The Green Eagle Score

9

Maybe I ought to tell the police,” Ellen said. She was hugging herself so hard her arms hurt.

“I don’t think you should,” Dr Godden said carefully. “I think you’re carrying around enough guilt feelings as it is.”

“It’s tonight,” she said. She was shivering, trembling, no matter how hard she hugged herself.

“If Stan had had his way,” Dr Godden reminded her, “it would have been happening right now.”

“Nobody has their way against Parker,” she said. “I hate him.”

“I believe we correctly analyzed Stan on Monday,” Dr Godden said. “He wanted a daylight robbery so that he could not be asked to take an active part in it.”

“If I told the police it was going to happen,” she said, “but didn’t tell them who was going to do it, and then somehow I let Stan know they knew about it—”

“You couldn’t do it,” he told her. “Not without implicating yourself. And then Stan would merely hate you.”

“But there’s no way out! If they get caught, that’s terrible, and if they don’t get caught he’ll want to do it again and that’s terrible.”

“We still can’t be sure he’ll want to do it again,” Dr Godden said, his voice soothing her though she still trembled. “After all, if he didn’t want to take an active part this time it means he’s had some second thoughts already, he’s somewhat afraid now. After the reality of the experience he may decide he never wants to go through anything like that again. We can’t tell one way or the other until he’s actually gone through it.”

”But what if they get caught?”

“Let’s go over the plan,” he said, “and see if we can find any loopholes, anything Parker and the others haven’t thought of. We’ve discussed various parts of the plan from time to time, but we’ve never taken it through from beginning to end. Let’s do that now.”

“All right,” she said. Her voice began to drone.