Crimson Joy

by Robert B. Parker

  "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."

  "Good point," Susan said, and picked up her cup of cold coffee and drank it just as if it were hot.

  CHAPTER 13

  I was in Susan's kitchen cleaning up breakfast when the phone rang. It was Quirk.

  "Washburn's confessed," he said.

  "Not surprising," I said.

  "He confessed to being the Red Rose killer," Quirk said.

  I didn't say anything for a minute.

  "Yeah," Quirk said, "me too."

  "It's bullshit," I said.

  "I think he did his wife," Quirk said. "I don't believe the rest."

  "What's the chain of command think?"

  "Chain of command is so happy to have an arrest, they'd buy Daisy Duck for it if they had a confession," Quirk said.

  "What about the guy that left the rose with Susan?" I said.

  "Nobody cares about him, they don't want to hear about him," Quirk said.

  "You're sticking close?"

  "For the moment," I said. "Hawk's coming by around ten."

  "When he gets there, come over to my office," Quirk said.

  I put the dishes in the dishwasher and wiped off the counter and sat to read the Globe. They didn't have it yet. But they would. The TV people would get it first probably, but everyone would have it soon and another ring would be added to the circus.

  Hawk strolled in at 9:59. He was always on time. In fact he always did everything he said he'd do. He was carrying a gym bag.

  "Cops got a confession," I said.

  Hawk put the gym bag on the counter in the kitchen.

  "Quirk like it?" Hawk said.

  "No," I said.

  "Tell him about the guy ran away from you the other night?"

  "Yeah."

  "How Susan going to deal with it?"

  "She's got a thirty-two in the desk drawer and you or me sitting around up here."

  "No names?"

  "No."

  Hawk nodded. He opened his gym bag and took out some audio tapes, a paperback copy of Common Ground, and a copy of Ring magazine. He put the tapes in a neat pile beside Susan's stereo, put Common Ground on the coffee table next to the couch, took his gun out of the shoulder holster and placed it beside Common Ground, and settled back on the couch with Ring.

  "You going to see Quirk?" he said.

  "Yeah. You know where everything is?"

  "Un huh."

  It was one of those deceptive days in April when it seems like spring and the wind is a velvet conceit on the lingering reality of winter. I parked on Berkeley Street by a sign that said POLICE VEHICLES ONLY and went up to Quirk's office. Belson was there.

  "Washburn has it all about right," Quirk said when I sat down. "The rope's a little different. Always before it was cotton. This time it's that plastic stuff you have to melt the ends when you cut it. But the tape's the same, the way she's tied is the same. She was shot the same way. But there's no semen."

  "Same gun?"

  "No. Same caliber, but not the same gun."

  "It was all in the papers," Belson said. "I checked, everything tape, way the rope was wound, caliber gun, how she was shot, all of it. Anyone could know."

  "You do the questioning?" I said to Quirk.

  "Me and Frank and twenty others. It's hard to conduct a good interrogation in a case like this."

  I nodded. "Everybody that outranks you has to get in on it and maybe claim he broke the case."

  "Place was like a fucking cake sale," Belson said. "The fucking commissioner was there, a guy from the mayor's office."

  "They told him what to say," I said.

  "Sure," Belson said. He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at it for a moment and threw it hard into the wastebasket.

  "What about the rope being wrong, and the gun being different, and no semen?"

  Quirk grinned. "Guy from the mayor's office says it proves he's the one. Says if he was a copycat he'd have got it right. Says because it was his wife he couldn't ejaculate."

  "The gun too?"

  "Says he probably got rid of it to cover himself and got another one."

  Quirk said.

  "Can't be a dope and work in the mayor's office," I said. "What about Washburn?"

  "Managed a hamburger joint over on Huntington Ave. No connection with the cops, no record of a registered gun except the murder weapon. No previous record, except one DWI."

  "What did he do with the previous gun?" I said.

  "Took a cruise on the Jazz Boat, dropped it over the middle of the harbor."

  "He know you?"

  Quirk shook his head. "Nope. Says he looked up my address after he saw my name in the paper, but he forgot it."

  "Why'd he claim to b
e a cop?"

  "Wanted to confuse us," Belson said.

