The Delilah Complex

Thirty-Eight

After Noah left, I retrieved the tape that Shelby Rush had given me and watched it once more. This time I was not curious about the rituals of the group; I was searching for Liz. Was she Betsy Young? Both names were nicknames for Elizabeth. It was possible that either the blond hair she sported in the therapy sessions or the brown hair I’d seen at the police station was a wig. Many of the women who belonged to the Scarlet Society disguised themselves, and that wasn’t illegal. They had a right to their privacy and to keep their sexual predilections a secret.

That a woman in the group had gone to the police didn’t bother me. In fact, I’d asked the group the day before to consider doing just that.

What I was having a hard time understanding was that a woman who’d taken an oath to keep the society a secret was also the reporter who had broken the news of the members’ deaths. It was clearly a conflict of interest.

The only ethical way for a reporter to handle being in her position was to disclose it to her editor, take her chances, and hope her boss would let her cover the stories despite the collision of her professional and personal lives.

Had she done that?

If she had, wouldn’t the editor have taken her off the story?

Certainly, she hadn’t written about the men’s involvement with the society in her stories. And from what Noah had told me, she had not disclosed it to the detectives working the case.

Why?

To hold something back from the authorities in case she needed ammunition? To protect the society? And if that was the reason, if she was keeping her promise to the society, then what was she doing writing the stories?

On the tape, the auction continued. Even if she were in this crowd, I wasn’t sure I’d recognize her. Most of the women were wearing masks. Timothy stepped forward on the makeshift stage. I’d seen this footage before. It made me more sad this time than it had the other day.

Was it simply a coincidence that the killer was confessing through a reporter who belonged to the society? But I didn’t believe in coincidences. So Betsy Young aka Liz had to have been chosen to break the stories precisely because she was a member of the society.

But why?

On the screen, Tim left the stage with the woman who had won him.

At that moment the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Morgan, I’d like you to come down and see what we found,” Noah said. “I’m sending a car for you.”