Crimson Joy

CHAPTER 24

"It's Felton," I said.

Susan and Hawk and I sat at Susan's counter on Saturday morning, drinking coffee and eating whole-wheat bagels that Hawk had picked up at Fromaggio on his way over.

On the counter was an 8 1/2 X 11 brown manila envelope that Hawk had got from Belson before he made the bagel run. It contained a voiceprint matchup of the two phone messages and a tape of both messages side by side.

Susan took ajar of cherry preserves from the refrigerator under the counter and put it out with the cream cheese. She spread a vaporously thin layer of cream cheese on a small piece of bagel she'd broken off.

She dabbed a minuscule of preserve on it and took a small bite.

"It is, Susan," Hawk said.

"Yes," Susan said when she swallowed her morsel of bagel. "It probably is."

I stirred a spoonful of sugar into my second cup of coffee.

"It explains the symbolism," I said. "The red rose, the black women.

Rose Mary Black, aka Blackie."

Susan carefully sliced a bagel in two and put both halves in her imported German toaster, which was wide enough to contain two bagel slices. She slid the toast lever down.

"I knew her first name was Rose," Susan said. "But he never mentioned his mother's last name."

"Isn't that unusual?" I said.

"Not really, many patients talk of 'my wife," 'my mother," 'my father' particularly parents, whom the patient has never really thought of by their name."

The toaster popped and Susan took the bagels out and put them on Hawk's plate.

"And he was having trouble with her, wasn't he?" I said.

Susan watched Hawk put cream cheese on his bagel. Like everything else Hawk did, it was done without wasted motion, without mistake, and there was exactly the right amount. When Hawk ate pizza he never got any on his tie.

"If he was in the grip of some sort of unresolved rage at his mother."

Susan said, "and his mother's name was Rose Mary Black, and there were other factors that I know, a man might in fact express that rage in a deflected manner on people who could appropriately symbolize Rose Mary Black."

"Like black women," Hawk said, "and leave a rose."

"Yes," Susan said, "and if the object of his rage was infinitely powerful, the rage would be overlaid with fear. And if the rage and fear were sexually inspired and sexually expressed, it might have to be in a kind of surrogation."

"You mean, he might have to tie them up and rape them with a gun," I said.

"Yes," Susan said. She was drinking her coffee, holding the mug in both hands, watching me over the rim.

"Does Felton fit that kind of a profile?" I said.

Susan continued to look at me over the rim of her cup. She sipped a little decaffeinated coffee. She had a faux art clock that ran on a battery, on the coffee table in the living room, and its ticking was loud and metronomic. Hawk poured some more coffee into his cup and then added some to mine.

I looked at Susan. She looked at me and then closed her eyes.

"Yes," she said. "He fits it better than you can know." I said, "We've got a tape that Belson did a voiceprint on. One's the guy that called and said he was Red Rose and challenged me. The other came after the Jimmy Winston fiasco. Voiceprint says they're the same."

Susan nodded. "I'll listen," she said.

I went to her stereo and put the tape in. Susan listened with her chin in her hand. I played the two conversations three times.

Susan still sat with her chin in her hand, staring at the tape machine.

Hawk and I waited. Susan blew her breath out in a short burst.

"It sounds like him," she said. "No certainty, it could be someone else, but it could be him."

I took the tape out of the stereo. Hawk sat in repose, stool tipped back, balanced lightly with his elbows against the edge of the counter.

I was pretty sure he didn't really need the counter.

Susan took her chin from her hand. "I too know it's him," she said.

"But there's nothing I can say in terms of courtroom-type evidence.

Because these crimes fit a man with his pathologies, it doesn't mean he committed them. I've had many men with similar pathologies that are able to master them."

"What makes the difference?" Hawk said.

"I don't know," Susan said. "Character, influences of other people in their lives, degree of Oedipal manipulation on the mother's part, intelligence of the patient, will to succeed in the therapy, blind chance." Susan smiled. "All of the above."

"How 'bout divine intervention," Hawk said.

"Wouldn't it be pretty," Susan said.

Hawk smiled at her with warmth that no one ever got.

"He's the one," I said.

"Yes," Hawk said.

"Yes," Susan said.

"And we can't prove it," I said.

"The voiceprint?" Susan said.

"Just proves that the same guy called me twice. Doesn't prove he's Red Rose. Doesn't prove the guy they've got for it isn't Red Rose. Even if you could identify the voice without equivocation, it wouldn't prove he was Red Rose."

"Equivocation," Hawk said.

"Keep hanging around with me," I said to Hawk. "Listen and learn."

"My appointment book will show that Felton was there the day that you chased him," Susan said.

"So were, what, seven other people?" I said.

She nodded.

"What about the murders?" Hawk said.

"The murders?" Susan said.

"Compare the dates of his therapy with the dates of the murders," I said.

"Why?"

