The Analyst (64 page)

When he came out from beneath the trees, he saw what he’d hoped for: the still-charred remains of his home. Even with the growing season upon the land, the earth was still blackened for yards around the gaunt skeleton of the old farmhouse.

Ricky walked up to where the front door had once stood, passing through the weeds of what had once been his garden. He stepped inside, moving slowly midst the ruins of the home. Even after a year, he could still smell the gasoline and burnt wood, but then, realized that was nothing more than his mind playing tricks on him. There was a roll of thunder in the distance, but he ignored it, and maneuvered as best he could through the spaces, allowing his memory to fill in walls and furniture, artwork and carpets. And when all those recollections had built his old home up around him, he allowed his memory to paint in moments with his wife, long before she sickened, and before she was robbed of strength, vitality, and finally life, by disease. It was both pleasant and eerie for Ricky, as he wandered through the wreckage. It was, in an odd way, both a return and a departure, and he felt a little as if he was embarking that night upon something that would take him somewhere far different, and that finally, he was able to say goodbye to everything that had been Dr. Frederick Starks, and ready himself to greet whatever person emerged from the night that was falling swiftly around him.

The spot he’d hoped to find was waiting for him, directly to the side of the center chimney that had graced the fireplace in the living room. A slab of ceiling and thick wooden beams had tumbled to the side, making a sort of decrepit lean-to, almost a cave. Ricky donned the poncho, seated the bug hat on his head, and removed the flashlight and semiautomatic pistol from his backpack. Then he crawled back into the darkness of the wreckage, concealed himself, and waited for night, the approaching thunderstorm, and a killer to arrive.

He saw some humor in it: What had he done? He had behaved like a psychoanalyst. He had provoked electric, runaway emotions in the person he wanted to see. Even the psychopath was vulnerable, Ricky thought, to his own desires. And now, just as he had for so many years of his own analytic practice, he was waiting for this last patient to come through the door, bearing with him all the anger, hatred, and fury, all directed at Ricky the therapist.

He fingered the trigger guard on his weapon and clicked off the safety. This session, however, wasn’t intended to be quite so benign.

He leaned back and measured every sound, and memorized every shadow as they lengthened into darkness around him. Vision was going to be a problem that night. The moon would be obscured by clouds. The ambient light from other homes and distant Provincetown, would fade beneath the coming rain. What Ricky expected to rely upon was both certainty and uncertainty: The ground where he’d selected to wait was the most familiar tract in his life. This would be an advantage. And, more important, he was relying upon Rumplestiltskin’s uncertainty. He won’t know precisely where Ricky is. He is a man accustomed to controlling the environment in which he operates, and this, ultimately, Ricky hoped, was the least-controlled situation he could be placed in. A world the killer was unfamiliar with. A good place to wait for him that night.

Ricky was supremely confident that the killer would arrive, and soon enough, searching for him. As the man drove east from New York, he will understand that there were really only two potential locations for Ricky’s presence. The beach where he’d faked drowning, and the home he’d burned down. He will come to these two spots, hunting, because despite what he might have learned from the clerk at the
Village Voice
, he will not really believe that there was any business other than the business of dying planned for the trip to the Cape. He will know that everything else was merely illusion, and that the real game was simply about one set of memories facing off against the other set.

The rain came in spurts throughout the first part of the night, falling heavily, with cracks of thunder and lightning strikes out over the ocean for the initial hours of his wait, before tapering off into a steady irritating drizzle. As the storm passed overhead, the temperature dropped a half-dozen or more degrees, giving the darkness a chill that seemed perversely out of place. There had been some wind with the line of thunderstorms, strong currents that tugged at the edges of his poncho, and made the rubble and charred remains around him creak, as if they, too, had unsettled business that night. Ricky remained hidden, like a hunter in a blind, waiting for the quarry to come into sight. He thought of all the hours he had spent silently seated behind the heads of patients on his couch, barely moving, rarely speaking, and thought it funny that all that time spent in contemplation had prepared him well for the wait that night.

