group. How about people you didn't know, sex you wouldn't be able to watch?'
'I didn't want to think about that.'
'Of course not. You'd go crazy if you did. But how could you be sure? Unless there was some way to… close her off. Prevent anyone else from getting what you couldn't get. That's when you thought of it, right?'
He looked into Gale's eyes, but all he could see there was confusion. No anger, no rage, no word forming to come out or being throttled so it wouldn't. This boy didn't know anything about glue; of that Janek was certain. Greg Gale hadn't stabbed Jess, and he hadn't mutilated her. He was lost in a reverie of his inadequacy as a man, not in a fantasy of stabbing and gluing up a woman.
Janek stood. 'I don't know what to say to you. You messed around with my goddaughter's head. I'd like to think you couldn't help yourself, but still, it's hard to forgive. I'm not going to try. I think you've been honest with me. I appreciate that. No need to get up. I'll let myself out.'
But then, before he could turn, Gale stood up. He wanted to show Janek his photographs of Jess. Janek dreaded looking at them; he didn't want sordid images of her etched upon his mind. But he waited anyway while Gale dug the pictures out, and then he was surprised.
Gale's photos were not posed tableaux like the mistress/slave picture over the fireplace. Rather, they were superb black-and-white action shots of Jess fencing in tournaments, ongarde, thrusting, making parries and ripostes and lunge attacks against her opponents.
He looked at them all carefully, admiring Gale's abilities as a photographer. Then he came upon a shot of Jess so fine, so powerful, he could not tear his eyes away. Gale had caught her just at the moment of a victory. Having scored, ripped off her mask, she met the gaze of his camera with a great broad, beaming grin of triumph.
Gale watched him as he examined this picture. 'Like it?' he asked. Janek nodded. 'Take it. No, I mean it. I want you to have it.' And before Janek could protest, Gale placed the print in a protective cover and presented it to him as a gift.
Clutching this image of Jess as he rode back to his apartment, Janek knew', no matter what anyone said, that he would have to find out who had killed her. The little girl he had nurtured had grown into the magnificent women in the photograph-and now she was dead. The wound this time was not just upon society, nor was it only upon Laura and Stanton. It was also upon himself, and it would not be closed for him until he had hunted her killer down.
Oh, Jess, he thought. Jess.
That night, his second since his return from Europe, Janek finally got a full ration of sleep. But it was total exhaustion, not peace of mind, that closed his eyes. His last thought, before falling off, was that Jess seemed to have been at a crisis point at just the time she was killed. was that significant or merely a coincidence? He posed the question, then collapsed into a spiral of fatigue.
It was Laura Dorance who set up his appointment the following morning with Jess's shrink.
Janek arrived before the first-floor office entrance of a converted two-story carriage house on East Eighty- first. He pressed the bell, gave his name to a disembodied voice, and was buzzed in. He found himself in a hall. Through an archway to his left there was a sparsely furnished waiting room. He entered, took a seat, thumbed through an old copy of Psychology today, while a small radio, tuned at low volume to a classical station, yielded a gentle flow of Mozart.
At precisely eleven o'clock Dr. Beverly Archer appeared in the doorway. A very short, fortyish butterball of a woman, she welcomed Janek with a sympathetic smile. Warm and friendly eyes, slightly rouged cheeks, curly, dull reddish hair, she had the kind of bland features one often associates with people in the mental health field.
But her voice gave her away; it was throaty, low-pitched, intense.
'Please come in, Lieutenant. I have forty minutes before my next appointment.'
He followed her into a comfortable consultation room. A desk, two easy chairs, an analyst's couch, and bookcases filled with psychiatric texts.
On one wall hung a reproduction of van Gogh's sunflowers; on the other, a cluster of diplomas.
'Now what can I do for you?' Dr. Archer asked with a formal smile, after motioning him to one of the chairs.
'I'm sure Mrs. Dorance told you-'
'She said you were Jessica's godfather and that you're a New York City detective. But I must tell you from the start I'm most reluctant to discuss the contents of Jessica's sessions. Many people don't realize this, but the confidentiality of the therapist's office transcends even the patient's death.'
Janek paused. The woman was more authoritative than he expected. He understood he would have to tread gently if he was going to get any information.
'Yeah, I've heard that, Dr. Archer, but her mother, her legal heir, has given consent.'
Dr. Archer nodded. 'So she told me. But you have to understand, there's a principle involved. If I make an exception, violate my pledge of confidentiality, then where do I draw the line?'
She smiled. 'My oath binds me to silence. Unless, of course, I learn that someone is about to commit an act of violence. And that I'm afraid, is not the case here.'
Oh, shit! A real hard-ass! 'I notice you call her Jessica,' he said. 'That was her name.'
'We all called her Jess.' 'So did 1, Lieutenant. But I'm not speaking to her now. I'm speaking about her, and as you can probably tell, I'm feeling just a little uncomfortable about that.'
Dr. Archer, Janek noticed, pursed her lips into a little smile at the end of every sentence. It was a nervous habit, not unattractive or disconcerting, but he found it slowed him down.
'If it will make it any easier for you, Doctor, I already know a lot. We have her diary. We know about the sex group. I've already spoken with Greg Gale, and he's confirmed everything she wrote. If it's a question of protecting Jess's reputation, please believe that's foremost in my mind. I'm not going to repeat anything you tell me, and her diary won't be leaked. I guess what I'm saying is I hope you'll reconsider. My first priority, which I'm sure you share, is to find the person who killed her.'
As he spoke, Dr. Archer nodded along. 'Yes, yes, that's true, that's certainly true. And I shall certainly think the matter over.' She paused, smiled. 'Now why don't we start by talking a little about your own relationship with Jessica? I think that would help me to better understand your interest.'
She was such a nice woman, so clearly attuned to listening, that even though Janek was not in the mood to unburden himself, he soon found himself speaking of his sense of loss. He spoke, too, of his discomfort with thoughts of Jess's sex life, his overreaction when Glickman called her names, and the tight control he had had to exert upon himself with Greg Gale the night before. 'It's as if suddenly I have to deal with a side of Jess I never thought about before.' Janek realized he was speaking to this woman much as he had on the telephone to Monika.
Dr. Archer nodded. Indeed, she understood. But then she wondered if it was really necessary for Janek to deal with that side of Jess at all.
'I think it is,' he said. 'That's why I'm here. I need to know everything she did.'
'Do you really need to, Lieutenant?'
'I think so. I'm surprised you'd even ask.'
Dr. Archer settled back. 'You're saying that to pursue her killer, you must delve into every aspect of her character. I question whether that's true. My suggestion, and I make it with timidity and respect, is that you ask yourself why you're so disturbed by the intimate material you've so far uncovered. Is it Jessica you want to understand, or are you really seeking to understand yourself9'
Janek stared at her. It was an interesting suggestion, but he'd come for information, not therapy or analysis.
'What I'm saying,' Dr. Archer continued, 'and I emphasize I do so without making any kind of value judgment, is that you possibly were and perhaps still are overly involved with your goddaughter. Perhaps you had unconscious fantasies about her. Perhaps you longed for her in some way you don't fully understand. And now that she's been so tragically killed, you use that as an excuse to delve into the most intimate aspects of her life. I suppose what I'm really asking, Lieutenant, is whether you're the right person to be handling this investigation. I certainly don't presume to know the answer. I merely raise the question.'
A maddening, if fascinating, forty minutes, Janek thought as he emerged, somewhat shaken, on the street. Dr. Archer could not be faulted. She had acted professionally and shown herself protective of her patient.
But instead of behaving in a cooperative manner, as is normally the case when a doctor is questioned by a
