Alienist

by Laurence M. Janifer

  “Her patients adore her,” he said. “Adored her. God damn it, Knave, adored her.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You’ve lost her. You’d be expected to feel something.”

  “Oh, I suppose,” France said. “It’s—it’s hard, Knave. She used to—to—to tell me how to be. What to do. In—difficult situations. I’d go to her for advice, I really would; you wouldn’t think she knew enough, but she did. Now—now she’s left me to do it for myself.”

  I nodded. “Her patients adored her,” I said. “All of them?”

  His eyes shut and opened. “That couldn’t be expected. Illness—trouble, trouble like that—makes people irritable. It’s only natural. She had some—they’d yell at her, they’d say all kinds of things.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t serious.”

  “Tell me about some of them,” I said, and he did, and he was right; it wasn’t serious, or it didn’t look serious. I’d check out any that looked even faintly promising, but there didn’t seem to be the Hell of a lot there.

  “A therapist, maybe?” I said.

  “Now, with therapists,” he said, and he smiled. It was a gentle, faraway smile. “With therapists, you really do have it: they adored her. Some neuropsychologists get very tough with therapists. They ask for the Moon, and they expect to get it. Or—what’s worse—they draw up a plan of treatment, walk away and never check back at all. The plan’s all they contribute, and if it isn’t followed, or if there are changes—not their worry.”

  “And Cornelia?”

  “She did it right, Knave,” he said. “She really did. She gave orders where she had to—she made them suggestions where suggestions would work better, you know—she followed up, she wasn’t too tough, and she didn’t just say six words and forget about the patient. She did it right.”

  “The therapists thought so?” I said.

  “The therapists adored her,” he said. “God damn it, people liked her. I wished—I used to wish—I had her trick with people. Even the patients who yelled at her. Knave, nobody could have wanted to kill her. Nobody.”

  But somebody had.

  What the Hell, I told myself when I went away—maybe Folla.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  There were sixty things to do, of course—check on the patients France had mentioned, do a little more digging on the life of Cornelia Rasczak, talk to Euglane about how France was bearing up, and whether, just possibly, there was anything in his belief about alien examiners that linked up with Folla, or Cornelia, or anything else at all.

  I did none of them. Instead, I went home and called the Master—and was told by a strange voice that he was occupied. Deep female voice: friend, secretary, light-and-love? Better, perhaps, not to ask. I said it would wait, I’d phone again, and checked my watch.

  Five-forty P. M.—seventeen-forty, if you insist. I reached for the phone, intending to call Gjenda and see whether I could patch up the relationship that had looked so promising before everything had started to happen—and found myself punching in Mirella’s code instead.

  The thing blipped twice, and an irritated voice said: “What? I am off duty, damn it.”

  “Mirella, it’s me,” I said. “Knave.”

  The voice changed timbre instantly. In the sweetest imaginable tones, the tones of a contralto assuring Rhadames that she, not that pitiful slave Aida, was his only true love, she said: “Oh. Gerald. How are you?”

  “Confused,” I said. “Can we possibly meet somewhere?”

  The voice stayed honey-sweet. Honey with added sugar. “Why, Gerald,” she said, “you’re rushing me.”

  I took a deep breath. “That may happen,” I said. “Why rule it out? Why rule anything out? But, for a change, this is professional.”

  “Now look,” she said, and the honey had gone. “I said I didn’t change my mind. You are not going to talk me into—”

  “I don’t want to talk you into anything,” I said. “I want you to talk to me. I’ve been checking the police files—but there are some questions I can’t ask just anybody.”

  Honey. “And I am not just anybody, Gerald?”

  “You’re somebody I know,” I said, “and somebody I think I can trust to be honest.”

  “Dinner,” she said after a second. Not a honeyed tone: Mirella Normal. “And we talk after dinner. Till then we are social.”