  We were quiet in the room. There was an elongated rectangle of sun sprawling across Quirk's nearly empty desk. On the desk was a picture of Quirk's wife, three children, and dog. There was a desk clock that told you the time all over the world. It was never clear why Quirk wanted to know. Quirk was leaning back in his swivel chair, sucking on his lower lip.

  "Susan doesn't say absolutely that her guy can't be the guy, does she?"

  Belson said.

  "Shrinks don't say absolutely anything," I said.

  "She think he'll come back?"

  "Shrinks don't know what people are going to do. They only know why they did it," I said.

  "Like cops," Quirk said.

  "Except they don't usually know why they did it," I said.

  "True," Quirk said. He picked up the picture of his dog from his desk and placed it half an inch closer to the pictures of his children. The rhomboid of sun across his desktop had shifted slightly toward me.

  "We've got to know about this guy that left the rose for Susan," Quirk said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Washburn was into his second aria for the brass when this guy dropped the rose," Belson said.

  "So if he is Red Rose, who the hell is this guy?" Quirk said.

  "And if Washburn isn't Red Rose," Belson said.

  "Yes," I said.

  The three of us sat quietly looking at nothing.

  "It isn't Washburn," Quirk said.

  I looked at Belson.

  "Washburn did his wife," Belson said. "He didn't do the rest."

  "Maybe."

  I said.

  "Probably," Quirk said.

  "It ain't Washburn," Belson said. "Hawk with Susan?" Quirk said.

  "Yeah."

  "Good."

  CHAPTER 14

  Washburn was famous by morning. His name was on the lips of Jane Pauley and his face was on the front page of everyone's morning paper. The mayor was on CNN congratulating the police commissioner, and the police commissioner was generously crediting hard work by the entire department. Six paragraphs into the front page story in the Globe was an allusion to Police Lieutenant Martin Quirk, the homicide commander, who expressed some reservations. In paragraph ten it was mentioned that a Boston private detective who had been working on the case with the police was unavailable for comment.

  "I'm available," I said.

  Susan was eating a piece of whole-wheat toast across her breakfast counter from me.

  "Certainly to me," she said.

  "Paper says I'm unavailable for comment," I said.

  "They probably tried your office and you weren't there," she said.

  "Lying bastards," I said.

  "Well, aren't we surly this morning," Susan said.

  "Everybody's got it solved," I said.

  She had another bite of toast. I drank my coffee. Susan's hair was in curlers, her face was devoid of makeup. She wore white silk pajamas with a ruffle, and sleeping had wrinkled them. I stared at her.

  "What's the matter?" she said when she caught me.

  "I was just wondering why you still look beautiful," I said. "It must not be the makeup and the clothes. It must be you." She smiled. "Are you drinking at this hour of the morning?"

  "You go to my head," I said, "like a sip of sparkling burgundy brew."

  "I'm not going to do that," she said, "until after work."

  I gnawed on my bagel. She looked at her watch. Susan was always running a little late. There seemed time to finish her toast.

  "Any hints from your patients?" I said.

  "No."

  "If you knew who left the rose and were pretty sure he was Red Rose, would you share?"

  "Red Rose has confessed," she said.

  "Don't dodge the question."

  She nodded, and bit the corner of her toast triangle.

  "I guess I would," she said. "But I would have to be sure and it would be .. She shook her head and didn't finish the sentence. She tried a new one.

  "I came late to this work," she said. "And the work, and my skill at it, makes me possible. It makes us possible, because I am more than the apple of your eye, however glad I am about being that too. I am valuable without you."

  "True," I said. There was a bowl of Santa Rosa plums on the counter. I took one and polished it against my pants leg.

  "I am rigidly defensive about it," she said.

  I bit into the plum.

  "To have my autonomy violated by the Red Rose business is nearly intolerable," she said. "And to have you or Hawk here watching over me" her face tightened as she said it "is very bitter."

  "None of this is your fault," I said.

  "Nor yours," she said. "But you must understand that it is like letting you into something that is mine. It is like giving away part of me, to have you question me about my patients."

  "I don't want him to kill you," I said.

  "I know," she said. "I don't want him to either. And I am less frightened with you here, or Hawk. But you must see that being frightened unless you're here, in the practice of my profession, is a terrible condition to be in for me."

  "I know," I said.

  "I know you know," Susan said. She smiled her big wide brilliant smile, the one that made you feel like life's focus. "I'm just kvetching."

