"We'll get you a jacket." A pause, then, "There. Is that better?"
"A l-little."
"I want you to think back to just a short while ago, Nicholas, just two weeks ago. Can you remember back that far?"
"Far, far ago."
"Just two weeks. It was evening. Do you remember Bob Kirk?"
"The grave. Yes, the grave. Far, far ago. Once upon a time. The c-cold and l-lonely grave. So dark, forever dark."
"No, Nicholas, I want you to remember before that, before the cemetery. The night you--"
"The night there was no morning. And Cynthia is in the dark. As c-c-cold as I am. I'm sh-shivering. Is it right to b-be so c-cold?"
"Do you want to stop the session, Nicholas? Nurse, get me some blankets."
"No g-good. N-no good. I wrapped her in the quilt. B-but it was no good. Cynthia, my sleeping princess. Awake. Aw-wake t-to me. D-down, down in the d-deep, cold grave. Take me. G-god, Cy-cynthia, take me with you!"
"You can leave this memory now. Come back to just two weeks ago. There is no Cynthia in this memory of two weeks ago."
"No, there is no Cynthia an-anymore. 'Til death do us p-part, Cynthia. But it was not s-supposed to part us. Why couldn't you t-take me with you?"
"It's all right, Nicholas. We are stopping now. You don't have to remember anymore. Look, here are the blankets. We will let you sleep, now."
Fitapaldi snapped off the tape recorder and buried his face in his hands. Cynthia. He remembered Cynthia from the stack of pictures Cole had brought with him to the session, hoping they would stir a memory. Cynthia with the large, dark eyes, alert and luminous as a sparrow's in her thin, triangular face. Cynthia, smiling, with wisps of hair sticking out of the kerchief she had tied behind her head like a Russian peasant. "If we only had forever, Nicholas. Love, Cynthia," she had scrawled on the back of one of the photos.
When, with tortured effort, Fitapaldi succeeded in clearing his mind of Cynthia, the memory of Cole took her place, shivering violently in the jacket, under the blanket, mumbling about the grave, the dark and lonely grave until the second injection he had given him had finally taken effect and he had sunk into deep sleep. He slept still, on the bed in the treatment room next door, while Fitapaldi sat and pondered his mistakes and wondered what to do. He had been so sure Cole was not a murderer, that Nicholas could not do what Cole would not have done. How could he have been so wrong?
Several hours later, when he had yet to think of any solutions and Cole faced him expectantly across the desk, Fitapaldi fell back on his training to carry him through the second part of the therapy. Perhaps there was an explanation buried as deeply as the memory. Perhaps if he slashed deep enough he would find it.
"Do you remember these photographs, Cole?'
"Yes, Trissa showed them to me several times."
"But do you remember this girl?" he held out the doe-eyed girl with the scarf. "Do you know where she is now?"
"No. She is one of Nicholas's girls. He collected them."
"And you never met her yourself?"
"No."
"Did you ever meet any of Nicholas's girls?"
"Other than Trissa? Yes, one."
"Can you show me that one?"
Cole spread the photos in a fan on the desk. "This one."
"Jane Simmons?"
"That's what the back says."
"What happened to her? Do you know?"
Cole's face clouded. "Yes."
"Can you tell me?"
"What does this have to do with me now? What does it have to do with our session?"
"You don't want to tell me?"
"I'm not proud of it."
"Not proud?"
Cole shoved his hands in his pocket and stretched his legs out in front of him, pretending a casualness that was denied by the rigid lock on his knees and the grim line of his jaw. "I got rid of her."
"How do you mean?"
He shrugged, as if it meant nothing. "I was cruel to her."
"You hurt her?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I screamed at her. I called her names. I called her a fat, stupid cow. I threw her clothes out into the street."
"I see."
Yanking his legs back, Cole sat upright, his hands out in the open again, gripping the arms of the chair. "Wait a minute. How did you think? Did you think I hit her? God, it was bad enough what I did. She cried. She pounded on the door, crying. She sat on the front steps, crying. I couldn't stand it. I went out to her