The Oedipus Murders

by Casey Dorman

  Think as he might, he could not recall anything from the night before. His last memory was of eating dinner with Madeline, both of them in silence, both of them drinking more than eating. He seemed to remember her leaving to go up to their bedroom, heaving a loud sigh but saying nothing, but perhaps she had said something after all. He had a vague recollection of her threatening him. With what? Leaving? Her car was still in the garage. He’d checked her closet and her drawers. Nothing seemed to be missing. All the suitcases were still in the auxiliary closet where they were kept. He’d called her cell phone twice. She hadn’t answered either time.

  When Susan Lin called him on his cell phone he had been relieved. Suddenly, his thoughts about Madeline’s hostility toward him had been erased by his interest in the psychologist. For the length of the conversation, he hadn’t thought about Madeline at all. Now, his terror had returned full bore, combined with his apprehension about focusing on Susan Lin instead of his missing wife, just as Lucas had focused on Sherry Bennett instead of his own wife.

  He roused himself from the bed and went downstairs to the kitchen. The knife block was still in the middle of the counter. He stared at it, trying to jog his memory. They had eaten steaks for dinner, so two steak knives were missing, as they should be. He opened the dishwasher. The steak knives were there. There was no sign of the butcher knife.

  The front door opened.

  “George? “His wife stood in the entryway, looking at him standing in the doorway to the kitchen in his wrinkled clothing and a drink in his hand. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you at work?”

  He almost dropped his drink. He felt a wave of relief. “Where have you been?”

  She walked into the living room and threw her purse on a chair. “Where have I been? I was at Cecily Engle’s house. I told you that when I left last night.”

  “But your car….”

  “She picked me up. I’d had too much to drink to drive. You’d had too much also, which is why I left. You followed me upstairs, trying to pick a fight with me.” She looked at him with curiosity. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t remember what happened. I called you, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

  “ I didn’t want to talk to you. Your drinking is getting out of control, George.” She stood gazing at him. “Look at you. You’re already drinking and it’s 10:30 in the morning. You’re not even at work. Are those the same clothes you were wearing last night?”

  He looked down at his wrinkled shirt and pants. “The butcher knife was missing. I thought...”

  “You thought what, that I had been attacked, kidnapped, murdered? You’re losing it, George. That knife has been missing for at least three weeks.

  “I was terrified.” He didn’t say that he’d been terrified that he had done something to harm her.

  She shook her head. “Worry about yourself, George. This ridiculous case is making you ill.” She glanced at the staircase. “I have to change my clothes. I have a lunch appointment.” She picked up her purse and started up the stairs. “Stop drinking George, and go to work. Pull yourself together for God’s sake.”

  He watched her climb the stairs, feeling as though he had been through this experience before.

  — — —

  “So we meet again, Doctor Farquhar, but this time I need to ask you specifically about what Lucas Bonaventure has told you.” Susan Lin sat in the soft leather chair in front of George Farquhar’s desk. She appeared surprised by the psychiatrist’s cordiality after she had produced a copy of the release of information form, signed by his client. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her.

  Although George had been pleased when Susan Lin had called and asked to meet with him, he now felt his suspicion growing. “I thought you were working with the Newport Beach Police Department. This release is from the Irvine Police.”

  “I work for several departments at the same time. I’m working on both Bonaventure’s wife’s disappearance and Sherry Bennett’s murder, which I’ve heard you’re also connected to in some way.” Her statement sounded like a question.

  George felt his anxiety rising. “I’m afraid I found the poor woman after she was already dead.” After his experience with Madeline’s absence, he was even more worried about the fugue state that surrounded his finding Sherry Bennett’s body. He felt as if he might be capable of doing anything and not remembering it.

  “And you already knew the victim?”

  “I interviewed her at Bonaventure’s request.”

  “And why did he ask you to interview her?”

  “He was stalking her. He felt she needed protection. She felt harassed and had quit working for him, and he wanted me to find out what he’d done that had forced her to quit.”

  “That doesn’t sound like analytic therapy. It doesn’t sound like any kind of therapy. Why did you consent to do it?”

  His face reddened. He remembered his wife asking the same question. “It’s rather complicated.”

  She smiled politely. “I have time to listen.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Lucas Bonaventure is a very complex man. He has a neurosis.” He noticed the young psychologist raise her eyebrows at his use of the old-fashioned term. “I know we don’t talk about neuroses anymore. Instead, we classify people by symptom syndromes, clusters of symptoms that occur together and can be observed even by poorly trained therapists. Of course, Bonaventure fits one of those categories, too. He has what the DSM would classify as a dissociative disorder.” Even as he said it, George felt self-conscious, realizing that his own fugue states fell into the same category.

  “You mean he has amnesia or a dual personality?” Her frown conveyed her skepticism.

