“What is it?” He felt her fingers dig into his coat as he tried to draw her back. “Are you alone?” Instinct had him reaching for his weapon, closing a hand over it as he looked around for someone, anyone who might have tried to hurt her. “What happened?”
“Close the door. Please.”
Keeping one arm around her, he closed it and dealt with the chain. “It’s closed. You’d better sit down, you’re shaking. Let me get you a drink.”
“No. Just hold me a minute. I thought, when you knocked, I thought…”
“Come on, you need some brandy. You’re like ice.” Trying to soothe, to stroke, he started to steer her toward the sofa.
“He called me.”
The fingers on her arm tightened as he turned her around to face him. Her cheeks were white, her eyes enormous. Her right hand still gripped his coat. He didn’t have to ask who. “When?”
“Just now. He called me at the office before, but I didn’t realize it was him. Not then. He’s been outside. I saw him one night, on the corner, just standing on the corner. I thought I was being paranoid. A good psychiatrist knows the symptoms.” She laughed, then covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God, I have to stop this.”
“Sit down, Tess.” He relaxed his fingers on her arm and kept his voice calm; the same tone he’d use to interrogate a shaky witness. “You got some brandy around here?”
“What? Oh, it’s in the buffet there, the right door.”
When she was sitting, he went to the buffet, what his mother would have called a server, and found a bottle of Rimy Martin. He poured a double into a snifter and brought it to her. “Drink some of this before you start over.”
“Okay.” She was already pulling herself back, but drank to help things along. The brandy shot into her system and dulled the remaining fear. Fear had no place in her life, Tess reminded herself. Only clear thought and careful analysis. When she spoke again, her voice was level, without the bubble of hysteria. She gave herself only a moment to be ashamed of it.
“Thursday night I had a late appointment at the office. When it was over and I was packing up for the day, I got a call. He sounded very troubled, and though I didn’t think it was a current patient, I tried to draw him out a bit. I didn’t get anywhere, he just hung up.” Brandy sloshed gently as she moved the bowl of the snifter around and around in her hands. “I waited a few minutes, but when he didn’t call back, I filed it away and went home. He called back tonight.”
“You’re sure it was the same man?”
“Yes, I’m sure. The same man who called before. The same man you’ve been looking for since August.” She sipped the brandy again, then set the snifter down. “He’s falling apart, rapidly.”
“What did he say to you, Tess? Tell me everything you remember.”
“I wrote it down.”
“You-” He stopped and made a quick movement with his head. “Of course you did. Let’s have a look.”
She rose, steady again, and went to the desk. Tess brought the yellow pad over and handed it to Ben. Here was something positive, something constructive. As long as she could think of it as a case, she wouldn’t fall apart again.
“I may have skimmed on a few words when he was talking quickly, but I got most of it.”
“It’s in shorthand.”
“Yes. Oh, I’ll read it to you.” She started at the beginning, making sure her voice was detached. Words were there to give the psychiatrist a clue to the mind. She remembered that and pushed back the horror of knowing they’d been directed at her. After the biblical quote, she stopped. “It sounds like the Old Testament. I imagine Monsignor Logan could place it.”
“Job.”
“What?”
“It’s out of Job.” His gaze was on the far wall as he lit a cigarette. Twice he’d read the bible through, when Josh had been sick. Looking for answers, Ben remembered, to questions he hadn’t even formed. “You know, the guy who had everything going for him.”
“And then God tested him?”
“Yeah.” He thought of Josh again, then shook his head. Josh had everything going for him, before ‘Nam. “Too happy, Job? How about some boils?”
“I see.” Though it was painfully obvious she didn’t know the bible as well as he, she saw the parallel. “Yes, it makes sense. His life was well set, he was content, in all likelihood a good Catholic.”
“Never had his faith tested,” Ben murmured.
“Yes, then it was tested in some way, and he failed.”
“The some way would have to do with this Laura.” He glanced down at the pad again, frustrated not to be able to read it himself. “Let’s have the rest.”
As he listened to her read, Ben fought to think like a cop and not a man caught between infatuation and something deeper. A killer had been watching her. Ben’s stomach tightened into a maze of tiny knots. He’d been waiting for her the night Anne Reasoner was killed, the night Tess had spent in his own bed. The cop recognized the warning as quickly as the doctor had.
“He’s focused on you.”
“Yes, that seems to be the situation.” Abruptly cold, she tucked her legs up under her before she set the yellow tablet aside. It was a case. Tess knew it was vital to think of it, to analyze it as a case. “He’s drawn to me because I’m a psychiatrist and part of him knows how desperately he needs help. And he’s drawn to me because I fit the physical description of Laura.”
It had been the voice, she remembered, that had been the most frightening. The way it had swung from pitiful to powerful, in quietly determined madness. She folded her hands together, tight. “Ben, what I want you to understand is that it was like talking to two people. One of them was weepy, desperate, almost pleading. The other-the other was aloof, fanatical, and determined.”
“He’s only one person when he strangles women.” He rose and walked toward the phone. “I’m calling in. We’ll want to put a tap on your phone, here and at your office.”
“At the office? Ben, I often talk to patients over the phone. I can’t jeopardize their right to confidentiality.”
“Don’t give me grief on this, Tess.”
“You have to understand-”
“No!” He whirled to face her. “You have to understand. There’s a maniac out there killing women, and he decided to call you. Your phones get wired, with your permission or with a court order, but they get wired. Four other women didn’t have the chance. Captain? This is Paris. We got a break.”
It took less than an hour. Two cops in suits and ties came in, did what seemed to be a few minor adjustments to her phone, and politely refused the offer of coffee. One of them picked up the receiver, punched a few numbers, and tested the tap. They took Tess’s spare key to her office and went out again.
“That’s it?” she asked when she and Ben were alone again.
“These are the days of the microchip. I’ll take some of that coffee.”
“Oh, sure.” With a last glance at the phone, she went into the kitchen. “It makes me feel exposed, knowing that whenever the phone rings, someone with a set of headphones is listening to everything I say.”
“It’s supposed to make you feel protected.”
When she came back in with the coffee, Ben was standing by the window, looking out. She saw him deliberately close the curtain when he heard her behind him.
“I can’t be sure he’ll call back. I was frightened, I’m sure he sensed it, and dammit, I didn’t handle it very well.”
“I guess you lose your standing as supershrink.” He took the coffee, and her hand. “Aren’t you having any?”
“No. I’m already too wired up.”
“You’re tired.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. She looked so fragile all at once, so pale and beautiful.
