Burning Time

27

Jason called Charles as soon as he returned to his office. Charles got back to him in twenty minutes.

“I spoke to the police,” he said gloomily, “and I think I’m going to have to handle this myself.”

“How are you going to do that?” Charles asked. “You don’t know who the guy is or where he is.”

“I’ll do a profile. I’ll find him,” Jason said.

“So?” Charles said worriedly. “Then what?”

“I’ll go talk to him.”

“I don’t know, Jason,” Charles muttered. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea. Why don’t you do the profile, give it to the police, and let them take care of it? I’ll even help you.”

“We’ll see,” Jason said.

“Come on, it’ll be like the old days. Remember the old days?” Charles pressed.

“Yeah, I remember them.”

Jason wasn’t quite as nostalgic about the past as Charles was. He’d been unhappily married during their training when they were part of a team and worked long hours at the Psychiatric Center. He remembered the stints they did in different parts of the hospital, meeting every day for endless evaluations and reports on the psychotics and potential suicides that came in to the ER every day.

Charles remembered it enthusiastically because he had been wealthy then as now, and none of his patients these days were very sick people. If he was so interested in this, he must not have a whole lot to worry about, Jason thought.

“We’ll work on the letters together,” Charles said. “Maybe we can get Emma to help us. She must have some idea who it is.”

“I told you she thinks it’s me,” Jason said.

“Do you want me to talk with her?” Charles asked.

“Maybe later.”

“You want to start in the morning?”

Jason looked at his watch. Did he want Charles involved? Yeah, he guessed he did. “Okay,” he agreed.

At six-thirty the next morning Charles leaned back against the leather sofa in his office and stretched. His jacket was on a chair and his sleeves were rolled up.

Jason looked up from the chart he was making.

“Tired?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Charles said, yawning.

They had been working since Jason’s arrival forty-five minutes earlier.

“When do you think the police will have something to tell you?” Charles asked.

“I don’t know if they’ll ever have anything to tell me. I told you the detective wasn’t very impressed with the case.” Jason checked his watch. He had a seven o’clock appointment.

Charles took a sip of his cold coffee.

“Breaks a man’s heart like a wheel. Was that a movie or something?” he asked after a minute.

“I don’t know.” Jason shook his head. He wasn’t sure they were getting anywhere with this. They had never had to put together a profile based on written material alone. The kind of writing samples they got always came from people they knew, who were desperate to explain, to clarify what they felt, who they were, what was wrong. These letters were from someone who didn’t want them to know who he was and what he intended to do. They were in code. The signature drawing showed that the writer liked to decorate things, had some artistic outlet. Others, added to the last few letters, were illustrations of his fascination with power and motion and fire.

“Yeah, with Sally Field. Wasn’t that the one where they lose the farm?” Charles persisted with the line.

“I don’t know,” Jason repeated. He didn’t go much to the movies, probably never would again. He pulled himself together and tried to concentrate.

It looked to him like the guy was becoming more focused, at the same time as he was coming apart. His thinking was confused, but his drawings were precise and painstakingly done. Jason knew there were experts who could predict by letters and past behavior what a psychopath was likely to do next, and even what he would be wearing when he did it. But he and Charles were not experts. Not only that, they had no idea what kind of background this guy had and what kinds of acting out he had done in the past. They were trained for clinical evaluation, for living people in front of them talking their hearts out. They couldn’t do a history with none of the facts.

“I don’t think that’s the tie-in,” Jason said about the movie. “The references to wheels start here.”

“Chariots of Fire. Wheels of fire,” Charles murmured. “Humph, Lear?”

“Jets of Fire?”

“No, King Lear—‘I am bound by a wheel of fire that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.’ ”

Oh, Wheel of Fire, of course. All the psychiatric analyses of King Lear were called Wheel of Fire.

“Do you think he’s a fan of Shakespeare, or fire is like a child’s tears to him?” Jason asked.

“Who knows. Fire’s only one thing. What about motion and power? Here he talks about running with the wind and two legs gone. Maybe he means the cruise missiles. They run with the wind with two legs gone, don’t they?”

“Uh-uh. I think he’s talking about amputation there.”

“Maybe he’s missing something,” Charles speculated.

“Or thinks he’s missing something,” Jason murmured.