  “Not a dual personality, but he utilizes repression much more than normal. That’s one of the drawbacks of the new diagnostic system. It doesn’t allow us to diagnose someone on the basis of how he copes with his unconscious conflicts, the extent to which he employs specific defense mechanisms.”

  “Those were the kinds of things no two clinicians could ever agree upon, which is why we changed to the new system.”

  George smiled at her. Engaging with the young psychologist in theoretical repartee was more comfortable than talking about why he had interviewed someone who was not his client. “I’m afraid you’re right. Such things require knowledge not just of a client’s symptoms, but also of the inner workings of his mind, both on a conscious and unconscious level. Most modern clinicians are not trained nor capable of gaining such knowledge about their clients.”

  “Only psychoanalysts?”

  He wondered if she was teasing him. “Only clinicians with an appreciation of unconscious processes and defense mechanisms,” he answered, aware that he was speaking somewhat stiffly.

  “We could argue about this for a long time,” she replied. “But what about Lucas Bonaventure? You were going to tell me how he convinced you to interview Sherry Bennett.”

  George felt his face getting hot. Doctor Lin wasn’t letting him off the hook. If he were talking to Madeline, he’d pour himself a drink about now. “Mr. Bonaventure was living under the delusion that Sherry Bennett was in danger. I believe it was a displacement of his anxiety caused by the loss of his wife, by his failure to protect her.”

  “So some harm befell his wife and since he didn’t do anything to prevent that, he made up a danger for this other woman and was determined to protect her as a substitute for not protecting his wife?”

  “In a nutshell.” He was impressed by how easily she comprehended the psychological situation.

  “But she obviously was in danger. And she felt that he was the one who posed that danger to her. Did he ask yo
u to reassure her that he wasn’t a threat to her?”

  “Not at all. He wanted my opinion on whether I felt she was in danger or if he was deluded about it.”

  “How could you determine if she was in danger?”

  “It was Mr. Bonaventure’s idea that Miss Bennett was courting danger by behaving sexually provocatively and he wanted my opinion about that. He also wanted my advice on what he could do to persuade her to be more careful.”

  “And you agreed to that?”

  “I knew that he was delusional on the topic. But I felt that I needed my own first-hand observation in order to change Mr. Bonaventure’s mind.” George was trying his best to make his behavior sound logical. It was hard to keep his thoughts straight.

  “And did you change his mind?”

  “Not really. He continued to believe that she was, in his words, ‘courting danger.’ He also continued to stalk her.”

  “Stalk her? I don’t know if the Irvine Police are aware of that.”

  “I told them, at least I thought I did. But I know that he followed her after work on more than one occasion. He admitted as much to me.” He couldn’t tell her that he had also followed Sherry in order to confirm that Lucas was stalking her. Such a confession would reveal too much about him.

  “And when she called you on the night she died, she said he was following her?”

  “That was her assumption. I don’t believe she had any direct evidence that that was the case.”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “I don’t have one. I know she was terrified, and I believe that someone deliberately sent her to that address, and then disabled her car so they could kill her. I have no idea who it was.”

  “And why did you go there that night?’

  George felt a wave of anxiety. He rubbed his hands together. His palms were slick with sweat, and he could feel the moisture from his armpits sliding down his side. He worried that Susan Lin might smell his fear. “Miss Bennet sounded terrified. She called me because she thought that my client was after her and that if he appeared, I could stop him. I had no idea if that was correct, but I knew that she was paralyzed with fear and I felt an obligation to try to help her.” He knew that his behavior made no sense from the point of view of his being Lucas’ therapist.

  “I’m not an analyst, nor even a therapist, but I thought that meeting with other people in a client’s life carries the danger of biasing your relationship with your client, that it harms the transference relationship or something. Am I wrong?”

  She was not wrong and George felt trapped by having to admit that, by meeting with Sherry Bennett and then by responding to her distress call, he had violated the very theory that underlay his therapy. He shook his head to try to clear it. “What was your question?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was only theoretical. Tell me more about Lucas Bonaventure’s mental state.”

  His shoulders relaxed. Talking about his client was easier than talking about himself. “As I said, he’s severely repressed, quite unaware of the reasons he does some of the things he does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I told you before. His reaction to his wife’s disappearance has been one of complete emotional denial. He knows she’s missing, but he feels no emotion about it. Instead, he transferred all of his fear about his wife to a woman he picked virtually at random from his office staff. And he has no idea that he’s displaced his anxiety from one person to the other. None at all.” He was struck by the recollection that he had reacted similarly by focusing on Susan Lin when she had called, despite thinking his own wife was missing. He tried to refocus his thoughts. He felt as if his mind were swirling in circles.

  “You said that Bonaventure felt that Sherry Bennett was behaving provocatively, that he said she was asking to have something bad happen to her. Do you think those feelings were also displaced from his wife?”

  For someone without analytic training, Susan Lin was amazingly quick to grasp psychological phenomena. “I have to assume so. I met Miss Bennett and I got no impression that she was behaving provocatively. That was all projection on Bonaventure’s part.”

