Analysand

Chapter 1

Monday October 13, 1902

"What is it with murderers wanting to kiss me?"

William laid back on Julia's couch, hands laced over his chest, still favoring his left arm and shoulder. His charcoal grey jacket was off and at her urging, his navy blue tie loosened a little and his top collar button undone. He was watching her goldfish making ellipses in a large glass container in her office. The slanting sunlight glowed occasionally on an orange fin as the creature made its circuit. Going nowhere, just like this case, he thought.

"That was no dream this time, William," Julia offered. "Eva Pearce made a direct threat to you." She adopted as neutral a demeanor as possible towards her husband, since he was asking for her professional assistance and she needed as much objectivity as she could muster. She was probably the last person he should be consulting on this in particular, considering she was his wife. She eventually agreed that, in this case, discussing with others was going to be impossible.

He trusted her, he said, so she acquiesced. She kept her voice low and calm, and her body still and relaxed-appearing, with effort. Her right wrist throbbed from banging it around in the fight in C-Ward a week ago. She did not re-break the bone but the blows did not to it any good and it was swollen inside the cast. She kept it elevated on the arm of her chair.

Julia prompted him to continue. "Tell me more about your question. What is your concern?" In another context, and with a smile, his question would have been funny. However, Julia knew he was dead serious. He wanted to explore the connection between two murderers, James Gillies and Eva Pearce with himself, for a clue to break the case and help him catch Miss Pearce, now (theoretically) on the run.

William shifted position and made a face before speaking, his eyebrows coming together. "I do not understand their behavior. It is irrational to risk recapture and incarceration by coming back-why not take advantage of the escape and flee as fast and far away as possible? I understand the motives for most crimes. James Gillies and Eva Pearce made it personal on a whole other level, and I don't know why."

Julia paused before saying, "What do you think?"

"It can't be as simple as revenge, I suppose." William thought a moment and then said, "You told me that knowing more about the victims of crimes can provide information on catching the criminals. I have collected more than one nemesis, if you will. Why? Even the fictional Sherlock Holmes only had one. Simple revenge would be shooting me from a distance and ending my life, not torturing me. The machinations are confusing and dramatic. Too much like an opera."

Or Penny-dreadful, Julia thought, but said only, "Go on."

He considered. "I must have attracted them – something about me got them obsessed with me." He found the notion distasteful. "But what? And how can I stop that from happening? And why, for heaven's sake, did they both kiss me?"

He was nearly always self-contained but not always completely self-aware, she thought. "Think about it William. The persona you present to the world is direct, pleasant yet restrained, upright, intelligent, logical, and relatively unemotional. You keep your own counsel, as it were. Only give the smallest clues away." You also do not seem to appreciate how physically attractive you actually are, she added to herself, aware of her own bias in the matter. "That lets anyone read their own desires between the lines."

Julia paused for emphasis and asked again, "How did that make you feel when they kissed you?" Despite her best efforts at stillness, she had to adjust herself in her seat to take pressure off a bruise. William admitting to his feelings was still somewhat foreign territory for him. I wonder what he will say. Julia waited.

"Invaded. Angry. Confused. Disgusted," he said firmly. His face flushed.

Julia waited more, letting the silence lengthen. He will not like it when he gets there, she thought. Pressing an advantage he believed to be unwanted was an unnatural inclination for him, and to be on the receiving end of one even more so.

He hesitated. "I…er, also felt out of control, and to be honest, frightened." He was disconcerted, but had asked for this consultation. He looked at her for a response, and got none he could discern, other than her calmness and the same careful warmth in her face she showed her patients. He admired the halo of her hair, liked the particular blouse she was wearing with the lace trim, and knew he was stalling. She seemed to expect more. He appealed to her with a look, unsure of where this was going. He was not going to admit to arousal as he was not aware of any occurring, so what was it she was driving at?

She tried again. "And how does that make you feel now?"

The word leapt to his mouth and was out before he could curb himself. "Powerless….I feel utterly powerless." He was surprised and sat up immediately. "They both wanted power over me, didn't they?" He felt on firmer ground all of a sudden. "But to what end?"

"William, what do they accomplish if you are rendered powerless?" Julia asked.

He was talking more rapidly now. "I will not be as capable of catching them and bringing them to justice, and by laying the seeds of self-doubt, it damages my ability to do my job as a whole-they win even if they are caught. And they enjoy another's suffering for the gratification of putting them through it. That's it, isn't it?!" He was starting to feel relieved.

"Yes, William, they are both manipulative narcissists. If they undermine your sensibilities, you are at a disadvantage. In their minds, they thought they knew you, and moreover, thought they knew you better than you know yourself. Mr Gillies and Miss Pearce projected their own fantasies onto you, made up a story about you, created a connection that does not actually exist, and then acted upon it." Never underestimate the power of a fantasy, especially in a disturbed mind, she thought silently, thinking of her attack in C-Ward.

He frowned again. "But, Julia, why kiss me? That seems to imply a…er,…sexual motive also," William asked.

Oh, dear, thought Julia. He is in deep now. "What answer comes to you?" she asked.

