“Thus solving all their problems.”
“And getting even with whomever they are getting even.”
“Which is usually why people do it?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “The pathology is often similar, oddly enough, to the pathology which causes stalking – see what you’ve made me do is a kind of back door control. It forces emotion from the object of your ambivalence.”
“I don’t think he could have opened the window,” I said.
“Maybe it was conveniently open when the time came. Maybe its openness was the presenting moment, so to speak.”
“I checked,” I said. “It was thirty-six degrees, raining hard, with a strong wind on the day he went out.”
Susan smiled at me.
“So much for psychoanalytic hypothesis,” she said.
“It’s very helpful,” I said. “Especially when you asked about who actually ended KC’s affair. But it isn’t intended to replace the truth, is it?”
“No. It’s intended to get at it.”
We went into Susan’s office. Her office and waiting room and what she called her library (it looked remarkably like a spare room with a bath to me) were on the first floor. Her quarters, and Pearl’s, were on the second. When Susan opened the door to her living room, Pearl bounded about giving and receiving wet kisses, torn with her passion to greet us both at the same time. But, being a dog, she quickly got over her bifurcating ambivalence and went back and sat on the sofa with her tongue out and looked at us happily.
Susan got me a beer from her refrigerator and poured herself a bracing glass of Evian, and we sat down together at her kitchen counter. Pearl sat on the floor beside us in case we moved into eating.
“So where to now,” Susan said.
“One thing is I’ll ask KC to go through the breakup, see if he might have experienced it as her leaving him. Second, I figure that Louis has fooled around before.”
“I think you can bank on it,” Susan said.
“So I’m going to see if I can find a few former girlfriends and see if there’s been any stalking. If he’s a wacko, KC can’t be the only one he’s been a wacko with.”
Susan nodded and sipped some Evian. I drank some beer.
“How about the other case?”
“I’ve got a stack of back issues of the magazine that Lamont published:
“As in OUT of the closet?”
“Yes. I’ll read through that and see if there’s a suspect. I’ll look at the plans for future issues, which I also have, and see if there’s any suspects there.”
“And if there aren’t?”
“Then I’ll try to establish whether there was or was not a relationship between Nevins and Lamont, and if there was why people didn’t know and if there wasn’t why people said there was.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“I’ll ask you,” I said.
“For some psychoanalytic theory?”
“Can’t hurt,” I said. “What I think we should do is go take a shower and brush our teeth and lie on my bed and see what kind of theory we can develop.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what will develop,” I said.
“Should we shower together?” Susan said.
“If we do, things may develop too soon.”
“Good point,” Susan said. “I’ll go first.”
“And Pearl?” I said.
“In the living room with the TV on Fox – loud. She loves to watch Catherine Crier.”
“Anyone would,” I said.
And Susan disappeared into her bedroom.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KC Roth poured some white wine into her glass.
“I was about to have lunch, I could make us both something,” she said.
“Thank you, no,” I said. “Just a couple questions.”
“Did you see him?”
