Susan said.
'So what?' I said.
She smiled. 'Yes, of course. Is there anything either of us knows better than the uselessness of deciding what you want to think.' She took another nearly transparent sliver from her cheesecake and a sip of coffee.
'It is work where one encounters atypical people,' she said. 'Some of them can be frightening. If one is to do the work, one puts the fear aside.'
'I know,' I said.
'Yes.' She smiled and put her hand on top of mine. 'You would surely know about that.'
My cheesecake was gone, and the cherries only a memory in my mouth. I finished my coffee.
'The bond of trust between therapist and patient is the fundament of the therapy. I cannot conspire, even with you, to identify and track any of them.'
'If it is Red Rose,' I said, 'it's not just you that's at risk.'
'I'm not sure I'm at risk at all,' Susan said. 'It is unlikely that he would change the object of his need suddenly to a white psychotherapist.'
'It doesn't have to be sudden. Its manifestation would seem sudden, but he may have been changing slowly in therapy for the last year,' I said.
Susan shrugged.
'And,' I said, 'you have explained to me how people like Red Rose are working with a private set of symbols. You may fit that symbolic scheme in some way, just as the black women did.'
'Possibly,' Susan said, 'but it is still highly unlikely that a serial murderer would be in psychotherapy. People come to therapy when the pressure of their conflicting needs gets unbearable.'
'Maybe the psychotherapy is part of the need,' I said. 'Maybe he needs the opportunity to talk about it.'
'But he hasn't. I have no clients talking of serial murders.'
'Maybe he's still talking about them so symbolically that you don't know it,' I said. 'Can a patient fool you?'
'Certainly,' Susan said.
'Obviously it's not in his or her best interest to do so.'
'He obviously has a need to be caught,' I said. 'The letter to Quirk, the tape to me.'
'The tape to you may not be like the letter to Quirk,' Susan said.
'Maybe not, but that makes it more likely that he's connected to you,' I said. 'Jealousy, or some such.'
Susan made a noncommittal nod.
'Jack,' I said to the counterman, 'I need more coffee.'
'Ted does the coffee,' Jack said. 'I do the celery tonic.'
Ted poured some coffee and brought it out and set it down in front of me.
'Planning to stay up all night?' he said.
'Caution to the winds,' I said. I put some cream in and some sugar. I had a theory about diluting the caffeine. Ted went back behind the counter.
'And,' I said to Susan, 'the red rose in your house. It almost got him caught.'
'If it was he,' Susan said.
'Coming to you might be part of the desire to get caught,' I said.
'Or noticed,' Susan said.
'And maybe if he gets too close to getting caught, or noticed,' I said,
'he'll want to save himself by killing you.'
Susan was looking at the paintings on the walls.
'This is the only deli I've ever been to that had art on the walls,' she said.
I didn't say anything.
'It's possible,' Susan said. She was looking full at me now and I could feel the weight of her will. 'But I cannot act on the possibility. I need much more.'
I looked back at her without comment. My chin was resting on top of my folded hands. Sigmund Spenser.
'I will,' Susan said, 'keep the gun in my desk drawer, and I will keep it on my bedside table at night.' She pursed her lips a little bit and relaxed them. 'And I will use it if I have to.'
'Okay,' I said. 'I know you will. And I'm going to try and find out which one of your patients it is, and I won't tell you how I'm going to do it, because I don't know what will compromise your work and what won't.'
Susan laughed without very much pleasure. 'It's hard to say whether we're allies or adversaries in this,' she said.
'We're allies in everything, pumpkin,' I said. 'It's just that we don't always go about it like other people.'
