Mortal Fear

“You want to grab a bite to eat after this?” he asks lightly. “Tie on the old feed bag, as they say back home?”

“Sure. I want to find out what the hell’s going on with this manhunt.”

“Whoever goes first waits for the other. Cool?”

“Sure.”

“Mr. Turner?”

The receptionist has slid open her window, but she is seated, and I see only a tight black bun atop her head.

“Dr. Lenz will see you first,” she says in a husky, almost luminous voice. “Go through the door and down the corridor. The doctor is waiting.”

Miles stands slowly, looks through the billing window, and says, “You have spooky eyes.” Then he picks up his computer and his cellular phone and disappears through the door like a tall and undernourished White Rabbit.

SIXTEEN (#ulink_7d3b1e2b-147c-51d7-ad9c-0df8b8e74440)

When the receptionist finally calls my name, Miles has not yet reappeared. Perhaps Lenz wants to talk to us together. As I get up and move toward the door that bars the office proper, I turn to get a closer look at the receptionist.

She is no longer there.

The door leads into a short hallway carpeted in royal blue. To my left is the empty receptionist’s cubicle, at the end of the hall another door. I open it without knocking.

Arthur Lenz is seated behind a cherry desk in a worn leather chair much like the one my father used in his medical office. But Lenz smells of cigarettes, not cigars. And his office is spartan compared to the Dickensian clutter of my father’s sanctum sanctorum.

My first thought when Lenz looks up is that I pegged him wrong in New Orleans. There he seemed a handsomer version of William F. Buckley Jr. Now, seated silently behind the ornate desk with his iron-gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, he seems to have morphed into a more sinister character—Donald Sutherland in one of his heavier roles. Lenz gives me a perfunctory smile and motions me toward a sleek black couch that reminds me of an orthodontist’s chair.

“Did you transport Miles to an alternate dimension?” I ask.

He looks puzzled. “Here are your printouts,” I say quickly, dumping the contents of my briefcase on the center of his desk.

Lenz gives the laser-printed pages a quick scan, then slips them into a desk drawer. “I was about to have some tea sent in,” he says. “Care for some?”

So this is how he means to play it: two supercivilized males sitting here sipping tea. “Got any Tabs?”

“Tabs?”

“You know, the drink. Tab. Tasted shitty in the Seventies, now it’s just palatable. That’s what I drink.”

The psychiatrist’s mouth crinkles with distaste. “There’s a vending machine in the building next door. I suppose I could send my receptionist over for some.”

“Fine. Normally, I’d be gracious, but since you’re the one picking my brain, I insist. I need some caffeine.”

“Tea has caffeine.”

“But it ain’t got fizz.”

Lenz pushes a button on a desk intercom and makes the request. It reminds me of the old Bob Newhart Show. I almost laugh at the memory.

“What’s funny, Mr. Cole?”

“Nothing. Everything. You’re wasting time talking to me. Your UNSUB could be out there killing another woman right this second.”

“Yes, he could. But you don’t seem to grasp the fact that you and Mr. Turner are the only direct lines into this case. And as for wasting time, I frequently spend hours interviewing janitors or postmen whose only connection to a case may be that they walked past the crime scene.”

I don’t respond to this.

Lenz smiles like he’s my favorite uncle or something. “I know the couch seems camp. But it does tend to concentrate the mind.” He takes a pencil from the pocket of his pinpoint cotton shirt and taps the eraser on a blank notepad in front of him. “Lie back and relax, Mr. Cole.”

The soft leather couch wraps itself around my back like beach sand, which tells me it does anything but concentrate the mind. Lenz’s ceiling tiles tell me his roof has leaked before. He modulates his deep voice into a fatherly Masterpiece Theatre register, but behind it I sense an unblinking gaze.

“This is not a formal interview,” he says. “Psychological profiling is not an exact science. Any wet-nosed FBI trainee could question you about the homicidal triangle: bed-wetting, fire starting, cruelty to animals. I use a different approach. Despite the attempts of thousands to discredit Sigmund Freud, I still believe the old grouch was onto something regarding the importance of sexual experiences.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you familiar with Nietzsche’s epigram?”

“That tired old saw about monsters and the abyss?”

“No, this.” Suddenly Lenz is speaking harsh German that sounds like Erich von Stroheim in Five Graves to Cairo.

“I didn’t catch that, Doctor.”

“Forgive me. ‘The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.’”

“I’ve seen that on EROS.”

“I happen to believe it. I’m going to ask you some very personal questions. I hope you’ll answer frankly. You may feel a bit harried. I tend to jump from subject to subject, following my nose, as it were. Please try to remember that there is no personal motive behind my questions.”

Right. You just want to put me in line for a lethal injection. “Fine,” I say aloud. “Let’s do it.”

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done, Mr. Cole?”

The question takes me off guard. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“What could be simpler? Please answer.”

“You don’t waste much time on foreplay, do you?”

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“Next question.”

Lenz sighs in frustration, but I don’t really care. “Very well. What moment are you proudest of in your life?”

“What is this?” I ask, trying to get some idea of how to handle this guy.

“Mr. Cole, did you come here expecting to look at Rorschach blots? Perhaps to say the first thing that popped into your head when I said words like ‘breast’ or ‘hate’?”