"If you don't confess, if you go on as you have, it will be worse for you, they will catch you soon." She nodded at me without looking at me.
"He knows you are the killer. Pretty soon he will catch you."
Felton was rocking in his chair back and forward, bent double, sobbing.
"I can't do it, I can't. You can't leave me."
"It is an awful choice for you," Susan said. "But it is a choice, and it is more than those four women had. You can confess and take your chances with my support, or you can leave now, and he," she nodded at me again, "and others will pursue you until you're caught."
Felton continued to rock and shake his head. "I didn't," he said. "I didn't." He slid forward out of the chair and pitched onto the floor and lay on his side with his knees up and his arms clutching himself.
"Jesus, oh, Jesus," he said. "I can't."
Susan got up from her chair and walked around her desk and crouched beside him and put her hand gently on his back.
"You can," she said. "Simply because you have no other choice."
He remained there and she remained beside him, her hand motionless on his back between his shoulder blades as he cried. It couldn't have gone on as long as it seemed, but after a while Felton got quiet. He sat up on the floor and then got slowly up, as if every bone ached, and stood holding on to the back of the chair with both hands.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. You fucking bitch, I can do it without you."
Below desk level, Susan turned the palm of her left hand toward me.
"When you are ready with the truth," Susan said, "I am here."
"I won't be back," Felton said. "You'll never humiliate me again. I'll get out of here and you and him can fuck on the couch over there like two dogs for all I care."
He turned and walked out the door into the waiting room. Hawk was leaning against the wall by the exit door. His eyes stayed on Felton without expression as Felton went to the door, opened it, went into the front hall and out the front door. Hawk went after him.
I closed the door.
Susan looked at me for a moment and began to cry, first a sniffle, then steadily, and then, head down on the desk, shoulders shaking. I started toward her and stopped, and knew something I didn't know how I knew, and waited quietly while she cried, and didn't touch her.
CHAPTER 27
Susan took about ten minutes to get back together. [ "Sorry about the tears," she said. I "Don't blame you," I said. "What you had to do was brutal."
"We're convinced he murdered four women," Susan said. "I doubt that he could stop himself, and I fear he won't be able to stop himself again.
But that is little consolation to the four women, and the people that survived them."
"Hawk's behind him," I said.
"What if Felton loses him?"
"He won't. Hawk doesn't have to be circumspect. He doesn't have to keep from being spotted. He can walk along in Felton's shirt. He won't lose him."
"We can't let him kill someone else," Susan said.
"I know," I said. I took the phone off her desk and called Quirk at home. His wife answered and in a moment Quirk came on.
"Felton's it, the security guard from Charlestown," I said.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. I can't prove it, but I know it."
"Where is he now?" Quirk said.
"Just left Susan's office with Hawk behind him. Felton knows we know.
Susan dropped him from therapy, he's in a lavender funk."
"I'll get Belson," Quirk said. "We'll see if we can pick him up at his home. You at Susan's?"
"Yeah."
"Stay there, I'll check with you in a while."
"I'll be here," I said.
We hung up.
"Quirk and Belson are going to join Hawk behind Felton," I said. "Then there will be three people on his tail and they can relieve each other."
"Until when?"
"Until we figure out a way to prove what he did," I said. "Then Quirk can arrest him and he's off the street."
"What if we can't prove it?"
"Eventually he has to be out of circulation," I said.
"You mean you will kill him, or Hawk will," Susan said.
"Quirk might," I said. "He can't be left loose."
"I know he is the killer."
"Yeah," I said.
"We must think of a way to catch him."
"Well," I said. "I'm not letting you out of my sight until we do, so let's begin. What about your other patients?"
"I cancelled my appointments for the rest of the day," Susan said.
"You want some lunch," I said.
"Yes," Susan said, "and probably two stiff drinks."
We went upstairs and I stirred up two vodka martinis with very little vermouth. Susan plunked three cocktail olives into a glass and I poured the martini over them. Susan picked up the glass, looked at it for a moment, and drank maybe a third of it in one swallow.
Susan's refrigerator was under the counter, and what it lacked in height it lacked also in width. I sat on my haunches to look for lunch possibilities. They were limited.
"There are a couple of boneless chicken breasts in the freezer," Susan said.
I found them on top of the ice trays. The ice trays were full. Normally Susan kept them in there empty. I put some extra virgin olive oil in a fry pan, took the foil off the chicken breasts, put the two small rocklike portions in the fry pan, poured some of the vermouth over them, covered the pan, and put it on the gas stove to simmer.
Susan was down two thirds in her martini.
I found a bottle of Laphroig single malt Scotch in her cupboard, beside a box of sugar cubes and in back of some all-natural peanut butter. I took it down, broke some ice cubes out of one of the plastic trays, and made a large Scotch-on-the-rocks.
"You were right, you know," Susan said.
"Probably," I said. "About what?"
Susan drank the rest of her martini and motioned with her glass. I poured her a second one and didn't even point out to her that I'd mixed without measuring and come out two glasses to the rim.
"About not letting me deal with Felton alone."
"It wasn't even right or wrong," I said. "I couldn't leave you alone."
"Just like you can't now," she said.
"Yes."
"Even though Hawk is following Felton, and Quirk and Belson will join him."
"Yes."
"Even though you told me Felton couldn't get away from Hawk."
"Yes."
"Why is that?" she said. She pulled the olive jar toward her and put two olives into her martini, which made it too full. She sipped some and put in another olive.
"I lost you for a couple of years back there," I said. "I found out that I could live without you. And I found out also that I didn't want to."
"Because?"
"Because I love you," I said. "Because you are in my life like the music at the edge of silence."
"The music what?"
"I never quite got it either," I said. "I read it somewhere."
I drank some of the Scotch. Susan drank some of the martini. The chicken breasts simmered, defrosting as they went. I mused through the refrigerator again, looking for inspiration. There was broccoli, and one carrot. Under the sink I found an onion, the last survivor in its mesh bag. I got the vegetables lined up and began to search for a knife.
"Let me try it another way," I said. "It is not only that I love you.
It is that you complete my every shortfall." Susan smiled and ate an olive.
"But do you respect me?" she said.
"I respect you like hell," I said. It was one of our thousand catch phrases, remembered from an old Nichols and May routine we'd each seen years before we knew each other. I found a paring knife and began to peel the onion.
"And," I said, "I complete yours. Our strengths and weaknesses interlock so perfectly that together we are more than the sum of our parts."
Susan smiled and ate another olive. Her martini was almost gone. Susan said, "Make some more martini."
I looked at her and raised my eyebrows and mixed up another batch.
"Thank you," Susan said when I filled her glass.