Crimson Joy (14 page)

Susan and I had one of the larger fights we'd had. It started when she said, "I cannot of course continue as his therapist." And I said,

"Absolutely not."

"He has an appointment Monday, and I'll have to tell him we cannot continue under the current circumstances," she said.

"Sure," I said. "When's his appointment?"

Susan had her book open on the counter.

"Eleven," she said. "I'll be in the office," I said, "and Hawk will be in the waiting room." She said, "No."

"Yes."

"No. I cannot have a patient come in for what he thinks will be therapy to be confronted with two armed men."

"He's killed four women," I said.

"I cannot let you tell him you know he did it without being around to protect you."

"I'm afraid you'll have to," Susan said. "You and Hawk both may stay up here as you have. I won't have you in the office. He has a right to that sanctuary."

"And I have a right to keep you alive," I said.

Susan slammed her hand down flat on top of the counter.

"Don't you, God damn it, play God with me," she said.

We were silent, looking at each other. Hawk sat comfortably, watching without expression. As far as you could tell from his reaction, we could have been discussing my plans for a haircut.

"I won't let you be alone with him," I said. "We worked too hard. It cost too much, to be who we are, to risk it for professional ethics, or human compassion, or your sense of self or all of them and world peace thrown in."

"You won't let me?" she said.

"I won't let you."

"Who the hell are you to talk about letting me?" she said.

"Your Sweet Patootie," I said.

Hawk was shifting his gaze uninterestedly back and forth between us, like a man watching a tennis match that didn't matter.

Susan said to him, "Have you got anything to say?"

"I won't let you be alone with him either," Hawk said.

Susan patted the fingertips of both hands along the edge of the counter.

She looked down as she did so and studied her hands while they moved back and forth along the countertop.

"His rights stop this side of us," I said.

"And mine?" Susan said.

I shook my head. "I won't get metaphysical about this. I'm bigger, I can insist, and I do."

She studied her tapping fingers some more. I waited. I could see her breathing begin to slow. Hawk took a plum from the bowl. Hawk finished the plum and got up and dropped the pit into the wastebasket and sat down. Susan's breathing was quiet now. She looked up.

"You are my Sweet Patootie," she said. "You can be with me when I talk with Felton."

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome." Hawk smiled benignly, like a proud grandparent.

"Knew you two could work it out," he said.

"Oh, fuck you," Susan said.

"Good point," Hawk said.

At nine minutes to eleven on Monday a blond young woman with what amounted to a crew cut came out of Susan's office and took her yellow slicker off the rack and went out of the waiting room without looking at me. As soon as the door closed behind her I got up and went into Susan's office. Hawk lingered at the top of the stairs. As soon as Felton showed up in the waiting room, Susan would ask him to come into the office, and as soon as he came in Hawk would come downstairs and sit in the waiting room.

"He always comes at one minute to eleven," Susan had said. "There's never anyone waiting. If he sees Hawk in the waiting room, it will frighten him."

"Does it matter?" I had said. "Hawk won't let him leave."

"You have forced your protection on me," Susan had said. "That's enough."

Which was why I was standing on the wall behind the door as Felton entered and Hawk waited until he was in to come sit in the waiting room.

Susan was wearing a dark blue suit with a boxy jacket and a white sweater. She stood when the waiting-room door opened and walked without hesitation to the office door and said, "Come in." Then she walked back into the office and stood by the doorway. When Felton entered, Susan closed the double layered door behind him. Then she went around her desk and sat down. Felton stood where he'd entered, looking at me. I looked back. It was the first time we'd met in daylight.

Susan said, "Sit down, please, Mr. Felton. I will explain in a moment why Mr. Spenser is here." Felton continued looking at me, and I at him.

He was probably six feet tall, maybe a little less, and slim, with a springiness in his bearing that suggested he was in decent shape. His brown hair was receding on each side of a widow's peak and there was a balding crown at the back. He had an untrimmed mustache that would have been bushy if he had the whiskers for it, but his beard was too light and it was merely untidy.

