Free Primal Scream by Michael Slade Page B

this heart of the city turned skid road by the Depression. Gussied up in the sixties to reclaim its heritage. Then I watch it slowly slip back to skid road."
    "A never ending battle," agreed the cop. "A metaphor for what we do," said the shrink. DeClercq joined him at the window to gaze out over the square. A hump in the cobblestones marked the place where Gassy's tavern had stood, surmounted by the statue gf Jack standing on his barrel, and slumped at the base of it was a wino struggling to push down his pants. Across the square was the V-shaped Europe Hotel, Alexander Street angling left along the train tracks and the harbor, Powell Street angling right to the criminal courts and police station two blocks away. Down Powell drove a paddy wagon slick with rain, crossing the square toward Water Street to cruise on, until the cop riding shotgun spotted the wino exposing himself. The wagon stopped by the statue, and both cops got out. They opened the rear doors and approached the bum. One cop gripped him under the armpits while his partner reached under the shoved-down pants; then the latter jerked up his hands, covered with shit.
    "Now, that's indecent exposure," said DeClercq.
    "I know how he feels," Ruryk said, gazing into his own hands.
    It was now obvious to DeClercq that this was a bad idea. A decade ago this psychiatrist had profiled a mad killer who left behind bodies and carried off heads. So—given their success in that case—it seemed right to consult him about the flip side of that scenario: a mad killer who had kept or hidden a body and sent police its head. But what he had not factored in was the decade between, for it had been that long since he had last worked with Ruryk, and during that interval something had destroyed the man he knew.
    What? wondered DeClercq.
    "I've asked a colleague to join us, if you have no objection. Dr. Carlisle will assume my patients after I retire. Two heads—except in the case of your killer— are better than one."
    "By all means," said DeClercq, thankful to have an auxiliary support the burnt-out shrink.
    Ruryk pressed an intercom. "Please join us, Andy," the Mountie thought he heard him say.
    Bursts of color exploded against the dark paneling where pictures by Impressionists hung on the walls. The prints by Monet and Manet ("Tweedledum and Tweedledee," Katt the Critic opined), and Renoir and Sisley (the two DeClercq favored, after Monet), and Cezanne, the father of modern art (may he burn in hell) seemed no more than indistinct dabbling up close, but took on telling focus if you kept your distance.
    Is that what happened to Ruryk?
    He got too close to the picture?
    The thought went poof! the moment the door between Monet and Manet opened, for the art in the frames paled beside that framed by the door.
    Genny, Robert gasped.
    Dr. Anda Carlisle could be his second wife. In her thirties, with vivid green eyes lit by intelligence and something more, with hair chignoned back from full lips and classic cheekbones, and with a body that curved her suit in all the right places, she was the revenant of a joy wrenched from him too soon.
    Ruryk introduced them. "Anda Carlisle. Robert DeClercq." The cool touch of her handshake sent sparks along his nerves.
    First Macbeth. Now Carlisle. What was happening to him? The onset of satyriasis? The birth of a dirty old man? He saw himself as a figure on a Grecian urn in the Louvre, half human from the torso up, half horse below, lasciviously chasing nymphs through the forests, lubricity evident from the prong that poked from between his legs. "Man, is that guy ever hung!" Katt had exclaimed, wide-eyed.
    Katt , he thought . It's you.
    For suddenly he saw himself sitting in a dark room with all the shutters closed against the light outside, pictures of Kate, Jane, and Genevieve rotting away with him, a musty, cobwebbed shell locking out emotions which had hurt him to his soul, when in stomped Katt to throw open the shutters and draw the curtains wide,