John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“Beeker. Dr. Alfred Beeker. He’s a psychoanalyst.”

“Like you?”

“Not exactly. He’s a cognitive analyst.”

“And you are…?”

“What you might call a creative Jungian.”

Quinn thought he’d better take a different tack. “If Beeker’s a psychologist, can’t he figure out he needs help himself?”

“He’s a psychiatrist, actually, who practices psychotherapy and augments it with drugs, and apparently he doesn’t think he needs help. There are plenty of people out there playing the same games he plays, so he’s not at a loss for partners.”

“It can be a dangerous game.”

“That’s part of the allure. Listen, Quinn, Alfred moves in a world he considers normal. And for the people in it, maybe it is normal. No laws are being broken, and everything is consensual. But what it came down to was I wasn’t part of that world and didn’t want to be, and he couldn’t accept that.”

“I more or less agree with you about consensual adults, but what you described between the two of you didn’t sound consensual.”

She smiled in that gradual, quiet way that devastated him. “The problem was that sometimes pretending to be forced was part of the game. It got so Alfred couldn’t see the difference. As far as he was concerned, the game was always on.”

“And for him it wasn’t a game,” Quinn said.

“For me it wasn’t always a game.” She moved away from Quinn and leaned with her buttocks against the car’s sun-warmed fender, crossing her arms. “He didn’t like it that I left him.”

“You afraid of him?”

“Not anymore. I haven’t even seen him in months. Maybe he doesn’t think of me at all.”

“That’d be a tough job for any man. What you were thinking this morning, Zoe?…Was it that he might know about you and me, might resent it, and it could somehow be tied in with the Slicer murders?”

Again Quinn surprised her with his nose for the truth, as if he were some sort of psychic bloodhound. He would get there sooner or later on his own, so she might as well tell him.

“He…” She tightened her grip on her elbows and swallowed. “He sometimes insisted on role playing, doing a scene where he raped me at knifepoint. He even wore a mask and pretended he’d just come in through my bedroom window. He took photographs with a digital camera. He told me he’d posted some on the Internet, though nothing too suggestive. But I was always afraid he’d…taken some I wasn’t aware of.”

“Hell, Zoe…”

“Back in college people said psych majors went into it because of their own crazy hang-ups. Maybe they were right.”

Quinn shrugged. “I’ve heard the same thing about my profession. Maybe they were right, too.”

“I know I was an idiot, but I went along with it. A few times, it went too far. He cut me.”

“ Cut you?”

“Not badly, and he always said it was an accident. But I associate dead women and knives with Alfred Beeker.”

“I can see why. I’m going to talk to him, Zoe.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“I won’t do anything drastic. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to feel Beeker out and see if he’s still into those kinds of games, and if they’ve become even more violent.”

“Quinn, I don’t want you playing the protector-avenger role.”

“I’m a cop, Zoe. Women are being murdered and butchered with a knife, and I’ve just learned about a sadist who likes to cut women. I need to look into him. I think you knew that, or you wouldn’t have told me about him. Am I right?”

“I don’t even know.”

Quinn thought he knew. The city harbored more than a few sadists who liked to cut women, and he doubted that Beeker was the Slicer. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to warn Beeker, to make sure the nutcase doctor knew there’d be consequences if he bothered Zoe again. Later, if necessary, would come the avenger part of Quinn’s role.

He moved closer to her, leaned down, and kissed her cheek. She was wet with perspiration.

“Let’s get in the car and get the air conditioner going,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

“To my office,” she said. “I’ve got a two o’clock appointment.”

“With a psychotic killer?”

“With a man who’s terrified of turning corners when he’s walking alone.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, “that’s all of us.”

He opened the car door for her and watched her get in, thinking again how gracefully she moved and how beautiful she was. How much he already cared about her. She was becoming an addiction, his own illness and fixation.

So this is what it’s like dating a psychoanalyst.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, as they pulled away from the curb.

“How glad I am I didn’t bring up this subject in the restaurant,” he said.

Later that same afternoon, Quinn found Dr. Alfred Beeker in the Manhattan phone directory. His office was on Park Avenue, about three blocks away from Zoe’s.

Quinn thought he should see the doctor as soon as possible, with or without an appointment.

“So the doctor says, ‘Not only have I never seen anyone get pregnant that way, I don’t understand how it could happen.’”

Jackie Jameson’s delivery was spot on the beat, and the punch line drew a good laugh from the Say What? audience. But Jameson’s mind wasn’t completely on his work. It used to be that New York comedy clubs were hazy with tobacco smoke, but not anymore, so from where Jackie stood onstage it was easy to read the expression on the face of the man trying to bore holes in Mitzi Lewis with his eyes.

Mitzi was a looker who attracted lots of the wrong kind of attention, with her spiky white blond hair, childlike features, and compact, curvaceous body. She was used to the attention, and her fellow comic Jackie was used to seeing it, but this guy seemed different. Much more intense. Like he wanted to have her right now with his Coke and fries.

Mitzi was scheduled to do the set after Jackie, so she was standing just offstage waiting to be introduced, visible only to a small part of the audience seated off to the side. The guy with the laser eyes and his tongue hanging out was alone at his table and had a perfect view.

Jackie took him in again with a sidelong glance while laying the groundwork for his final joke, the one about the man who thought he was a violin. The man at the table was handsome in a dark, predatory way, about average height and build, but there was something about him that suggested great physical strength. Though he wasn’t the only guy in the club wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt with a tie, he was the only one who looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of GQ. And the only one who for some reason looked flat-ass rich. He had the high cheekbones, well-defined features, and thick black hair of a male model.

If I looked like that, Jackie thought, I wouldn’t be funny.

But Jackie was funny, and headed for his own Comedy Channel special.

He continued his routine onstage without seeming to pay any attention to the man staring at Mitzi. But Jackie was still watching the guy. He was seated at one of the tiny tables that had been jammed in at the edges to accommodate maximum audiences. There was barely room on the thing for his elbows. The glass before him was empty. When a waiter approached and tried to push another drink on him, he made a flicking motion with his hand that somehow was a threat. The waiter retreated.

The longer Jackie watched the guy, the more he figured the handsome gawker was trouble and might want to do more than just look at Mitzi. Considering what was happening around town, with those women getting their throats sliced and their guts cut out, Jackie thought it might be wise to warn Mitzi about the guy.