He looked at her, back at the fish and then at her again. He began to gesture. "So, more than just trying to throw me off…more than just power or sadism. They felt a sexual connection also? But I never….." He knew the inexorable pull of desire, and of fantasy. Where his thoughts were going stopped him cold.

She saw his consternation and replied. "No William, you did not give them an invitation to focus on you. The obsession is in the person who is obsessed, not in the object of the obsession. Their ideas about you are much more about them than about you. You had no actual relationship with them. No mutual one at least, beyond your professional duty to apprehend them…."

"You offered them a blank canvas upon which to paint their image of who they wanted you to be. I think you provided a kind of intellectual challenge to Gillies. He believed you matched him in cleverness. I believe, perhaps, he wanted to see himself as Moriarty to your Holmes. I also think he never acknowledged his own homosexuality underlying his choices. By kissing you before he jumped over the bridge he revealed himself—not just to you, but to himself." Julia paused as she saw that information getting absorbed by William. Her husband was familiar now with Herr Doktor Freud's theories on psycho-sexual development.

"And Eva Pearce?" he asked, even more alert to her answer because Miss Pearce was the current threat.

"What do you believe?" she countered.

"She knew, somehow, that my subconscious desired her, and is angry that I did not overtly respond to her?" He made it a question.

"That is part of it. She also believed no man would, or could, ever turn her down, and that all men will act on aroused passions. That, after all was her forte—to make men unable to command themselves." She looked at him more fondly now. "But you were—are—impervious to her, sorely damaging her ego. This is intolerable to her. She will try to use it in some way, some manipulation. She is obsessed with you because you are impervious and unattainable."

"So, how to I stop that?" he demanded, opening his hands, and then closing his fists, putting his thumbs into his palms. His elegantly-made cufflinks flashed, catching the light- her gift to him that he wore all the time now.

William always wants a concrete problem to solve, she thought.

So she said:"Oh, William, you cannot stop what someone else thinks or feels." And of all people, he should know how impossible it is to derail someone's emotions, she thought. "You will have to accept you are powerless over that. Eva Pearce will expect to use some aspect of your personality against yourself—to put you in a double bind of some kind, or use your reflexive habits to trap you. Or try to split you from me to keep you unstable. Your reaction to what she does tells you more about you than about her." Julia tread carefully now.

"William, please lie back down, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Empty your mind." She saw him settle back down and do as she asked. After a few breaths, she asked him again, "What do you believe? What is there in common between your actions in response to theirs?"

William struggled with his thoughts and visual images of his encounters with both Gillies and Miss Pearce. "Miss Pearce said I chose her over you, and in a sense I did….more interested in catching her than thinking about your welfare. I ran after her when I saw her flee." He realized he was unaccountably ashamed of this, as if he should have known….. "She taunted me with that." He did not tell Julia that Miss Pearce also assumed he was already bored in his marriage, because that was just absurd.

"Yes, William, go on…" Julia said softly.

"I jumped in the river after Gillies, even when George warned me away from doing so…Even when I warned Gillies he would likely die if he jumped. Gillies said he had nothing to live for…but…I went off the bridge too." He paused and looked at her meaningfully. "I did have something to live for -you…us." Shame flooded him again. He mastered himself so he could continue as honestly as possible. "I went after him because he was getting away and I did not want him to get away. It was my duty to stop him," he went rigid at that thought. "And I needed to see him ended, for me to believe we were safe…"

He raised his head. "I asked you at the river where I was pulled out- what you would have done in similar circumstances. But you would have done something different, wouldn't you?" He kept looking at her, at that same warm but neutral presence, but she did not respond. He stopped and then started again. "Is that what she will use against me? That I am predictable in that way?"

"What do you think?" she asked again, trying not to hold her breath.

"Yes, and I think that is what is about me that attracted them. That I do not give up until I get to the truth, sometimes no matter the cost. That I cannot help myself—like a hound that sees a rabbit…." The look on his face shifted again. Julia saw the emotions take turns across his face. "Also that I can be unbending…and that is also the truth, isn't it?" He sat up slowly, uncurled and flexed his hands.

There it is….That must have been difficult for him—but I must say he took it well, she thought. This time she reached over and touched his arm gently, catching his brown eyes with her blues ones in a level gaze. "You are in fact predictable. We all are. It is human nature. She is a master manipulator who exploits weaknesses to her advantage. However, for all her innuendo and comments, she really does not know you." Julia sat forward for emphasis. "And she does not know that she does not really know you. That is her flaw. Her obsession with you is a weakness you can exploit."

He was encouraged by that, but suspicious about what that would mean.

"William, don't forget, you knew James Gillies well enough to know he was going to kill his hostage anyways. You turned his predictability against him." She kept her voice firm so as not to betray her anxiety. "William—I am going to be the bait again, whether or not you and I want it so. Because your obsession is with me." She smiled as he looked over at her, startled. "I stood between Gillies and you and I stand between Eva and you. The way to her gratification is to torture you by separating you from me. Every sadistic fantasy she has is likely building towards that end."

"So, how do I get the power back?" He was working this out now.

"By not doing what is expected," Julia declared. "At least not when it comes to her."