He moved only occasionally, and then just to stretch and flex his muscles enough so that they wouldn’t seize up with disuse but be available to him when needed. Mostly, he leaned back, the mosquito netting about his head, the poncho spread over his body, more a shapeless lump than human. From where he was concealed, he could still see across the open field that had welcomed visitors to his home, especially when the sky was streaked by bolts of electricity. He was situated in a position that allowed him to spot slices of headlights penetrating the stands of trees out by the main road, and he found that he could hear the car engines above the thick folds of black darkness.

He had only one fear: that Rumplestiltskin would find more patience than he had.

Ricky doubted this, but wasn’t completely certain. After all, the child had harbored so much hatred for years, and waited so long before springing his traps, it was possible that now, in this last stage, he might hesitate, and simply take up a position in the tree line and do more or less what Ricky was doing, which was waiting for some telltale motion before closing in. This was the gamble that Ricky was taking that night. But he thought his bet was well hedged. Everything he’d done was designed to provoke Mr. R. Anger, fear, and threats demand responses. A professional killer was a man of action. An analyst was not. Ricky believed that he had created a situation where his own strengths compensated for those of his adversary. His own training countered the killer’s training. He will move first, Ricky insisted. Everything you know about behavior tells you this is true. In the game of memory and death that the two men were locked in, Ricky held the higher ground. He was fighting on land he knew.

It was, he thought, the best he could do.

By ten p.m. the world around him had funneled itself into a damp, musty arena of blackness. He found his senses heightened, his mind alert to all the nuances of the night. He hadn’t heard a car, or spotted distant headlights in over an hour, and the rain seemed to have driven all the nocturnal beasts into their dens, so not even the scratching sound of an opossum or skunk searching for something to eat penetrated the air about him. It was, he thought, right at the moment when his heart and his determination should fail him, that doubt should creep into his imagination, trying to persuade him that he was waiting foolishly for someone who would not arrive. He mocked this sensation within him, insisting that the only thing he knew for certain was that Rumplestiltskin was close, and would be closer still, if only he persevered and waited. He wished that he’d had the sense to bring a bottle of water, or a thermos of coffee, but he hadn’t. It is hard to plot murder, he thought, and remember the mundane at the same time.

He wiggled his fingers occasionally, and silently drummed his index finger along the side of the trigger guard. Once he was startled by a bat swooping through the air above him; another time a pair of deer emerged for a second or two from the woods. He could make out only the vaguest elements of their shapes, until they spooked and turned white tails and bounded away with unmistakable ballet leaps.

Ricky continued to wait. The assassin was likely a man accustomed to the night, and comfortable in it, Ricky thought. Daytime compromises much for a killer. It gives him vision, but makes him recognizable, as well. He thought: I know you, Mr. R. You will want to end all this in the dark. You will be here soon enough.

Some thirty minutes after the last car’s headlights had swooped past in the distance, shrouded by the trees, a cone of light heading steadily away, Ricky spotted another car approach on the roadway. This one traveled a little slower, almost hesitant. Just the slightest element of indecision in the speed it traveled.

The glow paused near the dirt road entrance to his property, then sped up, and disappeared around a corner some ways away.

Ricky shrank back, burrowing deeper into the hole that concealed him.

Someone found what they were searching for, he thought, but did not want to display the discovery.

He continued to wait. Twenty more minutes passed in utter darkness, but Ricky now was curled like a snake, waiting. The glow of his wristwatch helped him to measure what was happening just beyond what little sight he had. Five minutes, time enough to find a spot where he could leave the car unseen. Ten minutes, time to walk back to the entranceway to Ricky’s property. Another five minutes to slide along quietly, beneath the canopy of branches. Now, he’s in the last line of trees, Ricky thought. Surveying the ruin of the house from a safe distance. He drew back into his lair, pulling his feet under the edge of the poncho.

