John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“Might as well learn as much as I can.”

“About philosophical psychology?”

“About you and the way you think.”

“The way I think?”

“I’m curious about how you reach your conclusions.”

“In general? Or do you have a specific question you’re not asking?”

He laughed. “How’ve you been?”

“What?”

“You look great. How have you been?”

“Okay, I guess. Busy. Very busy, in fact.”

“Seems to be paying off.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fame. Respect. Applause. Books. Articles. Speeches.” She nodded, cocked her head, watched him, waited. “So?”

He looked out over the lawn at the shimmering lake. “I’m just remarking on what a remarkable career you’ve put together. First a big name in forensic psychology, now a big name in philosophical psychology. The Holdenfield brand is growing and glowing. I’m impressed.”

“No you’re not. You’re not that impressionable. What do you want?”

He shrugged. “I need some help understanding the Good Shepherd case.”

“Why is that?”

“Long story.”

“Give me the short version.”

“The daughter of an old acquaintance is producing a TV documentary about the families of the Good Shepherd’s victims. Wants me to look over her shoulder, act as sort of a police sounding board for her, et cetera.” Even now, as Gurney was speaking, the ill-defined “et cetera” part was eating at him.

“What do you need to know?”

“A lot. Hard to decide where to start.”

There was a restless twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Anywhere would be better than nowhere.”

“Pattern resonance.”

She blinked. “What?”

“It’s a term you used in your presentation today. You also used it as the title of a journal article you wrote nine years ago. What does it mean?”

“You read that article?”

“I was intimidated by the long title and figured the rest of it would be over my head.”

“God, you’re such a bullshit artist.” She made it sound like a compliment.

“So tell me about pattern resonance.”

She glanced again at her watch. “I’m not sure I have enough time.”

“Try.”

“It refers to the transfer of energy between mental constructs.”

“In the vocabulary of a humble retired detective, born in the Bronx, that would mean…?”

There was a flash of amusement in her eyes. “It’s a rethinking and revision of Freud’s concept of sublimation-the forcible diversion of dangerous aggressive or sexual energy into safer alternative channels.”

“Rebecca, humble retired detectives speak plain English.”

“Christ, Gurney, you’re so full of crap. But okay, we’ll do it your way. Forget about Freud. There’s a famous poem about a young girl by the name of Margaret who experiences grief at the falling leaves of autumn. But the last two lines are, ‘It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.’ That’s pattern resonance. The intense emotion she feels at observing the death of the leaves is really coming from a deeper knowledge of her own inevitable fate.”

“Your point being that the emotional energy in one experience can be transferred to another without-”

“Without our realizing that what we’re feeling right now may not be coming from what’s happening now. That’s the point!” There was a proprietary pride in her voice.

“How does all this apply to the Good Shepherd?”

“ How? In just about every way possible. His actions, his thinking, his language, his motivation-they fit the concept perfectly. That case is one of the clearest validations of the concept. This kind of mission-driven killing is never about what it seems to be about on the surface. Underneath the killer’s conscious motive, there is always another source of energy, a traumatic experience or set of experiences that occurred much earlier in his life. He has a storehouse of repressed fear and rage generated by that experience. Through a process of association, he connects his past experience with something happening in the present, and the old feelings begin to animate his current thoughts. We’re hardwired to believe that what we’re feeling now is the result of what we’re experiencing now. If I feel happy or sad, I assume it’s because something in my current life is going well or badly-not because some bit of emotional energy has been transferred from a repressed memory into the present. Normally this is a harmless error. But it’s not so harmless when the transferred emotion is a pathological rage. And that’s exactly what happens with a certain kind of killer-the Good Shepherd being a perfect example.”

“Any idea what kind of childhood experience provided all that transferred energy behind the murders?”

“My best guess would be traumatic terror of a violent, materialistic father.”

“So why do you think he stopped after six?”

“Has it occurred to you that he might be dead?” Holdenfield looked at her watch with an alarmed frown. “Sorry, David, I really don’t have any more time.”

“I appreciate your fitting me into your hectic schedule. By the way, during your study of the case, did you ever speak to Max Clinter?”

“Hah! Clinter. Yes, of course. What about him?”

“That’s my question to you.”

Holdenfield sighed impatiently, then spoke very quickly. “Max Clinter is a furious narcissist who believes that the Good Shepherd case is all about him. He’s full of conspiracy theories that make no sense. He’s also a self-indulgent drunk who screwed up his own life and his family’s life in the course of one calamitous evening-and ever since then he’s been trying to connect the dots in any weird way he can to blame everybody but himself.”

“Why do you think he’s dead?”

“What?”

“You said the Good Shepherd might be dead.”

“That’s right. Might be.”

“So why else would he have stopped?”

She uttered another impatient sigh, more theatrical than the last. “Maybe one of Clinter’s wild bullets came too close for comfort or even hit him. Maybe he had a breakdown, a psychotic decompensation. He could be in a mental hospital or even prison, for events unrelated to the shootings. There could be any number of reasons he dropped out of sight. There’s no point in speculating without additional evidence.” Holdenfield stepped away from the table. “Sorry. Got to go.” She gave Gurney a quick farewell nod and started to head for the door that separated the veranda from the hotel lobby.

Gurney spoke to her back. “Is there any reason someone would want to prevent a reexamination of the case?”

She turned and stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The young woman who’s making the documentary I mentioned earlier? Strange things have been happening to her. Things that could be interpreted as threats. Or, at the very least, as hostile suggestions that she back away from the project.”

Holdenfield looked perplexed. “Like what?”

“Unauthorized entries into her apartment, personal objects moved, kitchen knives missing and reappearing in places they shouldn’t be, drops of blood, flipped circuit breakers cutting off the lights, a sawed step in the cellar stairs rigged to break…” He was about to mention the whispered warning, but his insecurity about it stopped him. “There’s a chance she’s being harassed for another reason, that the threats are not directly related to the case-but I think they are. Let me ask you something: In the event that the Good Shepherd is still out there somewhere, do you think he’d want to keep the case from being discussed on television?”

She shook her head definitively. “Just the opposite. He’d love it. You’re talking about someone who wrote a twenty-page manifesto and then mailed it to every major media outlet in the country. These psychopaths with societal grudges want an audience. They crave it. They want the importance of their mission to be recognized. By everyone.”