The Analyst

by John Katzenbach

  “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.

  The killer seemed to rock back, trying to hold himself upright, as if expecting the final, killing shot. His own weapon had slid toward the ground, hanging loosely by his side after his second effort, held only by twitching fingertips no longer responding to destroyed and bleeding muscles. He lifted his good hand to his face, as if hoping to deflect the coming blow.

  Adrenaline, anger, hatred, fear, the sum of all that had happened to him came together right then, in that single instant, demanding, insisting, reaching within him and shouting commands, and Ricky thought wildly that finally at that precise moment he was about to win.

  And then he stopped, because abruptly he realized he would not.

  Rumplestiltskin had paled, face white as if moonlight was illuminating it. Blood that seemed like streaks of black ink was coursing down his arm and chest. He tried once more, feebly, to grasp his weapon and lift it up, but was unable. Shock was taking over rapidly, clouding his every motion and fogging his grip on events. It was as if the quiet that had settled on the two men, as the gunshot echoes faded, was palpable, blanketing every movement they made.

  Ricky stared at the man whom he had once known and yet not known as a patient, and realized that Rumplestiltskin would bleed to death in relatively short order. Or succumb to shock. It’s only in movies, Ricky thought, that a man can be shot with a high-powered round at close range and still be strong enough to dance a jig. Rumplestiltskin’s chances could be measured in minutes, he guessed.

  A part of him he had never heard before insisted he simply watch the man die.

  He did not. He struggled to his feet and jumped forward. He kicked the pist
ol away from the killer’s hand, then took his own and slipped it into his backpack. Then, as Rumplestiltskin mumbled something, as the man battled against the unconsciousness that would herald death, Ricky reached down and grasped his adversary around the chest. Struggling against the weight, Ricky lifted the killer up and with as great a burst as he could muster, threw him over his own shoulder, in a fireman’s carry. He straightened slowly, adjusting himself against the weight, half struck by the ironies that seemed as dense as the humid air around him, and then he staggered forward, through the wreckage, carrying the man who wanted him dead out of the rubble of the farmhouse.

  Sweat stung at his eyes, and he struggled with each stride. What he carried seemed far greater than anything Ricky ever remembered lifting before. He could feel Rumplestiltskin lose consciousness, and heard his breathing grow wheezy and labored, asthmatic with death lurking close by. Ricky sucked in great drafts of humid air himself, powering himself forward in sturdy, unimaginative steps, each harder than the previous one, each mountainous in challenge. He told himself that this was the only way to walk to freedom.

  He stopped at the edge of the road. Night surrounded both men with anonymity. He dropped Rumplestiltskin to the ground, and ran his hands over the man’s clothing. To his relief he found what he’d expected: a cell phone.

  Rumplestiltskin’s breath was coming in shallow, pained spurts. Ricky suspected that his first shot had fragmented as it struck the scapula, and that the burbling sound he could distinguish was from a torn lung. He stanched the man’s wounds as best he could, then called the number long remembered for Wellfleet fire and rescue.

  “Nine-one-one Cape Emergency,” came a clipped, efficient voice.

  “Listen very carefully,” Ricky said slowly, deliberately, pausing between words, enunciating each with deliberate pace. “I am only going to say this one time, so get it straight. There has been a shooting accident. The victim is located on Old Beach Road at the entrance to the late Doctor Starks’s vacation home, the place that burned down last summer. He’s right on the driveway. The victim has multiple gunshot wounds to the back shoulder and right upper arm extremity, and is in shock. He will die rapidly if you are not here within minutes. Do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Do you understand!”

  “Yes. I’m dispatching rescue now. Old Beach Road. Who is this?”

  “Are you familiar with the location I’ve given you?”

  “Yes. But I need to know: Who is this?”

  Ricky thought for a moment, then answered: “No one who is anyone anymore.”

  He disconnected the phone. He took his own weapon out and ejected the remaining bullets from the clip. These he tossed as far into the woods as he could. Then he dropped the pistol on the ground next to the wounded man. He also removed his flashlight from the backpack, switched it on and placed it on the unconscious killer’s chest. Ricky lifted his head. He could hear a distant siren starting up. Fire rescue was located only a few miles away, on Route Six. It would not take them long to reach the location. He guessed that the trip to the hospital was another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. He did not know whether the EMTs would be able to stabilize the wounded man or if the emergency room staff was capable of dealing with serious gunshot wounds. Nor did he know whether a suitable surgical team was on call. He looked down at the killer one more time, and could not tell whether the man would live through the next few hours. He might. He might not. For the first time, perhaps, in his entire life, Ricky enjoyed uncertainty.

  The ambulance sound quickly grew closer, and Ricky turned and started to jog away, slowly for the first few steps, but then gathering pace rapidly until he was flat-out sprinting forward, feet pounding against the road surface with a steady rhythm, letting the nighttime darkness swallow his presence utterly, until he was completely hidden from sight.

  Like a newly inspired ghost, Ricky disappeared.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  OUTSIDE PORT-AU-PRINCE

  It was about an hour past dawn and Ricky was watching a small lime green gecko dart about on the wall, defying gravity with every step. He watched the tiny animal move in spurts, occasionally pausing to extend its orange throat sac, before dashing forward a few strides, then stopping, pivoting its head to the right and then left, as it checked for danger. Ricky admired and envied the wondrous simplicity of the gecko’s day-to-day world: find something to eat, and avoid being eaten.

