The Delilah Complex

Forty-Five

After Betsy blurted out that she was responsible for the deaths of all four men, she sat there, head in hands, while I opened the envelope and inspected the contents. I’d seen so many photos like these at the police station I should have been inured to them, but the new shots made me sick to my stomach, and when I saw the red number 4 on the new man’s feet, my head started to pound. “Betsy?”

She looked up. “They wouldn’t be dead if I’d told the police about the Scarlet Society.”

“What would you have told the police?”

“How can you sound so calm? You don’t sound as if you care.”

“Why do you think that?”

“You can’t care about them-you didn’t know them.”

“But you did, didn’t you? You had sex with them and talked to them.”

She nodded.

“Did you care about them?”

“I cared about Bruce Levin.”

I nodded, not surprised that Betsy had known this last man better than the others. Something had brought her to me.

“But I killed him.”

“How?”

“I didn’t do anything to protect him.”

“Actually, you did. You wrote articles that were picked up on every television station and in every newspaper in the country. All the men involved in the Scarlet Society heard or read that news and should have been careful. Extra careful.”

“I thought that, too. But they weren’t, were they?”

“Or if they were, it wasn’t careful enough.”

“I can’t go to the police.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” I said.

“But you think I should.”

“Betsy, I didn’t say that. Do you think you should?”

“I can’t. I took an oath to the society.”

“But surely if you can prevent someone’s death by revealing that information-”

“It’s more complicated than that,” she said.

She didn’t have to tell me. I was as conflicted as she was. “Tell me.”

“It’s not just about the society. I tell the police, I will most likely get fired from the Times.”

“Why?”

“If it were revealed that I knew about the society-was involved in the society-and that I kept that information from both the authorities and the paper…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

I waited, and when she clearly wasn’t going to resume speaking, I asked her what she had stopped herself from saying.

“I’d have to recuse myself from writing the rest of the stories and I can’t do that. Not yet. It would be professional suicide.”

“You have a stellar career, don’t you? You’ve won Pulitzer Prizes. Would this cancel all that out?”

“You don’t understand. It’s not about avoiding getting into trouble. I’ve waited twenty years to get this kind of front-page space day after day. I can’t possibly walk away from it now.”

“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

“I’ve never equivocated on my decision.”

“So why are you here?”

I could tell from the expression on her face that she hadn’t expected that question. But blunt questions work in my favor. Not because I always expect to get truthful answers-patients lie to themselves and to me all too often. No, it was that unless you are a trained actor you don’t know what your face is showing. Only the most devious and accomplished liars are practiced enough to control all of their facial expressions.

I can see pupils dilate or shrink. Can see lips tremble or sweat pop out on the forehead. Can hear an involuntary intake of breath. Or notice the pulse quicken by focusing on a prominent vein on the neck. Swallowing, gulping, blinking, squinting-all proclaim the lie.

Betsy wasn’t a trained actress and she was acting guilty. Depending on the question, she couldn’t meet my glance. Despite the cool fall air blowing through the window, wisps of hair were stuck to her damp forehead. She picked at a hangnail, kept crossing and uncrossing her feet at the ankles. Her mouth was dry-I could hear that.

Was she letting me witness her guilt on purpose? Was her confession about the smaller crime offered to distract me from thinking she was capable of the larger one? Was I supposed to believe that anyone struggling with her conscience this way over the infraction of not admitting to knowing these men could not be the killer? If I were convinced she was distraught about the minor role she had played in this drama, then I might not wonder if she’d had an even bigger role.

But I did wonder.

I was all too aware that the woman sitting in my office on that Saturday afternoon might have been responsible for the carnage she was reporting.

She had motives.

One she had discussed in group: she was getting older and the men in the club were no longer excited when she chose them. She saw it in their faces and the way they avoided her eyes-the way she avoided mine that afternoon. Betsy was a strong woman and she was angry.

How angry?

I didn’t know that yet.

The second motive was the attention and power she was enjoying being the only reporter on the story.

Going against her claim of innocence was that she purported to be devastated over the deaths of four men she’d known, and yet she wasn’t willing to do anything to help prevent the next crime.

But neither was I.

And that didn’t make me a suspect.

Was she dangerous? Did she have mood swings? Inappropriate responses? Lapses in concentration? Inability to focus? The answers would help me make an educated guess, but she’d have to be in therapy with me for a few more weeks before I could assess whether she was psychotic. Psychotic enough to be a serial killer?

And there was the issue of her being female. Male criminals raped and killed serially. They easily had sex without forming connections. (Even healthy men.) But women were much less likely to engage in sexual athletics. Despite themselves, they made connections. The women in the group had attested to that when they’d bemoaned the fact that they couldn’t go to Philip Maur’s memorial service.

Certainly women could kill. A wife could murder her husband in a crime of passion if he betrayed her, but for a woman to kill four men she cared about, one after the other, because they didn’t pay her as much attention as she would have liked?

It wasn’t impossible, but it was highly improbable. Especially a woman who didn’t exhibit signs of serious psychosis.

Certainly Betsy was involved on some level, but how? And what could I do about it? She had not exhibited any behavior to lead me to suspect that she was going to harm herself. She had not named any man other than the men who were already dead. I could only go to the police if I feared for her or had information suggesting she was going to harm someone else.

The law was clear on this.

That I had a group of patients who knew men who were being targeted was just on the wrong side of the line. I had already encouraged them to go to the police.

Now I would have to try even harder to convince Betsy to tell the truth.