"Sit down, please, Mr. Felton," Susan said. Her voice was clear and firm.

Felton turned and sat in the chair beside her desk. He could see me from there and Susan too. I folded my arms and leaned against the wall.

I kept my face blank. The thing about monsters is, you want to kill them until you meet them, and when you meet them they don't seem monstrous, and killing them begins to seem unkind.

"What's the situation here?" Felton said to Susan.

"I'm sorry to bring Mr. Spenser in here, but we felt it necessary. I am convinced that you are the serial killer who uses a red rose for a trademark," Susan said. "Thus it seemed in my own best interests to have Mr. Spenser here, and another gentleman in the waiting room, while we discussed this."

Felton looked at me and back at Susan. He opened his mouth and closed it. I could see his face struggle to look contemptuous and contained.

"I hope you will confess," Susan said, "to me, and to the police. If you do, I will stand by you, but I cannot continue, under present conditions, as your therapist."

"You're kicking me out because you think I'm the killer?" Felton said.

I noticed he didn't say red rose, simply "the killer."

"Surely if we've gotten anyplace in here," Susan said, "we have come to understand that the way things are said matters. I am not kicking you out, I am withdrawing from my role as therapist. How effective do you suppose I could be if I continued, convinced you were a serial murderer and, frankly, apprehensive for my own safety?"

Felton's body was very tight. He sat up very straight and clasped his hands before him, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair. The posture made his shoulders hunch up somewhat. He seemed to feel hunched because he stretched his neck to its full length when he spoke.

"Well, you can't prove anything like that," he said.

"No, I can't," Susan said. "Nor is it my work to do so, nor will I share the confidences of our therapy with the police or anyone else. But I will tell the police that I am convinced of your guilt, as I'm convinced that you left the rose for me, as I'm convinced you killed the fish in my waiting room."

"You can't stop seeing me," he said.

"I'm sorry," Susan said.

"I didn't do anything. You can't. You got a responsibility. You took some kind of oath or something."

Susan shook her head slightly. "I am not an M.D. I am a Ph.D. I could not continue, however, even had I taken the Hippocratic oath."

"I have to talk to someone," Felton said. "I got no one to talk to.

There has to be somebody."

"If you will tell the truth, we can talk, but it has to be the truth and it has to be shared with the police and the courts. If you tell the truth, I will argue as persuasively as I know how that you need treatment, not electrocution. But I cannot, obviously, guarantee what the courts would decide."

Felton was still rigid in his chair. But his face was pale and his eyes were full of tears.

"Who will I talk to?" he said.

"I can do no further good for you," Susan said.

"I can't. You have to. I didn't do it, don't you believe me? I didn't."

Susan was quiet. Felton's rigidity began to loosen. He slumped in his chair and then bent forward as if there were no strength in his body to hold him upright.

"You can't," he said. His voice was thick and the tears that had come to his eyes were now running. "I can't stand it," he said. "I can't.

Please don't do this. Don't leave me. There isn't anyone else. Don't.

Don't."

Susan was still and her voice was steady and kind.

"If you don't confess, if you go on as you have, it will be worse for you, they will catch you soon." She nodded at me without looking at me.

"He knows you are the killer. Pretty soon he will catch you."

Felton was rocking in his chair back and forward, bent double, sobbing.

"I can't do it, I can't. You can't leave me."

"It is an awful choice for you," Susan said. "But it is a choice, and it is more than those four women had. You can confess and take your chances with my support, or you can leave now, and he," she nodded at me again, "and others will pursue you until you're caught."

Felton continued to rock and shake his head. "I didn't," he said. "I didn't." He slid forward out of the chair and pitched onto the floor and lay on his side with his knees up and his arms clutching himself.

"Jesus, oh, Jesus," he said. "I can't."

Susan got up from her chair and walked around her desk and crouched beside him and put her hand gently on his back.

