Black House

"Then you should have no problems with letting me see her in private for half an hour."

Dr. Spiegleman’s smile is gone as soon as it appears. "My patient and her husband have demonstrated their trust in you, Lieutenant Sawyer, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not I can trust you."

"Trust me to do what?"

"A number of things. Primarily, to act in the best interest of my patient. To refrain from unduly distressing her, also from giving her false hopes. My patient has developed a number of delusions centered on the existence of another world somehow contiguous to ours. She thinks her son is being held captive in this other world. I must tell you, Lieutenant, that both my patient and her husband believe you are familiar with this fantasy-world — that is, my patient accepts this belief wholly, and her husband accepts it only provisionally, on the grounds that it comforts his wife."

"I understand that." There is only one thing Jack can tell the doctor now, and he says it. "And what you should understand is that in all of my conversations with the Marshalls, I have been acting in my unofficial capacity as a consultant to the French Landing Police Department and its chief, Dale Gilbertson."

"Your unofficial capacity."

"Chief Gilbertson has been asking me to advise him on his conduct of the Fisherman investigation, and two days ago, after the disappearance of Tyler Marshall, I finally agreed to do what I could. I have no official status whatsoever. I’m just giving the chief and his officers the benefit of my experience."

"Let me get this straight, Lieutenant. You have been misleading the Marshalls as to your familiarity with Mrs. Marshall’s delusional fantasy-world?"

"I’ll answer you this way, Doctor. We know from the tape that the Fisherman really is holding Tyler Marshall captive. We could say that he is no longer in this world, but in the Fisherman’s."

Dr. Spiegleman raises his eyebrows.

"Do you think this monster inhabits the same universe that we do?" asks Jack. "I don’t, and neither do you. The Fisherman lives in a world all his own, one that operates according to fantastically detailed rules he has made up or invented over the years. With all due respect, my experience has made me far more familiar with structures like this than the Marshalls, the police, and, unless you have done a great deal of work with psychopathic criminals, even you. I’m sorry if that sounds arrogant, because I don’t mean it that way."

"You’re talking about profiling? Something like that?"

"Years ago, I was invited into a special VICAP profiling unit run by the FBI, and I learned a lot there, but what I’m talking about now goes beyond profiling." And that’s the understatement of the year, Jack says to himself. Now it’s in your court, Doctor.

Spiegleman nods, slowly. The distant glow flashes in the lenses of his glasses. "I think I see, yes." He ponders. He sighs, crosses his arms over his chest, and ponders some more. Then he raises his eyes to Jack’s. "All right. I’ll let you see her. Alone. In my office. For thirty minutes. I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of advanced investigative procedure."

"Thank you," Jack says. "This will be extremely helpful, I promise you."

"I have been a psychiatrist too long to believe in promises like that, Lieutenant Sawyer, but I hope you succeed in rescuing Tyler Marshall. Let me take you to my office. You can wait there while I get my patient and bring her there by another hallway. It’s a little quicker."

Dr. Spiegleman marches to the end of the dark corridor and turns left, then left again, pulls a fat ball of keys from his pocket, and opens an unmarked door. Jack follows him into a room that looks as though it had been created by combining two small offices into one. Half of the room is taken up by a long wooden desk, a chair, a glass-topped coffee table stacked with journals, and filing cabinets; the other half is dominated by a couch and the leather recliner placed at its head. Georgia O’Keeffe posters decorate the walls. Behind the desk stands a door Jack assumes opens into a small closet; the door directly opposite, behind the recliner and at the midpoint between the two halves of the office, looks as though it leads into an adjoining room.

"As you see," Dr. Spiegleman says, "I use this space as both an office and a supplementary consulting room. Most of my patients come in through the waiting room, and I’ll bring Mrs. Marshall in that way. Give me two or three minutes."

Jack thanks him, and the doctor hurries out through the door to the waiting room.

In the little closet, Wendell Green slides his cassette recorder from the pocket of his jacket and presses both it and his ear to the door. His thumb rests on the RECORD button, and his heart is racing. Once again, western Wisconsin’s most distinguished journalist is doing his duty for the man in the street. Too bad it’s so blasted dark in that closet, but being stuffed into a black hole is not the first sacrifice Wendell has made for his sacred calling; besides, all he really needs to see is the little red light on his tape recorder.

Then, a surprise: although Doctor Spiegleman has left the room, here is his voice, asking for Lieutenant Sawyer. How did that Freudian quack get back in without opening or closing a door, and what happened to Judy Marshall?

Lieutenant Sawyer, I must speak to you. Pick up the receiver. You have a call, and it sounds urgent.

Of course — he is on the intercom. Who can be calling Jack Sawyer, and why the urgency? Wendell hopes that Golden Boy will push the telephone’s SPEAKER button, but alas Golden Boy does not, and Wendell must be content with hearing only one side of the conversation.

"A call?" Jack says. "Who’s it from?"