Grimoire Diabolique

by Edward Lee

  “But…” My thoughts tugged back and forth. “If he cuts off their hands, they can’t leave fingerprints, can’t be identified, and if they can’t be identified, your investigation becomes obstructed.”

  “No, no, no,” he griped. “In my office I showed you the ID list. We ID’d more than half of the victims already. A lot of the girls still had their ID’s on their bodies when we found them. So what’s that tell you?”

  “The killer doesn’t—”

  “Right, he either thinks he’s hidden the bodies so well that they’ll never be found, or he doesn’t care if they’re ID’d. And, from there, the most logical deduction can only be?”

  “He’s…taking their hands for some other reason?” I posed.

  “See? I knew you were smarter than these other bozos.” Jameson actually seemed pleased that I’d figured some of it out. “That’s what we’ve done. We’ve put more man-hours into this investigation than fucking Noah put into the Arc. The killer’s collecting their hands. And when we find the reason, we’ll get our suspects. Here, take this,” he said, and reached down to his floor. What he hauled up was a briefcase. It felt heavy enough to contain a couple of cinder blocks.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “The entire case file.”

  I sat back down, put on my glasses, and opened the case. “This looks like over a thousand pages of data.”

  “More than that,” Jameson said. “Sixteen hundred so far. You want to be an honest journalist—”

  “I am an honest journalist,” I reminded him.

  “—then do your homework. Read the fucking file, read the whole thing. And when you’re done, if you can honestly say that me and my men are being negligent, then tell me so…and I’ll resign my post. Deal?”

  I flipped through the fat stack of paper. It looked like a lot of work. I was fascinated.

  “Deal,” I said.

  “I knew you wouldn’t walk out on this.” Jameson, half-drunk now, rose to his feet. “I’ll talk to ya soon, pal. Oh, and the beers are on you, right?” He slapped me hard on the back and grinned. “You can write ’em off on your taxes as a research expense…”

  ««—»»

  Jameson was afflicted by the very thing he condemned: alcoholism. That much was clear. But in spite of his hypocrisy, I had to stick to my own guns. I’m a journalist; to be honest, I had to be objective. I had to separate Jameson’s drunken hatred and bigotry from the task. Not a lot of newspaper writers do that, they jump on the easiest bandwagon—and I’ve done that myself—to please their editors buy increasing unit sales. The Green River Killer is the best example in the Pacific Northwest…and it was all a sham, it was all hype. Everybody jumped on the state’s favorite suspect…and it turned out to be the wrong guy. I knew I was better than that, so I decided that it didn’t matter that Jameson was a reckless racist prick. All that mattered was the quality of the job he was doing.

  And it looked like he wasn’t doing half-bad.

  That briefcase full of paper he gave me? He wasn’t exaggerating. It was the entire investigatory file on every victim, going back for three years. Jameson and his crew had left no stone unturned, no evidential hair uncombed, and no speck of evidence unexamined. Of the victims who had been identified, the few who’d had traceable living relatives, Jameson had personally made the notification. Not an informal letter or a soulless phone call. The Captain himself, as the major case investigator, had traveled to locales as far of as Eugene, Oregon; Los Angeles; Spokane; and in one case, San Angelo, Texas, to notify the next of kin. All departmental expenditure invoices were included in the case file; Jameson had made these trips on his own time and at his own expense.

  The evidence was another thing. Jameson had cut no slack whatsoever on pursuing even the minutiae of the crime-scene evidence. Even thoroughly decomposed and mummified victim’s bodies had been analyzed to the furthest extent of forensic science. From things I’d never heard of like particulate-gas chromatographs, iodine and neohydrin fingerprint scans, atomic-force microscopy assays to simple gumshoe door-to-door canvassing. Sure, when Jameson had a load on, all of his hateful pus came pouring out, but from what I could see, when he was sober, he was a state of the art homicide investigator. The guy was doing everything in his power to solve this case. It didn’t matter that he was an asshole. It didn’t matter that he was a raving caustic racist. Jameson was doing it all. He was working his ass off and getting no credit at all from the local press.