Ricky looped tendrils of patience around his heart. He could feel adrenaline pumping wildly through his ears, and his pulse racing like an athlete’s, but he calmed himself by silently reciting passages from literature to himself. Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” A line from Camus: “Mother died today, or maybe it was yesterday.” This recollection made him smile through the terror that lurked within him. An appropriate passage, he thought. His eyes darted back and forth, searching the darkness. It was a little like opening one’s eyes underwater. Shapes were in motion, but not recognizable. Still, he waited, because he knew that his only chance was to see before he was seen.

The drizzle had finally stopped, leaving the world slick and glistening. The chill that had first accompanied the thunderstorms fled, and Ricky could feel a thick, humid warmth seize hold of the world around him. He was breathing slowly, afraid that the asthmatic raspiness in every breath could be heard for miles. He glanced at the sky, and saw the outline of a cloud, showing up billowing gray against the black, scudding across the air, almost as if it was being rowed by some unseen oarsman. A little bit of moonlight slid into a hole carved by the cloud’s passing, dropping like a shaft through the night. Ricky pulled his eyes from right to left, and saw a shape step away from the trees.

Ricky fixed on the figure, who stood outlined for just an instant by the wan light, more a shape of darkness that was colored a richer black than the night surrounding them. In that time, he saw the person lift something to his eyes, and then slowly pivot, like a lookout high on a boat’s tower, searching for icebergs in the waters ahead.

Ricky shrank back farther, pressing himself back against the ruins. He bit down hard on his lip, for he knew immediately what he was facing: a man with night vision binoculars.

He froze in position, realizing that the outlandish costume of poncho and bug hat was his greatest defense. Amid the charred slabs of wood and piles of burned rubble, he would appear as just another shape of twisted wreckage. Like a chameleon who can change his color depending on the shade of leaf that it occupies, Ricky remained in position, hoping that there was nothing outward that presented even the smallest suggestion of humanity.

The shape moved subtly.

Ricky caught his breath. He did not know whether he’d been spotted.

It took every bit of mental energy he could collect to maintain his position. Panic lapped at the edges of his imagination screaming at him to run while he still had a chance. But he replied inwardly that his only chance lay in doing what he was doing. After so much that had happened, he had to bring the man moving through the darkness toward him within arm’s reach. The dark shape moved obliquely across Ricky’s field of vision. Moving cautiously, slowly, but not fearfully, slightly crouched over, presenting little profile, an experienced predator.

Ricky let out a long slow whistle of air. He did not see me.

The shape reached the onetime garden, and Ricky watched the man hesitate. He could see that he wore some cover over his head and face, matching his dark clothing. The shape seemed far more a part of the night than a person. Again something was lifted up, and again Ricky burned with tension as the night vision spyglasses swept over the wreckage of the place where he’d once enjoyed happiness. But again, the poncho hid his form, made him into a piece of debris, and the man hesitated, as if frustrated. He could see the hand holding the night vision glasses drop to his side, as if dismissing the surroundings.

The shape stepped forward more aggressively, standing now in what was once the doorway, searching the ruin. Then he stepped forward, stumbling slightly, and Ricky heard a muffled curse.

He knows I should be here, Ricky thought. But now he has doubts.

Ricky gritted his teeth together. He could feel a cold, murderous shaft within himself. He thought: Now you are unsure. It is not what you expected. And now you are doubting yourself. Doubt, frustration, and all the built-up anger you have for failing to kill me once when I made it so easy for you. This is a dangerous combination, because it is forcing you to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. You are shedding precautions with every stride and uncertainty is in your every step, and now, suddenly, you are playing the game on my field. Because Dr. Starks knows you, now, and knows everything that is in your head, because everything you are feeling, all that indecision and confusion, is the currency of his life, not yours. You are a killer whose target isn’t clear, and all because of the situation I’ve staged.