed that a pill could cure all his problems, he wouldn’t need her anymore.

“Other than physical sensations,” she asked, “are there any other feelings-emotions, moods-that you associate with the murders?”

For the first time he hesitated. She heard a series of soft pops and realized he was cracking his knuckles.

“I don’t feel anything when I do it,” he said at last.

“No emotions at all?”

“None.”

“Any special dreams?”

“No.”

“Do you ever dream? At any time?”

“I… Sometimes.”

“Erotic dreams?”

His chair squeaked with a shift of his weight. “I knew you’d get to that.”

“To what?”

“Sex. And dreams. They’re unavoidable, aren’t they?”

She didn’t respond directly. “Tell me about your dreams.”

“They’re erotic, like you said.”

“In what way?”

He cleared his throat. “Nothing special. I mean… they’re dreams, that’s all.”

His first apparent resistance. Briefly she considered backing away from this subject if it was agitating him. But under other circumstances she would never do that. When the patient showed discomfort, that was the time to drill deeper, penetrate to the root of the problem.

If she didn’t use the techniques that worked for her, if she didn’t allow herself to function as a therapist, she would guarantee her own ineffectiveness. And the man before her already had made clear what he would do to her if she didn’t get results.

Probe, then. Push.

“You seem reluctant to talk about this,” she said carefully.

“I don’t see that it’s relevant.”

She ignored that. “What’s your role in the dreams? What do you see yourself doing?”

“I don’t do anything. I just… watch.”

“What are you watching?”

“Not what. Who.”

“A woman?”

He flared up. “Of course a woman. What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything.”

“I don’t want to talk about the goddamn dreams, anyway. I already told you they’re not relevant. They have no significance, none at all.”

Abruptly she had an insight into him, an insight born at the gut level where the best analysis was done, and though she knew she shouldn’t press him further, something within her would not let the thought die unspoken.

“You hate it,” she said quietly. “You hate the feeling of arousal, of sexual need. Don’t you?”

A short silence. When he spoke, his voice was small, muted. “It’s

… sick.”

“What makes you say that?” No reply. “Everybody has sexual feelings, you know.”

“This isn’t what I want to talk about.”

“It may be related to your problem-”

“It’s not. I told you, I don’t feel anything when I kill. It’s not sexual. Not sadism. I don’t do it for pleasure, any kind of pleasure. I told you all that. So just change the subject.”

“I still think we need to understand-”

“ Change the subject!”

The lion cough of his command froze her. For a bad moment she was certain she’d pushed too hard. She sat motionless, listening to his hard, steady breathing above the throb of her own heart.

“Change the subject, Doc,” he said at last, his voice flattened into a dangerous monotone.

“All right,” she answered evenly. “Let’s talk about the killings themselves.”

The pattern of the murders clearly reflected a subconscious obsession at the heart of his psychosis. Comparable examples were familiar to her-the man who compulsively washes his hands because he harbors a secret guilt that makes him feel unclean; the woman forever double-checking the locks on her doors, motivated by buried memories of a molesting parent’s midnight visits to her bedroom.

“All three of your victims were young Caucasians.”

“True.” The faint tapping sound was the nervous drumming of his fingers on the side of his chair.

“Why did you pick those particular women?”

“No special reason.”

“There wasn’t anything that drew you to them; it was totally random. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, what do you think, Doc? What’s your brilliant theory?”

He was still exhibiting hostility. She wasn’t sure how much she ought to say.

“I don’t have a theory.” She picked her words with care. “But I wondered if there might be someone in your past, someone you were thinking of when you cruised the streets.”

“You mean my long-lost fiancee, the one who jilted me at the altar when I was eighteen and left me emotionally scarred for life? Sorry, Doc, only kidding. Afraid I can’t wrap it up that neatly for you.” His jocular tone was obviously defensive.

“Perhaps it’s some other feature of those women that you focused on,” she said. “Let’s take the first one, Marilyn Vaccaro. She was Italian, dark-haired, dark-eyed-”

“So?”

“Would that description fit a woman who means something to you? A girlfriend, a sister? Your mother?”

“Ah, the other shoe drops. The mother complex. Sex, dreams, and mama-the basic ingredients in every Freudian recipe.”

Humor again, stiff and forced. Clearly it was a defense mechanism characteristic of him.

She would not be put off. “ Was your mother dark-eyed? Dark-haired?”

“No on both counts. Her eyes were blue. As for her hair, it was red-just like yours, Doc.”

Blue eyes, red hair. Erin saw it then. The link between the first of his victims and his past. “Was your mother Irish?”

In his startled silence she heard the answer he didn’t want to give.

“Catholic?” she pressed.

This time he spoke, his reply drawn out of him with painful slowness. “Yes.”

“Marilyn Vaccaro was kidnapped after attending a midnight church service.” He said nothing. “If you saw her leave that church, you must have known she was Catholic. That’s why you chose her, isn’t it?”

“I… don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“No, I mean… It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part. I never realized…”

He sounded genuinely astonished to have discovered this unsuspected facet of himself.

“Do you realize it now?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Why do you suppose you focused on her religion?”

“I can’t say. Really.”

“Do you have something against Catholics?” No response. “Do you?”

“Why would I?”

“You tell me.”

“I’ve got nothing against them.” He coughed, a nervous sound.

“Don’t hide things from me, please. Not if you want my help.” He wouldn’t speak. “I’m Catholic, you know. Irish Catholic, like your mother. Did you pick me for that reason?”

“No. No, it was those articles you wrote, the ones on fire starters.”

She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Are you a practicing Catholic?”

“Of course not.”

“Why of course?”

“I just… I could never accept it. An afterlife. Eternal punishment.”

Punishment again. The idea that had set him off last time. Plausible enough that he would hate and fear a religion that held out the prospect of damnation for his sins. But somehow his answer struck her as too facile.

“What else do you object to about the Catholic faith?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’m not a theologian.”

“You don’t need to be a theologian in order to have an opinion. Did your mother raise you as a Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“You must have learned some tenets of the religion. What turned you off?”

“It’s crap,” he said with sudden vehemence. “All of it-everything they believe.”

“What about it is crap?”

“All of it, I said.”

“What, specifically?”

“Abortion.” The word was blurted out, and she knew she’d penetrated to the heart of the matter.

“The church doesn’t permit abortion,” she said quietly.

“No.”

“And it ought to?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Some people shouldn’t be born.”

His answer chilled her.

“Like you?” she whispered.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you wish your mother had aborted you?”

“ I didn’t say that!”

Perilous to ride him any harder, but she had to. She couldn’t let it go.

“Do you hate her,” she asked with quiet insistence, “for bringing you into the world? Is that why-”

“No, God damn you, no!”

He was up now, and close-must have leaped out of his chair. She could picture him standing over her, balled fists shaking as he contended with the impulse to lash out and stifle her questions forever.

A long, crackling silence passed while she waited to learn if she would die tonight.

Sudden footsteps circled away from her, toward the door.

“I brought you the Tegretol,” he said from a distance, his voice empty of feeling. “You’d better be sure to take it, Doc. We wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize your health.” The door did not slam. It clicked shut politely. She heard the rattle of a key, then a receding drumroll as he climbed the stairs.

Our first session, she thought as her trembling hands groped for the blindfold’s knot.

She was by no means certain she would survive a second one.