Before the woman on my right could speak, Shelby interrupted.
“Dr. Snow, I think we should just introduce ourselves and then I can tell you what the problem is. But first we need the confidentiality agreement I sent you with the videotape. You told me on the phone you would sign it.”
I watched for reactions to Shelby’s assertion of power: no one seemed surprised by her taking over. Responding to the group, rather than to Shelby, I said, “The entire relationship between us is predicated on trust. Just like any doctor, I am bound by doctor-patient confidentiality and will not disclose anything you say to anyone outside of this room. The only exception to that rule is if I have information that one of my patients might inflict harm upon herself. So if one of you talks about committing suicide and I feel you mean it, I will have to go to the authorities. The same holds true if one of you tells me that you intend to kill someone and gives me reason to believe you mean it, as opposed to just thinking or fantasizing about it. I should tell you, though, that in all the years that I have been practicing, I have never had to break a patient’s trust.”
Shelby nodded. “We all understand that, but I really have to insist.”
Nina had known I wanted to work with this group, almost desperately, even if I wasn’t sure I knew all of the reasons. Our talk had prepared me for Shelby’s ultimatum. But it still rankled me. I got up, walked over to my desk, pulled the signed sheet out of a folder and gave it to her. She took it, glanced at it, folded it and put it in her bag.
I sat down, turned to the woman on my right and said, “Let’s try the introductions again.” I smiled at her.
Louise M. introduced herself and added, “I’m glad you are working with us. We need help.”
One by one, we went around the circle. Ginny P., Shelby R., Martha G., Ellen S., Bethany W., Anne K., Liz B., Cara L., Aimee B., Gail S. and Davina C. I didn’t remember all their names right away, but after listening to them for an hour and a half, I would.
During that initial go-around, I’d discovered the blond, slightly ethereal woman in black, who seemed so sad, was Anne. Liz was the woman in the worn brown blazer who was so observant. Ellen was the red-suited woman who’d wanted to be the first to talk.
“Do you all keep your last names private in the society?” Even though Shelby had told me that they did, I wanted to get them talking.
“Damn straight,” Ellen said. I was not surprised that she answered. “We don’t use our last names and neither do the men who join us. Our privacy is as important to us as getting what we want,” she said, giving the last phrase an emphasis and energy that was slightly confrontational.
Shelby continued to explain: “Our entire organization—all of the chapters around the country—abides by the same rules. In fact, some of us don’t even use our real first names. We know one another only in one way, in one environment. We aren’t friends outside of the society. It would be far too risky.”
I saw Anne lower her head.
“How would it be risky?”
“We have families, spouses, children. We have careers. Some of us have public lives,” Shelby said.
“But you are all a family, too, aren’t you? A certain kind of family?” I asked.
Anne’s shoulders heaved in a quiet sob. “Yes, we are,” she said softly.
“We are a group of women who believe in fulfilling our sexual potential beyond the ways that society deems acceptable. We have refused to be afraid of what we want.” Shelby said, taking back the reins.
I had to get the other women talking.
“What does it feel like to set the rules and the terms you want?” I asked, looking from Bethany to Liz to Davina, hoping to engage them.
Davina smiled. She was tall and shapely, with coffee-brown hair cut short to show off her heart-shaped face. Everything about her was lovely, except for fingernails bitten down so low there was dried blood on some of the cuticles. “It feels limitless,” she said.
“Anyone else?” I asked.
Martha, who appeared to be the youngest member of the group, smiled at me. “It feels right to me.”
No one else volunteered. It was becoming clear that I was going to have to work to find out what was bothering these women. “Can one of you describe the mission of the society?”
Shelby and Ellen both began to speak. They exchanged a glance. With a nod, Ellen acquiesced and Shelby began. “Since its inception, the society’s purpose has been to create an environment for women who want to be in power, where they can act out their sexual fantasies with men who are willing to be their sex partners.”
“Why aren’t any of the men here?” I asked.
“They don’t belong to the society. It’s our club and they are invited guests. We don’t have relationships with them. We don’t become their friends, or fall in love with them. They are just there to please us. Do you understand?”
I nodded, wondering why she was being so emphatic. I would have preferred she talk less so that the others could talk more, but it was also instructive to observe how the group deferred to her.
“What kind of men do you invite?”
“For the most part they are successful, highly respected and often powerful men, each of whom has gone through an extensive screening process. Sexually, the one thing they have in common is their preference to be submissive. Usually, we have about twice as many men on our roster as women—so we have about thirty now. All of them are invited to our weekly soirées. As long as a man accepts three out of every five invitations he remains active.”
It appeared that she could go on talking indefinitely, but Cara, another of the women in sunglasses, interrupted. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back off her face, her olive skin stretched tight over prominent bones. Her voice was low and soft, and I had to lean forward a little to hear her.
“Last week we found out that one of the men who has been with us the longest had been reported missing by the partners at his company.” She hesitated. “People wondered if he’d been kidnapped. None of us even knew his name until the article ran in the paper, with his picture.”
