Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

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.”