On leaving, she took his coat with her and shoved it into a Dumpster behind the restaurant. It seemed the least she could do.
Sonofabitch coward.
She wanted to call him now and tell him to go fuck himself. That he could find himself another therapist. She caught herself in the middle of the thought and let a bitter smile pull up the corners of her mouth. A woman scorned, she chided herself angrily.
Of course, she got only what she deserved. She never thought about getting involved with a patient before, well, maybe thought about it, but not seriously, at least not to this degree. And this was not only a patient but a married one. So what did she expect? You play with matches, you get burned. You play with married men, you get dumped. And, what she had to keep telling herself, you play with patients, you lose your license. So she got off easy… But what the hell was it with him? Why couldn’t she keep him out of her mind? Probably the pheromones he put out, making it completely physical and beyond her rational control. That had to be it.
He was already ten minutes late for his appointment.
Lousy, stinking sonofabitch…
Successful therapy requires both human interaction and caring, but she had let things go too far with him. Even going shopping to buy those black lace panties for the sonofabitch. From now on her relationship with Shannon was going to be completely clinical. Nothing else.
There was a knock on the door. She felt the butterflies rise up in her stomach as she stammered out for the person to come in. At that moment she felt more like a fraud than ever in her life.
The door opened and Mark Bennett, the hypnotherapist, shoved his face in.
“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, out of breath. “Parking out on Beacon Street now is murder. I ended up five blocks away.”
“That’s okay,” Horwitz said. The butterflies settled back down like lead weights. “My patient hasn’t shown up yet.”
Bennett nodded, took his overcoat off and folded it over a chair and sat down, crossing his legs. With his fleshy face and receding curly hair and pear-shaped body he looked a little like Larry Fine from the Three Stooges. This is what’s always interested in me, Horwitz thought, fucking stooges.
“Maybe you could tell me about the patient,” Bennett asked, smiling pleasantly.
“He’s a thirty-three-year-old police officer. As an adolescent he found his mother after she’d been brutally murdered. It seems that repressed guilt has manifested itself into both clinical depression and extended blackouts.”
“What’s he guilty about?”
“He feels if he’d come home earlier he could’ve saved her.” Elaine Horwitz smiled joylessly. “He wouldn’t have been able to.”
Bennett settled back into his chair. “It sounds like you already figured it out. What do you need me for?”
“I don’t have it all figured out,” Horwitz said. “There’s something else. I have no idea what it is.” She sighed heavily and let her shoulders slump. “There’s a yearly pattern to his breakdowns. I want to dig deep and see what we can find.”
Bennett was frowning, making his long, rubbery face seem even more comical. “Yearly breakdowns? How consistent are they?”
“Very consistent. Every year around the anniversary of his mother’s death. Same pattern of symptoms climaxing to a prolonged blackout, usually lasting a week, and without the patient having any memories of it.”
Mark Bennett was frowning deeply and shaking his head, a perturbed look spreading over his features. “Lasting a week?” he muttered to himself.
Horwitz nodded. It sounded a lot worse when spoken out loud. Bad enough, actually, to make her regret not trying to have Shannon hospitalized. It made her wonder how much she’d let her personal feelings interfere with her treatment. A sick feeling crept into her stomach. She glanced at her watch. “He should be here by now,” she said uneasily. “He’s already fifteen minutes late. Let me try giving him a call.”
She dialed his number and let it ring until the answering machine clicked on. When she put down the receiver she offered Bennett an apologetic smile.
“He could be on his way,” she said. “I don’t know. I hope so. He did have a setback yesterday.”
“How so?”
Horwitz paused for a moment, and then explained about Shannon’s latest homicide case and the similarities between it and his own mother’s death. “All in all, a bizarre coincidence,” she added.
Bennett shook his head. “One thing I’ve learned from years of hypnotherapy… there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that.”
“Don’t give me that crap. What are you trying to say?”
“I’m not really sure,” Bennett said, pausing, trying to smile. “I have to admit I’ve never heard of anything like this. This is pretty bizarre stuff. And now during the time when your patient suffers from his blackouts, a woman is murdered in the same freakish way as his mother-”
“You’re way off track,” Elaine Horwitz cut in, annoyance pushing some color into her cheeks. “First of all, my patient hasn’t blacked out yet-”
“Excuse me, but how do you know?”
“Because-” Horwitz stumbled, trying to explain the obvious, partly because it was no longer so obvious. “Well, for one reason, his blackouts last a week.”
“How do you know he doesn’t have shorter duration ones, also? Does he remember them when they happen?”
“He knows when he has them,” Horwitz argued. “Anyway, this wouldn’t fit his pattern-”
“Again, how do you know?”
The thought left her stunned. “This is ridiculous,” she said, her voice rising. “There’s physical evidence tying a boy to the murder, and besides-”
“Elaine.” The hypnotherapist had both hands up in an exaggerated sign of surrender. “I’m just talking. You know, just trying to kill some time.”
“That’s okay,” Elaine Horwitz offered grudgingly. They sat in silence for the next several minutes with Bennett’s attempts at small talk falling flat. Finally, he glanced at his watch and asked if it was safe to assume the patient wasn’t showing. That got to Horwitz. Pretentious little prick. Couldn’t just say that it looked like the patient wasn’t showing up. Had to ask if it was a safe thing to assume. Horwitz told him it appeared to be a safe thing to assume.
Bennett stopped at the door before leaving. “When you hear from him again give me a call,” he said, pausing as he stroked his chin. “I’m curious.”
February 7. Night.
It didn’t surprise Susan Shannon to find an empty apartment when she arrived home from work. When ten o’clock rolled around and Shannon still hadn’t come home it didn’t faze her a bit. It was what she expected and all she felt about it was a heavy weariness. For the last few days she knew it was inevitable. So she called Joe DiGrazia, apologized for waking him, and told him that Shannon had disappeared. After that she had her first good night’s sleep in weeks.
When she woke it was as if a hundred-pound weight had been rolled from her back. She pulled suitcases out of the closet and started packing her clothes. She had them filled when Joe DiGrazia called. He just wanted to tell her that he’d been out all night looking for Shannon, hadn’t had any luck yet, but was going to take the day off and see what he could do. After she hung up the phone the weariness that had hit her the night before fell back on her like cement. All her resolve, her determination, crumbled away. She just sat on the edge of the bed and started weeping. It came out of her like a faucet.
It seemed a long time before she could slow it down, before she could breathe normally. Her lungs and chest ached from the crying. The thought struck her how a friend of Shannon’s spent the night driving the streets for him while his own wife was all set to bail out, and as the thought stuck in her mind the sobbing started again. This time, though, it was silent and tearless. There wasn’t anything left inside for tears.