Wallflower (16 page)

F
ran Dunning phoned Janek two days after their walk.

"
You said I should call you if I remembered anything."

Good girl!
"
What do you remember?"

"Something Jess said at the Chinese restaurant. It's probably not important, but I thought I should tell you anyway. She said she might have to stop seeing her shrink."

Interesting.
"
Did she say why?"

"
No. But I'm sure the reason wasn't financial because she once told me her stepfather was paying the fees. I wouldn't remember her mentioning it except the week before she'd been very positive about her therapist."

"
Try and recall her exact words, Fran? Did she say she might have to stop or that she wanted to quit?"

"
I don't remember exactly. But I had the feeling that she was disgusted about something, that whatever it was, it was gnawing at her and that if she stopped seeing her therapist, it would be at her initiative." Fran paused.
"
I could be wrong, Lieutenant, but that's what I thought at the time."

Janek thanked Fran and reminded her to call him again if she remembered anything more. When he put down the phone, he thought about what she'd said. Jess's comment could have been a casual remark, but still he was glad he knew about it. He'd been looking for an excuse to see Dr. Archer again. This time, he resolved, he would limit the discussion to her former patient.

T
he therapist had set their appointment for 5:00 P.M
.
As before, she appeared at the door of her waiting room precisely on the hour.

"
Nice to see you again, Lieutenant. You have fifty minutes," she announced with a sympathetic smile.

As Janek followed her into the consulting room, he noticed that her curly red hair was dyed.

"
Now, how may I help you?" Dr. Archer began smiling again after they were seated in opposing chairs.

"Jess tried to get in touch with me two days before she was killed. Any idea why?"

Archer shook her head.
"
I have no idea, and I can't imagine why you'd ask me that."

"
Her father and I were partners once. Laura Dorance thinks Jess might have wanted to ask me about him. Did she talk about him much in here?"

The psychologist looked pained.
"
As I told you before, Lieutenant, even though Jessica has passed away, I don't feel I can properly discuss her therapy."

"
Look, Dr. Archer, I'm conducting a criminal investigation. Right now I need your help. If you refuse to give it to me, then I'm faced with a problem. I can write you off as an unhelpful witness or I can seek a court order to compel you to respond." The therapist was staring at him. Janek smiled to soften his threat.
"
I certainly hope that won't be necessary."

Dr. Archer sat very still. The office was silent except for the muted sound of classical music issuing from the waiting-room radio. After waiting futilely for her to speak, Janek decided to take her silence as acquiescence.

"Laura tells me Jess began asking questions about her dad about the time she started seeing you. Laura assumed his name came up in therapy."

"His name did come up," Dr. Archer affirmed.

"Just his name? Or his character?"

The therapist tightened her lips.
"
I am truly mystified," she said.
"
W
hy are you asking me about this?"

"
Please, Dr. Archer, I'm not your patient. I'm here to ask questions, not answer them."

She turned away, irritated.
"
And you expect me to respond without the right to ask questions of my own—is that how it goes, Lieutenant?"

Janek turned conciliatory.
"
Can't we try and work this out?"

Archer turned back to him, then folded her hands neatly on her lap.
"
I shall try to help you as best I can," she whispered, then clamped her mouth shut.

He found the next half hour trying. Archer kept her word, answered all his questions clearly, sometimes even exhaustively. But she made no effort to be pleasant. Rather, she replied to him in terse sentences while gazing at him as though she regarded him as a torturer.

Tim Foy: Yes, he was discussed; in therapy a patient's parents always are. Jessica had described watching her father get into his car and then seeing it explode. Her father's death had been the traumatic event of her early years, yet her long-term response to it had been surprisingly positive. Seeing him die had hardened her will. She was determined never to become a victim. She developed an aggressive personality that she channeled healthily into sports. All of that was entirely to her credit.

Bad dreams: Yes, Jessica had been having them lately. Nothing unusual about that. A patient often feels a requirement to bring dream material to her analyst, especially in the early stages of therapy. The content of her dreams varied, but they were typical college-age stress fantasies: facing an exam while blacking out all knowledge of the subject; finding herself naked in a room in which everyone else is dressed; letting her teammates down by stumbling during a fencing match and thus losing a tournament to a rival school.

Sex: Jessica had the normal longings of a woman her age with no indications of lesbianism beyond normal parameters. Again much to her credit, her initial exhilaration at the anonymous sex to which Greg Gale had introduced her gave way fairly quickly to feelings of inner emptiness and ennui.

The topless fencing episode: That could be viewed in a sexual context, although Dr. Archer saw it somewhat differently. Jessica had brought it up at their first session. It was her
"
presenting symptom." She was disturbed about it. She felt that by staging the scene with the other girl, a British fencer she had befriended at the Ruspoli School in Italy, she had done something forbidden, possibly even evil.

