The Tease (The Darling Killer Trilogy) (11 page)

“Good luck,” Tish said, with a broad wink.

I
did not have butterflies in my stomach as I awaited Max’s appointment that Thursday; I had hummingbirds. I met him in the waiting room, hoping that my smile didn’t betray my elevated pulse. I couldn’t decide to how to bring it up. I had carefully rehearsed the conversation several times, but how would it go? His confession? My job disappearing?

“How have you been?” I began.

“I’ve been okay, thank you,” he said. “How about you? That’s a lovely necklace.”

“Thank you,” I said, my fingertips flitting briefly to the sapphire pendant Kevin had sent. I noticed that I automatically smiled when I thought of our upcoming date that evening. “I’m good.” I drew in a deep breath and said, “I think we should discuss Friday evening.”

He smiled. “So that
was
you.”

Damn. Damn it to hell.
Would he have assumed it wasn’t me if I hadn’t blurted it out? Damn me for being a lousy liar. My face burned. “I… wonder if you have any concerns about moving forward.”

“Concerns? Of course not. You were great. It’s good to feel like I’m talking to a real person.”

I hesitated. “I’m concerned that it would be inappropriate to continue a counseling relationship.”

He frowned. “Inappropriate how?”

“Max, there are reasons we have boundaries in a counseling relationship. It’s very different from being friends. I have to maintain a professional distance.”

“Good Christ, you were fifty feet away.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“So I saw your show, and now you don’t want to counsel me anymore?” He crossed his arms and furrowed his brow.

I had no idea this would be so much like an awkward breakup conversation. “Not at all. I enjoy working with you—”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“There could be some ethical concerns,” I said carefully.
He’s scared I’m rejecting him
. One of the three prevailing theories about necrophilia was that they are terrified of rejection and want a partner incapable of rejecting them. I was the one person to whom he’d confessed his secret. If he thought I was rejecting him, he might not seek help from anyone else. It might get worse.

But what if he did it?

“There’s a reason I have a stage name,” I said. “I keep my artistic life and professional life private. Something could come up later – I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“But I’m
more
comfortable,” he insisted, his accent more pronounced.

Accents usually become more pronounced when a person is upset.

“I feel even more like I’m talking to a real flesh-and-blood person, like with a sense of humor and everything.”

“With the nature of what we’re talking about,” I said, “are you sure you’ll be okay with disclosing your feelings about women and sexuality with me?”

His face darkened. “Is this about our session Friday?” he asked quietly. “You really do think I’m a monster.”

“Not at all,” I assured him. “I think you’re very brave, to come to therapy and confront the urges you have.”

“Then why won’t you help me?” he asked. “You’re the only person I’m comfortable with. I don’t
want
to see anyone else. I don’t
want
to start over.”

“I don’t want you to have to,” I said. Despite my discomfort, my heart cracked a little for him. It was so terribly daunting to go to therapist after therapist, looking for someone to help you.
It would be so hard for him to work up the nerve to tell someone else.
“But according to practice policy—”

His eyes narrowed. “Practice policy,” he scowled. “You’re worried about your job.”

Damn again.
I was losing him.
And he’s right.

“I’m worried about you,” I said. “And about the right thing to do. To be honest, it could hurt my job if my boss found out, but I would rather lose my job and know you’re okay than compromise your treatment to serve myself.” As I said the words aloud, my pulse slowed down.
It’s true
, I realized.
At least I know that’s true.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like being able to sleep at night.

“I won’t tell,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone. I was just out with my mates, you know, I didn’t tell them I knew you. D’you think I want them to know I’m in therapy? For this? I won’t tell your boss, I won’t tell a soul.”

His eyes burned earnestly. His need for reassurance was strong enough to fire up the fierce protectiveness I feel about my clients. Hugging him and telling him everything would be okay was a friend’s role, not a therapist’s, but the impulse flared, and then warred with the revulsion I couldn’t quite shake.

