The Analyst (65 page)

Ricky eyed the shape. Come closer, he said to himself.

The man stepped forward, stumbling slightly on a chunk of what was once a roof beam, trying to walk through a room that he did not know.

He stopped and kicked at the detritus.

“Doctor Starks,” the man whispered, like an actor on a stage, a secret meant to be shared. “I know you’re here.”

The voice seemed like dull razors scraped across the night.

“Come on out, doctor. It’s time for an ending.”

Ricky did not move. Did not reply. He could feel every muscle he had tighten, pulled taut. But Ricky had not spent years behind the couch greeting the most provocative and demanding statements with silence to fall into the invitation that the shape urged.

“Where are you, doctor?” the man continued, turning back and forth. “You weren’t on the beach. So you should be here, because you are a man of your word. And this is where you said you would be.”

The man stepped forward, moving from shadow to shadow. He tripped again, banging a knee against what had once been a stairway riser. He cursed a second time, and straightened up. Ricky could see confusion and irritation, mingled with frustration, in the shrug of the man’s shoulders.

The man turned right and left one more time, then sighed.

When he spoke, it was loudly, with resignation. “If not here, doctor, then just where the hell are you?”

With a final shrug, the man finally turned his back to Ricky. And as the man turned, Ricky lifted his hand holding the semiautomatic pistol out from where it was concealed beneath the poncho, lifting it up as he’d been taught at the gun store in New Hampshire, holding it with both hands and bringing the barrel sight squarely in line with the middle of Rumplestiltskin’s back.

“I’m behind you,” Ricky said quietly.

Now time seemed truly to lose its grip on the world around Ricky. Seconds that would ordinarily have collected themselves in an orderly progression into minutes seemed to scatter like flower petals caught in a strong breeze. He remained frozen in position, weapon bearing directly on the killer’s back, his own breathing shallow and labored. He could feel surges of electricity racing through his veins and it took an immense amount of energy to keep himself calm.

The man in front of him stood immobile.

“I have a gun,” Ricky croaked, voice raw with tension. “It is pointing at your back. It is a.380 caliber semiautomatic pistol, loaded with hollow-point bullets, and if you move even in the slightest, I will fire. I will get off two, maybe three shots before you can turn and bring your own weapon to bear. At least one of these will find the target and will likely kill you. But you know that, don’t you, because you are familiar with the weapon, and the ammunition, and you know what they are capable of, so you have already made these calculations in your head, haven’t you?”

“As soon as I heard your voice, doctor,” Rumplestiltskin replied. His tone was unruffled and even. If he had been surprised, it was not readily apparent. Then he laughed out loud, adding quickly, “To think that I waltzed right into your aim. Ah, I suppose it was inevitable. You have played well, far better than I ever expected, and you have displayed resources I didn’t think you possessed. But our little game is now down to its final moves, isn’t it?” He paused, then said, “I think, Doctor Starks, you would be wise to shoot me now. Right in the back. You currently have the advantage. But every few seconds that pass, your position weakens. As a professional having dealt with these sorts of situations before, I would strongly recommend that you not waste the opportunity that you’ve created. Shoot me now, doctor. While you still have the chance.”

Ricky did not reply.

The man laughed. “Come on, doctor. Channel all that anger. Focus all your rage. You’ve got to bring these things together in your head, concentrate them into a single, centered entity, and then you can pull that trigger with nary a twitch of guilt. Do it now, doctor, because every second you let me live, is another second you may be taking off your own life.”

Ricky aimed straight ahead, but did not fire.

“Hold up your hands where I can see them,” he demanded instead.

Rumplestiltskin snorted another laugh. “What? Did you see that on a television show? Or in the movies? Is doesn’t work that way in real life.”

“Drop your weapon,” Ricky insisted.