  "Neither Quirk nor Belson believes the confession," I said.

  "It exonerates the police," Susan said. "Washburn, according to the news, isn't a cop."

  "Yeah, and it gives them a black criminal, which shuts up all the talk about racism, and it keeps the general public from screaming for an arrest. There's a lot of reasons to believe him."

  "Except?"

  "Except the gun is wrong and the rope is wrong and there's no semen and he's black, so how come he kept finding his victims in places a white guy would find them and how come he took this long to get to his wife?"

  "I could speculate on the wife part," Susan said.

  "Sure," I said. "But the fact remains that there's a lot of holes, and two very experienced homicide investigators don't believe him."

  "A man like Washburn might in fact kill his wife and be so overcome at the guilt of it that he would do this," Susan said.

  "Confess to a whole series of crimes?" I said.

  "More. He might emulate the criminal in the crime, become him, in a manner of speaking. It would be a way of dramatizing how horrible a crime he was contemplating, and it would, maybe, distance him from it enough so that he could carry it out."

  "So his grief and all would be genuine," I said.

  "Absolutely. He's done something more horrible than any of his questioners can imagine. Of course he's overcome. And he must be punished on a scale equal to the horribleness. He must not only be a murderer, he must be a fiend, as it were, a noted serial killer."

  "So you don't believe his confession either," I said.

  "I neither believe nor disbelieve. I could make a scenario for belief too. I'm only trying to give you possibilities in an area I know."

  Susan said. "If you decide finally that he's innocent or guilty, I will believe you," she said. "I know what I know, and I know what you know.

  In this you know more."

  I finished my plum, and got up and walked around the counter to the other side and gave her a kiss on the mouth.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "You're welcome."

  She looked at her watch.

  "Jesus Christ," she said. "I have twenty minutes until my first appointment."

  "Try not to trample me," I said, and got out of the way.

  CHAPTER 15

  Quirk called me while Susan was speeding around the apartment.

  "Hawk coming over?" he said.

  "Yes, at ten."

  "Stay there with him. Belson and I are coming by," Quirk said.

  "Sure," I said.

  As I was hanging up, Susan stopped momentarily in front of me, gave me a kiss on the mouth, and sped to the
front door. She looked like a fast sunrise.

  "Beep beep," I said.

  "I'll call you later," she said, and was gone.

  Hawk arrived at ten, Quirk and Belson right behind him.

  Hawk said, "This a coincidence, or are you guys after me?"

  Quirk shook his head and closed the door behind him and said, "We need help."

  Hawk's face broke into a wide smile. "Y'all finally facing up to that," he said.

  Belson rummaged around the kitchen until he found a saucer that would serve as an ashtray. Quirk went into the kitchen behind him and carefully shook the water from his raincoat onto the tile floor. Then he hung it from a rack Susan had by the back porch door. Belson started back into the living room with his ashtray.

  "Frank," Quirk said, and nodded at the coat.

  Belson said, "Yeah," and came back into the kitchen and hung his raincoat up beside Quirk's. Hawk draped his leather jacket over the back of a kitchen chair. Without the jacket the ivory butt of his gun glared at us from under his arm. He wore extra rounds in a pocket on the back of his belt.

  Belson glanced around the apartment with its careful clutter of objets dart, lace, silk, crystal, and velvet. There was a huge crimson fan spread on one wall of the den.

  "It's you," Belson said to me.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm looking to buy a paisley gun." Quirk said, "Belson and I are on vacation."

  The cold spring rain was sharp and insistent on the front windows.

  "Perfect weather for it," I said.

  "Commissioner insisted," Quirk said.

  "I noticed in the paper you were expressing reservations," I said.

  "Yeah, I did it again on Jimmy Winston's show last night," Quirk said.

  "Mobilizing public opinion," Hawk murmured.

  "Something," Quirk said. "Anyway, this morning I got put on vacation status, extended. Frank joined me. Some kind of gesture, I guess."

  "I been working hard, boss, you know that," Belson said.

  Quirk nodded.

  "So they are committed to Washburn," I said.

  "Yeah," Quirk said.

  "Means they figure his story will hold up," Hawk said.

  "He's pretty steady on that," Quirk said.

  "It's the only thing he is steady on," Belson said. "Everything else, he's only got one oar in the water."