“She thinks you use Will?”
Crawford looked at Dr. Bloom sharply. “I’ve got some things I have to talk to him about. We’ll need to check with you. When do you have to be at Quantico?”
“Not until Tuesday morning. I put it off.” Dr. Bloom was a guest lecturer at the behavioral-science section of the FBI Academy.
“Graham likes you. He doesn’t think you run any mind games on him,” Crawford said. Bloom’s remark about using Graham stuck in his craw.
“I don’t. I wouldn’t try,” Dr. Bloom said. “I’m as honest with him as I’d be with a patient.”
“Exactly.”
“No, I want to be his friend, and I am. Jack, I owe it to my field of study to observe. Remember, though, when you asked me to give you a study on him, I refused.”
“That was Petersen, upstairs, wanted the study.”
“You were the one who asked for it. No matter, if I ever did anything on Graham, if there were ever anything that might be of therapeutic benefit to others, I’d abstract it in a form that would be totally unrecognizable. If I ever do anything in a scholarly way, it’ll only be published posthumously.”
“After you or after Graham?”
Dr. Bloom didn’t answer.
“One thing I’ve noticed—I’m curious about this: You’re never alone in a room with Graham, are you? You’re smooth about it, but you’re never one-on-one with him. Why’s that? Do you think he’s psychic, is that it?”
“No. He’s an eideteker—he has a remarkable visual memory—but I don’t think he’s psychic. He wouldn’t let Duke test him—that doesn’t mean anything, though. He hates to be prodded and poked. So do I.”
“But—”
“Will wants to think of this as purely an intellectual exercise, and in the narrow definition of forensics, that’s what it is. He’s good at that, but there are other people just as good, I imagine.”
“Not many,” Crawford said.
“What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or mine—and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.”
“Why aren’t you ever alone with him?”
“Because I have some professional curiosity about him and he’d pick that up in a hurry. He’s fast.”
“If he caught you peeking, he’d snatch down the shades.”
“An unpleasant analogy, but accurate, yes. You’ve had sufficient revenge now, Jack. We can get to the point. Let’s make it short. I don’t feel very well.”
“A psychosomatic manifestation, probably,” Crawford said.
“Actually it’s my gall bladder. What do you want?”
“I have a medium where I can speak to the Tooth Fairy.”
“The Tattler,” Dr. Bloom said.
“Right. Do you think there’s any way to push him in a self-destructive way by what we say to him?”
“Push him toward suicide?”
“Suicide would suit me fine.”
“I doubt it. In certain kinds of mental illness that might be possible. Here, I doubt it. If he were self-destructive, he wouldn’t be so careful. He wouldn’t protect himself so well. If he were a classic paranoid schizophrenic, you might be able to influence him to blow up and become visible. You might even get him to hurt himself. I wouldn’t help you though.” Suicide was Bloom’s mortal enemy.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Crawford said. “Could we enrage him?”