The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

He put the Ripper book aside and forged onward.

Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis-people chasing pleasure in hideous ways. Interpol and FBI reports-the German theory notwithstanding, America seemed to have more serial killers than any other country. One estimate said there were forty or forty of them doing their dirty work at any given time, more than five hundred unresolved serial murders. The FBI had begun to program a computer in order to catalog all of it.

Thirty roving monsters. Such cruelty, such evil.

Street-corner Mengeles. Why had God created them?

He finished at two in the morning, dry-mouthed and heavy-lidded, Laura's drawing lamp the sole illumination in the silent, dark apartment.

Was it happening right now? The ritual, the outrage-an inert body laid out for dissection?

Knowing his dreams would be polluted, he went to sleep.

He awoke at dawn, expecting bad news. None came and he faked his way through Shabbat.

At nine on Sunday morning he filled an attache case with papers and went to see Dr. Ben David. The psychologist's main office was at Hebrew University but he kept a suite for private consultations in the front rooms of his flat on Rehov Ramban.

Daniel arrived early and shared the claustrophobic waiting room with a tired-looking woman who hid from eye contact behind the international edition of Time magazine. Ten minutes before the hour, Ben David came out of the treatment room with a skinny, large-eyed boy of about five. The boy looked at Daniel and smiled shyly. The detective smiled back and wondered what could trouble such a young child so deeply that he needed a psychologist.

The woman put the Time into her purse and stood.

"All right," said Ben David heartily, in English. "I'll see Ronny the same time next week."

"Thank you, Doctor." She took her son by the hand and the two of them left quickly.

"Daniel," said Ben David, taking the detective's hand in both of his and shaking it energetically. He was a young man, in his early thirties, medium-sized and heavyset, with bushy black hair, a full dark beard, light-blue eyes that never rested, and a fitful nature that had taken Daniel by surprise the first time they'd met. He'd always thought of psychotherapists as passive, quiet. Listening and nodding, waiting for you to talk so they could pounce with interpretations. The one he'd seen at the rehab center had certainly fit the stereotype.

"Hello, Eli. Thank you for seeing me."

"Come in."

Ben David ushered him into the treatment room, a smallish, untidy office lined with bookshelves and furnished with a small desk, three sturdy chairs, and a low circular table upon which sat a dollhouse in the shape of a Swiss chalet, doll furniture, and half a dozen miniature human figurines. Behind the desk was a credenza piled high with papers and toys. Next to the papers were an aluminium coffepot, cups, and a sugar bowl. No couch, no inkblots. A single Renoir print on the wall. The room smelled pleasantly of modeling clay.

Daniel sat on one of the chairs. The psychologist went to the crcdenza.

"Coffee?"

"Please."

Ben David prepared two cups, gave Daniel his, and sat down opposite him, sipping. He was wearing a faded burgundy polo shirt that exposed a hard, protuberant belly, baggy dark-green corduroy trousers, and scuffed loafers without socks. His hair looked disheveled; his beard needed trimming. Casual, careless even, like a graduate student on holiday. Not like a doctor at all, but such were the perquisites of status. Ben David had been an academic prodigy, chief of the army's psychological service at twenty-seven, a full professor two years later. Daniel supposed he could dress any way he pleased.

"So, my friend." The psychologist smiled cursorily, then shifted in the chair, moving his shoulders with almost tic-like abruptness. "I don't know what I can tell you that we haven't covered on Gray Man."

"I'm not sure, myself." Daniel pulled the forensic reports and crime summaries out of his case and handed them over. He drank coffee and waited as the psychologist read.

"Okay," said Ben David, scanning quickly and looking up after a few moments. "What do you want to know, specifically?"

"What do you think about the washing of the bodies? What's the meaning of it?"

Ben David sat back in his chair, flipped one leg over the other, and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Let me start with the same warning I gave you before. Everything I tell you is pure speculation. It could be wrong. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Given that, my best guess is that the pathologist may very well be right-the killer was attempting to avoid leaving physical evidence. Something else to consider-and the two notions aren't "mutually exclusive-would be a power play, playing God by preparing and manipulating the body. Were the corpses positioned in any way? Posed?'

Daniel thought about that.

"They looked as if they were set down neatly," he said. "With care."

"When you saw the first body what was your initial impression?"

"A doll. A damaged doll."

Ben David nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I like that. The victims may very well have been used as dolls."

He turned and pointed to the miniature chalet. "Children engage in doll-play in order to achieve a sense of mastery over their conflicts and fantasies. Artists and writers and composers are driven to produce out of similar motivations. The creative urge-everyone wants to be godlike. Sex killers do it by destroying life. Gray Man tossed his victims aside. This one's more creative."

It sounded blasphemous to Daniel. He said nothing.

"Collecting accurate data on sex killers is difficult, because we have access only to the ones who get caught-which may be a biased sample. And all of them are liars, so their interview data are suspect. Nevertheless, the Americans have done some good research, and a few patterns seem to hold- the things I told you about Gray Man. Your man's an exceptionally immature psychopath. He's grown up with a chronic and overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness-a creative blockage, if you will. He's been constructing power fantasies since early childhood and building his life around them. His family was intact. His family life was a mess but may have appeared outwardly normal to the casual observer. Normal sex doesn't work for him. He needs violence and domination-helplessness of the victim-to get aroused. In the beginning, violent fantasies were enough to satisfy him. Then, while still a child, he moved on to torturing and possibly having sex with animals. As an adolescent, he may have progressed to human rapec. When that no longer fulfilled his power needs, he began killing. Murder serves as a substitute for intercourse: beginning with some sort of subjugation and following in with stabbing and hacking-the exaggerated sexual metaphor, the literal piercing and entry of the body. He chooses women as victims but may be latently homosexual."

Thinking of the rumour about Dr. Darousha, Daniel asked, "What about an active homosexual?"

"No," said Ben David. "The key word is latent. He's fighting to suppress those impulses, may even be hypermasculine-a real law-and-order type. There are homosexual sex killers, of course, but they usually murder men." Ben David thought for a moment. "There are records of a few pansexual murderers-Kurten, the Dusseldorf Monster, did away with men, women, children. But unless you start tuning up male victims, I'd concentrate on latent homosexuals."

"How can a latent homosexual be spotted?"

"He can't."

Daniel waited for more. When it didn't come, he asked, "What about the earrings? Gray Man didn't take anything."

"Gray Man was crude, scared-slash and run. The earrings are trophies, as was the uterus taken from your second victim. Other killers take underwear, clothing. Your corpses.were found naked, so your killer may have taken clothing as well. The trophies are a temporary substitute for killing again. Mementoes, similar to the heads collected by hunters. They're used for masturbation, to retrigger the power fantasies."