He wanted to say more about what he was. 'I was her only child, you know, she worried about me all the time.'
'How do you know she worried?' the shrink said.
Christ, couldn't she figure anything out? 'She said so,' he said, 'and when I did stuff that worried her she'd get, like, sick.'
'Sick?' the shrink said.
'Yeah, she'd lie on the couch and not talk all day and her face would have this look, like she was having cramps or something. You know, like broads get when they're having their period. 'He felt the tingle of daring and guilt when he said it.
'Like mean, you know. Bitchy.'
'What does bitchy mean to you?' the shrink said.
'It means crabby, it means, you know, not talking to you, being mad at you, not… not loving you. Not being nice to you.'
The shrink nodded.
'If I'd come home late for supper or hang around with the guys or go out.' He could feel the tightening in his throat and the way his nose began to tingle.
'Go out?' the shrink said.
'With girls,' he said. His eyes were filling. He felt himself burning with frustration and shame. 'She told me that every girl was going to take me for all they could get.' He fought the hot crying. He turned his head.
The shrink said, 'Let it come. Let's see what comes with it.'
Like hell. He wasn't going to cry here. His mother had never caught him crying. He held his head down and forced his breath in and out. In his groin he could feel the pressure.
'I can control myself,' he said.
'Always?' the shrink said.
He felt a trill of fear.
'Absolutely,' he said.
'Control is important,' the shrink said.
'You lose control,' he said, 'you lose yourself.'
The shrink waited.
'You get controlled,' he said. 'You don't control yourself, people control you.'
'Then they could take you,' the shrink said, 'for all they could get.'
He wanted to speak and couldn't. He felt as if he'd pushed something aside. He felt shaky now. Deep breath. Let it out. His arm muscles were bunched, and he pressed with his elbows against the arms of the chair.
'My mother always used to say that,' he said.
The shrink nodded.
The next woman was a schoolteacher, killed in her own apartment on Park Drive overlooking The Fenway. It was Saturday, lunchtime. Quirk and Belson and I looked at the murder scene again. It was as before. The rope. The tape. The blood. One of the precinct detectives was reading aloud from a notebook to Belson.
'Name's Emmeline Washburn,' he said. 'Teaches at the Luther Burbank Middle School. Seventh grade. Fortythree years old, separated from her husband, lives alone. Husband's over there.' He nodded to a black man sitting motionless on an uncomfortable red couch, staring at nothing.
'Emmeline went to the movies with a friend, lives on Gainsborough Street, Deirdre Simmons. She left Deirdre at about ten-fifteen at her place, and intended to walk home. Husband came by this morning to have lunch with her and found her. He hasn't been able to say much.
ME hasn't established time of death yet. But she's in rigor. MO seems just like the other four.
Quirk said, 'You establish an alibi on the husband yet?'
The detective shook his head. 'He's in bad shape, Lieutenant. All I got so far is, he found her.' Quirk said, 'I'll talk to him,' and walked over to where the man was sitting. 'I'm Martin Quirk,' he said. 'I'm in charge of homicide.'
'Washburn,' the husband said, 'Raymond Washburn.'
He didn't look up at Quirk. He didn't look down at the dead woman. He simply fixed on the middle distance.
'I'm sorry,' Quirk said.
Washburn nodded. 'We were going to put it back together,' he said.
'We'd been separated a year and we'd been seeing a counselor and it was working and we were going to put it back together.'
As he spoke, his body suddenly went limp and he began slowly to lean forward on the couch. Quirk dropped to one knee and caught him as Washburn pitched off the couch. Washburn looked to weigh maybe 190 pounds, and Quirk had to steady himself a moment as he caught the dead weight. Then without apparent effort he stood, his