“If we continue working together,” I said, “can you promise me that if anything does come up, you’ll talk to me about it?”

“It won’t,” he said. “But I promise. I promise if I feel weird about it I’ll say something to you. But nothing will come up. I won’t go see any more shows like that. It’ll be like it never happened.”

“But it did happen,” I said gently. “I can see you feel strongly about this, and I’m honored that you trust me. I believe it’s important to have everything out on the table.”

“Right then,” he said. “It’s on the table. It’s discussed.”

That’s such a male response
. “Part of it is,” I said.

“And the other?”

Why is he playing dumb?
“Have you seen the news? About the theater that night?”

He drew in his breath sharply. “My God,” he said. “I’d – yes, sorry, I’m such an ass. I’m so sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you for your condolences,” I said.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been all going on about me, and…” he trailed off.

“But these therapy hours
are
about you,” I said. “That’s what makes it different from any other sort of relationship.”

“Ah,” he said.

“If something blurs the boundaries,” I explained, “if something changes the dynamic so that the hours are about me instead of you, then it can hurt your progress.”

“But you’re here,” he said. “I can’t just pretend you’re not here. Like you’re not a
person.
”

“I agree,” I said. “Therapy is a collaboration. The way you react to me is important, because it can tell us a lot about your relationships with other people.”

He put his forehead in his hands. “I haven’t told anyone else,” he said quietly. “Except that girl I asked to lie in the snow, and that was only half of it. And she dumped me. So I think I’d go mad if you turned me away.”

My heart ached for him. As unsettled as I was by the hold he could have over me – as unsettled as I was by the benefit to myself of keeping the secret – I worried that a rejection would crush him and discourage him from therapy. He needed help. He was asking for it.
Maybe I can coax him into letting me bring someone in for a consultation, involve someone else in his treatment, so I can be sure he’s getting an objective eye.

If an ethics committee got hold of this…

Fuck the ethics committee,
I thought.
The ethics state you should never be friends with a client after termination because they might want to come back to therapy… but they also say it’s okay to sleep with a client if you wait five years. Hell, it’s only two years if you have a Ph.D. So you can screw a former client as long as you don’t really like them? He’s in pain. I’ll risk it.

Unbidden, the chilling refrain struck deep into my chest.
But what if he did it?

There’s no proof. There’s no proof, and he needs help.

“I’m not turning you away,” I explained. “I’m letting you know that there are other options if you want them.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Fifteen percent of necrophiliacs are sexually attracted to the dead
, I remembered.
The other eighty-five are just motivated by loss and rejection. I’ll take those odds.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and I took another deep breath. Might as well go for it. “Now, I’m wondering how
you
feel about the events at the theater.”

“A lot,” he said. “I felt a lot.”

I waited, a horrible sinking sensation dragging through my body.

“I did feel – you know – turned on, that I’d been so close to it. I was thinking about how I was probably right in the lobby when she… died. That the Darling Killer was in the same building. This was the first time a beautiful woman died in the same building as me. And I’d just seen her skin…”

Necrophiliac homicide, murder to obtain a corpse. Necrophiliac fantasy, envisioning acts but not engaging. Regular necrophilia, using an already dead corpse for pleasure.
If he was one of the two latter types, he might respond, but he wouldn’t necessarily have done it. I was dimly aware of shrieking in the corridors of my mind.
Lisa dying terrified with hands around her throat—
I slammed the door on the thought.

“I wonder… “ he said, his eyes shining. “The stories say the Darling Killer struck again, but they don’t say where on the body it was written. Did you see it? Did you know?”

I shuddered inside at the gleam in his blue eyes, but kept my face neutral. “I wonder,” I said carefully, “if you’re enjoying this part of our conversation.”

He groaned, his face crumpling from eagerness into a chaos of anguish. “I am. God help me. I am.”

Remorse? Remorse and a killer’s arousal at revisiting the crime? Or just a confused guy who’s been rejected a lot?

“Why do you say that?”

