recognized Nudger from Grace Valpone's apartment and nodded to him. 'Deja vu,' he said. French was in the air.
Suddenly remembering that he didn't have his car here, Nudger decided that he didn't want to be driven back to his office by the same two blue uniforms. He hitched a ride with the ME to a sandwich shop on Grand, where he phoned for a cab and sat brooding over a diet cola, waiting, thinking about a maniacal killer who was like a time bomb with multiple warheads, each exploding closer and with more force than the last. Deja vu! Deja vu! Deja vu!
XX
Still feeling shaky and nauseated, Nudger didn't bother going back up to his office when the cab eased to a stop in front of Danny's Donuts. He paid off the cabbie, watched the dented yellow taxi leave a haze of exhaust fumes down Manchester, then crossed the street to where the Volkswagen was squatted patiently at the curb.
He drove around for a while without a destination, until most of his queasiness had left him, winding through the park, past the Jefferson Memorial and the Art Museum, finally exiting from the park on Hampton, near the Zoo. Then he stopped at a phone booth and used the directory.
Dr. Oliver wasn't difficult to find. Edwin was his first name. Only an answering machine replied at his office, but at his home number a woman, possibly his wife, told Nudger that he was on staff at Malcolm Bliss Hospital and would be there until eight o'clock tonight. Nudger called Oliver at the hospital and explained what he wanted. Oliver agreed to give him fifteen minutes that he couldn't spare but would anyway. The implication was that Nudger should be extremely grateful. Nudger understood; the golf season didn't last forever.
But it took him only seconds to decide he'd been wrong about Oliver. Being on staff at Malcolm Bliss was no fiesta. Nudger had been there before, as a patrolman. This was where the police brought the violent criminally insane and dumped them in the laps of people like Oliver. People who really didn't have fifteen minutes to spare. Nudger had forgotten what it was like here.
'Please sit down, Mr. Nudger,' Dr. Oliver said. He was a youngish-looking man, though probably in his forties, large, yet with a kind of leprechaun air about him.
Nudger sat in a small vinyl-upholstered chair near the door. Oliver sat behind a plain gray metal desk. The doctor's office wasn't much bigger than a closet-it might even have once been a large linen closet-and was painted a restful pale green that was probably supposed to soothe the patients. It had a window, but no view worth looking at. There was metal mesh over the glass anyway.
'You said you wanted to talk about one of my former patients, Claudia Bettencourt,' the doctor said, hurrying Nudger along. 'What's your interest in her?'
To the point: 'I love her.'
Oliver studied Nudger. Then he shrugged and his leprechaun features lifted in a grin. 'I can understand why. Claudia is a very fine person. You do know I can't divulge any details of our doctor-patient relationship.'
'Of course,' Nudger said. 'I'll speak in generalities. Is she cured?'
'Of what?'
'The tendency to abuse her children.'
'Some generality,' Oliver said. He thought for a moment. Claudia's conviction was a matter of public record; no need for Hippocratic secrecy here. 'Yes, I think she could be described as cured. Her problems now are her own and don't affect others, at least not physically. Child abuse is a curse that runs in a lot of families, Mr. Nudger. It's passed on down the generations, a chain of violence that needs something traumatic sometimes to break it. Claudia is an intelligent woman; she understands that aspect of herself now, and so has greatly reduced, if not eliminated, her impulse to deal with people through violence. Unfortunately, understanding came too late to avert a tragedy in her life.'
'I know,' Nudger said. 'I've been told about her daughter's death, the trial, and conviction.'
'Who told you?'
'Other people who care about her.'
Dr. Oliver ran a thumb along the edge of the desk, as if testing for sharpness. 'I told her to leave town,' he said.
'What?'
'I could have fixed it up with the Probation Board. She should get out of St. Louis, away from her former husband.'
'I've met Ralph,' Nudger said. 'He's worthy of getting away from, all right.'
'He's still a part of her problem. He's the key link in the chain that can't be broken, because he won't let go of the past; he won't forgive Claudia. He's punishing her.'
'Is that why she attempted suicide?'
Oliver leaned back and played some kind of touch game with the fingertips of one hand against the other. 'That's a tricky question. I don't think I'd better answer it.'
'Okay. Do you think she might try suicide again?'
'For all I know, you might try suicide, Mr. Nudger. We're getting into speculation. I'm a doctor, not an odds- maker. And remember, it's been over a year since I've seen Claudia.'
'Why didn't she?' Nudger asked.
'Didn't she what?'
'Leave town.'
'Ironically enough, because she loves her children. She doesn't want to move someplace where she can see them only infrequently. It seems to me-' Oliver caught himself, nipped the words before they could escape his lips, lips he probably thought had been too loose already. He smiled. 'There are subjects I really can't get into, Mr. Nudger.'
'Sure. I guess what I really came to find out, and what you've told me, is what you think of Claudia personally.'
'She's a kind, decent human being who didn't deserve what she got,' Oliver said. 'I could introduce you to dozens of such people, right here on this floor.'
'And all over the streets outside,' Nudger said. He stood up. 'One other thing, Doctor, while I'm face-to-face with an expert. Can you give me any insight into the mind of your average mass murderer?'
Oliver laughed at the abrupt and bizarre change of subject. 'Only very generally. He-and the mass murderer usually is a he-is nonsocial, a loner, with a gigantic repressed ego. If he kills women, he despises a formative woman in his early life, his mother, usually. He wants to kill secretly, to get by with something few would suspect him of, but he also needs for people to know about it. He needs recognition, needs glory-or his idea of glory-even if it means going out in a blaze of it.'
'Then he'd have to kill more and more frequently, until finally he was caught and exposed. After a certain point, he'd have no choice.'
'That's the classic pattern. The killer might even feel remorse: the well-known catch-me-before-I-kill-again syndrome. You said you were a private detective. Are you looking for a mass murderer?'
'I might be.' Nudger moved to the door and opened it. The quiet of the office was broken by the bustle of staff and visitors in the hall. 'Thanks for the time, Doctor. I know it's scarce around here.'
Oliver looked at his watch and grinned. 'Fifteen minutes. That would cost you twenty dollars with a psychiatrist out in Clayton or Ladue.'
'But not here, Doctor. I've been here before, as a cop. The people you help here are the ones who need help most and can afford it least. If you were in it for the money, you'd be in the other end of the medical business.'
'And if you were in it for the money,' Oliver said, 'you'd be in the other end of the crime business.'
Nudger considered the doctor's remark all the way home.
When he got to his apartment his phone was ringing. He heard it in the hall as he was fitting his key to the lock, but he didn't hurry, hoping whoever was on the line would lose patience and hang up. Now that he felt better, he didn't want his stomach needlessly aroused by someone wanting money or selling storm windows or urging him to see another dead body.
