Darker Than Night

50

Ready for the chess game.

Dr. Rita Maxwell was standing behind her desk as usual as David Blank entered her office. It was best to be standing, smiling, and putting the patient at his or her ease, yet still maintaining a position of authority.

“David, it’s good to see you again.”

He smiled back. “Same here, Dr. Maxwell.”

How amiable and cooperative we are this afternoon. “Why don’t you sit down, David, the clock is running.”

He grinned wider. “Isn’t that the truth, Doctor?”

She sat down on the sofa this time, very informal, as he lowered himself into the recliner he liked, tilting the backrest so he was lying almost horizontally. He watched her from that position from the corner of a narrowed eye, almost like someone feigning sleep.

“We’re in the truth business,” she said, keeping it conversational and meaningless for now. She was determined to make appreciable progress this session, to peel back another of the layers concealing the real David Blank. David Blank—who wasn’t in the phone directory, who didn’t appear on any of New York’s public records she could access on her computer. Who are you?

Again he nudged her off balance. “I’d like to apologize for being evasive,” he said, his eyes closed lightly. “I’ve been avoiding the truth, lying to you.”

“I suspected,” she said, keeping the irony from her voice.

“This is difficult for me,” Blank said without changing expression. His eyes were still closed, as if he were napping and talking at the same time.

“Like a confession?” Dr. Maxwell asked. She wondered if he might be playing her, setting her up for an even bigger lie than the ones he’d told earlier. If that were possible.

“Well, maybe…Why would you describe it as that? A confession?”

“To be honest, I interpreted some of what you’ve told me as a manifestation of guilt.”

“What kind of guilt?”

“There is only one kind.”

“Ah, that’s wonderful, Doctor! You know! Guilt is like every color always, a dreadful buzzing gray.”

“That’s very descriptive. Really. I do want to assure you that confession here will be confidential and liberating. And between us only, I promise you.”

“Liberating…” He seemed to taste the word as he said it. “Do you believe that?”

“Oh, yes. It’s why I’m here.”

Dr. Maxwell liked that answer. She glanced at the tiny recorder on the corner of her desk to make sure it was running. Though it was soundless, its red pinpoint of light glowed reassuringly.

“We might start,” Dr. Maxwell said, “with you telling me your real name.”

“Your real name is Rita.”

Deflection. And unabashedly obvious. He wasn’t quite in a mood to relinquish control. “Yes, of course it is.” Keeping her tone neutral.

His eyes remained closed as he spoke. There was no sign that the pupils were moving beneath the thin flesh of his eyelids. “If a person did have something he wanted to confess, Rita…say, that he had to confess, if you know what I mean…”

“I know, David.” Keep talking, keep talking.

“Say, like a serial killer who secretly yearns to be stopped, to be caught; how would a serial killer deal with the sly pressure, the self-destructive danger of his increasing need for confession?”

Whoa! “That’s quite a question.”

“Do you have quite an answer?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Not yet.”

“I do.”

Dr. Maxwell found herself glancing at the closed office door. It wasn’t often that she’d been frightened during her sessions. And she wasn’t ready to admit she was frightened now.

Uneasy, yes…

“What is your answer, David?” She felt a chill as she asked. She was playing his game, she knew, finding herself being led. To where? “What would such a person do?”

“Obviously, he’d find someone other than the police to confess to.”

“To what effect?”

“Why, then the buzzing would stop, the pressure would ease, and he’d be unburdened, liberated, and free to kill and kill and kill.”

My God, it made sense! A horrible kind of sense, but sense.

“Anyone he’d confess to would have to notify the police,” Dr. Maxwell said. “Even a priest. Even a psychoanalyst. Of course, we’re speaking hypothetically,” she added hopefully. Knowing on some level, beneath so many layers of her own, that she’d lost control of what was happening here.

His eyes were open now and he was looking directly at her. His right hand crept beneath his unbuttoned sport coat and emerged holding a long-bladed knife. The blade had obviously been wiped recently, but there was still a smear of what looked like blood on it. Dr. Maxwell’s mind darted to her receptionist in the outer office.

Hannah! If I can somehow alert Hannah!

If he hadn’t…

“Only one of us is speaking hypothetically, Doctor.” His voice was calm, and somehow different. This was the real David Blank, whatever his name, whatever his ancient name, and he terrified her.

“Hannah?”

“She’s in the closet, where no one coming into the office will notice her. The phone’s disconnected, but it doesn’t matter. She won’t be booking any more appointments.”

Dr. Maxwell heard herself swallow, a sound like tiny bones breaking beneath flesh. Words froze in her throat. She didn’t know what she was trying to say, anyway.

David Blank sat up and swiveled his body on the recliner so he was facing her, holding the knife up and out so she could see and appreciate the length of its gleaming blade.

“We have another twenty minutes, Doctor.”

She swallowed again.

He smiled. “All these weeks are about to pay off. You’ve gotten what you wanted. We’ve finally made a real breakthrough. I’d like you to hear my confession.”

Dr. Maxwell knew that this time none of it would be lies.

Her insatiable need to learn, the driving curiosity that had propelled her to a scholarship to one of the toughest, most prestigious universities on the East Coast, then through a near-fatal bout of meningitis, then through medical school and a grueling internship, and all the way here, to a plush office on Park Avenue, somehow found its way through her horror.

“Why don’t we start with your real name?” she managed to croak.

Dying to know.