The Coleridge Project: Chapter 6
Bill explained his transference theory regarding Gail Hawes to Dr. Sidney Whitfield, a small owlish-looking man in his late sixties. “Doctor, does that make any sense? Could Gail Hawes have grown to believe that the murdered girl was her own?”
“Let me guess,” Whitfield said. “You’ve been watching In Treatment on HBO, and that’s the extent of what you know about transference?”
Bill showed a sheepish smile. “You got me there.”
“You’re not too far off, though,” Whitfield said. “The show is accurate in its depiction of that phenomenon, and what you described is possible.” The psychologist grimaced severely enough that his eyes disappeared under a thick tangle of bushy gray eyebrows as he gave the matter additional thought. “A traumatic event could’ve triggered this,” he admitted cautiously. “A death of someone close, a major disappointment, a victimization, so yes, this is very possible. She could have found herself identifying so strongly with Mrs. Larson’s pain that she began to think of it as her own. Usually, people with these types of fixed delusions show other evidence of psychological instability, but it is possible she was able to fool those around her. Underneath, she must be a mess.”
Whitfield stopped to rub his eyes. When he took his hand away, he offered Bill a bleary-eyed stare and added, “I would obviously need to examine Ms. Hawes to say with any certainty whether this was the case, but yes, you can quote me on saying this is possible.”
“Why pick Kent Forster?”
Whitfield shrugged, his thin rounded shoulders drooping lower. “She could’ve fixated on him for any number of reasons. It could’ve been nothing more than spotting him on the street, then finding out who he was. My guess is that she is suppressing memories of abuse, and that this Mr. Forster had the bad fortune of reminding her of her abuser.”
Bill spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find evidence of past abuse or a recent traumatic event in Gail Hawes’s life only to come up empty. He tried several times during the day to call Janet Larson and finally reached her a few minutes after six. Her voice had a despairing quality, but also a sense of inevitability, as if she knew she would have to talk to someone about what Gail Hawes had done.
“We moved up to Massachusetts nine months ago,” she said. “This was a few months after Jenny’s murderer was killed, and we moved up here hoping to escape all that. I’ve been struggling all day whether to call the police, but I just couldn’t bear seeing Jenny dragged through the mud again.”
“I’ll try my best to be respectful to your daughter’s memory, but I will be writing about this. Did you know Gail Hawes?”
“No. My husband and I saw her in the building’s lobby a few times, and when someone looks as much like you as she does, you notice. But no, neither of us ever talked to her.”
“Any idea how she found out about Jenny?”
Bill heard a gasp as if Janet Larson was struggling not to sob. “No,” she said after several heavy breaths. “My husband and I, we don’t talk to people about that.”
“Do you know why she might’ve blamed Kent Forster for your daughter’s death?”
There was another long silence, then, “That woman must be mentally ill. That’s all I can imagine. John Gandre killed Jenny, not this Kent Forster. But that’s what happened, isn’t it? She somehow found out about Jenny and deluded herself into thinking that Jenny was her daughter, not mine, and that’s why she killed that poor man?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said.
“But that’s what you’re going to write for your newspaper, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She started sobbing softly then. He heard the click as she hung up the phone. Bill felt sympathy toward her, but he had no choice. The story was going to run. Understanding how explosive this story would be, he decided he’d better give Boxer a heads up. He called the detective and told him what he had found out. Boxer listened quietly, and then told Bill that none of this proved anything. “She’s not criminally insane. She knew exactly what she was doing. This was a cold calculated killing, and I don’t believe this fairy tale of yours.” Boxer’s voice grew angrier as he added, “Hawes is using that poor girl’s death to create an insanity defense.”
“What’s her reason for killing Forster?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s what I got to find out. But thanks for letting me know about the bullshit I’ll be dealing with.”
Bill couldn’t imagine the scenario Boxer was grasping onto, not with what he found out about Gail Hawes. There was little chance she would ever have known Kent Forster. With what he knew about her, her growing to imagine Janet Larson’s loss and pain as her own made more sense than anything else. He just wished he knew what traumatic event triggered all this. After he got off the phone with Boxer, he worked fast and furiously on his story and by ten o’clock he finished his first draft and went over it with Jack. The city desk editor had some changes he wanted made, and by eleven Bill had the story ready for printing. He gave Emily a call and headed off to the North End to share a late-night pizza.