Crimson Joy

CHAPTER 14

Washburn was famous by morning. His name was on the lips of Jane Pauley and his face was on the front page of everyone's morning paper. The mayor was on CNN congratulating the police commissioner, and the police commissioner was generously crediting hard work by the entire department. Six paragraphs into the front page story in the Globe was an allusion to Police Lieutenant Martin Quirk, the homicide commander, who expressed some reservations. In paragraph ten it was mentioned that a Boston private detective who had been working on the case with the police was unavailable for comment.

"I'm available," I said.

Susan was eating a piece of whole-wheat toast across her breakfast counter from me.

"Certainly to me," she said.

"Paper says I'm unavailable for comment," I said.

"They probably tried your office and you weren't there," she said.

"Lying bastards," I said.

"Well, aren't we surly this morning," Susan said.

"Everybody's got it solved," I said.

She had another bite of toast. I drank my coffee. Susan's hair was in curlers, her face was devoid of makeup. She wore white silk pajamas with a ruffle, and sleeping had wrinkled them. I stared at her.

"What's the matter?" she said when she caught me.

"I was just wondering why you still look beautiful," I said. "It must not be the makeup and the clothes. It must be you." She smiled. "Are you drinking at this hour of the morning?"

"You go to my head," I said, "like a sip of sparkling burgundy brew."

"I'm not going to do that," she said, "until after work."

I gnawed on my bagel. She looked at her watch. Susan was always running a little late. There seemed time to finish her toast.

"Any hints from your patients?" I said.

"No."

"If you knew who left the rose and were pretty sure he was Red Rose, would you share?"

"Red Rose has confessed," she said.

"Don't dodge the question."

She nodded, and bit the corner of her toast triangle.

"I guess I would," she said. "But I would have to be sure and it would be .. She shook her head and didn't finish the sentence. She tried a new one.

"I came late to this work," she said. "And the work, and my skill at it, makes me possible. It makes us possible, because I am more than the apple of your eye, however glad I am about being that too. I am valuable without you."

"True," I said. There was a bowl of Santa Rosa plums on the counter. I took one and polished it against my pants leg.

"I am rigidly defensive about it," she said.

I bit into the plum.

"To have my autonomy violated by the Red Rose business is nearly intolerable," she said. "And to have you or Hawk here watching over me" her face tightened as she said it "is very bitter."

"None of this is your fault," I said.

"Nor yours," she said. "But you must understand that it is like letting you into something that is mine. It is like giving away part of me, to have you question me about my patients."

"I don't want him to kill you," I said.

"I know," she said. "I don't want him to either. And I am less frightened with you here, or Hawk. But you must see that being frightened unless you're here, in the practice of my profession, is a terrible condition to be in for me."

"I know," I said.

"I know you know," Susan said. She smiled her big wide brilliant smile, the one that made you feel like life's focus. "I'm just kvetching."

"Neither Quirk nor Belson believes the confession," I said.

"It exonerates the police," Susan said. "Washburn, according to the news, isn't a cop."

"Yeah, and it gives them a black criminal, which shuts up all the talk about racism, and it keeps the general public from screaming for an arrest. There's a lot of reasons to believe him."

"Except?"

"Except the gun is wrong and the rope is wrong and there's no semen and he's black, so how come he kept finding his victims in places a white guy would find them and how come he took this long to get to his wife?"

"I could speculate on the wife part," Susan said.

"Sure," I said. "But the fact remains that there's a lot of holes, and two very experienced homicide investigators don't believe him."

"A man like Washburn might in fact kill his wife and be so overcome at the guilt of it that he would do this," Susan said.

"Confess to a whole series of crimes?" I said.

"More. He might emulate the criminal in the crime, become him, in a manner of speaking. It would be a way of dramatizing how horrible a crime he was contemplating, and it would, maybe, distance him from it enough so that he could carry it out."

"So his grief and all would be genuine," I said.

"Absolutely. He's done something more horrible than any of his questioners can imagine. Of course he's overcome. And he must be punished on a scale equal to the horribleness. He must not only be a murderer, he must be a fiend, as it were, a noted serial killer."

"So you don't believe his confession either," I said.

"I neither believe nor disbelieve. I could make a scenario for belief too. I'm only trying to give you possibilities in an area I know."

Susan said. "If you decide finally that he's innocent or guilty, I will believe you," she said. "I know what I know, and I know what you know.

In this you know more."

I finished my plum, and got up and walked around the counter to the other side and gave her a kiss on the mouth.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome."

She looked at her watch.

"Jesus Christ," she said. "I have twenty minutes until my first appointment."

"Try not to trample me," I said, and got out of the way.