  I grinned at the phone. “Perfect,” I said. “Murray’s—”

  “There’s kind of an antique place I like,” she said. “Even the name is, like, historical. We could try that, it’s maybe a little quieter than Murray’s Basement.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Forty Street and Josephson Road,” she said. “I could meet you there, okay?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Seven-thirty?”

  “Seven-thirty?” she said. “In the morning?”

  I sighed. “Make it nineteen-thirty.”

  She agreed. “You can’t miss it,” she said. “It’s called the European Union.”

  Mirella ordered, so help me, a crocodile filet. I’d had no idea there were crocodiles on Ravenal, let alone crocodiles being raised for food—Hell, I’d had no idea crocodiles were food. She gave me a very toothy smile.

  “They want to eat me,” she said, “I can eat them. Why not? They’re pretty good, you should try one.”

  Why not, indeed? But I settled for what the place called rissoles and I, out of a Classical background, called burgers. Made from nice, peaceful beef animals, who would never have dreamed of wanting to eat me.

  The place was a nice, somewhat claustrophobic little room, crammed with tables and eaters, but surprisingly quiet—good sound management, I supposed. It was dimly lit, which many find romantic and I find bothersome; I have a fondness for being able to see what the Hell I’m eating. But there was decent music going, from somewhere—a selection of Austrian folk songs, of all things, sung by a gentle tenor voice accompanied by a wind trio.

  “Every night a different country, the music,” Mirella said. “Countries in Europe. That’s a continent back on Earth, or something.”

  “Well, part of a continent,” I said. “I’d love to stop in, the night they do Switzerland.”

  “Must be some Switzerland songs someplace,” Mirella said.

  “Yodels, I think,” I said, and we discussed music for a while, and other things for a while, and when we were finishing up—Mirella with something-or-other flambe, and me with a small selection of fairly decent cheeses—she said:

  “All right, so you have something on your mind, so get it off.”

  I cut a bite of cheese—something I remembered from my last visit to Ravenal, a thing called City Four Smoked. It’s not bad, and ought to be better known off-planet. “Harris France,” I said. “I’ve talked with him, and I’ve dug up the public facts, and some of the private ones. But you know more about him than I do.”

  “He’s a nut,” Mirella said flatly. “People who kill people are nuts.”

  “Mirella—”

  “Maybe they do it for money,” she said. “Maybe for love, or whatever. Maybe for jealousy, which is a nut thing all by itself. But there are things you do, and there are things you do not do. Killing somebody is a thing you do not do. You do it, who cares what the reason is? You are nuts.”

  “Well,” I said, and watched her stoke her furnace with a spoonful of flambe, which dripped slightly, “there’s always self defense.”

  She swallowed, and sighed. Deeply. “I don’t mean self defense,” she said, “and I don’t mean soldiers. Be serious. Killing people is nuts.”

  “Basic sanitation?” I said.

  “Somebody needs being put away, you put him away. Maybe in the Colony.” The Colony is Ravenal’s version of an ancient idea—Devil’s Island. “Maybe in a nut hatchery. You do not kill him.”

  It’s true that Ravenal has no death penalty, and they get a lot of work out of the Colony population. “Well—”

  “It is A, B and C,” Mirella said. “You k
ill people—and I am not talking self defense, or soldiers either, there are special cases for everything—you are taking something nobody can give. Money people can make. Life you get once.”

  It’s not a discussion that has any end to it, and never has been. “About Harris France,” I said. “Before he was a nut—or before you knew he was a nut—what was he like?”

  “He was away up there,” Mirella said. “With the big shots. Me, I walk post in an empty house. Do I know what a big shot is like?”

  “There must have been talk,” I said. “Gossip. Stories. There always is.”

  She spooned up the last of the flambe. “Oh,” she said. “Stories. You want to go around believing this kind of thing? I mean, people say anything.”

  “They say what they feel, mostly,” I said. “The kind of stories that get told about a commander tell you something about what he’s like on the job. They fit what people see.”

  She nodded. “Could be,” she said. “About Harris France—I think back and the stories were, he is a tough kind of a guy. He says six words, he does not say seven. He wants it done, he wants all of it done, not just the piece that shows.”

