The Delilah Complex

Thirty-Three

My last patient on Tuesday left at 4:55 p.m.-ten minutes late because we had broken through a major issue and I was loath to rush her out. I hurried to the staff meeting in the upstairs conference room that usually began on time.

There were eight therapists at the institute, all of whom specialized in sex therapy, and our weekly conclaves gave us a chance to talk with one another about our patients and their treatments. Nina-and her husband before her-believed that one of the strengths of the Butterfield Institute was the combined expertise of several doctors and therapists under one roof. Indeed, for me, being able to consult with others had proved preferable to working alone, as most members of my profession did.

That night, the discussion was focused on one of Nina’s patients whom she thought needed to begin working with a sex surrogate. She wanted our opinions-surrogacy being the last resort.

We’d been going around and around about whether there was any other impotency treatment Nina might try first, but no one offered any options that Nina hadn’t already exhausted. She looked at me and said, “You haven’t had much to add, Morgan. No ideas?”

“It sounds like you’ve covered pretty much everything but the surrogate.”

She nodded but was frowning. “We moved off of that about five minutes ago.”

I stared at her.

“We’ve been talking about which surrogate would be best in the situation.”

“Sorry.”

“What’s going on with your caseload?” she asked.

It wasn’t required, but it was expected that at some point in the meeting we’d each do an update on some of our most complicated cases. But the only thing I needed to discuss was the one thing I didn’t want to discuss. I tried to think of every other patient I was seeing, to dredge up some valid question and get a conversation going and move Nina’s attention-and her fierce eyes-off me.

“Morgan?”

I still hadn’t said anything and she was waiting. This wasn’t like me, I knew. Anxiety was making my blood race. I forced myself to just say it.

“I need to talk about going to the police,” I said.

Nina’s eyebrows arched. “I thought we covered that.”

I shook my head.

“Going to the police about what?” Simon Weiss asked.

There were no windows in the conference room. Just dark green walls, comfortable black leather chairs, a verdant marble table, and antique prints of maps on the walls. From where I was seated, I could see a line of etchings of Europe on maps from the seventeenth century. The blue of the ocean was slightly faded, but the reds, browns and yellows of the countries were still fairly intense. I couldn’t keep staring at the prints. Taking a breath, I launched into an explanation of what had been going on with the Scarlet Society, what I had seen at the police station, and what I felt I needed to do.

“The only thing Morgan hasn’t mentioned,” Nina said in a tone that was harsher than normal, “is that we already talked about this and I advised her not to talk to the police again.”

“You did. But I just don’t think that’s the right decision.”

“It’s the only decision that you can make under the circumstances,” she countered.

Around us, Simon and the rest of the staff must have been aware of the subtext of the conversation. Everyone knew of Nina’s overdeveloped and irrational anger at the NYPD.

“Please, Morgan, can’t you just trust me on this?”

I looked at Simon, my closest friend at the institute, imploring him with my eyes to step in. He did. Of course he did. I could always count on him, and I gave him a half smile before the fact to thank him.

“Nina, what’s your objection? If the women in the group haven’t given Morgan this information, if it’s something she saw on her own, there’s no reason she can’t go to the police.”

There were murmurs and assents from two other therapists.

“I don’t think you can, Morgan,” Helen Grant said. She was one of the older members of the staff and had been handpicked by Sam, even before he married Nina, to work at Butterfield. She was elderly then. Now she was approaching ancient, but she still came in five days a week and saw patients. “No. Morgan can’t go to the police. She has a commitment to her group. There is nothing she can offer up that will help, if the society is as secret as she says it is.” Her white curls bobbed with the intensity of her next words. “It is not our job to solve crimes. Haven’t we gone through enough of that around here?”

Nina was looking at me sternly, differently from how she looked at any other member of her staff. She was frowning the way I’d frown at Dulcie when she pushed me to the point of exasperation.

“I am not a child,” I said more stridently than I’d wanted to. “I am not unaware of the boundaries. I don’t have any reason not to tell detectives Jordain and Perez what I saw in those photographs.”

“Well. We’re done for tonight,” Nina said as she put her mug down on the table.

The crack was not as loud as it was unexpected, and everyone stared at the shards of white china and the tea that pooled on the table. No one moved except for Nina, who leaned over and started to pick up the broken mug.

“Don’t do that-” I started to say, about to warn her of exactly what happened. She cut her forefinger on one of the slivers of porcelain. A droplet of bright blood appeared. She stared at it as if it were an intruder. With the blood starting to drip off her finger, she looked up and over at me.

“You understand that I believe you are about to make a serious mistake.”

I turned and picked up a paper napkin from the sideboard where the coffee, tea, cups and a plate of cookies were. “Here,” I said as I reached her side. “Your finger is bleeding.”

She took it from me without thanking me. Suddenly, I became aware that the room was too quiet. I looked around. We were alone. The other members of the institute had slipped out.

“Why are you so dead set on doing exactly what I don’t think you should do? Why would you bring that up here? It was between us.”

“No, Nina, it wasn’t.”

“I told you the other day that-”

“This isn’t a decision about me personally that I talked over with my godmother. This is about a therapist, a group of patients and two murders. I brought it up in front of the members of the Butterfield Institute because the institute needs to make a decision about it.”

She looked stricken. As if I’d pushed her off a narrow parapet and she was afraid that she was falling.

“It isn’t about the institute. It’s not about your patients. You know it isn’t.” She then walked out, slamming the door behind her and leaving me by myself in the conference room.