CHAPTER 26
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.