  “Demanding?”

  She nodded. “You could say. But not a screamer, you know? A fair guy. You screwed up, you had reasons, he might understand the reasons.” She thought for a second. “He might not, too. Guy lost a set of prints once.”

  “Well,” I said, “you can always get another copy out of file.”

  Mirella laughed. “No—look, this was file,” she said. “People born here, like me, we get printed automatic, when we’re maybe six months old. Something like that. But people come here, we just do not print everybody comes in.”

  “Customs has enough to do as it is,” I said, with some feeling.

  “So we had a case—a murder case, what else? We would go print a tourist for traffic tickets?” Mirella said. “There were two tourists might be involved, it looked like. Never mind details, but we had to get prints. And the guy got one set, he lost the things.” She shook her head in wonder. “I mean, on the way back to the station with the set—the tourist was printed in her hotel, we make it easy for them, right?—on the way back to the station he suddenly did not have the file.”

  I blinked. “What the Hell happened?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows?” she said. “Did the guy just drop it on the street, and a sweeper got it before anybody really noticed? Did he lose it some way in the car? I got a question for you, and it was the question was in France’s head, I guarantee you: did he ever take the prints at all?”

  “You think maybe she bribed him to forget about taking them, and claim they were lost?” I said. “But somebody would go out and get her prints again, wouldn’t they?”

  “Maybe,” Mirella said. “And maybe she was buying time. And maybe he really did take them, and they got somehow lost. I do not know this guy who lost them, and I wouldn’t say word one about it. But anything is possible.”

  I nodded. “And what did France do?”

  She laughed again. “First, he sent out and got another set from the tourist. Who screamed like Hell, but it had to be, right? Second, he busted the guy lost the set so far down he will be ten years making Private First.”

  “He got mad?”

  “Live steam was coming out of his ears, what I heard,” she said. “What I heard he said to the guy—name of Gutch, I remember that, Killeen Gutch—he said, by rights he should be shot dead. He had his way, somebody screws up that bad would be shot dead.” She paused, and I let her say it. “Hey. So maybe his wife screwed up real bad. So he shot her dead. Makes sense.”

  “Somehow I doubt it,” I said. “But this was one time only? His ears didn’t steam every couple of days?”

  “One time,” Mirella said. “Not often you get that much of a screw-up. But I will say, not often he even got mad, either. Tough, yes. Also fair. Mostly, he would listen, and maybe even understand. That is not such a usual thing, away up there where he was.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I poked around for more, and got a little, but you have the basic picture. Privately, I wondered how Harris France had thought his invisible examiners had reacted to his blowing up at a duty policeman. It wasn’t surprising he hadn’t done it more than once.

  Hell, none of it was surprising: France had been what I’d seen him to be, and what he almost had to be, given what Euglane had told me—a man under tight control, tough enough to keep the control, and as careful to be fair in any situation as he could be.

  Which told me absolutely nothing about whether he’d used a beamer on his wife. The Master had been right: motive was the key. My digging hadn’t turned one up, and my talk with France hadn’t done anything helpful in that direction either.

  But somebody had wanted the woman dead. Maybe all murderers were (as Mirella had said) nuts, but even nuts had motives, most of the time. And this wasn’t a killing at random, not in a locked, sealed, chained and bolted house.

  Most motives are personal. Some aren’t; assume Cornelia Rasczak was the well-liked person I’d been reading and hearing about, all right—and concentrate on the impersonal ones: these come in two sizes.

  1. She was placed somewhere the killer didn’t want her to be placed. In other words, she held a position, or had some sort of standing, that the killer wanted vacated.

  2. She knew something the killer didn’t want known.

  There’s a small subset to 2: the victim knew something the killer didn’t mind other people knowing, but didn’t want the victim to know. That particular little oddity doesn’t come up often, but you can’t ignore it.