“Could be.” Charles made a note. “He could have been in an accident, and was injured. Maybe there’s something physically wrong with him.…”

Jason tried to console himself with the thought that Freud had analyzed Leonardo da Vinci based on the “Mona Lisa.” The problem with that was da Vinci was long dead when Freud did it, and it didn’t matter whether he was right or wrong. He looked at his watch again. Better start making some hypotheses. He had to go soon.

“What do we know?” he asked.

“We know about his obsessions,” Charles said. “He’s clearly obsessed with good woman/bad woman. He has a virgin/whore fixation. Emma was a good woman who is now a bad woman. He believes in punishment for wrongs done. His drawings indicate a great deal of technical skill. Maybe he does something graphic for a living. He’s educated enough to be able to handle the language pretty well. He talks a lot about speed and motion and power. His signature drawing certainly seems to have a wheel in it, as well as fire, but that could be feathers. And, of course, he’s left-handed. Left-handed people are often tortured about it when they’re kids, made to change over.”

“He’s angry that the world is set up for right-handed people,” Jason added. “Emma was on the Right path and went off it. He wants to make things Right again.”

He frowned. About six percent of the population were left-handed. That was a whole lot of people.

“Air power versus land power. He talks about the Apache being sloppy,” Charles went on. “It’s got some design flaws and can’t stay up in the air. Maybe he’s in the military. Air and land. Air and land. Angel and whore. Right and left. Everything is an opposite. He’s probably conflicted about the good/bad in himself.”

They looked at each other over the empty coffee cups. If the good side of him wrote letters and drew pictures, what did the bad side of him do? Jason turned away first.

“I met this bone surgeon on a plane once, wouldn’t shut up.” Charles changed the subject. “Know what he told me? Eighty percent of his emergency cases were amputees.”

“What?” Jason was startled out of his speculation on what the guy might do if he started acting out.

“Bikers.”

“Jesus. So here he’s speculating about missiles on a motorcycle taking out a tank.”

“Yeah, so what’s he telling us? Want some more coffee?”

“Yes, I’ll get it. What about you?” Jason got up to pour it and was distracted again by Charles’s setup.

Charles had everything in his office. Tiny, immaculate kitchen in a closet with a two-burner stove top, sink and refrigerator in one unit, and a coffee maker and microwave on shelves above. Had Charles thought of this himself, or was Brenda responsible for all the luxuries?

Jason and Emma didn’t even have a microwave in their apartment. Jason wasn’t absolutely certain what they were good for. He felt another pang. Emma liked to cook for him, and he rarely had the patience for candlelit dinners. There were a lot of things he should have thought more about, tolerated with better grace.

He poured the last of the coffee into two matching mugs and reached into the refrigerator below for the fresh milk that was in there. Who bothered about all this? Who got the milk and the excellent coffee? There was smoked salmon in there, brown bread and butter. Capers and chilled champagne. It was unimaginable to Jason that Charles had the energy to think of all this. Who did he eat the smoked salmon with?

Jason looked over at him, on the leather sofa with his copies of the letters, his notes. What was going on with him? Charles had the frown of concentration between his eyes. Jason felt another pang. He didn’t have much doubt about the salmon and champagne. Charles, married to Brenda for less than the five years he was to Emma, seemed to be playing the same old games and getting away with it. While he, who had been so responsible and faithful, was losing everything he cared about because the woman he loved didn’t scream at him when she wanted something. The sounds Emma made when she talked were not loud or insistent enough to make him listen. He felt the knife in his gut again. Whatever made him think he could escape the most basic and non-negotiable biological need a woman has? No matter whether she was quiet or loud about it. Really stupid.

The coffee burned his tongue. He sat down again and went over his chart of what they knew. The guy was obsessed with things not turning out Right. Emma was bitten by a snake and poisoned. He was going to make things Right again. There was the threat. But where was he, and what was he likely to do? He was into motorcycles and air power. He himself was off the path of Right. The guy was furious about being left-handed in a world of right-handed people.

He talked about her—about Emma—being branded. By appearing in the film? By having herself tattooed? By having sex, or showing her body? Or was it the whole thing? And branded as what? Somehow Jason thought the guy writing was the one who was branded. But in the film they were both branded, if the brand was the tattoo. Jason shivered. Great. Really great. There was just too much he didn’t know. He looked at his watch and then gathered his notes together. It was time to go.