Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.

Author's Note: The third part in this section, still following The End of Civilization . . .

Sessions—7

It wasn't that Westerfield believed in the adage that things come in threes, but he wasn't much surprised to receive a phone call from the judge the next morning. After an exchange of greetings, the psychiatrist asked, "Is tomorrow okay for you?"

This got him a brief moment of silence followed by a chuckle from the man at the other end of the line.

"I just want you to know," Westerfield went on, "that I've already been to Eduardo's once this week. I think I'm going to hit you up for a prime rib dinner. After that story Mark told me about last weekend, I've decided life's too short to worry so much about my cholesterol."

He noted that the chuckle had faded away. It was followed by a nervous throat clearing and, "You know, Doc—"

"Don't worry," Westerfield assured him. "I'm his psychiatrist, remember? Even if he won't admit it. The story's not going any further than me. Psychiatry is the twentieth century equivalent of the confessional."

Another throat clearing from Hardcastle and then, "It's not that I think this should be kept secret, but if all the facts came out, then the authorities would be looking a lot harder at Paul. You met Paul?"

"Yesterday. He's a very interesting kid."

"Yeah, well, so far we've kinda kept him under the radar, which is where he needs to stay on this one, if you ask me."

"I can see your point on that," Westerfield mused. "But, hey, now I'm his psychiatrist, too, so they won't get anything from me."

There might have been a brief, worried sigh. "It's not just the authorities," Hardcastle added.

"I know," Westerfield replied, in a more serious tone. "Mark told me some of the gorier details. But you can't be too worried about it. You're letting them both wander around on their own."

"Well, we figured the people who wanted it the worst are dead, and maybe that'll scare most of the rest off. And I saw the preliminary report—Paul's only mentioned in passing, and they even managed to misspell his name. And McCormick is sort of used to looking over his shoulder. He hasn't noticed anything so far."

"Sounds like there's hope. Between routine incompetence and lost notebooks, we may eventually be able to go back to worrying about our cholesterol, right?"

He thought he might have hit a nerve with the casual remark about the notebook. There was a moment of hesitation before the judge replied, with more than the required bonhomie, "In the meantime, how does Lawry's sound? Tomorrow, six?

"Perfect."

00000

They had a table off to the side. The salad had come and gone and then the serving cart. Hardcastle had made nothing but small talk. His demeanor would have passed muster if Westerfield hadn't known anything about recent events. But, as it was, there were small tell-tale signs, a tendency to distraction, an occasional, albeit subtle, nervous hitch in the conversation.

"Congratulations," the psychiatrist finally said, into one of those brief, silent lapses.

Hardcastle looked up abruptly from his food and cast him a quizzical glance.

"Well, you've managed to avoid an episode of anniversary syndrome by coming up with an entirely new crisis to worry about." Westerfield's smile had shades of seriousness to it.

"Anniversary?" The judge looked puzzled. "Oh, that."

"Yeah, that."

"It has been a year, hasn't it," Hardcastle nodded to himself. "Seems longer." He frowned. "I guess I'd forgotten," he said, with what Westerfield figured was unintentional irony.

"Well," the psychiatrist conceded, "you've been busy."

"You could say that."The judge was still frowning. "Though, you know I didn't really do much last weekend." Another long pause and then, "That was Mark and Paul going point on that mission. Thank God somebody did."

"Two different approaches," Westerfield nodded.

"Well, theirs worked and mine didn't. And the worst thing was, I knew mine wasn't working, practically from the get-go, and still I stuck to it. And if I'd known what those two were up to, I would've given 'em hell." Hardcastle grimaced. "And they probably would have listened to me. The system," he added bitterly, "struck out this time."

"It does that from time to time."

"Hah. This would've been the last time."

Westerfield nodded thoughtfully. Then after a moment he cocked his head. "So, is that what's bothering you?"

"Ah," the man looked momentarily startled, "Ah, no. That just kinda came out." His frown deepened. "Actually, it was what I did afterwards."

"Burning the notebook?"

"Oh, he told you about that, huh?" Hardcastle said with some chagrin. "He got a big kick out of it."

"Why do you think that?" Westerfield asked quietly.

The judge let out a heavy sigh. "He joked about it." There was a pause before he conceded, "I dunno, maybe he was trying to make me feel better."

"Sounds more likely."

"Yeah, and he did seem a little shook up. Joking is how he covers that."

"'Shook up' about destroying evidence?" Westerfield coaxed gently.

"Hell, no," the judge gave him a puzzled look, "not likely. It was more like . . . maybe because I wasn't sure about it." Still the frown. "I'm usually pretty sure about things."

"Yes," the psychiatrist agreed, "I could see that." He leaned back in his seat a little, still studying the other man. Hardcastle had gone determinedly back to attacking his prime rib.

"Paul and I were talking about Jung yesterday," he added casually.

The judge paused in mid-bite, looking puzzled.

"Yeah, he's out of fashion," Westerfield conceded with a small smile, and if Hardcastle had been about to argue any such thing, he managed to keep it to himself, "but he had some interesting things to say about opposites." The doctor took a bite of his own meal.

"Such as?" Hardcastle finally asked.

"Well," Westerfield shrugged, Jung is all about completeness, about how whatever are a person's most apparent traits, their tendencies, they're not complete without the opposite. So, take a person who is extremely expedient. Someone who—"

"Gets the car."

"Ah?"

"It's his motto—'Get the Car'. It's right after 'Don't Get Caught', or maybe before. I'm not sure."

Westerfield gave him a long, hard stare. "Well," he finally said, "that's interesting . . . He actually said that? But, see, that's what I mean. Someone like that, someone who is obviously a little deficient in the protocol department, Jung would say he needs a counter-balance, an anchor."