  I thought about 1 for a while, but not very long. Professional rivalry, at that strength, didn’t seem to exist, according to France. I’d do some checking, but, provisionally, 2 seemed more likely.

  What could she have known?

  If France himself had been shot, I’d have had a thousand instant possibilities: any police officer knows the Hell of a lot of things that other people don’t want known. But it was Cornelia who was dead; and what would a clinical neuropsychologist know that might pose a threat to somebody else?

  She dealt with therapists, and all of that would normally be a matter of record: programs drawn up, lists made, reports of all kinds. And she dealt with patients.

  Patients who might be anybody, and might have any kind of secret.

  Why would they have told those secrets to their doctor?

  Well, maybe if I knew what the secrets were, I’d have an answer for that. And finding that out meant looking at the patients, in detail.

  First thing in the morning, then—well, second thing, after climbing slowly into a state of being awake, cleaned, fed and dressed—I went on back to the police station. Somebody there had to have a list of Cornelia Rasczak’s patients.

  The somebody turned out to be an ancient, overweight Sergeant-Major named Griselda Fank. I showed her my pass from Michael Morse, and she grunted at it from behind an old and overloaded wooden desk.

  “This paper doesn’t say you can carry our documents away,” she said at last.

  “I don’t want to carry them away,” I said. “I want to copy small bits of them.”

  “Copy machine’s busy,” she said, without looking up from the paper.

  “I’ll use pen and paper,” I said, and showed her a small supply.

  “In the file room,” she said. “No chairs or tables, but the material can’t leave the file room.”

  “I’ll write standing up,” I said, and that exhausted her invention. When I asked her for access numbers for the files on Cornelia Rasczak she gave them to me at once, in a slow and tired voice.

  Fourteen patients. I could list all the names, but what’s the sense? I’ll list just two: Harnett Groves, and Hester MacEvoy.

  Harnett Groves was the first one on the list. He had, he told me, Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome. “People are pretty understanding,” he said. “Go back a few centuries and I’d be
burned for witchcraft, or anyhow get into a lot of bar fights. But people here do understand.” He grinned. “Mostly.”

  He was a small, birdlike fellow in his forties, with a thin mat of grey hair and small brown eyes, and with very quick sudden motions, and a habit of blinking his eyes about four times a second, which was disconcerting until you got used to it. He also had a habit of brushing at his cheek with one hand—the first few times I thought he was trying to wipe away some smudge I wasn’t seeing, or had an itch, but his hand went up to his cheek every few minutes all through our talk.

  “And Dr. Rasczak was helping you?” I said.

  “She was doing everything she could,” he said. “There isn’t much help, even today and even here. There’s a new operation—I could go into details, I could draw you diagrams—but it’s only for certain types of the syndrome. Certain Touretters. People like me—I’ve got the wrong balance or something. Thyroid, I mean. For some thyroid balances, they tell me, the operation won’t work; very bad side effects. Very bad.” Hand to cheek. “They tell me, some day soon they’ll have an answer.” Another grin; they came and went very rapidly. “I’ve been waiting for some day for twenty years now.”

  “They tell me it’s a complicated kind of thing,” I said.

  “It seems to be,” he said. “It seems to be. It seems to be.” He blinked a few times. “Sorry. But when I heard she’d been— killed, I mean not just died but somebody killed her—it wasn’t the kind of thing you could believe. Kill Dr. Rasczak? Why?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said.

  Another fast grin. “Why not ask him?” he said. “This husband of hers, I mean. He did it, is the way I’ve heard it. So why not ask him?”

  “The police are doing that,” I said. “Maybe they’ll get an answer. But I’m trying to find out about Dr. Rasczak. She’d been your doctor for—” I had the numbers from the files—“four years.”

  “One of my doctors,” he said. “Neuropsychologist isn’t like a medical doctor. They know a lot of the same things, but it’s different. She could advise, she could put things in some kind of perspective. I have doctors—I tell you, I have doctors the way some people have—I don’t know. Customers. It’s like I’m a store, and somebody comes in every day.”