The man shook his head slowly back and forth. “No. I won’t be doing that, either. It’s a cliché, anyway. You see, if I drop my weapon to the ground, then I give up any options I might have. Examine the situation, doctor: In my professional judgment, you’ve already blown your chance. I know what is in your head. I know that if you could fire, you would have done so already. But it is a little more difficult to murder a man, even someone who has given you plenty of reasons for death, than even you thought. Doctor, your world is one of fantasy death. All those murderous impulses that you’ve listened to for all those years, and helped defuse. Because, to you, they exist in the realm of fantasy. But here, tonight, there is nothing but reality surrounding us. And right now, you’re searching for the strength to kill. And, I’m wagering, not finding it rapidly. I, on the other hand, haven’t quite the same journey to travel before finding the same strength. I wouldn’t have worried even a bit about the moral ambiguity of shooting someone in the back. Or the front, for that matter. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, doctor. As long as the target is dead, who cares? So, I won’t be dropping my weapon to the ground, not now, not ever. Instead, it will stay in my right hand, cocked and ready. Will I spin around now? Take my best chance at this moment? Or shall I wait a bit?”

Ricky again remained silent, his mind churning.

“One thing you should know, doctor: If you want to be a successful killer, you need to not worry about your own sorry life.”

Ricky listened to the words that flitted through the darkness. A great unsettled sensation crept into his heart.

“I know you,” he said. “I know your voice.”

“Yes, you do,” Rumplestiltskin replied, with a slight mocking tone. “You’ve heard it often enough.”

Ricky felt suddenly as if he were standing on a sheet of slippery ice. Unsteadiness crept into his own voice. “Turn around,” he said.

Rumplestiltskin hesitated, shaking his head negatively. “You don’t want to ask me to do that. Because once I turn around almost every advantage you have will be erased. I will see your precise position, and, trust me on this one, doctor, once I have you located, it will only be a short time before I kill you.”

“I know you,” Ricky repeated, whispering.

“Is it that hard? The voice is the same. The posture. All the inflections and tones, nuances and mannerisms. You should recognize them all,” Rumplestiltskin said. “After all, we were in more or less the same physical relationship five times each week for nearly a year. And I wouldn’t have turned around then. And the psychoanalytic process, isn’t it more or less the same as this? The doctor with the knowledge, the power, dare I say it, the weapons, right behind the back of the poor patient, who can’t see what is going on, but only has his paltry and pathetic memories to work with. Have things changed all that much for us, doctor?”

Ricky’s throat was completely dry, but he still choked out the name.

“Zimmerman?”

Rumplestiltskin laughed again. “Zimmerman is very dead.”

“But you’re…”

“I’m the man you knew as Roger Zimmerman. With the invalided mother and the couldn’t-care-less brother, and the job that went nowhere, and all that anger that never seemed to get resolved in the slightest despite all the yakkety-yak that filled up your office to no great advantage. That’s the Zimmerman you knew, Doctor Starks. And that’s the Zimmerman that died.”

Ricky felt dizzy. He was grasping inwardly at lies.

“But the subway…”

“That is indeed where Zimmerman-the real Zimmerman, who was indeed quite suicidal-died. Nudged to his demise. A timely death.”

“But I don’t…”

Rumplestiltskin shrugged. “Doctor, a man comes to your office and says he is Roger Zimmerman and he is suffering from this and that and presents as a proper patient for analysis and has the financial wherewithal to pay your bills. Did you ever check to be certain that the man who arrived at your door was in truth the man he said he was?”

Ricky was silent.

“I didn’t think so. Because, had you done so, you would have found that the real Zimmerman was more or less as I presented him to you. The only difference was that he wasn’t the person coming to see you. I was. And when it came time for him to die, he’d already provided what I needed. I simply borrowed his life and death. Because, doctor, I had to know you. I had to see you and study you. And I had to do that in the best way possible. It took some time. But I learned what I needed. Slowly, to be sure, but, as you’ve learned, I can be a patient man.”

“Who are you?” Ricky asked.

“You will never know,” the man replied. “And, then again, you already know. You know of my past. You know of my upbringing. You know of my brother and sister. You know much about me, doctor. But you will never know who I truly am.”

“Why did you do this to me?” Ricky asked.

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, as if astonished at the simple audacity of the question. “You already know the answers. Is it so unreasonable to think that a child would see so much evil delivered to someone he loved, see them beaten down and thrown into despair so profound that they eventually had to murder themselves to find salvation, and when this child reached a position where he could exact a measure of revenge from all the people who failed to help out-yourself included, doctor-that he wouldn’t seize that chance?”

