Jack sneaked another sip, thinking, his long hair kept falling in front of his face.
“Charlie’s also persuasive, a magnetic personality. He’s probably very attractive. The victim was willing from the start, and that too is a key word. The bondage wasn’t forced. Otherwise the wrist and ankle lacerations would’ve been more severe. Most girls don’t let a man they just met tie them up. There was something special about him, something that made her trust him instantly. Girls with andro-compulsive desires have a tendency to fall for guys fast. It never lasts, but that doesn’t matter.”
This definitely didn’t last, Jack thought.
“Willingness. Remember that,” Karla Panzram induced. “You’re looking for a charmer with a knack for making girls sexually willing in situations that would normally project reluctance on the part of the female. Lots of male erotopaths are like that — the only difference is they don’t kill the girls afterward. One question: Did the girl have a drug history?”
“No, but her tox screen’ll be in today.”
“Have your tech check for cocaine, and also the usual synthetic morphine derivatives. There’s a lot of Demerol and dilaudid going around now that the coke prices are up. He may have enticed her with something to make her less inhibited, and if so, you’ve got another string to diddle with, someone with drug connections.”
“What about Charlie himself? Do you think he’s a drugger?”
“I doubt it,” Karla Panzram said. “The act is very important to him — there’s no way he’d round off any of the corners of the experience with drugs. The way he wrote the stuff on the walls shows me someone with a clear head. We TAT drug users all the time and what they come up with is completely different. I know this may all sound very obscure to you, but I still assert that the major keystones here are passion and willingness.”
“But there was blood in the vagina. Not much, but still. I’m thinking vaginal abrasions.”
“She must’ve been on her period, then; ask your tech. Charlie is not the type of personality to commit rape. It’s a priority that his victim be willing. I even think that if one of Charlie’s prospects turned out to not be willing, he’d leave. He wouldn’t go through with it. Charlie is not a hostile person.”
Jack almost winced. “Not hostile? Shanna Barrington looked like a botched autopsy. He tore her up.”
“He tore her up out of passion, Captain, via the ritual delusion. Not hostility, passion.”
Some leads, Jack thought, smoking. His drink kept beckoning him. He felt Dr. Panzram was right about Charlie, and she was probably right about Jack. He’d like nothing more than to down the rest of his Fiddich and order another — no, two more at once — but to do so would make him afraid of what she’d conclude of him. Without pretense, then, the words tolled: I’m an alcoholic.
“If I didn’t feel secure in what I’ve told you, then I wouldn’t tell you,” she said over her mussels. Each one she delicately removed with her fork, inspected, then consumed. The shelled mussels looked like little vaginas. “I’ve seen all kinds, for the last twenty-two years. Charlie’s definitely different, but he’s just as easy to type as a hebephrenic or hallucinotic. You can trust my speculations. The majority of my conclusions, though are graphological.”
“You mean the writing on the walls,” Jack said.
“Not the writing itself, but how he wrote it. You can tell as much about someone from one writing sample as six months of psychotherapy. I’m sure you’ve deduced from the bloodfall and entrance wounds that Charlie is left-handed.”
“Sure. A majority of sex killers are. So what?”
“You can also tell he’s left-handed by how he inscribed the symbols, the letters, and the triangle. You’d be surprised how objective the human mind can be when analyzed comparatively. Different types of people tend to do the same types of things whey they externalize themselves. Our graphological references are quite accurate. Tell a patient to draw a house, and what he’s really drawing is an aspect of his subconscious. Have a patient write the alphabet, and you see the insides of all his feelings, what he loves, what he hates, and so on. I can’t drop Charlie into a neat psych category for you, but I can tell you all about him, comparatively, simply by the way he draws and writes.”
“I’m all ears,” Jack said. And all mouth too, which I’d really like to fill with Scotch.
“Writing is an equiposture of consciousness, subconsciousness, and mental structure. And that’s the most important part from your end — his creative revelations.”
“Huh?”
“The letters and symbols aren’t as much written as formed. They were applied quickly but with great accuracy. The angles of the symbols, and especially the triangle, are almost perfect, as though he used a compass to outline them. Would you like some?”
“Huh?”
She pushed the plate of mussels toward him. A dozen little vaginas peered up through their shells. Some even had tiny beards.
“No thanks,” Jack said. “I gotta drive.”
Karla Panzram smiled. “That’s interesting, Captain. Something about mussels distresses you. Hmm. I wonder what that could be.”
“Fear of female genitals, right? I’m not afraid of women, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Oh, but you are, Captain. Women terrify you, because you get lost in them. You’re very passionate too.”
“Like Charlie?”
“Oh, no. Your sense of passion is much more primitive—”
“Thanks.”
“—but much more real. However, you’re afraid to let your passion out, because you’re afraid it will disorient you. You’re afraid of rejection. You’ve been recently rejected, haven’t you?”
Jack lit another Camel and sighed smoke. “I like you, Dr. Panzram. You’re smart, and I admire you. But I hate it — and pardon my French — I fucking hate it when people try to analyze me.”
“I know you do, Captain.” She forked another mussel, daintily plucking its bread with her fingers.
“You were saying something about the structure of the symbols and the triangle. Accuracy.”
“Oh, yes. It could be of no investigative significance at all, but Charlie’s very creatively inclined. He may be an artist.”
He’s an artist, all right, Jack added. And that was a hell of a piece of artwork he left in that apartment.
“That’s all I have for you now,” she said. “When you get more, send it to me. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
“I appreciate that.”
Karla Panzram was tapped out. She was a very strong woman; dealing with people who didn’t want to help themselves wasn’t as bad as dealing with people who couldn’t. It made Jack think again of what Craig had said, about taking things for granted.
When the meal — which she’d consumed completely, double-baked potato included — was done, Jack reached for the check, but she snatched it up first. “This is not a county tab, Captain. Shame on you for lying to me.”
“Hey, I lie to women all the time.”
“You feel emasculated when a woman pays?”
“Pay the goddamn tab, Dr. Panzam. You can pay my phone bill too, if you want, but that wouldn’t make my balls feel any smaller.”
Karla Panzram laughed out loud. As they were leaving, she said, “Forgive me for toying with you, Captain. You’re a moving target. Did you know that?”