7. A Question of Motive
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"What I wanna know, though," Braig said, "is why?"
They were on their way back to the precinct. Xehanort had responded to a call from Jack, leaving Braig and Dilan in Ansem's flat.
"I mean, we've narrowed it down, haven't we? And it looks like it's someone we know. Worse, it looks like whoever killed Ansem killed all those doctors, too."
"Talk to Ienzo," Dilan replied. "I'm no psychologist, Braig. Serial killers are messed up in the head. That's his department, not mine."
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Braig took his advice and went to loiter around Ienzo's office until the woman inside took her leave.
"Got a girlfriend?" he asked as soon as he was inside. Ienzo looked coolly at him over the top of his glasses.
"A client. Have you ever considered the possibility that your apparent obsession with women yet inability to remain consistent in your relationships could be due to a subconscious state of denial about your sexuality?"
Braig snorted.
"I don't swing that way. Next you'll be saying I killed Ansem out of some male possessive territorial thingummy."
Ienzo only blinked. He had zero sense of humor.
"We can't rule anything out," he said. "And I've been examining how everyone reacts to this. No one's acting suspicious in any way."
"Maybe none of us did it. Maybe someone's a good actor. Maybe you're lying."
"If I did it, I would implicate someone else. Unless, of course, I thought you knew that I would implicate someone else and so implicated no one."
"Or if you knew that I knew that you thought that I knew that you would implicate someone else and so didn't implicate anyone."
Ienzo looked like he was trying very hard not to smile. As it was, he adopted that annoying superior expression of his.
"Don't try to outthink me, Braig," he said.
"No kidding. I have no idea what the hell I just said."
Ienzo made one's brain hurt after only a minute of conversation. Sometimes Braig couldn't stand the kid, but they had been in the academy together, and he had blackmail material. There was only so annoyed you could get at someone when you had seen him drunk enough to make out with posters of Jessica Rabbit.
"Actually, I came to talk about serial killers," he said, and Ienzo nodded like he'd been expecting it.
"The doctor killer. You think he had something to do with this?"
Braig had to remind himself that Ienzo was a suspect, and he was smart.
"Maybe."
"Did you know," Ienzo said, "that every mass murderer or serial killer I've ever known was sexually abused at some point or other?"
"I had no idea."
"Anything the conscious mind can't handle, it pours into the subconscious," Ienzo went on, gesturing at his own head to demonstrate. "That stuff has to come out somehow."
"Hey, women who get raped don't normally go around killing people. What makes some people go nuts, and others not?"
Ienzo flipped his hair out of his face.
"No one knows. Men are more innately violent than women, and more likely to take it out on others."
"Why's that?"
"Men have a sex drive. That's the bottom line, anyway. Some primitive possessive instinct, you wouldn't understand all the jargon."
"So. Wrenching the topic back to our man. What's he got against doctors—and psychologists, by the way, although I sympathize with him on that one?"
Ienzo shot him a dirty look, but refrained from retorting.
"That's the mystery," he said. "Aside from being all professionals in the medical or psychological fields, they share no other common factors that I can see. Men and women, no particular race or age group. No correlation in their dates of death, either. The murders happen at random intervals, aside from the first three. This leads me to believe that perhaps killing is not always the first thing on our man's mind. He may kill out of necessity…"
"When is it necessary to kill innocent people, Ienzo?"
Ienzo looked down.
"True. Perhaps he wishes to hide something? Some medical or mental condition? Perhaps we're dealing with a split-personality disorder, when the killer half is triggered by the danger of his secret getting out… Xehanort and I, and Ansem and I before that, have been trying to find a pattern of some sort."
"Nothing?"
"Not yet. Ansem mentioned something about a breakthrough… shortly before his death."
Braig nodded. This supported his hypothesis.
"Whatever he found out, it wasn't in the casefile. But if the killer was good enough to delete his visit from the door's records or hack into the apartment, he could have hidden or deleted the files. Thanks, Ienzo."
"Don't mention it. Consider that thing I mentioned to you."
"As if."
Braig's phone rang and he answered.
"Xeha, hey."
He frowned at Xehanort's next words.
"All right. Thanks."
He hung up, looking over at Ienzo.
"Speak of the devil," he said. "Xeha's got another one. The good doctor was strangled."