“Why after the reunion.”
“Because he wouldn’t have known any addresses before the reunion.”
“Why didn’t he just talk to the man?”
“What do you mean?”
“At the reunion. Why didn’t he just go up to him and say TListen, I want to hold up a liquor store, are you interested?’ ”
“Maybe he didn’t get the idea till after the reunion,” Meyer said.
“Wrote to the man in September sometime,” Hawes said.
“And let’s say the man agreed to go in with Jimmy. Wrote back, or phoned him, or whatever, told him ‘Okay, I’m in, let’s rob a bank.’ ”
“Okay,” Byrnes said.
“Okay, so they hold up the bank or the liquor store or the gas station or whatever...”
“Yeah?”
“And Jimmy stashes the loot in his apartment.”
“In the window box,” Meyer said.
“And won’t tell his partner where he put it,” Hawes said.
“So his partner follows Jimmy on his way home Thursday night, and tries to get him to talk, but Jimmy won’t.”
“So the partner slits his throat, and then goes to the apartment figuring that’s where the loot is...”
“Turns the place upside down...”
“Finds the money...”
“Kills Isabel...”
“And then kills Hester Mathieson the next night...”
“To make it look like some nut’s running around killing blind people.”
“How does that sound, Pete?” Carella asked.
“It stinks,” Byrnes said.
The police psychologist was a man named Manfred Leider. His primary job was to help members of the department who were having problems that could not be solved by the use of marital aids such as those Prestige Novelty sold through the mails. Occasionally, though, a law-enforcement officer came to him for information about criminal behavior. He had dealt with detectives like Carella before; he found the man sincere but limited. All too often, even the brightest of working cops had only a peripheral knowledge of the intricacies of psychiatric techniques. This one wanted to know about dreams. Where should he begin? Basic Freud?
“What exactly do you want to know?” he asked.
They were sitting in Leider’s office on the fortieth floor of the Headquarters Building on High Street downtown. The island was narrow here; beyond the windows they could see both rivers that bounded the city. The day was cold and clear and sharp, they could see for miles into the next state.
“I’m investigating a homicide,” Carella said, “and the victim was having nightmares.”
“Mm,” Leider said. He was a man in his fifties, and he sported a graying beard that he thought made him look like a psychiatrist. In this state a psychiatrist had to go through four years of college, four years of medical school, one year of internship, three years of residency and another two years of clinical practice before taking the written and oral examinations he had to pass for a license to practice. That was why psychiatrists charged fifty dollars an hour for their services.
Leider was only a psychologist.
When Leider first began to practice, even a garage mechanic could hang out a shingle and offer his services as a “psychologist,” whatever that might have been. Times had changed; there were now stringent licensing procedures. But many psychologists, Leider among them, still felt somewhat inferior in the presence of a psychiatrist or — God forbid — that most elite and august personage, a psychoanalyst. At a tea or a soiree in the presence of such learned men, Leider often talked of glove anesthesia and eulalia and waxy flexibility. This was to show that he knew his stuff. The funny part of it was that he really did know his stuff. Leider should have gone to see a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist might have helped him with his feelings of inferiority. Instead, he spent eight hours a day in an office at the Headquarters Building downtown, where he talked to working policemen who made him feel superior.
“What sort of nightmares?” he asked.
“Well, the same nightmare each time,” Carella said.
“A recurring nightmare, do you mean?”
“Yes,” Carella said. Leider made him feel inferior. He knew that the word he’d been looking for was “recurring,” but somehow it had eluded him. Leider was wearing bifocal glasses. His eyes looked huge behind them. A crumb was clinging to his beard; he had probably just had lunch.
“Can you tell me the content of these recurring dreams?” he asked.
“Yes,” Carella said, and related the dream to him:
It is shortly before Christmas.
Jimmys mother and father are decorating a Christmas tree. Jimmy and four other boys are sitting on the living-room floor, watching. Jimmy's father tells the boys they must help him decorate the tree. The boys refuse. Jimmy's mother says they don’t have to help if theyre tired. Christmas ornaments begin falling from the tree, crashing to the floor, making loud noises that startle Jimmys father. He loses his balance on the ladder and falls to the floor, landing on the shards of the broken Christmas tree ornaments and accidentally cutting himself. The carpet is green, his blood seeps into it. He bleeds to death on the carpet. Jimmys mother is crying. She lifts her skirt to reveal a penis.
“Mm,” Leider said.
“That’s the dream,” Carella said.
“Mm,” Leider said again.
“The dream was analyzed by a Major Ralph Lemarre...”
“An Army doctor?” Leider asked.
“Yes, a psychiatrist.”
“A psychiatrist, mm,” Leider said.
“And he seemed to think it was related to a gang rape that had taken place some years back?”
“Some years back from when?”
“From when he was treating the patient.”
“When was he treating the patient?”
“Ten years ago.”
“Ten years ago, mm. And the rape took place how many years before that?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Carella said. “The rape didn't take place. We talked to the girl who was supposed to have been the victim, and it never happened.”
“Perhaps she was lying. Many rape victims—”
“No, she was telling the truth.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she told us what did happen, and it was a sex experience, but not a rape.”
“What is it that happened?” Leider asked.
Carella told him all about Roxanne and Jimmy being alone down there in the basement on a rainy day. The intercourse against the basement post. Thunder and lightning outside. The fear of discovery and punishment.
“What I’m asking,” Carella said, “is whether it’s possible— Look, I don’t know much about how this works. I’m trying to find out whether their making love in the basement that day could’ve become something different in Jimmy’s mind, could’ve become a whole big rape scene in his mind, and could’ve eventually caused nightmares. That’s what I want to know.”
“You say there was fear of punishment involved?”
“Yes. If the leader of the gang had found out, they both would’ve been punished.”
“Mm,” Leider said.
“What do you think?” Carella said.
“Well, there’s certainly a great deal of sexual symbolism in the dream, no question about that,” Leider said. “A tree is a dream symbol for male genitalia, and any sharp weapon is a dream symbol for the penis. The broken Christmas tree ornaments — commonly called Christmas balls — would seem another reference to male genitalia. And the dream figure cutting himself would seem to symbolize penetration of the body — sexual intercourse.”