“Compartmentalized the potential clinical profiles into three groups?”
“Yes, and—”
“And you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
My shoulders slumped in the chair. “You hit the nail on the head, doctor.”
Dr. Desmond stroke his bare chin as if he had a goatee. “What’s the first question a paramount journalist such as yourself might be inclined to ask after examining to full details of this case?”
I’d already learned this one the hard way. “Why is that killer taking the hands? It can’t be to obfuscate fingerprint discovery because he’s clearly demonstrated a total lack of concern as to whether or not the authorities positively identify the victims or not.”
“Excellent,” Desmond said.
“Which means that the killer is collecting the hands, for some unknown reason.”
“Well, not unknown. There are several suspected reasons detailed in the case file.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’m not clear on, sir.”
In his hand, Desmond was diddling with a small pale-blue paperweight that said PROLIXIN - IV & IM on it. “Consider the most obvious symbological reference. There’s been no evidence of semen or prophylactic lubricant in the vaginal barrels or rectal vaults of any of the victims, which indicates a sexual dysfunction. He’s picking the women up and strangling them, then he’s cutting of their hands. This is a strong evidence signature; the crime describes an inner-personal pathology. So you’re right. He’s collecting their hands. Possibly as trophies. The same way Serbs severed the heads of so many Bosnians. The same way the T’u Zhus removed the penises of invaders from nearby tribes. Yes? Taking parts off the enemy. Offending parts.”
Suddenly, I was beginning to see. “But who’s the enemy in this case?”
“Clearly, the mother. The first profile possibility indicates someone who was severely abused as a child my the mother-figure. A woman who beat the child, with her hands. A woman who molested the child, with her hands. The mother who invaded the child’s private parts—with her hands.”
It made some sense… but there were still more possibilities. “And the second profile?” I asked.
“The converse. The polar opposite, in a sense. No abuse in this instance but simply a lack of the necessary primal need to be touched—by the mother. We’re talking about the sheer lack of the facilitation of the nurturing touch. All babies need to be touched by the mother. If they’re not, the incidence of subsequent sociopathy is increased by one hundred percentage points. Put a newborn hamster in a cage by itself, and it dies in a few days. Even if it’s regularly hand fed by a human. Put it in a cage with a dummy mother, and it lives but later in life it becomes violent, anti-social, homicidal. It’s never touched by the mother. Any mammalian species that aren’t nurtured by the mother never grow up right. Then put this in human terms. Humans—the most complex mammalian species. They bear the most vulnerable newborns, which require constant attention by the mother to survive. The mother’s touch. Infants who aren’t sufficiently touched by their mothers suffer numerous psychological disorders. Theodore Kaczynski, the world-famous Unabomber, never became socially adjusted in adulthood in spite of his high IQ and expert propensity for mathematics. Why? Because complications shortly after his birth required him to be incubated for several weeks—separated from his mother’s nurturing touch. It’s something that all babies need, and he didn’t get it. Look what happened later.”
The office sat just behind the McDonald’s on Stone Way; all I could smell were french fries and Big Macs, which kind of threw me for a loop: smelling fast food while listening to psych profiles seemed bizarre. “Both of those descriptions make sense,” I said. “But I’m wondering—just how crazy is this guy?”
“In Profile #1, the perpetrator may be quite ‘crazy,’ to use your term. He may be psychopathic or merely sociopathic, but more than likely the former. He’s probably in the mid- or late-stages of a hallucinotic syndrome, and has long since experienced a mid-phased episodic reality break.”
Christ, I thought. You need a doctorate in psychiatry just to talk to this guy. Talking to him’s worse than reading his write-ups. “The clinical terms are way over my head, Dr. Desmond,” I admitted. “If you could dumb this down a little?”
“Clinically, we would call Profile #1 a graduated bipolar symbolist. The effect of his illness has a tendency to switch off and on at times relative to his delusion, and to put it in general terms, when he’s off, he’s able to function normally in society, but when he’s on, he is indeed ‘crazy.’ He becomes overwhelmed by some facet of his delusional fixation to the extent that he hallucinates. The women he murders are symbols. He sees his victims as his mother, as the self same person who so heinously abused him as a child.”
“Jeeze, that sounds pretty serious.”
“Well, it is given the gravity of the crimes. It’s unusual, though, that someone could maintain this level of bipolarity for three years. If there’s anything ‘promising’ about the diagnosis, it is the graduated aspect. He’s gradually becoming more and more insane; eventually—soon, I would say—he’ll lose his ability to maintain social functionality. And he’ll get caught rather quickly.”
Promising? I thought. Odd choice of words, but then he’s the shrink. “What about Profile #2?”
“More complicated, and less predictable,” Desmond began. “Profile #2 is functionally similar in that the killer is suffering from a symbolic bipolar personality disorder. But he’s not experiencing any manner of hallucinosis and his delusions are conscious and quite controllable. The fantasy element takes over. It’s probably quite like a dream. When he’s murdering these women—and severing their hands—he’s immersed so deeply in the delusion that he’s probably not even consciously aware of what he’s doing. It’s a fixation disorder that’s run amok. Am I losing you?”
“Well, a little, yes.” A little, my ass.
“He’s dreaming of something he never had. Only, regrettably, he’s acting out the dream in real life. Is that synopsis cool with you, young man?”
But I still didn’t get it. “A dream… of cutting off hands?”
“No, no. Be intuitive. The perpetrator doesn’t see it that way. He sees it as claiming what he never had as a child. Remember—the facilitation of the mother’s nurturing touch. All infants need to be touched; the perpetrator was not. That should answer your question about what exactly he’s doing with the hands.”
I stared at him, gulped. And the implication was disgusting. “You mean he’s… taking the hands—”
“He’s taking the hands home,” Desmond finished, “and putting them on his body. His mother is at last touching him. Nurturing him. But now, in adulthood, the delusion is so thoroughly contorted and transfigured—he’s probably masturbating with the hands too.”
What a screwed up world, with screwed up people. “Christ,” I said. “That’s… sick.”
“But so is our perpetrator,” Desmond added. “There’s quite a bit in our world that’s sick, twisted, wrong. And quite a few people in it who don’t see it that way.”
“But the third,” I said, “the third profile.” I put my glasses on and looked back at the marked pages of the case file. “You called it a ‘fixated erotomanic impulse’. What’s that mean?”