  Above him an old brown four-bladed paddle fan creaked slightly with each revolution, spinning the hot, dull air of the small room. As Ricky shifted his legs, swinging them out of bed, the mattress springs matched the paddle fan noise. He stretched wildly, yawning, running a hand through his thinning hair, grasping the pair of weathered khaki hiking shorts that hung from the bed stand and searching for his glasses. He rose and poured himself a small basin of water from a pitcher standing on a swaying wooden table. He splashed the water onto his face, letting some of the liquid run down his chest, then he took a threadbare washcloth and soaped it from a pungent bar that he kept on the table. He dipped the cloth into the water and washed himself as best he could.

  The room Ricky occupied was nearly square, and more or less undecorated, with stucco walls once a flat vibrant white, but faded over the years into a color that seemed only one step away from the dust that hung above the street outside. He had few possessions: a radio which brought in spring training games on the Armed Forces channels, some clothes. An up-to-date calendar sporting a bare-breasted young woman with an inviting look in her eyes had that day circled in black pen. It hung from a nail a few feet away from a hand-carved wooden crucifix that he suspected had belonged to the prior occupant, but which he had not removed, because it seemed to him that taking down a religious icon in a country where religion in so many weird and conflicting ways was so critical to so many people, invited bad luck, and, so far, he thought, his luck, on balance, had been quite good. He had built two shelves against one wall. These were crammed with a number of worn and well-used medical texts, as well as some brand-new ones. The titles of these ranged from the practical (Tropical Diseases and Their Treatments) to the more esoteric (Case Studies in Mental Illness Patterns for Developing Nations). He had a thick faux leather notebook and some pencils, as well, which he used for jotting down observations and treatment plans, which he kept on a small desk next to a laptop computer and printer. Above the printer he kept a handwritten list of wholesale drug outlets in south Florida. He also had a small, black canvas duffel bag, big enough for a two- to three-day trip, which he had packed with some clothing. Ricky looked about the room, and thought that it wasn’t much, but it suited his mood and his sense of himself, and though he suspected he could easily move into far nicer digs, he wasn’t sure that he would do so, even after he ran the errands that would take up the remainder of the week.

  He went to the window and stared out at the street. It was only a half block to the clinic, and already he could see people gathered outside. There was a small grocery across the street, and the proprietor and his wife, two incongruously large middle-aged folks, were setting out some wooden crates and barrels that contained fresh fruits and vegetables. They were brewing coffee, as well, and the smell reached up to him more or less the same time that the proprietor’s wife turned and saw him standing in the window. She waved gaily, smiling, and gestured at the coffee simmering over an open fire, inviting Ricky to join them. He held up a couple of fingers, to indicate he would be along in a moment or two, and she returned to work. The street was already beginning to crowd with people, and Ricky suspected it would be a busy day at the clinic. The heat for early March was oddly potent, mingling with a distant flavor of bougainvillea, market fruits, and humanity, temperatures rising as quickly as the morning did.

  He looked off at the hills, which alternated a lush and enthusiastic green with barren brown. They rose high above the city and he thought to himself that Haiti was truly one of the most intri
guing countries on the planet. It was the poorest spot he’d ever seen, but in some ways the most dignified, as well. He knew that when he walked down the street toward the clinic, he would be the only white face for miles. This might have unsettled him once, in his past, but no longer. He reveled in being different, and knew there was an odd sort of mystery that accompanied his every step.

  What he particularly enjoyed was that despite the mystery, the people on the street were willing to accept his odd presence without question. Or, at least, no questions to his face, which, when he considered it, seemed both a compliment and a compromise and one of each that he was willing to live with.

  He descended from his room and joined the market proprietor and his wife in a cup of bitter, strong coffee, thick and sweetened with raw sugar. He ate a crust of bread that had been baked that morning, and took the opportunity to examine the abscessed boil on the proprietor’s back that he had lanced and drained three days earlier. The wound seemed to be healing rapidly and he reminded the man in half-English, half-French, to keep it clean and to change the bandage again that day.

  The proprietor nodded, grinned, spoke for a few moments about the local soccer team’s erratic fortunes, and begged Ricky to attend their match the following week. The team was called the Soaring Eagles and carried much of the neighborhood’s passions into each contest, with decidedly mixed and noticeably un-soaring results. The proprietor refused Ricky’s offer to pay for his breakfast, meager as it had been. This was already a routine between the two men. Ricky would reach into his pocket, and the proprietor would wave anything that emerged away. As always, Ricky thanked him, promised to be at the soccer match wearing red and green Eagle colors, and stepped off briskly toward the clinic, the taste of the coffee still strong in his mouth.

  The people crowded around the entranceway, obscuring the handwritten sign that read in large, black, uneven letters, with several misspellings: doctor dumondais excelent medical clinic. hours 7 to 7 and by appointment. call 067-8975. Ricky passed through the mob, which parted to let him through. More than one man tipped his cap in his direction. He recognized some faces from some of the more regular customers, and he smiled greetings in their directions. Faces flashed replies and he heard more than one whispered “Bonjour, monsieur le docteur . . .” He shook hands with one old man, the tailor named Dupont, who had made him a tan linen suit far more elegant than anything Ricky thought he might need after Ricky had obtained some Vioxx for the arthritis which afflicted his fingers. As he’d suspected, the drug had done wonders.