  Then I had to weigh my own professional values. And I had to be honest. I didn’t like this guy at all, but that wasn’t the point. So I told it like it was when I wrote my piece for the Times. I reported to the readers of the biggest newspaper in the Seattle-Metro area that Captain Jay Jameson and his veteran homicide squad were doing everything humanly possible to catch the “Handyman.”

  The writers for the other papers about shit when they saw the detail of my article. My article, in fact, made the others look uninformed and haphazard. It made them look like the same exploitative tabloid hacks that Jameson accused them of being. But that didn’t mean I was letting Jameson off the hook. If he slacked off or screwed up in any way, I’d write about that too. I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt because he deserved it. The rest was up to him.

  Another thing, though. The case file contained several hundred pages of potential psychiatric analyses. I’m not stupid but I’m also not very well versed in psych-speak. On every profile prospectus, I saw the same name: a clinical psychiatrist in Wallingford named Henry Desmond. I needed more of a layman’s synopsis of these work-ups, to make my articles more coherent to the average reader.

  So I made an appointment to see this guy, this Dr. Henry Desmond.

  ««—»»

  “I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice, Dr. Desmond,” I said when I entered the spare but spacious office. A pencil cup on his desk read: Thorazine (100 mgs) Have A Great Day! One the blotter lay a comic book entitled Dream Wolves, with cover art depicting what appeared to be sultry half-human werewolves tearing the innards out of handsome men.

  “So you’re the journalist, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “My last patient claimed to be about to give birth to a litter of extraterrestrial puppies. Her question was would I prefer a male or female. So I can assure you, any questions you might have will be more than welcome considering the usual.”

  Extraterrestrial puppies? I wondered. I took a seat facing the broad desk. Dr. Desmond was thin, balding, with very short blonde hair around the sides of his head. The dust-gray suit he wore looked several sizes too large. In fact, he looked lost behind the huge desk. A poster to the side read: Posey Bednets And Straitjackets. Proven To Be The Very Best Three-, Four-, And Five-point Restraints In The Industry.

  Some industry. “I’ve got some questions, sir, about the—”

  “The so-called ‘Handyman’ case, yes?”

  Jameson must’ve talked to him, but that didn’t make a whole lot of sense because I never told Jameson I’d be coming to see Desmond. “That’s right, sir. I’m fascinated by your clinical write-ups regarding—”

  “Potential profiles of the killer?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at me as of chewing the inside of his lip. “What you need to understand is that I don’t officially work for the police. I’m a private consultant.”

  “So it’s not cool with you that I mention your name as a consultant in any future articles I may write?”

  “No, please. It’s not…cool.”

  Great, I thought. A cork in a bottle.

  “But I’d be pleased to answer any questions you may have on an anonymous basis. The only reason I must insist on anonymity is probably obvious.”

  “Uh,” I said. “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s not quite obvious to me.”

  The doctor let out the faintest of snorts. “If you were consulting with the police about a serial-killer case, would y
ou want your name in a newspaper that the killer himself could easily read?”

  Stupid! I thought. “No, sir. Of course not. This kind of thing is new to me, so I apologize for my naiveté. And I guarantee you that your name won’t be mentioned.”

  “Good, because if it is, I’ll sue you and your newspaper for multiple millions of dollars,” he said through a stone cold face. “And I’ll win.”

  I stared back, slack-jawed.

  “I’m kidding! My God, can’t anybody today take a joke?”

  I nodded glumly after a long pause. A funny guy. Fine. Just what I need.

  “I trust it was the good Captain Jameson who sent you?”

  “No, sir, he didn’t send me. He gave me the case file to examine, and I saw your name on the prospective profiling data, so—”

  “What do you think of Captain Jameson?” Desmond asked. “He’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but only my lips quavered.

