The Delilah Complex

Forty-Eight

“It’s too bright in here. Can’t you shut off some of the lights?” Anne asked.

“I’d like that, too,” Ellen said.

The lights were not that bright. My desk lamp was on. The recessed lighting was at the same level it always was. I thought about the request, got up, and turned the rheostat down just enough to make a difference. Then I sat back down.

The group had assembled. Everyone was present except for Betsy, and I wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t shown up.

“Let’s get started. If-” I had to remind myself not to call her Betsy. “If Liz comes we’ll be able to fill her in.”

“I think we should wait for her. She’s the only one who isn’t here,” Davina said. “And this is the first time we’ve all been together since the last two articles appeared. This is the only place we can be together and talk about this.”

“I understand that you’d like everyone to be here. But she may not be coming. And there is a lot for us to talk about. Is it all right with everyone if we proceed?”

I got a few lukewarm nods. Only Shelby spoke. “I think you’re right, Dr. Snow. We really need to get started so we can talk about what’s happened.”

Over the last three weeks, the stress these women were feeling had become more profound. They were in shock. Disturbed. Confused. And flat-out frightened.

The conversation quickly turned to the four men who had been chosen and conjecture about why, out of the many dozens who were participants in the society, they were being targeted. No one could come up with a reasonable suggestion. It seemed random.

The group was also sincerely worried about several men who hadn’t been seen at the society in the past two weeks. Were any of them missing?

“Maybe they just aren’t coming to your evenings. Perhaps the news has scared them away. Have you tried to contact them?”

“Yes. But we can’t do any more than leave coded messages. And we haven’t heard back from them,” Shelby said.

“I’m surprised anyone is still coming,” Ginny said. “Why isn’t everyone staying away? Why aren’t I?”

“How do you feel about being there?” I asked.

“As if it’s more important than ever to show up…” She seemed embarrassed for a moment. “It makes me feel even more alive. Like we are saying ‘fuck you’ to whoever this madman is every time we get together.”

A few other women agreed.

“I think that is a very reasonable reaction. You want everything to go back to normal. It’s a way of defusing the reality of what’s happened.”

“When I’m at the society, I can pretend that nothing has changed,” Anne said.

“I don’t feel that way,” Davina said. “I don’t think I can do this anymore. It’s wrong. Like we are playing some kind of ghoulish sex game.”

Shelby shook her head. “This isn’t our fault, though. It’s not something that we did. We’re not responsible.” She spoke too loudly.

Anne started to cry. “I’m tired of being sad. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being sad. It was bad enough when it was just Philip. And, after him, Tim. But now…four men…this is horrible. I think we should do something.”

Shelby turned quickly to look at her. “I thought you and I already resolved that.”

“Maybe it would be helpful to tell the group what you resolved,” I suggested.

Anne turned directly to me. “I told Shelby I thought we should talk to the police.”

I was glad that someone had brought it up again. If no one had, I was going to try and figure out how to suggest it myself.

There was only one connection between these men. It was the society that these women belonged to and participated in. Yes, now the police knew that each victim had a mark on his right foot that connected him to the others, but that wasn’t much of a lead without knowing what the mark was.

“No.” Shelby spoke sharply. “It’s just impossible. What could we say? No one knows about us. The very last thing we can do is expose our membership. That would be disastrous. We’d never recover!” She was almost shrieking.

It was the first time since we’d started the group that she exhibited this level of emotion. And I was glad.

“It doesn’t matter if it destroys the society,” Anne said. She was angry now, too. “If it means that even one man’s life will be saved, I don’t see how we have any choice. I don’t even understand how it can be a conversation.”

“You can’t be serious,” Ginny said. “Are you willing to have your husband find out? Your boss? Your kids? Your in-laws? Your friends? I’m not. I absolutely am not. Besides, what good will telling the police do? Aid them in warning all the men that they are targets? For God’s sake, there isn’t one man from the society who doesn’t know that by now.”

“Except it hasn’t helped,” Anne argued.