"
The imagery of the Bayard painting embedded itself in Jessica's mind," Archer explained. "She was fascinated by the semi-nudity of it, the notion of women exposing their bared flesh to a steel sword. She equated it with the stripped-down costuming of male boxers. To fight bare meant to duel seriously, even to the death. We spent several sessions working through her troubled feelings about it, especially her guilt over having talked the English girl into trying it. In my analysis I tried to focus on the underlying meaning of the scene. What we came up with (and I emphasize we did this together) was that Jessica's strong attraction to fencing and to martial arts was based on her romantic notion of heroism. I called it the gladiator's syndrome, the idea that the highest, most noble way of life is the way of the warrior who regularly offers his body to injury or death for the delectation of the public. The gladiator's sacrifice is for the benefit of those who watch him. By engaging in dangerous fights, he fulfills the innermost needs of his audience, channeling its bloodlust into sport, stylizing its collective aggression into art. At the same time he, or she, in the case of Jessica, surrounds herself with an aura of glamour. It's close to the Japanese samurai ideal, but with the added component of exhibitionism. It's a hard, short life of intense experience—perilous, painful, and, ultimately, self-sacrificial."

It was a brilliant analysis, and Janek was dazzled by it. He was also impressed at the way Archer seemed to come alive. But the change in her demeanor made him uneasy. The voice she used to explain the fencing episode was different from her voice when answering his other queries. It was more vital, authoritative, indicative of an inner power and confidence that didn't fit with her earlier pettiness. Now he felt he was listening to another person altogether, a strong, dynamic temperament hiding behind a bland, nondescript façade. But even before, he realized, Archer's eyes had betrayed her. Her relentless gaze should have warned him he was dealing with an extraordinary individual, far more passionate, forceful, and intelligent than her insipid professional manner and constricted body language would suggest.

But then another transformation took place, which Janek found equally surprising. When he mentioned the Polaroids he'd found in Jess's closet, he saw an immediate pinching up of the eyes, followed by a grimace of anger. The reaction was fleeting, covered up almost instantly by a patient nodding of the head. But Janek was certain about what he'd seen: Jess had not told Archer about the pictures, and for that the therapist now felt betrayed.

"
I take it you didn't know about them," he asked.

Archer shrugged the omission off.
"
A patient will almost always hold something back." Her tone connoted superior wisdom.
"
A little shield against the therapist, a small corner of privacy to be preserved."

"
Do the photographs surprise you?"

"
Not the photographs so much as the way Jessica hid them. I have to admit that surprises me a bit."

"
Why?"

Archer raised an eyebrow.
"
You found them, didn't you?"

Janek squinted.
"
You're not suggesting she expected me to search her room?"

"
Of course not, Lieutenant. But she didn't hide them all that well. A good hiding place is an irrevocable hiding place, one that stays secret even after the hider's death."

"
So what does that tell you?"

When Archer began to speak, Janek recognized the same authoritative voice she'd used while analyzing the fencing incident.

"
It tells me Jessica wasn't all that ashamed about partaking in the scene. I know from what she told me how difficult it was for her to set it up. I know she proposed the idea to a teammate here in New York and, to her embarrassment, was rebuffed. Still, she needed a confederate, in this case the English girl, and so she took
a chance. By merely broaching such a bizarre idea, she risked exposing herself to the other girl's ridicule."

"But this time the other girl went along."

"
She did. And I think that that, ultimately, is what got Jessica so upset. Not that the English girl went along, but the
way
she went along, as if she took it as a seduction on Jessica's part and regarded it as a forbidden act."

"
But there's still something I don't understand, Doctor. You say Jess was troubled by the incident. If she was, why didn't she destroy the photographs?"

Archer paused to reflect. "Difficult to say. Perhaps for the same reason people often hesitate to destroy documentation even when it contains material that's painful for them to see or read. Jessica staged the duel. She had a large emotional investment in it. To destroy the photographs of the scene she'd worked so hard to set up would be to deny herself any chance to contemplate it in the future and perhaps even to revel in what she'd done."

Janek smiled.
"
You're a fascinating woman, Doctor. It's very interesting to talk to you."

The therapist smiled demurely, then glanced at her watch. Which brings us," she said,
"
to the end of the session. Your fifty minutes are nearly up."

"A final question." Archer motioned for Janek to ask it.
"
I have it from one of Jess's closest friends, who spoke to her just days before she died, that she was thinking about quitting therapy."

"
And you want to know what I think about that?" Archer looked past him toward the opposite wall.
"
In this business we're used to sudden changes in a patient's feelings. In the therapeutic relationship the therapist often comes to represent important figures in the patient's life—parent, sibling, lover—toward whom the patient then acts out. So, you see, when a patient contemplates leaving her therapist, it's only a natural by-product of the process."

"
So I shouldn't make too much of it?"

"
You may make of it whatever you like," the psychologist replied, rising.

On their way to the door she turned to him again. "Have you given any thought to what I said last time?"

Janek nodded. "I thought about it."

"And dismissed it out of hand?"

"Not at all. But after I thought about it awhile, I decided you were wrong."

Archer grinned.
"
You work in a most dangerous and stressful field, Lieutenant. There's bound to be some distortion in your view of things."

Janek smiled.
"
Think I could use some therapy, Doctor?"

Her grin widened.
"
We can all use therapy, Lieutenant. In your case I'd say it certainly wouldn't hurt."