"See what happen," Hawk said. "We know the fish in there, we casting around trying to find where."

"I'll get my book," Susan said.

She left us and went down to the office.

Hawk said, "We can't prove this guy did it, but we know he did. Sooner or later we got to do something."

"I know," I said.

Susan came back with her appointment book.

"What are the murder dates?" she said.

I knew them by heart and told her.

She wrote them down in her attractive and completely unreadable hand. It was graceful and composed of well integrated linear sweeps, which had great surface charm and no intelligibility. Susan's handwriting was so bad that often she couldn't read it herself when she went back to it later.

She leafed through her appointment book while Hawk and I cleared the counter and rinsed the cups and put them in the dishwasher. I capped the cherry preserves and put the top back on the cream cheese container and put them in the refrigerator. Hawk was washing his hands and face at the sink and drying them on a paper towel.

"Sonovabitch," Susan said.

Hawk and I turned and looked at her.

"Felton normally comes twice a week," Susan said. "The days vary, but the twice a week doesn't. All the murders except the first were on the day after an appointment."

"When did he start therapy?" I said.

"Two weeks after the first one," Susan said.

The room was quiet. The wet hum of the dishwasher was all there was to listen to.

"Something in the sessions must have set him off," Susan said.

I could feel the faint tremor in the floor as the dishwasher went about its business.

"Doesn't have to mean that," Hawk said.

"I know," Susan said. She was entirely Dr. Silverman now, thinking about human behavior. "But the coincidence is startling."

"What would have done it?" I said.

Susan shook her head. She walked to the window and stared down at Saturday morning on Linnaean Street. We were quiet. Hawk settled back onto his stool, I stood with my back to the sink, leaning against it.

Susan turned finally and looked at us.

"Me, I think."

"How so?" I said.

"I probably wasn't the right referral for him. An attractive older woman in a position of authority, it was easy for the transference of feelings from his mother onto me."

"That one of the things supposed to happen?" Hawk said.

"Yes, and I'm supposed to then lead him to master those feelings, because I'm not his mother and our interaction will not nurture his condition."

"But here?" I said.

"Here his passion for his mother was transferred to me and her un attainability existed as well in me, and, my God, it's a seminar in shrink school, but, too simply, his need for oblique and symbolic sex-slash-punishment was simply intensified by the transference plus the unfortunate accident of your relationship with both the case and me."

"Laius to your Jocasta?" I said.

Susan nodded.

Hawk said, "I just a poor simple minority pistolero. You intellectuals talking 'bout Oedipus?"

"I told you you'd learn stuff," I said.

"Grateful for the chance, bawse," Hawk said.

Susan was fully engaged with her topic and paid no attention to us.

"I should have given him a referral," she said. "I could feel the erotic tension in our first interview."

"But you figured you could handle it," I said.

"And help him master it," Susan said.

"And in time you probably could have," I said.

"And four women dead," she said. "We have no more time." . Her boyfriend had been to see Mimi. He'd lied about some kind of bonding check, but it was him. Big, tough looking guy, broken nose, just like the boyfriend. She'd been telling on him. She must know. He felt as if he would come off like an explosion. She knows. He felt like he did when he did the colored girls. Pull the trigger and feel the explosion… the bitch. She told. She fucking told. There was no one to trust. His mother, his wife ex-wife Her. They all fucked you up one way or another… He thought about bound black women. The fantasy always helped when he was upset. He thought about putting his stuff in the gym bag, the tape, the rope, the gun. He thought about the shrink with her black hair and dark eyes. Maybe I should do them all, he thought, maybe I should do them all together, all in the same room. He thought of his wife ex-wife helpless on the floor. He thought of Her.

He was standing above them. He went to the hidden place he'd made, removed the section of baseboard and took out the gun. A .38 caliber Smith n Wesson, nickel-plated, walnut grips, 4-inch barrel, unregistered. His registered gun was in the bedroom closet in his holster, hanging beside his uniform. He'd taken this one from his mother's house after his father's funeral. She never knew he took it.

He took his father's gun and put it in the gym bag. From his hiding place he took the roll of clothesline and the duct tape and put them in the bag. He didn't know what he was going to do yet, but he was getting ready. He felt strong and full to have his trouble bag ready. Maybe the boyfriend. Maybe if he weren't around he could take his time with Her.

The sense of fullness went away. His stomach felt hollow. He took the gun from the bag and hefted it. He turned toward the mirror on the far wall and went into a crouch, looking at himself over the gun sight. The handle of the gun was smooth and solid. The gun sight didn't waver. His stomach felt better. But it didn't feel good. He thought about the women some more and the full feeling came back. He turned sideways and watched himself in the mirror as he aimed one-handed, in profile, and then full face again. It had been a long time since the last one. The hell with them. He needed it. He looked at himself aiming into the mirror and thought about Dr. Silverman.