Free Final Notice by Jonathan Valin Page A

their analyst was so blithe and prepossessed. It certainly put me off. I found that I had to make myself concentrate on what he was saying rather than on the arrogant blur of his face, or I think I might have gotten up and left.
    As it turned out, it was a good thing I stayed, because the son-of-a-bitch was just as bright as he thought he was and a regular mine of useful information, .
    I told him about the Ripper, about Twyla and the books, about what Sachs had seen, and about what we had concluded.
    Howell raised a caterpillar eyebrow when I finished, tapped his front teeth with a nicotine-stained forefinger, and said, "You know I'm primarily a forensic psychiatrist. This practice is just a way of keeping myself busy when I'm not in court." His eyes darted about the room and came to rest on a bronze bust of Freud. He curled his lip a bit and said, "What I mean to say is that I'm generally consulted about criminal matters after the fact of the crime. And I'm usually given the chance to interview the criminal." He looked up from Freud and out the north window at the maple trees. "It's really an extraordinary challenge," he said without the slightest enthusiasm, "to try to analyze a psychopath without actually examining him." He finally looked at me. "I think that's what you're asking for, isn't it? An analysis of how this man's mind might work? A profile that would help you identify him?"
    I said, "Yes. And in layman's terms, Doctor, if you please."
    "Extraordinary," he said again, tapped his eye-tooth and looked down at the creamy carpeting. "Extremes, Mr. Stoner. That would be your first clue. Be on the lookout for a man of extremes. Extremes in dress, in look, in occupation, in temperament. Especially in temperament." He looked up and said, "Are you planning to interview your suspects or just to keep them under surveillance?"
    "Interview them, if possible," I said.
    Benson Howell got to his feet, walked over to the bookshelf and ran his finger along a row of blue, paper-covered periodicals. "Ask him what he would do in a fight."
    "In a fight?" I said. "You mean in a fist fight?"
    "Yes, in a fight. The man you want won't have any respect for his own body. He will be capable of tremendous violence without apparent fear of injury. He will talk of fighting as if his body didn't exist, the way young children sometimes act when they throw themselves off roof-tops in imitation of Superman. He will talk as if he were all-powerful and invulnerable. Extremes, you see."
    "How would he behave in a real fight?"
    "Just as he speaks," Benson Howell said. "As if he were invulnerable. Are you planning to do any research on your suspects?"
    "Of course," I said. "I'll work up case histories on each one. Or, at least, on the promising ones."
    "Then let me give you a typical history. A profile of what your man is like. Understand, there may be individual differences. But, in the main, your Ripper's personality should fit this description." He walked back to his chair, flicked a spot of ash off the cushion, and sat down again. "To begin, he will undoubtedly come from a broken home. He may have been abused as a child. Perhaps by a sadistic father or an overweening, brutal mother. He will most certainly have a marked ambivalence toward his family, and it will extend into every aspect of his emotional life. His sexual experiences will have been short-lived and unsatisfactory. His own sense of sexual identity is likely to be diffuse. He may, in fact, have had homosexual experiences, although he wouldn't recognize them as such. At this point in his life, he is a loner, incapable of sustaining a relationship with anyone outside the love-hate relationship he's formed with his parents and siblings. You will probably discover that he has a history of violent behavior.
    And if he doesn't," Howell said, "his schoolmates and his teachers -look especially to his teachers and counselors in high school- will remember him as giving the impression of violence,