Read Online Because the Night by James Ellroy - Free Book Online

and concentrated on practicing the craft of psychiatry, specializing in counseling criminals and prostitutes at Castleford and then in private practice in Los Angeles, seeking and storing knowledge, writing and publishing monographs and establishing a reputation of maverick brilliance that grew and grew as his designs for conquest seethed within him. And then one day Thomas Goff was at his door, whimpering that the headaches were back and would the Doctor please help him?
    Fate snapped its fingers. “Yes,” Dr. John Havilland said.
    Neuro scans, electro-encephalograms, blood tests, and extensive therapy followed, each physical and mental probe another step toward the starting gate of the Night Tripper’s mission. Thomas Goff’s last ten years had been extraordinary. Havilland described them in his journal:
    Since my previous analysis of the subject, he has gone on to assume classic criminal behavior patterns, exemplifying the paranoic/sociopathic textbook personality, but with one notable exception: His criminal behavior is pathologically derived, but not pathologically executed. Goff shows great adaptability in subjugating his violent urges to circumspection in the choosing of his victims, and he always stops short of inflicting great bodily harm or murder. He has committed nighttime burglaries all over the East Coast for a decade and has never been caught; he has performed an estimated two hundred assaults on women, experiencing simultaneous sexual release without reverting to the mayhem that characterized his assault career prior to our 1971 counselings. Since Goff is, in the truest sense a psychopath, this restraint (and his pride in it, that he attributes to my earlier counseling!) is beyond extraordinary—it is almost unbelievable. It is evident that he credits me with saving his life (i.e., alleviating his terror of daylight and blunting his memory of the suicide he witnessed at Attica); and that, implicitly, he credits me with “teaching” him the restraint that has armed him with a virtual criminal carte blanche. In fact, Goff (a 161 I.Q.!), says that I have taught him to think. It is evident that this brilliant criminal is seeking a father-son bonding with me, and that his “headaches” are a psychosomatic device to bring the two of us together to achieve the purposes he senses I have planned. His attraction to me is not either overtly or covertly homosexual; Goff simply equates me, on the sensory/stimuli level, with peace, tranquillity and the fulfillment of dreams.
    Three weeks into the new counseling, with Goff’s recurring headaches quelled with hallucinogen-laced codeine, the Night Tripper went in full tilt and gained complete capitulation.
    â€œDo you know that I love you, Thomas?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDo you know that I am here to take you as far as you can go?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWill you help me to help other people? To bring them out the way I’ve brought you out?”
    â€œYou know I will.”
    â€œWill you help me gain knowledge?”
    â€œName it, point the finger, I’ll do it.”
    â€œWould you kill for me?”
    â€œYes.”
    That night the Doctor outlined Goff’s role in his mission. Recruit lonely men and women, journeymen spiritual seekers, spineless “new agers” with no family and plenty of money. The counterculture consciousness circuit and singles nightspots should be rife with them. Goff was to judge their susceptibility, draw them out, and bring them to him, utilizing the greatest discretion and caution, employing no physical violence. He was also to perform burglary-reconnaissance forays, entering the homes of the Doctor’s hooker patients, checking their John books for the names of wealthy customers—the objective being men with weak wills and monogamous relationships with their whores. “Be slow and cautious, Thomas,” Havilland said. “This is a lifetime