"You mean they're not crazy because they don't know they're crazy."
"They're not crazy, as you say, because their actions are just as goal-directed and motivated as yours or mine. They are perfectly reasonable from their point of view."
"That's nuts! I'm sorry…I mean it's just semantics. They're crazy or ill or whatever you call it because they can't conform to society's standards of normal behavior."
She gave me the tolerant look an extraordinarily patient trainer might show to a particularly inept chimpanzee. "You may be surprised to learn that some schizophrenics actually choose careers as mental patients. They appraise their alternatives in the outside world, then make a rational choice as to their actions."
It didn't make sense to me, but then abstract concepts are not my strong point. "If their actions are violent or bizarre, does it matter if we call them rational or not?" I asked.
"Perhaps not, but it affects the very roots of psychiatry. Radical psychiatrists argue that the unconscious is a myth, that all wishes, emotions, and feelings are conscious thoughts, and if not conscious, they don't exist at all."
"Hold on. I thought the whole game you shrinks play is that the unconscious affects behavior."
"Historically accurate, but our science is changing."
"Are you saying it isn't the subconscious that causes someone to kill and kill again? Are you chucking out the old plea of not guilty by reason of insanity?"
"The fantasies acted out by serial murderers are clearly conscious. Your FBI has conducted lengthy interviews with imprisoned killers that demonstrate the extent of conscious fantasizing from the planning of the crime to the crime itself to disposal of the body."
"But the fantasies are the product of the unconscious, aren't they?"
"Prove it," she demanded.
Then it dawned on me. "You're a radical psychiatrist."
"Let's just say I have an open mind."
I mulled that over a moment and she continued: "Dr. Riggs rang me up about the second murder last week. The messages are quite interesting. Equus is a British work, you know."
I knew.
"The protagonist is a psychiatrist, you know."
I knew that, too.
"How do you interpret the Equus message?" she asked.
"I don't know. It was written to Mary Rosedahl by a professor who teaches drama when he isn't drunk. I was hoping you had some thoughts."
"Well, one thing is quite obvious. Judging from the differences between the messages, I would say it is unlikely that the professor wrote both the Equus excerpt to Miss Rosedahl and the 'green, scaly monster' rejoinder to Miss Diamond." I stayed quiet and she slid the glasses back down and looked directly at me. "Additionally, you have the other messages to deal with. The Jack the Ripper taunt at the Diamond murder scene and the Tennyson poem at the Rosedahl scene. They are all so different, it is difficult to know where to begin."
Now we were getting somewhere. I knew the lady shrink would be helpful. I was concentrating on every word, something made more difficult by the fact that her black wool skirt was starting to ride up her thighs. Her legs, as any objective eyewitness with moderate powers of observation could testify, were long and slender and carved from ivory. I forced myself to look at a spot in the middle of her forehead. "I'm not sure I follow you," I said.
"If you're trying to build a profile of the killer, you must be certain that the factors you build into it are derived from the killer. With these messages, some obviously are and some are not. But which? Equus is fiction, lyrical, and metaphorical. It's not about murder."
"The boy blinds six horses with a spike. He is deranged, as the killer must be."
"But the play is not about mutilating the horses, is it?"
As I thought it over, well-dressed London matrons carrying umbrellas began filling the lobby. The hotel apparently served an afternoon tea. Behind us, an elevator opened and some distinctively American voices-loud, complaining-filled the air. A family in warm-up suits and sneakers tromped out, festooned with video gear, the husband griping at a majestic decibel level about the price of fish and chips in SoHo.
"No," I said finally. "It's about materialism and the blandness of modern life, about our losing the capacity for passion."
"Whereas the Jack the Ripper message is starkly literal, harshly real. A madman killing women and jeering at the authorities."
"And you don't think the same person, the same killer, can be both literal and metaphorical?"
"It's unlikely, but the person who wrote the Equus note-"
"Professor Prince, by name."
"— may well have written the Tennyson poetry at the second murder scene."
"Whoa! Whoever wrote the poetry killed Mary Rosedahl. He left it for us just as the Ripper note was left at the Diamond scene."
"Is the professor not the obvious suspect, a man who knows literature and drama?"
"Yes, but he doesn't seem capable-"
"Read me the poem, just the last two lines."
I tried it with some feeling:
"'Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.'"
She raised her eyebrows and smiled an enigmatic smile. "Now read this." She reached into a folder and handed me the last page of the last scene of Equus. "The psychiatrist's speech to the boy," she said.
I read aloud, "'He may even come to find sex funny. Smirky funny. Bit of grunt funny. Trampled and furtive and entirely in control. Hopefully, he'll feel nothing at his fork but approved flesh. I doubt, however, with much passion! Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.'"
She smiled again. "You read quite well. Both the poem and the play are laments to lost passion, are they not?"
"In a way, but-"
"The professor admits sending the Equus message the same night Miss Rosedahl is killed," she continued. "The murder scene was organized, no blood or entrails dripping from the walls. An organized murderer is usually intelligent and able to converse with his victims. Rather than using violence to subdue, he controls with conversation. He assumes a position of authority, not unlike a teacher with a class. He can be quite winning. He frequently has problems with alcohol. Your professor fits the profile quite nicely, don't you think?"
In the movies, this is when the detective takes a long pull on his cigarette, exhales, and says, "A little too nicely, eh, babe?" But I don't smoke, and it all seemed to fit, just like the lady said.
Somewhere in my head, a memory was stirring. "After we left Marsha Diamond's apartment, you said something about an organized crime scene."
"And you made a rather pathetic joke demeaning psychiatry."
"I just thought it was a little much, your profiling the killer as somebody who got Bs in math and wasn't close to his father."
She shrugged.
The rest of the memory filled itself in. "And that's when we got off on the wrong foot," I said.
She seemed to think about it. It took a moment of self-analysis. " Before that. About two seconds after you joined Dr. Riggs and me at the restaurant. You came on as some sort of American-what do they call it? — hulk?"
"Hunk?"
"Yes. A big, Yank hunk. A cocky, grinning male predator."
"Me?"
"You."
"And how long have you had these feelings of insecurity in the presence of the male animal?"
She smiled but didn't say a word.
"I think you got me wrong," I said. "When I met you, I'd just been drop-kicked out of the courthouse. My ego was dragging. If anything, I needed feminine companionship to buoy my spirits. I was trying to impress you and it didn't work. I regret it."
She thought it over. "You sought validation that your product was still good."
I nodded.
"So perhaps you overcompensated."
I nodded again, eagerly anticipating her compassion.