“I feel so… bad about feeling that. Because she
died
, and she had a family and probably a boyfriend or something, and the striptease was playful, but this wasn’t. She
died
. I feel like a monster.”

“It sounds like you’re feeling ashamed,” I said.
Empathy
, I rejoiced.
Real empathy.
Most serial killers lack empathy, and if a person doesn’t have it, they can’t develop it later. If he felt genuine empathy, we had a fighting chance to keep the urges at bay.
Well. Urges toward the living, anyway.

“Exactly,” he said in a small voice. “Ashamed. Aroused and ashamed.”

“Do you judge yourself like that often?”

“Like what?”

“Calling yourself a monster,” I said. “And you called yourself an ass earlier today.”

“I just – it’s an expression.”

“I’m noticing a lot of judgments in what you say,” I said, a little relieved that could steer us back to the here-and-now.

“Like judging you?” he asked.

“Mostly yourself,” I said. “But sometimes others. The first time we met, you were talking about ‘weirdos’ who go to BDSM clubs. I wonder what judging accomplishes.”

“It just… I don’t know. Keeps me on the straight and narrow, I suppose.”

“I wonder if you’d be interested in a kinder way,” I said. “Because I don’t think beating yourself up is helping your self-confidence, and I think confidence is going to help you feel stronger about the goals we’ve discussed.”

He considered it for a moment. “I would,” he said. “It’d be nice, if I didn’t feel like I had to kick my own ass all day.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking about your treatment plan,” I said. “I’m thinking that if we spend some time talking about your history with women and fantasy, maybe we can discover where your fetish came from. There are some exercises and readings we can incorporate to help build your self-confidence. Then once you feel more grounded, we can explore whether you want to pursue relationships without the fetish, or if you want to find partners who will enact the fantasy in a safe way.”

He ran both hands through his hair and sat back in the sofa. “That sounds good.”

“Good,” I said. I glanced at the clock. “Since we only have about fifteen minutes left, I don’t feel I could do justice to delving into your history today, so how do you feel about some homework to help with the judgments?”

He shrugged. “If it’ll help, I’ll try it.”

“When you make a judgment during the day, count it. Keep track of how many judgments you make. Anything from
This guy’s a jerk
to
That couch is a stupid color
.”

“I don’t know if I can count that high,” he chuckled.

“You’re making a joke,” I observed. “I wonder if you’re doing that because you’re uncomfortable.”

“Damn,” he said softly. “You’re good.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” I quipped. I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out a yellow golf-swing ticker. I keep a stash for Dialectic Behavior Therapy. “This will help.”

“So just any judgment?” he said, accepting the yellow plastic counter. “And then what?”

“Jot down your number at the end of the day,” I said. “Before you go to bed, just put it on the calendar. Or when you get up in the morning and reset the counter for the day. Whatever’s easier. When you make a judgment, make sure you’re just counting it, not judging yourself for making the judgment. That’ll double your numbers.”

“How will this help?” he asked. There was curiosity in his tone, but no sarcasm.

“It’s to start the habit of noticing things in the present,” I said. “It sounds like you’re experiencing feelings of pressure and anxiety, and a lot of self-loathing. So let’s see what happens over the week.”

“We’ll see what happens,” he said bitterly.

“Max,” I said. “Look at me.”

He made eye contact.

“What you said earlier,” I said, “about her having a family and people who loved her – the feelings of shame – that’s empathy. That means you have something to hang onto to change. The sadists, the anti-social personalities, the ones that we call psychopaths – they don’t have that. So we have something to work with here, ok?”

He stared at the golf counter as he spoke. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else,” he said. “I don’t want to be hurt again.”

Anyone else. Good Lord.
“Of course you don’t,” I said. I waited, and he didn’t say anything, so I continued. “What do you mean, hurt anyone
else
?”

He met my eyes again, and it didn’t look like it was easy for him. “My ex-girlfriend,” he said. “Asking her to lie naked in the snow like that. I think it, like, diminished her or something. I think it hurt her.”