“So how could they think I’m involved with these disgusting crimes?”
“What did they tell you?”
“That two of the victims received e-mail from me.”
“Do they have e-mail addresses for the women right on the sites?”
“Yes.”
I watched him carefully as he spoke. There was no suggestion he was lying. He didn’t look away from me, but held my gaze. He didn’t bite his lips or lick them or put his hands over his mouth when he talked.
“Did you send them any e-mail at all, Bob-Alan?” It was going to take me time to stop thinking of him as Bob-without-a-last-name.
“Of course not. I signed on to their sites, but e-mail? Can you imagine me doing that?” He gave a derisive laugh.
“If you didn’t send either of the two women e-mail, what are the police talking about?”
“Someone is setting me up. It’s obvious. Someone is preparing to blackmail me. My lawyer spoke to one of the detectives late last night and all I know is that the girls both have e-mail from the e-mail address I use to access the porn sites I visit. Mine is the only e-mail the two of them have in common. And apparently the content of the e-mail is damning.”
“What does it say?”
He shook his head. “They won’t tell Adam, my lawyer. And obviously, since I didn’t write it, I don’t know.”
“If the e-mail isn’t on your computer, your lawyer will be able to work this out. You need to focus on that.”
He shook his head furiously. “I’m not concerned that I’m going to be charged. I know I didn’t send the e-mail. But I have accounts at those porn sites. I visited those girls. I watched them. That will come out. It’s going to ruin everything. Once people know that I’m an addict, that I’m seeing you-”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“The police have my computer, Dr. Snow. And there is e-mail to you on my computer-”
“What goes on in this office is privileged information.”
Sweat beaded on his upper lip. He looked like a man with vertigo who had found himself on top of the Empire State Building.
“I need you to tell me about the law of doctor-patient confidentiality the way you understand it. What will happen if they ask you if you treat me?”
“I can’t and won’t tell them you are my patient. The only circumstance that would allow me to talk to the police about you is if you told me that you intended to hurt someone and I believed you.”
The wind had picked up and was blowing tiny pellets of icy snow against the windowpanes. I turned to look. The garden on the small balcony was cut back and wrapped in burlap for the winter. Four or five inches of snow covered all of it, rendering the planters and pots into amorphous blue-white shapes, abstract and strangely foreign. The weatherman had predicted the possibility of a blizzard moving in from the north sometime late this morning, but it looked like it was already here.
“If they get a court order-”
“Alan, think, you know this. They can’t order me to tell them anything. Each and every word between us is protected unless you were suddenly to tell me that you are planning to commit murder or abuse a child and I was certain that you were telling me the truth. And there’s nothing you’ve said to me in the past six months that would even come close to suggesting that you’re a danger to anyone-except possibly yourself.”
Alan buried his face in his hands and sat still and silent for the next sixty seconds.
It was true.
From what I knew about him, I couldn’t imagine that he could be involved in the murders. He’d been in therapy long enough for me to understand his psychology. Yes, he was disturbed, but Alan didn’t have the characteristics of a psychopath. He was addicted to Internet pornography and he had intimacy problems. He also suffered self-doubt and self-loathing. He was torn between needs and knowledge, passion and logic. But no matter how deep and devastating any of those issues were for him, his rage was not directed at the women themselves. He was not capable of making the absurd leap that if he could get rid of the women, he would get rid of his obsession. If I found out that he had killed himself, I would not have been surprised. But to be responsible for those poor girls dying?
No. That was not possible.
“Alan, do you understand that I believe you?”
Of everything I could have said, of anything I could have asked, I knew that it was important for Alan to feel this was a safe place. His wife had invaded his fantasy life, the police had invaded his home and taken away his computer. He’d had to expose not only his secrets to me but also finally, his identity.
Finally he spoke, but into his hands, and his voice sounded as if he were deep under water.
“Yes.”
“No one can come in here and get your files.”
He nodded.
“No one.”
He relaxed just enough for it to be noticeable.
“You can talk to me today the same way you talked to me last week, when I thought you were Bob. Nothing is different except your name. Has anything changed for you? Now that I know your name? Are any of your feelings any different?”
“No. What I do is still repulsive, and I still can’t stop myself. No, I can say that more precisely. I still don’t want to stop myself. The only thing that I care about anymore is the feeling that comes over me when I sit down at the computer, when I bring the image of one of my girls up on the screen, when she’s looking right at me, and moving for me. Kira is gone then. My office is gone, too. The work I have waiting for me, the trials I have on my docket. Not in my consciousness. Shit. The decisions that I’ve made that may not be right, the ones that are definitely wrong, I don’t think about any of that. Not while I am sitting there in the dark, all by myself.”
“Alan, what decisions are you talking about?”
“Decisions?”
I repeated his sentence.
“We have all made decisions that, in retrospect, were not the right ones. We are human. We’re influenced by all sorts of things about people. Hasn’t that ever happened to you, Doctor? Haven’t you ever misjudged a patient?”
Of course I had, but this wasn’t about me. And I wasn’t going to allow him to turn the question around.
“What do these decisions you’re talking about have to do with what’s going on?”
“I am not about to let some overzealous detective turn me into a laughingstock. Do you understand what would happen to me if it came out that I have this problem?”
He hadn’t answered my question. “I understand, Alan, but what I’m asking is-”
“You don’t know why I’m here this morning, do you?” he interrupted me.
“You’re in therapy with me. You wanted a session so that-”
He interrupted again. “No. Not today. I came this morning because I need to know that no matter what the police ask you about me, you plan on keeping silent.”
There was something about the way he was staring at me and the intensity in his voice and his eyes boring into mine that made me afraid. If I hesitated, I was sure he would threaten me. What was going on?
There was a knock on the door.
The judge jerked back and stared at the door.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Terry Meziac.”
Alan relaxed.
“Come in,” I said.
The door opened and the young man Alan sent to my office once a month to check for listening devices, who was the judge’s driver, and possibly, I thought, his bodyguard, entered the room. He didn’t say anything, but looked with questioning eyes at Alan, who checked his watch and then glanced up at me. “I have to go, Dr. Snow. But we have an agreement, don’t we?”
“We always have. Nothing’s changed.”
Fifty
The fourth victim lived on 110th Street and Park Avenue, in a studio apartment in an old tenement building.