“Revenge solves nothing,” Ricky said.

“Spoken like a man who never indulged,” Rumplestiltskin snorted. “You are, of course, mistaken, doctor. Like you have been so often. Revenge serves to cleanse the heart and soul. It has been around since the first caveman climbed down out of a tree and bashed his brother over the head for some slight of honor. But, knowing all that you know, about what happened to my mother and her three children, why is it that you think we are not owed something in return from all the people who neglected us? Children who were innocent of any wrongdoings, but summarily dismissed and abandoned and left to die by so many folks who should have known better, had they the slightest bit of compassion or empathy or even just a drop or two of the milk of human kindness within their hearts. Are we not, having come through those fires, owed something in return? Really, that is by far the more provocative question.”

He paused, listening to Ricky’s silence in reply, then spoke coldly: “You see, doctor, the true question before us this night isn’t why would I pursue you to your death, it’s why wouldn’t I?”

Again, Ricky had no answer.

“Does it surprise you that I have become a killer?”

It did not, but Ricky didn’t speak this out loud.

The silence slipped around the two men for a moment, and then, just as it would in the sanctity of his office, with a couch and quiet, one man broke the eerie stillness with another question.

“Let me ask you this? Why is it that you don’t think you deserve to die?”

Ricky could sense the man’s smile on his face. It would be a soul-dead, cold smile.

“Everyone deserves to die for something. No one is actually innocent, doctor. Not you. Not me. No one.”

Rumplestiltskin seemed to shake slightly, at that moment. Ricky imagined he could see the man’s fingers curl around the grip of his weapon.

“I think, Doctor Starks,” the killer said, with a cold resolve that spoke of what was going through his imagination, “as interesting as this last session has been, and even if you think there is still much more to be said, the time for talk has passed by. It is now time for someone to die. The odds are it is about to be you.”

Ricky sighted down the pistol, taking a deep breath. He was wedged against the rubble, unable to move either to the right or to the left, his route behind him blocked as well, the entirety of his life lived and life to live dismissed in so many moments, all for a single act of neglect when he was young and should indeed have known better, but did not. In a world of options, he had none remaining. He squeezed back on the pistol trigger, mustering strength and channeling will.

“You forget something,” he said slowly. Coldly. “Doctor Starks has already died.”

Then he fired.

It was as if the man responded to the slightest change in the inflection in Ricky’s voice, recognized at the first harsh tone of the first word, and training and understanding of the situation took over, so that his actions were incisive and immediate and taken without hesitation. As Ricky pulled the trigger, Rumplestiltskin dropped obliquely, spinning as he did, so that Ricky’s first shot aimed at the direct center of his back, instead tore savagely through the killer’s shoulder blade and Ricky’s second shot sliced through the collected muscles of his right arm, making a ripping sound through the air, thudding as it hit flesh, and cracking as it pulverized bone.

Ricky fired a third time, but this time wildly, the bullet like a siren, disappearing into the darkness.

Rumplestiltskin twisted around, immediately gasping with pain, a surge of adrenaline overcoming the force of the blows that had struck him, trying to lift his own weapon with his instantly mangled arm. He grasped at the weapon with his left hand, trying to steady it as he staggered back, balance precarious. Ricky froze, watching the barrel of the automatic pistol rise, like a cobra’s head, darting back and forth, its single eye seeking him out, the man holding it, tottering, as if on an a steep cliffside edge of loose stones.

The roar of the pistol was dreamlike, as if it were happening to someone else, someone far away and not connected to him. But the shriek of the bullet scoring the air above his head was real enough, and it catapulted Ricky back to action. A second shot cracked the air, and he could feel the hot wind of the bullet pass through the shapeless form of the poncho hanging from his shoulders. Ricky sucked in air, tasting the cordite and smoke, and again sighted down the barrel of his gun, fighting the electric sweep of combat shock that threatened to turn his hands palsied, and brought the barrel to bear on Rumplestiltskin’s face as the killer crumpled to the earth in front of him.