Anne lowered her head once more and a tear fell into her lap. Martha covered her mouth with her hand as if to stop herself from talking. Shelby focused on Cara, watching her intently. Ginny, who hadn’t yet spoken, took off her large silver-and-onyx ring and then put it back on, as if this action in some way centered her.
Cara had stopped mid-sentence but clearly had something else she wanted to say.
“Go on,” I encouraged.
“His name was Philip Maur. It was bad enough that he was missing. Then last Friday the New York Times reported that he’d been killed.”
I was shocked and hoped it didn’t show on my face.
Davina, who had started to cry, asked me, “Did you see the article?”
“I did,” I said, and clearly remembered that moment in the greenroom at the Today show when I’d read the story and seen the letters at the bottom of the page that spelled out Detective Noah Jordain’s name.
“The problem is, how do we cope with this?” Finally, Ellen got to the point of why they were in my office. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. Men have left, but of their own volition. A few guys have gotten sick, but Christ, no one has died. What do we do? How do we cope with this?” she asked again, her voice tight and agitated.
Now that someone had exposed the problem, they all spoke at once, and I had to stop them and explain that they needed to go one at a time.
“A lot of us knew Philip really well. He’d been with the society for the past eight years.” Davina said.
“We’ve all been with him, haven’t we?” Martha asked, looking around the room.
Everyone nodded.
“We don’t know what to do,” Anne said. Her voice was musical and studied. I recognized its cadence and wondered if she was an actress.
Louise, who also wore sunglasses that covered more than a third of her face, and who had a faint Boston accent, said, “We can
’t talk about this with anyone outside of the society. It’s driving us crazy. We don’t know what to tell our friends or families about our melancholy. I burst into tears at the office this morning and my boss, whom I am incredibly close to, asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her. What am I supposed to do with all this grief?”
Around the room, with nods or murmurs, they all acknowledged that this was what they wanted me to help them with.
“There’s something else,” Ellen said. She looked angry, and tucked her hair behind her ears as if she was getting ready for a fight. I noticed the large ruby studs in her earlobes. “From the story in the paper, it doesn’t sound like the police have any leads. What if his death has some connection to the society? What if one of us has something to do with it?”
“Don’t you see? Any one of us could be involved with his murder,” Martha whispered. “What if it’s because he’s part of the society that Philip’s dead?”
Fifteen
Officers Tana Butler and Steve Fisher sat in an unmarked car parked on East Sixty-fifth Street between Madison and Park Avenues, across the street and four doors down from a turn-of-the-century limestone building.
“You wouldn’t think to look at it that it’s a sex clinic,” Fisher said.
For the first time, Butler paid attention to the building’s architecture: the elegant facade and decorative wrought-iron door.
“I guess not.”
“And if you didn’t know, nothing about the name on that nice little brass plaque would give it away. The Butterfield Institute could be anything, you know? A high-level think tank. An art school.”
Butler looked at her watch. They’d been sitting in the car since 6:45 p.m. and it was almost eight. “You sure there’s no back door to this place?”
“Nope.”
“Well this doesn’t make sense. She’s been in there for more than an hour. And why was she wearing a wig?”
“Maybe she’s doing some undercover investigation with one of the therapists. Pretending to be a patient instead of a reporter. Makes sense. The case has a sexual component. Why wouldn’t she do some follow-up with a sex therapist?”
“I guess. But how do you explain all the other women who went in there along with her?”
“It is a clinic, Tana. I’d bet most people go after work. Or maybe there’s some group thing going and they all wound up going in at the same time.”
Butler’s cell phone rang. It was Jordain, and she gave him an update on where they were, how long they’d been there, and the odd detail of Betsy Young wearing the wig.
When she got off the phone, she filled Fisher in on Jordain’s call. While they talked, they watched the Butterfield’s front door. A young couple came out; the woman looked visibly upset.
“Have you ever been to a therapist?” Butler asked.
Fisher shook his head. “You?”
“For a few weeks after I—” She broke off. The door to the institute had opened again and Young walked out. She turned left, in the opposite direction of the car, and started walking toward Park Avenue.
Fisher turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking space. The one easy thing about tailing someone in Manhattan was the traffic. Even at night, there were always a few cars on the street.
Even so, Betsy noticed the sedan trailing her.
Sixteen
The man was stretched out and tethered to the gurney with leather straps, but they were no longer buckled. He couldn’t get up and walk away anymore. His eyes were shut. His cheeks were hollow. His skin was ashen. It was a color that was without color. One doesn’t realize how many shades of yellow, peach and pink make up flesh tones until one has seen a body drained of all those colors.
Timothy Wheaton’s skin was exposed to the air-conditioning and yet he didn’t shiver or shake. He did not look like he was sleeping. A sleeping man has his head bent to one side. Or his fingers curled up under his chin. Or one of his feet twitches. This man looked dead.
