Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation by A.W. Hill

doctor-patient divide, but plenty
attractive enough to flirt with. Raszer would no more have engaged a male
psychoanalyst than he would have hired a male escort.
         “You
look ready for Valhalla,” he said. “Like you spent the night throwing
thunderbolts with Thor. Maybe we should forget the session and fly to Cabo.”
         “I have
never known such a sweet-hearted man,” she said, nailing him with a pair of
piercingly blue eyes, “who takes such great pleasure in being a bad boy.”
         “It’s my
upbringing, doc. My mother operated a bordello.”
         “Right.
So, how are we feeling these days? Still in a funk?”
         “I’d
rather you didn’t use that bedside we unless you’re planning on tucking me in tonight.”
         “With
you, Stephan,” she said, “the we is
more than manner. You are the most incorrigible Gemini on my roster, and I say
that as one who isn’t big on astrology.”
         “Yeah,
well . . . ” he mumbled, and thought for a moment about how he really was
feeling. “I had to take Brigit to the airport this morning.”
         “Ah,”
she said, and bit her lip in sympathy. “How was it?”
         “I got
into a scrap with the airport security guy,” he said. “The bastard wouldn’t let
me go to the gate with her.”
         “Nobody
gets to go to the gate anymore, Stephan. You know that. Why did you start a
fight you knew you couldn’t win?”
         He
stared out the window. The rain was making tributaries on the roof of the Annie
Besant Lodge. “It’s the whole scene, I guess. It raises my hackles. The armed
guards, the wary ticket agents. It’s too much like the first time. Once they
take her to the other side, she’s not in my life anymore, and I feel like I’m
busted all over again.”
         “But she
is in your life. Be glad for that. And listen—” She leaned forward and touched
his knee. “If I know anything about the human mind, I know that Brigit no
longer carries a conscious awareness of having been forcibly removed from your
house. I’ve been with her. I’ve analyzed her. I know she doesn’t.”
         “You
mean she’s sublimated it,” he said. “But it’s still there.”
         “Of
course it’s still there,” said Hildegarde. “Her bond with you wouldn’t be so
strong if her separation from you hadn’t been so painful.”
         “She saw
a man drop dead at my house yesterday.”
         “Oh? Who
was he?”
         “I think
he’s my new client,” said Raszer.
         “Aha,”
she said. “Well, if you have a dead man for a client, I think you had better
tell me about the case.”
         On the
wall behind her was a framed black-and-white photograph of C. G. Jung, the
Swiss psychoanalyst and onetime protégé of Freud who’d broken with his mentor
over fundamental questions about the roots of madness. Beneath the photograph
was a plaque bearing a Latin inscription attributed to him. In translation, it
read: S ummoned or N ot S ummoned , G od is P resent .
Raszer glanced at the plaque, then back to Dr. Schoeppe.
         “What do
you suppose old C. G. would have had to say about a small black rock in the palm
of the goddess Cybele?”
         “You’re
being cryptic, Stephan. Explain.”
         “The
dead man came to my house to ask for help finding his daughter, who was
apparently abducted from a mountain rave a year ago by three men in a black
limo. She was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, but she’d fallen in with a bad
crowd—renegade boys from the church. There’s a sister from Taos
involved—allegedly the catalyst.”
         “And the
girls’ mother . . . where is she?”
         “Presumably
also in Taos. Probably waiting for the saucers to come.”
         “I love
Taos,” said Hildegarde.
         “Me
too,” said Raszer. “But it does tend to attract people looking for an exit.”
         “And the
black rock?”