'Yes,' she said. 'These were some I considered. You must have eliminated others because they didn't look like the man you chased height, that sort of thing.'
'Yes.'
'It is unfortunate as hell,' Susan said, 'that our professional lives have had to intersect like this, so soon after we had reorganized our personal lives.'
'I know,' I said. 'But we have to deal with it. We've dealt with worse.'
'Yes,' she said, and took another hit on the Chianti. 'We have.
And we can. It's just that the problem cuts across business and personal in a way that touches on the core of our relationship.'
'I know,' I said.
'We are able to love one another with the intensity that we do because we are able to be separate while we are at the same time one.'
'E Pluribus Unum?' I said.
'I think that's something else,' Susan said.
The salads went and pasta came. When the waiter had set down the food and left, Susan said, 'This thing is compromising the separateness. I'm never alone. If you're not with me, Hawk is. And when I'm working, one of you is there, at the top of the stairs with a gun.'
I nodded. I was having linguine with clam sauce. It was elegant.
'You know that this has nothing to do with being tired of you,' Susan said. She had her fork in her hand and was leaning forward over her tortellini.
'Yes,' I said. 'I know that.'
'Or Hawk,' Susan said. 'There is no one except you I enjoy being with more than Hawk.'
'But you need time alone.'
'Absolutely.'
'But,' I said, 'we can't let him kill you.' Susan smiled.
'No. We can't,' she said. 'And I'm quite confident that we won't. If I'm to be guarded, who better?'
We ate pasta.
'If one of my patients is in fact the Red Rose killer, and left the rose in my hallway, I could probably make a stab at which of these names it is,' Susan said.
'But you aren't going to,' I said.
'I can't.' She ate some more tortellini. 'Yet.'
'Remember that it's not only you. It might be some unknown black woman that he's going to do next.'
Susan nodded. 'That of course also weighs with me. This is very difficult.' She drank some wine. 'He has not struck, if you'll pardon the melodramatic statement, since Washburn confessed.'
'We both know the answer to that,' I said.
'Yes. He could lie low for a while.'
'But how long?' I said.
'He'd probably be able to hold off for a while, but… it's need. The poor bastard is driven by a need he cannot resist. He's acting out something awful.'
'So he'll do it again.'
'Yes,' Susan said softly. 'And God only knows what going under cover costs him, and what he'll be like when he emerges.'
'You think he's one of yours,' I said.
She looked at the wine in her glass. The light above the booth shone through it and made it ruby. Then she looked back up at me and nodded slowly.
'I think he's one of mine.'
'Which one?' I said.
She shook her head.
'I haven't the right,' she said. 'Not yet. If I'm wrong and he's accused, it will destroy him.'
'Godammit,' I said.
Susan reached across the table and put her hands on my mouth. She let her hands slide down from my mouth along my shoulders and arms and rested them on my forearms.
'Please,' she said. 'Please.'
I took in as much air as I could get through my nose and let it out slowly, the way I used to let cigarette smoke drift out after I inhaled.
She was leaning forward so far that the tortellini was in danger.