It was midnight. Wheaton had been there for exactly four days. That was long enough. It was time to get to work.
The light exploded, illuminating the previously darkened room.
If a man was just sleeping, he might have sensed the brightness and opened his eyes, but Timothy Wheaton didn’t, not even when the camera’s flash went off for the second time.
The photographer smiled. After all these years of using a camera only for reference, it was satisfying to use it now creatively.
The process had been easier with this second man than with the first. The third would go even more smoothly. If there was a third. That was not yet decided.
It was a long walk to the darkroom, where one wall was covered with cork and more than a dozen shots of Phil Maur were pinned up in neat, even rows. Several of them had been sent to the New York Times. Others were too private to show to anyone. Every step had been documented: setting the stage, trapping the man, restraining him, preparing him and then rendering him helpless.
As each new, still-wet shot of Timothy Wheaton came out of the developer bath, it was added to the wall.
Both Philip and Timothy had been easy to seduce. Flattery and interest got them to settle down in the big comfortable chair, sip a glass of amber-colored liquor and talk about their sexploits. Neither of them had guessed that, along with the Scotch, they were ingesting liquid Thorazine.
They ignored the first relaxing effects of the drug because they were drinking and weren’t surprised to feel a slight buzz. But by the time their eyelids became heavy, they had trouble lifting their hands and standing up. Once the drug completely kicked in, they were harmless.
The photographer had no trouble undressing them. In fact, Philip Maur had helped undress himself, thinking he was having a drunken adventure. He’d even been able to sprout an erection. That had been interesting: sex with a half-dead man who was helpless but hard.
But Timothy Wheaton had been impotent from the drugs.
Examining the bulletin board, the photographer wondered which of the new shots should be sent to the paper. That front-page placement of Phil Maur’s photograph had been gratifying, even though there wasn’t a photo credit. Obviously, nothing could be done about that. It was too bad the paper hadn’t used those long shots of the beautiful naked body depleted of all its energy and vigor, but had instead used the simple shot of the man’s feet. His numbered feet. Red numbers from the middle of the ball of the foot to the heel. A 1 on the right foot. A 1 on the left.
Now there would be a new photo in the Times with a 2 on the right foot. And a 2 on the left.
Everyone would assume there was going to be a 3 to follow.
Everyone.
Fear of being next had to be a powerful inhibitor, didn’t it? They had to be thinking that if two of them had been killed, any one of them might be next, right? The photographer was counting on it.
Seventeen
Wednesday was rainy. A strong wind ripped the turning leaves from the branches and they lay plastered on the pavement, slippery but brilliant against the concrete streets.
Because of the weather, and because I’d scheduled a consultation with a new patient at 1:00 p.m. and only had a half hour for lunch, I ordered in vegetable soup and seven-grain bread and ate at my desk.
Nicky Brooks arrived on time, only minutes after I finished eating. Once he was sitting on the couch, I asked how he’d found me, assuming it was from the Today show, but it turned out Shelby Rush had recommended me.
“I told her I was looking for someone to help my wife and me. Shelby knows us. Knows what has been going on with us. What the issues are. She suggested you.”
Nicky was in his mid-thirties, dressed well in a navy suit and sky-blue striped tie. He had a high forehead, thick chestnut hair, dimples and a determined chin. He looked like someone who moved through the world getting what he wanted.
“Have you been in therapy before?”
He nodded.
“When?”
“About
six years ago.”
“For how long?”
“About a year.”
“You said that Shelby knew you and the kinds of issues you have been dealing with. I’d like to know what they are.”
“My wife and I are separated.” He looked around, taking in the room. I wasn’t sure if it was interest in his surroundings or a way of avoiding looking at me.
“How long have you been married?”
“Eighteen months.” He looked back at me when he answered.
“And how long have you been separated?”
“About four months. Couldn’t even make it through two years.” His voice dipped down, expressing disgust. With himself? With his wife?
“Who instigated the separation?”
“Daphne.”
“Why?”
“We had issues.”
“With what part of your lives?”
“Our sex life.”
The way he said the word “our” made me wonder if, indeed, the problem belonged to both of them.
“I’d like to hear your take on what the problems are. If we go forward with the therapy, I’ll be asking your wife the same question. Do you feel comfortable talking about the problems without your wife being here?”
He seemed surprised, as if it had never occurred to him that there might be anything wrong with talking about it without her. “Daphne and I met at the Scarlet Society almost three years ago. She was a member.”
He was watching for a reaction, but I had been doing this for years and knew how to hide my feelings if I wanted or needed to. Nicky continued, “I’d found out about the society from a woman I’d been seeing who thought I’d enjoy it.”
“And did you?”
“For the first time in my life, I was sexually satisfied.”
“What had happened previously?”
“I’ve been uncomfortable with several of the women I’ve been with.”
“Why, Nicky?”
“It’s embarrassing. To explain what you like. It can turn some women off.”
9 More Killer Thrillers Page 184
