"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."
Ben David glanced at the reports again. The ultimate power play is necrophilia. No mention is made of rape. Did your killer have post-mortem intercourse with the victims?"
"The pathologist found no semen," said Daniel. "It may have been washed away."
"Possible impotence," said the psychologist, "or he could have masturbated away from the body. It would make serum typing impossible-more avoidance of physical evidence. Not a stupid murderer, Dani. Definitely smarter than Gray Man."
Daniel thought: Stupid, "crude" Gray Man had eluded capture.
Ben David raised his cup and emptied it, then dried his beard with the back of one hand. "In order to dominate, you need subjugation. Some killers tie up their victims. Yours used heroin to subjugate, but it amounts to the same thing. Total control."
"Do you attach any significance to the use of drugs?"
The psychologist got up, walked to the credenza, and poured a second cup of coffee. "I don't know," he said, upon return. "Perhaps he'd experienced some sort of peak sexual experience related to drug use. A lot of what turns people on is the result of chance associations-the coupling of some random but significant event with sexual arousal."