  “Come on, son. Tell me the truth. I’m forbidden by law to repeat anything you say.”

  I guess he was right. Doctor-client privilege and all that, even though I wasn’t a patient. So I said it. “I think Captain Jameson is a clinical alcoholic with enough hatred in him to burn down the city…. But I also think he’s probably a pretty effective homicide investigator.”

  “You’re correct on both counts,” Desmond acknowledged. “He’s a tragic man in a tragic occupation. You’d be surprised how many of my patients are veteran police officers.”

  This struck me as odd. As a psychiatrist, Desmond could not legally verify that Jameson was a patient. And I’d never suspected that he was.

  Until now, perhaps.

  ««—»»

  “You profiles,” I said to move on.

  “They’re not profiles, not as of yet. Think of them as possible profiles.”

  “Er, right. I’ve read every page of the caseload compiled thus far, but I’m still a little shaky on a lot of it. These are highly clinical terms, I need layman terms.”

  “All right. Understood. So go on.”

  I must’ve sounded like I was babbling. “Well, er, sir, it seems that you’ve, uh—”

  “Compartmentalized the potential clinical profiles into three groups?”

  “Yes, and—”

  “And you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

  My shoulders slumped in the chair. “You hit the nail on the head, doctor.”

  Dr. Desmond stroke his bare chin as if he had a goatee. “What’s the first question a paramount journalist such as yourself might be inclined to ask after examining to full details of this case?”

  I’d already learned this one the hard way. “Why is that killer taking the hands? It can’t be to obfuscate fingerprint discovery because he’s clearly demonstrated a total lack of concern as to whether or not the authorities positively identify the victims or not.”

  “Excellent,” Desmond said.

  “Which means that the killer is collecting the hands, for some unknown reason.”

  “Well, not unknown. There are several suspected reasons detailed in the case file.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I’m not clear on, sir.”

  In his hand, Desmond was diddling with a small pale-blue paperweight that said PROLIXIN - IV & IM on it. “Consider the most obvious symbological reference. There’s been no evidence of semen or prophylactic lubricant in the vaginal barrels or rectal vaults of any of the victims, which indicates a sexual dysfunction. He’s picking the women up and strangling them, then he’s cutting of their hands. This is a strong evidence signature; the crime describes an inner-personal pathology. So you’re right. He’s collecting their hands. Possibly as trophies. The same way Serbs severed the heads of so many Bosnians. The same way the T’u Zhus removed the penises of invaders from nearby tribes. Yes? Taking parts off the enemy. Offending parts.”

  Suddenly, I was beginning to see. “But who’s the enemy in this case?”

  “Clearly, the mother. The first profile possibility indicates someone who was severely abused as a child my the mother-figure. A woman who beat the child, with her hands. A woman who molested the child, with her hands. The mother who invaded the child’s private parts—with her hands.”

  It made some sense…but there were still more possibilities. “And the second profile?” I asked.

  “The converse. The polar opposite, in a sense. No abuse in this instance but simply a lack of the necessary primal need to be touched—by the mother. We’re talking about the sheer lack of the facilitation of the nurturing touch. All babies need to be touched by the mother. If they’re not, the incidence of subsequent sociopathy is increased by one hundred percentage points. Put a newborn hamster in a cage by itself, and it dies in a few days. Even if it’s regularly hand fed by a human. Put it in a cage with a dummy mother, and it lives but later in life it becomes violent, anti-social, homicidal. It’s never touched by the mother. Any mammalian species that aren’t nurtured by the mother never grow up right. Then put this in human terms. Humans—the most complex mammalian species. They bear the most vulnerable newborns, which require constant attention by the mother to survive. The mother’s touch. Infants who aren’t sufficiently touched by their mothers suffer numerous psychological disorders. Theodore Kaczynski, the world-famous Unabomber, never became socially adjusted in adulthood in spite of his high IQ and expert propensity for mathematics. Why? Because complications shortly after his birth required him to be incubated for several weeks—separated from his mother’s nurturing touch. It’s something that all babies need, and he didn’t get it. Look what happened later.”

