Robert Walker - Bitter Instinct

“You're really hung up on the cost of therapy, aren't you?”

As they passed a row of small antique stores while searching for the Interstate, Kim replied, “At one-fifty an hour, I'm telling you, Gordonn could not afford Vladoc. Perhaps the video thing paid for a portion of his bill, but it couldn't have covered all of it.”

Jessica picked up the radio and asked dispatch to put her through to Dr. Vladoc. When he came on the line, she held nothing back, telling him they were onto Locke, and then she asked, “How did Gordonn pay your rates on his salary and go to classes at the same time? Did Locke have anything whatever to do with George's therapy?”

“I can only tell you that when… after his bill became too high and I cut him off from any further sessions, he came to me with the full amount and then some, asking to continue his therapy.”

“Did he empty his bank account, cash in annuities, what?”

“He never said. He would have the money in an envelope, white and unmarked, but all the money ready and up front after that.”

“You never questioned him further about his newfound income?”

“He once said that he'd gotten the money from the Lord Poet of Misspent Time.”

“Who was…?”

“I swear to you, he never said.”

“Did you have any suspicions?” About Locke giving him the money? No, not until now. They knew each other, passed one another in my office when I would take a breather. One going out, one coming in.”

“What were sessions with Locke like?”

“A pain, a real headache. A man with an ego the size of Pennsylvania. He liked to hear the sound of his own voice, and he liked taking over the sessions, in a sense doing all the work he paid me to do. As to his subsidizing or floating George a loan, I can't be sure, but I was sure that Locke had a special-how would you put it? — attraction for the boy, yes, he acted hopelessly attracted to George and George's story.”

“His family history?”

“That and how George had so heroically pulled himself out of the state of depression which for years had engulfed him.”

“And the videotaping for the club owners, Dr. Vladoc; was that your idea or Gordonn's?”

“Ah, well, it was Gordonn's.”

“Was it Gordonn's idea or Locke 'si If we dig a bit more, will we learn that Locke owns a half interest in one of the clubs? Or will we learn that you, sir, do?”

There was a long pause filled with a bit of static over the police radio. Then Vladoc said, “Silent partner; it was an exciting investment. That's all.”

“And Locke?”

“Also a co-owner.”

“He had a special reason to be at the clubs, just as you and George had a reason, so much so that you all became fixtures, and no one took much notice of you after a while. WTiy didn't you inform us of this sooner? Why have we had to pry it from you?”

“He… Lucian is… well, my brother.”

Jessica was silent for a moment, taking in the revelation. “Your spiritual brother?”

“No, my actual brother. He changed his name the day he turned eighteen. Parry's doorman saw a short man, and he assumed him a boy.”

Jessica recalled the bartender at one of the coffeehouses telling him of a man of extremely short stature, an older man, who had left with a young woman on his arm. Jessica had figured it was Vladoc, when, in fact, it might well have been Lucian Locke.

Kim, hearing all this, yanked the receiver from Jessica's hand and shouted at Vladoc, “Are you blinded by the fact that he's your brother? Go over your records for Gordonn's psychiatric care, and compare them to what you know of your brother's problems, why he comes to you. There will be innumerable correlations between Gordonn's fantasy life and your brother's real life. Your brother has been acting out Gordonn's fantasies, and both men at some point knew this, and in the end-”

It was as if Kim's outburst suddenly startled her into silence, and Jessica completed her thought. “Gordonn so trusted Locke that he believed Locke knew what was best for him, and so he allowed Locke to take him from this life without argument, as did most of the other victims. They so trusted him that it did not matter what the ultimate result might be.”

“I… I had thought George was doing remarkably well. It came as a shock to me when I began to suspect that he could be doing the killings, but I confronted him with my suspicions, and he laughed in my face, said he only wished he were capable of taking such action, but that he could not, that it wasn't in him to take another life. Years of therapy had brought George around to a level of acceptance of what had happened to him as a child, and to this day I believe that the boy's progress toward mental health simply admirable.”

Kim said, “You mean he was a challenge to you as a therapist?” And your brother?” asked Jessica. “What kind of patient was he?”

“I pleaded with him to get another, more objective and distanced person to work with; I told him that I could not be both his brother and his shrink, but week after week, he kept coming.”

“And he showed an interest in how Gordonn's therapy was going?”

“An inordinate interest, yes.”

“I ask you again, Dr. Vladoc, did it ever occur to you that Gordonn's bill was being paid by your brother?”

“Well, frankly, yes, I gave that a lot of thought, and I asked Gordonn about it, but he denied it. After that, I never questioned him about it again, and I am still of the opinion that you two must be wrong.”

“Will you prepare a full report about the two patients' therapy, Doctor?”

“I can only reveal such detail on the dead man, not my living brother. Ethics prevent it.”

“Then do it for yourself, Doctor. Heal thyself,” Kim fairly sneered, and hung up.

They sped toward Lucian Locke's house with the intent of somehow gathering a DNA sample from the man. To date, he had played the role of a man desperate to help out in the investigation, but now, with the supposed murderer dead and the case supposedly closed, they could not be certain how he would react to their request, and Jessica doubted that he would voluntarily give them a sample of his bodily fluids for analysis.

“Suppose… just suppose,” she told Kim, “that Locke had become infatuated with the romantic details of the suicide pact, and he learned that the mother believed herself to be the reincarnation of Lord Byron trying on a woman's body. 'Lady' Byron found modern life too wretched for his/her sensibilities, and so s/he had decided first to marry, to conceive a child, and then to convince her husband, Gordonn, to join her in a pact to affirm themselves as progeny of Byron through their art.”

“Weird theory, yet according to Vladoc, Gordonn believed that his mother thought this possible through her poetry, and that Gordonn's father believed it possible through his painting and photography. With them joining forces, they expected to shake the world. When this failed to occur, and all life became a miserable spiral of financial ruin and frustration, coupled with the agony of life in this dimension, and after they had had the child which Lydia now hated herself for having brought into this world, they hit upon the suicide pact.”

Jessica came in sight of the Locke home. “I see,” she said. “Sounds strange enough to be true.”

“Gordonn believed that it had been his father who had spared him, his reasoning being that his mother loved him too much to leave him behind, while his father loved him too much to take his life.”

“Then Locke becomes his spiritual father; a kid like that is all too easy a mark for the likes of Lucian Locke.”

Gordonn's revelations to Vladoc during his therapy sessions must have certainly fascinated Locke. Probably he met with Gordonn to hear what Gordonn had learned about himself in therapy. Footing the bill, he likely stipulated that he be privy to the details of Gordonn's progress.”