I kept my face blank. The thing about monsters is, you want to kill them until you meet them, and when you meet them they don't seem monstrous, and killing them begins to seem unkind.
'What's the situation here?' Felton said to Susan.
'I'm sorry to bring Mr. Spenser in here, but we felt it necessary. I am convinced that you are the serial killer who uses a red rose for a trademark,' Susan said. 'Thus it seemed in my own best interests to have Mr. Spenser here, and another gentleman in the waiting room, while we discussed this.'
Felton looked at me and back at Susan. He opened his mouth and closed it. I could see his face struggle to look contemptuous and contained.
'I hope you will confess,' Susan said, 'to me, and to the police. If you do, I will stand by you, but I cannot continue, under present conditions, as your therapist.'
'You're kicking me out because you think I'm the killer?' Felton said.
I noticed he didn't say red rose, simply 'the killer.'
'Surely if we've gotten anyplace in here,' Susan said, 'we have come to understand that the way things are said matters. I am not kicking you out, I am withdrawing from my role as therapist. How effective do you suppose I could be if I continued, convinced you were a serial murderer and, frankly, apprehensive for my own safety?'
Felton's body was very tight. He sat up very straight and clasped his hands before him, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair. The posture made his shoulders hunch up somewhat. He seemed to feel hunched because he stretched his neck to its full length when he spoke.
'Well, you can't prove anything like that,' he said.
'No, I can't,' Susan said. 'Nor is it my work to do so, nor will I share the confidences of our therapy with the police or anyone else. But I will tell the police that I am convinced of your guilt, as I'm convinced that you left the rose for me, as I'm convinced you killed the fish in my waiting room.'
'You can't stop seeing me,' he said.
'I'm sorry,' Susan said.
'I didn't do anything. You can't. You got a responsibility. You took some kind of oath or something.'
Susan shook her head slightly. 'I am not an M.D. I am a Ph.D. I could not continue, however, even had I taken the Hippocratic oath.'
'I have to talk to someone,' Felton said. 'I got no one to talk to.
There has to be somebody.'
'If you will tell the truth, we can talk, but it has to be the truth and it has to be shared with the police and the courts. If you tell the truth, I will argue as persuasively as I know how that you need treatment, not electrocution. But I cannot, obviously, guarantee what the courts would decide.'
Felton was still rigid in his chair. But his face was pale and his eyes were full of tears.
'Who will I talk to?' he said.
'I can do no further good for you,' Susan said.
'I can't. You have to. I didn't do it, don't you believe me? I didn't.'
Susan was quiet. Felton's rigidity began to loosen. He slumped in his chair and then bent forward as if there were no strength in his body to hold him upright.
'You can't,' he said. His voice was thick and the tears that had come to his eyes were now running. 'I can't stand it,' he said. 'I can't.
Please don't do this. Don't leave me. There isn't anyone else. Don't.
Don't.'
Susan was still and her voice was steady and kind.
'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.'