"Well, I was a lousy anchor last weekend."

"A momentary lapse." Westerfield smiled kindly.

"Flagrant necessity?"

"And I doubt that you did any permanent damage."

"But I'll probably get kicked out of the International Order of Repo Men, once he sees I'm back on the straight and narrow."

"Okay," Westerfield's smile had gone a little puzzled, "now you've lost me."

Hardcastle explained about his impromptu initiation in the desert. The doctor listened intently.

"You've really broken out of jail, twice?" Westerfield looked surprised.

"Well, he broke me out. It wasn't like I had a lot of choice," the judge protested. And then, after a moment more, "Though it probably was a good thing, both times."

The psychiatrist sat quietly for a moment. "'Get the Car'," he said, half to himself. "It's . . . perfect. I wish all my patients came with mottos." He shook his head and smiled. "So, anyway, last weekend, right up to the momentary lapse, you were being you, and following the rules."

Hardcastle nodded doubtfully. "And what the hell good did it do?"

Westerfield shrugged. "An anchor, a road-map, one fixed point in a changing universe. You name it. That's what he needs. Someone to tell him when he's gone too far—"

"But I didn't think he listened to me about stuff like that."

"He hears more than you realize, and you'll probably have to tell him less often as time goes by."

"Well, yeah," Hardcastle admitted. "I guess it must be 'cause Saturday he did something, right out of the blue—"

"The picks?"

The judge glanced up sharply. "Yeah, you know about that?"

Westerfield nodded.

"Did he say why?" Hardcastle's face betrayed his puzzlement, but this time he got no response. "Okay, go all hush-hush on me. I gotta figure that one out for myself, huh?"

"I'd be more interested in hearing why you turned him down."

"Oh, that's easy," the judge replied, but then there was a pause, as if it wasn't quite as easy as he'd thought. "You know," he finally began, a little hesitantly, "when he came home with that Olds, the Saturday before, and told me what he'd done, dammit, I was scared. It looked to me like he'd been set up, and he'd walked right into it, picks and all. And maybe I was a little angry, too, 'cause he does these fool things without a moment's thought." He shook his head. "So I made him ditch the burglary tools, leave 'em at home, when we went off to see Paul, to try and figure out what was going on.

"It made sense, too," he added, a little gruffly. "I mean, that's even one of his rules—'Get rid of the evidence.' If he was being set up, then we might've been stopped, and him carrying the picks . . . So, that's why he didn't have 'em later on, when he needed them. It was a good thing Paul had a set." Hardcastle winced. "A kid with lock picks. That kid with lock picks." Another slow shake of the head.

"Well," Westerfield mused, "he doesn't have them anymore."

"No," Hardcastle smiled thinly, "that's true." He paused for a moment, as though he was re-gathering his thoughts. Then he plunged ahead. "And so maybe I was feeling a little guilty, like I'd misjudged the situation the week before."

"Though, as you pointed out, what you had him do made perfect sense."

"My logic verses his intuition. But that time he was right."

"No guarantees it won't be the other way around next time," Westerfield pointed out.

"Yeah, I suppose, but he must've figured that out for himself, I mean, he wanted to give me the picks," Hardcastle said, looking less doubtful, but the air of puzzlement persisted. He said nothing more for a moment.

"That Jung guy," he was frowning when he finally spoke again, "that thing about opposites. I suppose it works both ways."

Westerfield couldn't help it, he felt his smile expanding. Insight was so much better than ideas externally imposed.

Hardcastle had caught the grin and met it with a chagrined smile of his own. "You were waiting for me to figure that out for myself, huh? What if I hadn't?"

"As much gentle prodding as necessary. I would have ordered dessert if I'd had to." Westerfield was still grinning.

"So, maybe somebody who like rules, who thinks they're really important—"

"Someone who's a little rigid," the doctor nodded, "maybe occasionally hidebound—"

"I wouldn't go that far," Hardcastle protested. "Okay, well, maybe once in a while." He sighed. "All right, now and then—" He grimaced, and interrupted himself. "You know the rules really are important; without law, you've got anarchy."

"But order taken to extremes is rigidity."

"So," Hardcastle sighed again, "maybe somebody like that needs someone who is, ah, flexible."

"A moving point in an unchanging universe." Westerfield grinned again. "Someone to tell you when you haven't gone far enough."

"But I don't listen to him much about stuff like that."

"Oh, I have a suspicion you do it more than you realize. You burned that notebook."

"That was—"

"Flagrant necessity? Yeah," Westerfield nodded, "literally. And the law doesn't crumble in cases like that. It merely bends."

"'The good of the people is the greatest law.'" The judge was staring down at the table, then he lifted his head. "I used to say that a lot. It's Cicero."

"I like it; has a nice ring."

"Hard as hell to apply though," Hardcastle added. "That's why we wind up with regular laws, books and books of them. And sometimes, even with all of that, the whole thing just falls apart."

"Like a week ago Saturday?"

"Yeah," the judge said glumly.

"Well, don't give up on it."

"Hah," Hardcastle looked up again sharply, "that's exactly what he told me."

"And what did you say?"

"Oh, something about it being the only system we've got . . . and then I torched the damn notebook."

"Sounds like a good compromise to me."

Hardcastle squinted at him a little. "No wonder McCormick likes to talk to you."

"Oh, don't worry; I tell him things he doesn't want to hear, too," Westerfield smiled. "You know, they have a nice raspberry trifle here."

The judge winced. "There's something else we've gotta talk about?"

"Not particularly," Westerfield smiled. "Sometimes a trifle is just a trifle."