Chase: Roman

a combination of fear and the desire to prove himself to Cauvel, Wallace and the rest of them. Until one or the other of those motivations disappeared, the mix was an effective spur to keep him going. Taking each step like an octogenarian, he went downstairs.
        ‘Mail for you,’ Mrs Fiedling said, slapping her mules as she shuffled out from the living room. She picked up a plain brown envelope from the pine table in the hall and handed it to him. She said, ‘As you can see, there isn't any return address.’
        ‘Probably advertisements,’ Chase said. He took a step toward the front door, hoping that she would not notice his stiffness and inquire about his health.
        He need not have worried, for she was more interested in the contents of the envelope than in him. ‘It can't be ads in a plain envelope. The only things that come in plain envelopes without return addresses are wedding invitations - of which that doesn't look like one - and dirty literature.’ She looked at him and said, ‘I won't tolerate dirty literature in my house.’
        ‘And I don't blame you,’ Chase said.
        Then it isn't?’
        ‘No,’ he said, slitting it open with his finger and withdrawing the Xeroxed psychiatric file and journal articles. ‘A friend of mine who knows my interest in psychology and psychiatry sends me interesting articles on the subject when he find them.’
        ‘Oh,’ Mrs Fiedling said, obviously surprised that Chase harboured such intellectual and hitherto unknown interests. ‘Well, I hope I didn't embarrass you, but I couldn't tolerate having pornography in my home.’
        Chase only barely refrained from commenting on her unbuttoned dress. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to be going.’
        ‘Job interview?’ she asked.
        ‘Yes.’
        ‘Then I won't be the one to hold you up!’
        He went out to his car and sank into the bucket seat behind the wheel, taking a moment to draw several deep breaths of fresh air. He started the car and drove far enough down the street to be out of sight of the house, kerbed, let the engine idle as he examined the Xeroxed pages which Judge had sent him.
        If he had hoped to find something in these papers to further convince him that his present attitudes were foolish and that he should go back to his room and forget the private investigation he had begun, he was disappointed. Instead, Cauvel's records engendered even a greater stubbornness, a more fierce anger and a stronger desire to prove himself. The pages of handwritten notes that had been made during their sessions were so difficult to read that he passed over them for the time being, but he studied the three published and two as yet unpublished articles that concerned him. In all of them, Cauvel's high self-esteem was evident, and his egotism had subtly distorted everything which he had reported to his colleagues. Though he never used Chase's real name, Chase knew himself in the articles - but as if he were looking at himself and the history of his mental condition through a curiously distorting glass. Every annoying symptom he suffered had been exaggerated to make their eventual amelioration seem more of an achievement on Cauvel's part. All the clumsy probes that Cauvel had initiated went unmentioned while he claimed credit for techniques he had never employed but had apparently developed through hindsight. And when Cauvel referred to him, it was with an unfair summation of the man-boy he had been before Nam, with a disdain completely unjustified. It was this, in the end, that brought Chase's growing irritation to a burst of anger: he jammed the sheets back into the envelope, put the Mustang in gear and drove away from there, more intent on amassing a body of information about Judge than he had ever been.
        
        The Metropolitan Bureau of Vital Statistics, in the basement of the courthouse, was a model of efficiency. The office itself, fronting the long, well-lighted data storage vaults, was small and neat, containing four filing cabinets, three typewriters, a copying machine, a long worktable, a tiny refrigerator-hotplate combination, two huge square desks with matching, sturdy chairs - and two equally study elderly women who banged away at their typewriters with a rhythmic swiftness that seemed almost arranged and conducted. The only open space was a railed foyer inside the door and aisles that led directly from each desk