"You can," she said. "Simply because you have no other choice."

He remained there and she remained beside him, her hand motionless on his back between his shoulder blades as he cried. It couldn't have gone on as long as it seemed, but after a while Felton got quiet. He sat up on the floor and then got slowly up, as if every bone ached, and stood holding on to the back of the chair with both hands.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. You fucking bitch, I can do it without you."

Below desk level, Susan turned the palm of her left hand toward me.

"When you are ready with the truth," Susan said, "I am here."

"I won't be back," Felton said. "You'll never humiliate me again. I'll get out of here and you and him can fuck on the couch over there like two dogs for all I care."

He turned and walked out the door into the waiting room. Hawk was leaning against the wall by the exit door. His eyes stayed on Felton without expression as Felton went to the door, opened it, went into the front hall and out the front door. Hawk went after him.

I closed the door.

Susan looked at me for a moment and began to cry, first a sniffle, then steadily, and then, head down on the desk, shoulders shaking. I started toward her and stopped, and knew something I didn't know how I knew, and waited quietly while she cried, and didn't touch her.

Susan took about ten minutes to get back together. [ "Sorry about the tears," she said. I "Don't blame you," I said. "What you had to do was brutal."

"We're convinced he murdered four women," Susan said. "I doubt that he could stop himself, and I fear he won't be able to stop himself again.

But that is little consolation to the four women, and the people that survived them."

"Hawk's behind him," I said.

"What if Felton loses him?"

"He won't. Hawk doesn't have to be circumspect. He doesn't have to keep from being spotted. He can walk along in Felton's shirt. He won't lose him."

"We can't let him kill someone else," Susan said.

"I know," I said. I took the phone off her desk and called Quirk at home. His wife answered and in a moment Quirk came on.

"Felton's it, the security guard from Charlestown," I said.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. I can't prove it, but I know it."

"Where is he now?" Quirk said.

"Just left Susan's office with Hawk behind him. Felton knows we know.

Susan dropped him from therapy, he's in a lavender funk."

"I'll get Belson," Quirk said. "We'll see if we can pick him up at his home. You at Susan's?"

"Yeah."

"Stay there, I'll check with you in a while."

"I'll be here," I said.

We hung up.

"Quirk and Belson are going to join Hawk behind Felton," I said. "Then there will be three people on his tail and they can relieve each other."

"Until when?"

"Until we figure out a way to prove what he did," I said. "Then Quirk can arrest him and he's off the street."

"What if we can't prove it?"

"Eventually he has to be out of circulation," I said.

"You mean you will kill him, or Hawk will," Susan said.

"Quirk might," I said. "He can't be left loose."

"I know he is the killer."

"Yeah," I said.

"We must think of a way to catch him."

"Well," I said. "I'm not letting you out of my sight until we do, so let's begin. What about your other patients?"

"I cancelled my appointments for the rest of the day," Susan said.

"You want some lunch," I said.

"Yes," Susan said, "and probably two stiff drinks."

We went upstairs and I stirred up two vodka martinis with very little vermouth. Susan plunked three cocktail olives into a glass and I poured the martini over them. Susan picked up the glass, looked at it for a moment, and drank maybe a third of it in one swallow.

Susan's refrigerator was under the counter, and what it lacked in height it lacked also in width. I sat on my haunches to look for lunch possibilities. They were limited.

"There are a couple of boneless chicken breasts in the freezer," Susan said.

I found them on top of the ice trays. The ice trays were full. Normally Susan kept them in there empty. I put some extra virgin olive oil in a fry pan, took the foil off the chicken breasts, put the two small rocklike portions in the fry pan, poured some of the vermouth over them, covered the pan, and put it on the gas stove to simmer.

Susan was down two thirds in her martini.

I found a bottle of Laphroig single malt Scotch in her cupboard, beside a box of sugar cubes and in back of some all-natural peanut butter. I took it down, broke some ice cubes out of one of the plastic trays, and made a large Scotch-on-the-rocks.