“Can you tell me what your nightmares are about?”
“The usual things—falling, drowning, being chased by something I can’t see, that sort of stuff.” He shifted uneasily in his chair.
Rubens tapped his ashes, biding for time. Now they were getting somewhere. Nick believed it was commonplace to dream so often of being in peril.
“There’s another dream too,” Nick added. He frowned in concentration and unlocked his fingers to stare at the knuckles of his right hand. “I have this one pretty often.” He glanced up suspiciously. “Not that it means anything. It’s just a nightmare.”
Rubens circled the stub of his cigar at Nick to gesture him to continue. Speaking at the wrong time was the mistake most listeners made.
“I’m lying on a hospital bed, all tucked in. I open my eyes and find that I can’t move. Not a muscle. I can’t even lift a finger or wiggle a toe. The only part of me that moves is my eyelids. I lift them and I see two figures beside my bed. I try to turn my head and I can’t. I try to talk and I can’t. I’m paralyzed and I panic. The figures next to me are talking. It’s Daley, my brother, and a doctor.”
Rubens squinted his eyes against the smoke of his cigar. He nodded and waited to hear the rest. So far it was a classic nightmare of impotency, sexual or otherwise. Many sociopaths felt a sense of helplessness.
Nick did not realize he was repeating a dream that in ways coincided with casebook patterns of the disturbed personality.
“In the dream Daley asks the doctor isn’t there something they can do for me. The doctor says there’s nothing to be done and the best thing Daley can do is to forget me, leave me alone, and live the rest of his life without regrets for his brother.
“Meantime, I’m frozen there in that bed trying like hell to talk to Daley, to beg him not to leave me, to rescue me. My tongue’s heavy as a concrete block and it won’t lift off the bottom of my mouth. I blink my eyes, but they aren’t looking at my eyes. They’re both staring at my paralyzed body, the doctor shaking his head. Daley starts to cry and say he can’t leave me this way, like a vegetable.”
Nick stood up and began pacing around his chair. “Fuck, it’s stupid. Really dumb. But I wake up from that dream in a sweat, scared stiff that I won’t be able to move.”
“You were dreaming of a catatonic state,” Rubens said.
“Where you can’t move or talk?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Dreams are all bullshit. I don’t know why I told you about it.” He sat down again and waved his hand as if dismissing the dream.
“Are there any other recurring dreams that you remember?” the psychiatrist asked.
“No, that’s the only one I have again and again. And it’s always the same. I’m lying there screaming inside my head for Daley to help me and he finally turns away to leave so that I’m left alone, imprisoned. Abandoned.”
Rubens decided to change the subject slightly. “How are you getting along with your brother lately?”
Nick grew restive again and sat up in the chair. He gripped the chair arms and stared at his shoes. “Okay, I guess.”
“Arguments?” Rubens probed.
“A few, nothing serious. We used to fight over his girl friend who moved in with us, but she’s gone now…” His voice trailed away abruptly.
“Where did she go?”
“Fuck if I know!” The belligerent tone surprised Sidney Rubens and Nick noticed. “I mean,” he backtracked, “she moved out. Down to Montrose somewhere is all I know. And good riddance. She was weird.” For some reason he did not want to tell Rubens that Madra died. But then if he told him that, how would he explain her death?
“You’re glad she moved out?” the doctor asked.
“Hell, yes, I’m glad. She was a bitch and Daley didn’t need her.” Nick clamped his mouth shut and looked away from the gaze that seemed to make him say things he did not want to. “It’s just better that’s she’s gone,” he finished lamely.
“And now you and your brother get along much better.”
Nick shrugged again. “Listen,” he said. “my lunch hour’s about up.”
Without consulting his watch, Rubens said, “We have another twenty minutes, then I’ll write your prescription.”
Nick groaned loudly and Rubens noted that when Nick was thwarted he adopted a childish attitude to try and get his way. He must be very good at manipulating people, Rubens thought. How good is he at manipulating his brother?
“You’re not getting along with Daley,” Rubens stated. One of his most effective tools was declarations that brought an emotional response from a patient.
“I didn’t say that!” Nick exploded.
Rubens sucked on his stogie and blew out smoke across the desk. He waited patiently, his eyes never leaving the agitated man.
“I didn’t say we don’t get along,” Nick repeated defensively. “Daley… well, he’s got a strange bag of ideas these days, but nothing I can’t handle on my own.”
“You don’t agree with his ideas?” Rubens asked conversationally.
“Not all of them,” Nick hedged. “He’s… accused me… of some things.”
“Nick, what do you think of those murders we’ve been having in Houston?” Rubens knew he was taking a big chance, but sometimes an earthquake worked better than a tremor.
Nick’s face blanched. “I… I…” he stuttered, unable to gather his thoughts into perspective.
“Everyone’s talking about them,” Rubens pursued. When a raw nerve lay exposed, the best thing was to yank it. “Did you read in the paper how the killer is suspected of using a wire—probably a garrote of some sort?” Press the advantage, he thought, this is the opening you were looking for. “Last time you mentioned you took a garrote off the enemy in Vietnam and you beheaded—”
“Stop it!” Nick jumped out of the chair and reached across the desk for Rubens’s lapels. He jerked the doctor from his seat. Sweat beaded his forehead. “You stop it right now,” he said ominously. “I won’t take the rap for that. I won’t, do you hear me? Daley said it and now you’re saying it, and it’s a goddamn lie!”
“Easy, Nick…”
“Fuck easy! I’ll bust your goddamn face. You want to set me up for this—that’s what you want to do. You’re all against me. It’s because of Nam, that’s what you’re doing it for. You think I was a crazy killer over there and you want to pin this shit on me. Why don’t you pin it on Daley?”
He dropped Rubens back into his chair and stalked away from the desk.
“That’s right,” he shouted, going for the door. “Call up my goddamn brother and ask him where he’s got the garrote. Accuse him, why don’t you?”
“Nick, wait.” For the first time Rubens was worried that he had gone too far.
“Fuck off, shrink. I don’t need your pills, you prick.” Nick slammed the door behind him so hard the psychiatrist jumped.
He had gone too far. In Nick’s parlance, he’d fucked up, but good. Nick would not be back.
Ask him where he’s got the garrote. Nick had said.
Daley had the garrote from Vietnam, the one his brother used to behead three Vietnamese. Why had he kept it? What did it mean to him? Why was one brother accusing another of murder? Or had he?
Rubens reached into his bottom drawer and pulled out the bottle of bourbon. After several gulps his breathing slowed a bit. He poured some into a glass, then lifted the receiver of his phone and asked for a private line. Information gave him the home phone number of Detective Sergeant Sam Bartholomew, retired.
“Hello, Mr. Bartholomew? This is Dr. Sidney Rubens, V.A. hospital. Do you think I could meet you somewhere to talk about the murder case you’re involved in? Yes, I know you’re not the officer in charge of the investigation, but I’d like to have a word with you. Seven o’clock? Danny’s Bar on Holcombe? Fine, I’ll be there. You can’t miss me. I smoke cheap cigars.”