Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective Read Online Free PDF

you
have an answer for it."
    "Maybe. I think it's our reward for
motherhood. Little boys grow up adoring their mothers, yet
resenting their domination."
    "Love-hate relationship."
    'You could say that."
    "How 'bout little
girls?"
    "Why do you think women are so catty toward
one another?"
    "So maybe you've got a point. But what does
all this have to do with Jane?"
    "It has everything to do with Jane. How many
battered men have you seen? Battered by a woman, I mean?"
    "Not many, I guess. Not any, I suppose."
    "But men batter women all
the time. I mean, we get one or two cases every week. Vicious stuff. Savage! Not that I put
Jane in that category. But I've seen some almost as bad. Some have
also been raped, but most of these women are battered by husbands
or lovers."
    "Jane had not been raped."
    "No evidence of it, no. That being the case,
the odds are that she was attacked by a husband or lover. He
thought he killed her. So he dumped her on the freeway, tried to
make it look like a sex crime."
    "You think it was not a sex crime."
    "She showed none of
the—Look, Ashton, a woman who has been violently raped has wounds
other than those that show on the body. Wounds of the mind. No, I
do not think—he killed her over something else, or thought he did.
Came back today to finish the job."
    "I need to call Cochran."
    "Why?"
    "Because he purposely told me nothing about
this case. Wanted me coming in untainted, cold."
    "But ... it's over now.
Why do you—"
    "You said the killer tried to make it look
like a sex crime."
    "Yes."
    "Yet there was no evidence of rape."
    "Well ... a sadistic sex
crime."
    "A sadist does not merely bash the brains
out."
    "Neither did this one. He decorated her
body."
    "How so?"
    "Crudely so. Brutally so. With the glowing
end of cigarette, it seems. Breasts and torso. Sick little design
on her tummy."
    "Design of what?"
    "A satanic symbol."
    "Shit."
    "I've seen a lot worse."
    I sighed, reached for a bedside pad,
quick-sketched a design I had in mind, showed it to Alison.
"Anything like this?"
    She recoiled, sucked in her breath, said,
"That makes me want to throw up."
    "Seen it before?"
    "Yes. Put it down, please."
    I returned the pad to the bedside table. "Is
that the symbol you saw on Jane's body?"
    "Close enough, yes."
    I sighed again. "I need to call Cochran." I
was reaching for the telephone.
    She caught my hand, held it, said, "Not
right now. Please. Keep talking to me."
    I settled back, resumed
the soft caresses—not at all an unpleasant task—thinking, too,
about the disordered male minds that enjoy desecrating such a body.
I have never directly encountered a female body that did not awe
me by its sensual softness and smooth warmth. I make no bones about
it; I adore the feminine sexual mystique and everything connected
with it. Maybe I never felt dominated by my mother. Certainly I can
remember rubbing her smooth cheeks with my little-boy hands, and I
have at least a phantasmal memory of snuggling happily to her soft
bosom. Alison's suggestion of a love-hate tilt to the son-mother
relationship was certainly not new in psychiatric annals; if the
reasoning was valid, then I supposed that the reverse could also be
true. If so, the mother-son relationships could set the tone for
future man-woman relationships. But I voiced none of that to
Alison.
    She asked me in a whispery voice, "Do you
think oral sex is a perversion?"
    I thought about it for a couple of
microseconds, then replied, "For some, maybe."
    "How 'bout for you?"
    "Couldn't have proper sex without it," I
said casually. "The mouth is a primary organ, isn't it? How much
could any of it mean without a kiss?"
    "I meant ..."
    I chuckled and traced an invisible line from
an up-flung hip to her knee. "I know what you meant. And what I
said still goes."
    She took a deep breath, said, "Well I've
always wanted to try it."
    "So why haven't you?"
    "Guess I never found a man with the—I mean,
that I feel comfortable enough with."
    "Do you feel comfortable