  The office sat just behind the McDonald’s on Stone Way; all I could smell were french fries and Big Macs, which kind of threw me for a loop: smelling fast food while listening to psych profiles seemed bizarre. “Both of those descriptions make sense,” I said. “But I’m wondering—just how crazy is this guy?”

  “In Profile #1, the perpetrator may be quite ‘crazy,’ to use your term. He may be psychopathic or merely sociopathic, but more than likely the former. He’s probably in the mid- or late-stages of a hallucinotic syndrome, and has long since experienced a mid-phased episodic reality break.”

  Christ, I thought. You need a doctorate in psychiatry just to talk to this guy. Talking to him’s worse than reading his write-ups. “The clinical terms are way over my head, Dr. Desmond,” I admitted. “If you could dumb this down a little?”

  “Clinically, we would call Profile #1 a graduated bipolar symbolist. The effect of his illness has a tendency to switch off and on at times relative to his delusion, and to put it in general terms, when he’s off, he’s able to function normally in society, but when he’s on, he is indeed ‘crazy.’ He becomes overwhelmed by some facet of his delusional fixation to the extent that he hallucinates. The women he murders are symbols. He sees his victims as his mother, as the self same person who so heinously abused him as a child.”

  “Jeeze, that sounds pretty serious.”

  “Well, it is given the gravity of the crimes. It’s unusual, though, that someone could maintain this level of bipolarity for three years. If there’s anything ‘promising’ about the diagnosis, it is the graduated aspect. He’s gradually becoming more and more insane; eventually—soon, I would say—he’ll lose his ability to maintain social functionality. And he’ll get caught rather quickly.”

  Promising? I thought. Odd choice of words, but then he’s the shrink. “What about Profile #2?”

  “More complicated, and less predictable,” Desmond began. “Profile #2 is functionally similar in that the killer is suffering from a symbolic bipolar personality disorder. But he’s not experiencing any manner of hallucinosis and his delusions are conscious and quite controllable. The fantasy element takes over. It’s probably quite like a dream. When he’s murdering these women—and severing their hands—he’s immersed so deeply in the delusion that he’s probably not even consciously aware of what he�
��s doing. It’s a fixation disorder that’s run amok. Am I losing you?”

  “Well, a little, yes.” A little, my ass.

  “He’s dreaming of something he never had. Only, regrettably, he’s acting out the dream in real life. Is that synopsis cool with you, young man?”

  But I still didn’t get it. “A dream…of cutting off hands?”

  “No, no. Be intuitive. The perpetrator doesn’t see it that way. He sees it as claiming what he never had as a child. Remember—the facilitation of the mother’s nurturing touch. All infants need to be touched; the perpetrator was not. That should answer your question about what exactly he’s doing with the hands.”

  I stared at him, gulped. And the implication was disgusting. “You mean he’s… taking the hands—”

  “He’s taking the hands home,” Desmond finished, “and putting them on his body. His mother is at last touching him. Nurturing him. But now, in adulthood, the delusion is so thoroughly contorted and transfigured—he’s probably masturbating with the hands too.”

  What a screwed up world, with screwed up people. “Christ,” I said. “That’s…sick.”

  “But so is our perpetrator,” Desmond added. “There’s quite a bit in our world that’s sick, twisted, wrong. And quite a few people in it who don’t see it that way.”

  “But the third,” I said, “the third profile.” I put my glasses on and looked back at the marked pages of the case file. “You called it a ‘fixated erotomanic impulse’. What’s that mean?”

  Desmond’s pate glimmered in a sun-break through the window. He shrugged his shoulders. “It means that in the case of this third potential profile, the killer is simply a sociopath with a hand fetish.”

  Simply a sociopath with a hand fetish, I thought. The terms just rolled off this guy’s lips like me talking about baseball.