forced to watch their boyfriends knifed to death, then killed themselves by multiple knife thrusts, killed slowly, painfully, so that they had time to feel each assault and know they were going to die. Murders as trophies: random shootings of white people by black men in some bizarre organization where they earned “wings” for killing whites. Political murders: underground groups plotting bombings, assaults, robberies. The heiress Patty Hearst: kidnapped. I had been lost in my own wanderings since my arrival in San Francisco, not even pausing to glance at newspaper headlines. Were these emissions from my radio true events or figments of my fevers?
The radio reports faded in and out, so I could not learn who was speaking, and exactly of what. But their reality gained favor as similar stories drifted in over the hours: couples on lovers’ lane killed in their cars; the knife murder, the same woman, tied up and speared over and over again, as if the world could not get enough of her horror. Taunting letters sent to the local newspapers by the killer, daring the police to catch him, his name hidden in cryptograms still undeciphered, his signature a circle and cross: rifle crosshairs. The Zodiac, he was called. All this was transmitted to me in peripatetic fragments, blinking lights diffused in fog: the letters, the ciphers, the crosshairs, the count of the victims—thirty-seven, the killer claimed.
Also fluxing through the hiss, in single words and phrases, were speculations about the killer’s identity: Loner. Voyeur. Fear of women. Obsessional. Meticulous. Compulsive. Abused. Family history. Abuser. Mental illness. Dysfunction. Sexual. These words floated at me and hovered in the cold air. Then, in one stunning moment of transmission clarity, the static vanished and the speaker said: We believe he may be connected with a university, since the first attack happened near a college campus.
The breath froze in me. I shivered with a chill that did not come from my fever. Was this a description of … myself? In terror, I wondered if I was indeed the brutal killer; if in blacked-out hours I had committed such horrid crimes and then cleansed them from my memory; if I had indeed become what I had always feared my obsessions would make of me.
No, I told myself. No! I had been accused of … not that, not yet, please God. But what would keep me from it? The university had forced me to take a leave while they investigated. How far had I gone? I swore: I had touched no one! But once the complaint was lodged, I understood the fear I had aroused—no, “aroused” is not the right word; the correct description is the fear I had “created.” For the object of my attentions had no reason to be afraid of me, had every reason to rely upon me as a trusted guide and advisor. And therefore there was no question of any “arousal.” There was only the terrible darkness within me, which he had seen and, rightly, feared.
Only the patient can save me, I thought. She is all that is still decent in me. She is my trial, my test. I will not harm her! As long as I can hear her voice; as long as she makes her way to Room 804 to tell her story; as long as I may be near to her; as long as I may know what happens to her—I will be all right, she will be all right. We have nothing to fear.
Wednesday came again, the patient’s last session before the holiday break. If I did not go to the office I would not hear her voice again until the end of the holiday break. How I needed her! How I ached for her! Yet my fevers and coughs continued—I could not go. My damp bed was my prison.
I turned off the radio. But the night did not give me rest. Again I skimmed the rim of sleep, tortured by images that grew more violent by the hour.
When Thursday morning came, I knew I could stay home no longer. I could not remain alone with my crows circling me, with their taunting call, Her! Her! Her! I resolved to go to the office. The sound machine would play; its whir would hide my stifled coughs. The patient would be gone, but still there was my dear office—its polished marble, varnished fruitwoods, balustraded stairways—all I had to help me.
34.
I bundled myself in sweaters and rode the N Judah. I debarked at Market