Ripper. Isabel Allende

man lay on his back on the massage table. A sheet was draped over him, half a dozen powerful magnets were strategically placed on his torso, his eyes were closed, and he was half dozing, lulled by the restful scent of vetiver and the almost inaudible murmur of lapping waves, soft breezes, and bird calls. Feeling the pressure of Indiana’s hands on his head, he realized with some sadness that the session was drawing to a close. Today more than ever he needed the healing power of this woman. The previous night had been exhausting. He had woken with the sort of hangover one might get from a bender, though in fact he never touched alcohol, and by the time he arrived in Indiana’s consulting room, he had a blinding headache; but her magic touch had managed to relieve it. For an hour, she had visualized a stream of sidereal dust falling from some distant point in the cosmos and passing through her fingers to envelop Gary.

      Since the first visit the previous November, Indiana had used a variety of approaches with scant results, and she was beginning to lose heart. He insisted that the sessions with her relieved his pain, yet still she could visualize it with the certainty of an X ray. Believing as she did that wellness depended on a harmonious balance of body, mind, and spirit, and unable to detect anything physically wrong with Gary, she attributed his symptoms to a tormented mind and an imprisoned soul. Gary assured her that he’d had a happy childhood and a normal adolescence, so it was possible that this was related to some past life. Indiana was waiting for the opportunity to delicately broach the idea that he needed to cleanse his karma. She knew a Tibetan who was an expert on the subject.

      Indiana realized from the start, before Gary even uttered a word at his first session, that he was a complicated guy. She could sense a metal band pressing in on his skull and a sack of stones on his back: the poor man was carrying around some terrible burden. Chronic migraine, she guessed, and he, astonished by what seemed like clairvoyance, explained that his headaches had grown so bad over the past year that they made it impossible for him to continue his work as a geologist. The profession required him to be in good health, he explained; he had to crawl through caves, climb mountains, and camp out under the stars. At twenty-nine years of age, he had a pleasant face and a puny body, his hair cropped short to disguise his premature baldness and his gray eyes framed by thick black glasses that made him seem insipid. He came to Treatment Room 8 every Tuesday, always arriving punctually, and if he was particularly in need, he would request a second session later in the week.

      He always brought Indiana little gifts, flowers or books or poetry. He was convinced that women preferred poetry that rhymed, particularly on the subject of nature—birds, clouds, rivers. This had in fact been true of Indiana before she met Alan, who was ruthless in matters of art and literature. Her lover had introduced her to the Japanese tradition of haiku, particularly the modern variant gendai haiku, though in secret she still enjoyed sentimental verse.

      Gary always wore jeans, boots with thick rubber soles, and a metal-studded leather jacket, an outfit that contrasted starkly with his rabbitlike vulnerability. As with all her clients, Indiana had tried to get to know him well so that she could discover the source of his anxiety, but the man was like a blank page. She knew almost nothing about him, and what little she managed to find out, she forgot as soon as he left.

      At the end of the session that Tuesday, Indiana handed him a vial of oil of geranium to help him remember his dreams.

      “I don’t dream,” said Gary in his taciturn manner, “but I’d like to dream about you.”

      “We all dream, but not many people attach any importance to their dreams,” she said, ignoring the innuendo. “In some cultures—the Australian aborigines, for example—the dream world is as real as their waking life. Have you ever seen aboriginal art? They paint their dreams—the paintings are amazing. I always keep a notepad on my nightstand, and I jot down my dreams as soon as I wake up.”

      “What for?”

      “So I’ll remember them,” she explained. “They can guide me, help me in my work, dispel my doubts.”

      “Have you ever dreamed about me?”

      “I dream about all my patients,” she said, ignoring the implication once again. “I suggest you write down your dreams, Gary, and do some meditation.”

      When he first came, Indiana had devoted two whole sessions to teaching Gary about the benefits of meditation, how to empty his mind of thoughts, to breathe deeply, drawing the air into every cell in his body and exhaling his tension. Whenever he felt a migraine coming on, she suggested, he should find a quiet spot and meditate for fifteen minutes to relax, curiously observing his own symptoms rather than fighting them. “Pain, like our other feelings, is a doorway into the soul,” she had told him. “Ask yourself what you are feeling and what you are refusing to feel. Listen to your body. If you focus on that, you’ll find that the pain changes and opens out inside you, but I should warn you, your mind will not give up without a fight; it will try to distract you with ideas, images, memories, because it’s happy in its neurosis, Gary. You have to give yourself time to get to know yourself, learn to be alone, to be quiet, with no TV, no cell phone, no computer. Promise me you’ll do that, if only for five minutes every day.” But no matter how deeply Gary breathed, no matter how deeply he meditated, he was still a bundle of nerves.

      Indiana said good-bye to the man, listened as his boots padded down the corridor toward the stairwell, then slumped into a chair and heaved a sigh, feeling drained by the negative energy that radiated from him, and by his romantic insinuations, which were beginning to seriously irritate her. In her job, compassion was essential, but there were some patients whose necks she longed to wring.

Wednesday, 11

      Blake Jackson received half a dozen missed calls from his granddaughter while he was running around like a lunatic after a squash ball. After he had finished his game, he caught his breath, showered, and got dressed. By now it was past nine at night, and his buddy was hungry for Alsatian food and beer.

      “Amanda? That you?”

      “Who were you expecting? You called me!”

      “Did you call?”

      “You know I called, Grandpa, that’s why you’re calling me back.”

      “Okay, jeez!” Blake exploded. “What the hell do you want, you little brat?”

      “I want the lowdown on the shrink.”

      “The shrink? Oh, the psychiatrist who was murdered today.”

      “It was on the news today, but he was murdered the night before last or early yesterday morning. Find out everything you can.”

      “How am I supposed to do that?”

      “Talk to Dad.”

      “Why don’t you ask him?”

      “I will, as soon as I see him, but in the meantime you could get a head start on the investigation. Call me tomorrow with the details.”

      “I have to work tomorrow, and I can’t be calling your dad all the time.”

      “You want to carry on playing Ripper or not?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      Blake Jackson was not a superstitious man, but he suspected that the spirit of his late wife had somehow managed to pass to Amanda. Before she died, Marianne had told him that she would always watch over him, that she would help him find comfort in his loneliness. He had assumed she was referring to him marrying again, but in fact she was talking about Amanda. Truth be told, he’d had little time to grieve for the wife he loved so much—he spent the first months of widowhood feeding his granddaughter, putting her to bed, changing her diapers, bathing her, rocking her. Even at night he did not have time to miss the warmth of Marianne’s body in his bed, since Amanda had colic and was screaming at the top of her lungs. The child’s frantic sobbing terrified Indiana, who ended up crying with her while he paced up and down in his pajamas, cradling his granddaughter while reciting chemical formulae he had learned back at pharmacy school. At the time Indiana was a girl herself, barely sixteen years