“This is not a discussion,” Shelby said. “We all took an oath. So did every man who joined us. We cannot tell anyone anything.”

“I think this is a discussion,” I said. “And an important one.”

Shelby turned on me. “You would. You talked to that reporter. Why did you do that? You told us that you would keep our secret with us. But you talked to the press.”

The attack was easier for everyone to focus on than the discussion of whether or not they should talk to the police. Ten sets of eyes-angry, hurt and accusatory-turned on me.

“No, Shelby. I didn’t go to the reporter. She came to me. And I didn’t discuss anything about the society with her. You can be sure of that. My comments were about what we can expect from a sexualized serial killer. Not about the men who have been killed or what might tie them together.”

“But you may still be talking to her. How can we know you aren’t?”

I wound up explaining privilege to them once again. I needed them to understand that it was up to one of them to go to the police and help them in figuring out who was behind these crimes. At the same time, they needed to trust me if I was going to help them work through their anger, shame and guilt over what had happened.

“The U.S. Supreme Court established the psychotherapist-patient privilege in the federal courts in its Jaffee v. Redmond decision in 1996. The psychiatric community had always operated on this premise but finally it went to the courts. For almost fifty years, lawyers and doctors had been trying to clearly establish that communication between patients and their psychotherapists was in need of a very high level of protection.”

They were listening. Intently. Only Shelby seemed to be ignoring what I was saying. She was looking out the window, staring into the tangled tree branches, lit by the streetlamp.

“There is another precedent-the Tarasoff case,” I continued, “which established just how far that privilege extended. In that court case, it was decided that psychiatrists do have an obligation to warn a third party when a patient has threatened that third party. But none of you has told me the name of the next person or persons at risk. And as far as I know, none of you knows. So I have no right to go to the police myself.”

“You are saying that as if you think we have the right to go,” Cara said.

“An obligation to go,” Anne said.

“No. No. That is just not going to happen,” Shelby yelled, her head swinging around to face the group again. “What are you going to tell them? What names are you even going to give them? We don’t know one another’s real names, for Christ’s sake. This is insane. We have a trust to uphold.”

“At what price?” Anne asked.

No one said anything.

“We don’t want you to talk to the press anymore,” Shelby said to me, obviously trying to change the subject.

“That’s not something that has anything to do with you, I’m sorry,” I said as kindly as I could.

“It does. Don’t you understand? If we hadn’t hired you, if we hadn’t paid you, you wouldn’t know anything about this case. You wouldn’t be getting your name in the paper. You wouldn’t be getting patients because of us.”

I am not made of ice. Pushed, I can get just as annoyed as anyone else. And yet, in this setting, understanding what I did about the stress these women were under-and Shelby in particular-I made an extra effort to control my own emotions so I could help them with theirs.

“Shelby, I didn’t talk to the press to get more patients. Why would you think that?”

“We’re giving you power,” she said.

In her world, this was a transaction and power was her currency. Several of the women in the room nodded their heads, agreeing, understanding what she said. The very reason the society had been created was to allow them to act out their desires to metaphorically-and perhaps literally, from what I had seen on the videotape-be on top.

“You see it as power, but I don’t. You hired me to help you cope with a disturbing situation. That doesn’t put me in a position of weakness any more than it puts you in a position of strength. This isn’t a battle between us.”

“And it won’t be as long as you don’t talk to the press.”

Davina had been listening intently, but saying very little. “Shelby, back off, will you? Can we just talk about what we might be able to do? How we feel about this? How to handle all this shit? I go to the office. I snap at people. I’m angry. Then I get sad. I want to cry but I’m afraid that, if I let myself cry, my friends or my family will ask me what’s wrong. What the fuck am I supposed to tell them? How do I short-circuit the grieving process so I can get back to my life?”

“You can’t. You-” I looked around and focused, one after the other, on each of the women. “None of you can short-circuit this process. That’s why it’s important to talk it out here. To feel free to let out whatever you want to.” My glance stopped at Ginny.

“I have something I want to let out,” she said. “I think I know who might be behind this.”