There was a flash of amusement in her eyes. “It’s a rethinking and revision of Freud’s concept of sublimation—the forcible diversion of dangerous aggressive or sexual energy into safer alternative channels.”

“Rebecca, humble retired detectives speak plain English.”

“Christ, Gurney, you’re so full of crap. But okay, we’ll do it your way. Forget about Freud. There’s a famous poem about a young girl by the name of Margaret who experiences grief at the falling leaves of autumn. But the last two lines are, ‘It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.’ That’s pattern resonance. The intense emotion she feels at observing the death of the leaves is really coming from a deeper knowledge of her own inevitable fate.”

“Your point being that the emotional energy in one experience can be transferred to another without—”

“Without our realizing that what we’re feeling right now may not be coming from what’s happening now. That’s the point!” There was a proprietary pride in her voice.

“How does all this apply to the Good Shepherd?”

“How? In just about every way possible. His actions, his thinking, his language, his motivation—they fit the concept perfectly. That case is one of the clearest validations of the concept. This kind of mission-driven killing is never about what it seems to be about on the surface. Underneath the killer’s conscious motive, there is always another source of energy, a traumatic experience or set of experiences that occurred much earlier in his life. He has a storehouse of repressed fear and rage generated by that experience. Through a process of association, he connects his past experience with something happening in the present, and the old feelings begin to animate his current thoughts. We’re hardwired to believe that what we’re feeling now is the result of what we’re experiencing now. If I feel happy or sad, I assume it’s because something in my current life is going well or badly—not because some bit of emotional energy has been transferred from a repressed memory into the present. Normally this is a harmless error. But it’s not so harmless when the transferred emotion is a pathological rage. And that’s exactly what happens with a certain kind of killer—the Good Shepherd being a perfect example.”

“Any idea what kind of childhood experience provided all that transferred energy behind the murders?”

“My best guess would be traumatic terror of a violent, materialistic father.”

“So why do you think he stopped after six?”

“Has it occurred to you that he might be dead?” Holdenfield looked at her watch with an alarmed frown. “Sorry, David, I really don’t have any more time.”

“I appreciate your fitting me into your hectic schedule. By the way, during your study of the case, did you ever speak to Max Clinter?”

“Hah! Clinter. Yes, of course. What about him?”