  “Your client certainly seems to have little knowledge of himself, doctor.”

  “I told you, Bonaventure is neurotic. He had conversion symptoms long before his wife went missing.”

  “What kind of conversion symptoms?”

  “One of his legs became paralyzed, apparently as a reaction to his brother’s death.”

  Doctor Lin’s face showed her surprise. “Really? Conversion symptoms are rare in our current culture, especially among educated people, such as your client. In many cases, they actually have a neurological basis. Are you sure there was no physical reason for the paralysis?”

  He shook his head. “None. Paralyses don’t come and go, not unless they’re psychosomatic.”

  “Did his come and go? Did it happen again?”

  “Not in real life, but he dreams about it.”

  “Dreams that he’s paralyzed?”

  “It’s not an uncommon thing. But his dreams are what we call anxiety dreams. They wake him up and he continues to feel terrified when he wakes up. The first thing he does when he awakens from such a dream is to check if his legs are able to move.”

  “Do you have an explanation for his dreams? I know that’s what psychoanalysts do, explain dreams.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was making fun of him or was sincere in wanting to hear his explanation. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear my Freudian interpretations. Anyway, dream analysis isn’t the immediate, shoot-from-the-hip process that most people think it is. I will need to hear much more about his dreams before I can understand their significance.” George wasn’t about to go into the Oedipal and castration fears that motivated Lucas’ dreams, not when his own dissociative episodes might be related to the same unconscious conflicts.

  She looked as if she was considering asking more but then changed the subject. “Bonaventure has a copy of The Interpretation of Dreams on his shelf in his den. In fact, he has an extensive psychological library, mostly Freud. He says that it’s his wife’s.”

  George tried to conceal his shock. “That’s news to me. He’s given no indication that his wife was interested in psychology and certainly not that he was.” Bonaventure’s naiveté about psychology was one of the assumptions that underlay George’s treatment of the man, and was part of the analyst’s explanation for Lucas’ lack of insight into his own mind.

  “But he did choose to see a psychoanalyst. Even if he picked a therapist randomly, what’s the chance that he would pick one of the few analysts in Newport Beach? Did he say why he picked you?”

  “He said he picked me out of the phone book.” In fact, George had no idea why Lucas had picked him, since he had no recollection of the phone call that had secured Lucas his first appointment.

  “I’ve never read much of Freud. I’m afraid they don’t teach it much in research psychology programs these days. Would you recognize if he was feeding you material from some of Freud’s books to make it seem as if he was neurotic?”

  This time he couldn’t conceal his shock. She was voicing the same opinion as his wife’s. He felt let down that she believed he could so easily be fooled. “I’m hardly capable of failing to recognize if someone is feigning a neurosis by copying his symptoms from one of Freud’s texts.”

  “Of course not. I just wondered if it made a difference knowing that he might have some knowledge of Freudian theory.”

  He gave her a quick smile. “I’ve told you all I know at this point.”

  She sensed that he’d said all that he was going to say. “I’d
like to talk to you again, kind of touch base every once in a while. Your client’s release allows us to talk as much as we’d like.” Her request sounded as much social as professional.

  George felt relieved. Perhaps she didn’t question his clinical acumen. He guessed that Madeline’s comments had made him overly sensitive. “I’d like to talk again, too. Anytime you want to. I also enjoy our talks.”

  She stood to leave. George came around his deck and took her arm as he walked her to his door.

  Chapter 28

  Susan Lin poured hot water from the electric pot on her kitchen counter into a cup in which she’d place a bag with green tea. She carried the steaming cup of tea and its saucer to her small living room and placed it on the coffee table in front of her flowered couch. Then she picked up the copy of The Interpretation of Dreams she’d checked out from the Irvine Public Library that afternoon. She plumped a throw pillow behind her back and put her feet up on the coffee table, careful to not disturb the cup of steeping tea. She enjoyed her nights of solitude in her condominium, one of nearly one hundred similar residences in the three-year-old Irvine complex. The apartment had been her first big purchase after graduating with her Ph.D. and getting her first job as a forensic psychologist. She didn’t think of it as her life-long home. It was a one-bedroom and too small for the husband and two children that she hoped to have someday. But it was comfortable, and it was home, and it was hers.

  She’d read about Freud’s theories in graduate school, but she’d never read Freud in the translated original. Her doctoral program had been based upon a combination of neuroscience and advanced psychometric theory. She had delved deeply into how the brain worked and learned how to use the most recent and sophisticated neuroimaging techniques to study what was happening and where it was happening in the brain when individuals engaged in cognitive tasks. And she had learned how to use the most advanced personality and attitudinal measures to compare an individual to his peers in every area from political sentiments to control of his aggressive impulses. Classical Freudian theory had only been mentioned as an example of unscientific, subjectively validated psychology, something from the ancient past.