The Last Precinct

"How did he know where you live?" A

"It's been in the news numerous times over the years, unfortunately," I conjecture. "I don't know how he knew."

"What? He went to the library and looked up your address on microfilm? This creature so hideously deformed who rarely went out in the light of day? This dog-faced congenital anomaly, almost every inch of his face, his body covered with long lanugo hair, pale baby-fine hair? He went to the public library?" She lets the absurdity of this hover over us.

"I don't know how he knew," I repeat. "Where he was hiding isn't far from my house." I am getting upset. "Don't blame me. No one has a right to blame me for what he did. Why are you blaming me?"

"We create our own worlds. We destroy our own worlds. It is that simple, Kay," she answers me.

"I can't believe you think for a minute I wanted him coming after me. I, of all people." An image of Kim Luong flashes. I remember fractured facial bones crunching beneath my latex-gloved fingers. I remember the pungent sweet odor of coagulating blood in the airless, hot storeroom where Chando

"I did not know those women," A

to what they did or did not do."

An image of Diane Bray flashes, her arrogant beauty savaged, destroyed and crudely displayed on the bare mattress in- side her bedroom. She was completely unrecognizable by the time he finished with her, seeming to hate her more completely than he did Kim Luong_more completely than the women we believe he murdered in Paris before he came to Richmond. I wonder out loud to A

"You had every good reason to hate her," is A

This stops me in my mental tracks. I don't respond right away. I try to remember if I have ever said I hate someone, or worse, if I have actually been guilty of it. To hate another person is wrong. It is never right. Hate is a crime of the spirit that leads to crimes of the flesh. Hate is what brings so many of my patients to my door. I tell A

"You don't think so?" A

"Many of them do."

"Did she?"

"Symbolically, as you put it?" I reply. "Maybe."

"And you, Kay? Did you almost die the way you lived?"

"I didn't die, A

"But you almost did," she says again. "And before he came to your door, you had almost given up. You almost stopped living when Benton did."

Tears touch my eyes.

"What do you think might have happened to you had Diane Bray not died?" A

Bray ran the Richmond police department and fooled peo- pie who mattered. In a very short time, she made a name for herself throughout Virginia, and ironically, her narcissism, her lust for power and recognition, it appears, may be what lured Chando

"Do you think you'd still be the chief medical examiner if Diane Bray were alive?" A

"I wouldn't have let her win." I taste my soup and my stomach flops. "I don't care how diabolical she was, I wouldn't have allowed it. My life is up to me. It was never up to her. My life is mine to make or ruin."

"Perhaps you are glad she is dead," A

"The world's better off without her." I push the place mat and everything on it well away from me. "That's the truth. The world is better off without people like her. The world would be better off without him."

"Better off without Chando

I nod.

"Then perhaps you wish Lucy had killed him after all?" she quietly suggests, and A

"No." I shake my head. "No, I would not pull the switch on anyone. I can't eat. I'm sorry you went to so much trouble. I hope I'm not coming down with something."

"We have talked enough for now." A

I try to object but she won't hear it.

"The good thing about being my age is I can do whatever the hell I want," she adds, "I am on call for emergencies. But that is all. And right now, you are my biggest emergency, Kay."

"I'm not an emergency." I get up from the table.

A

"What else do you need?" She hangs up my clothes.

I help put away other items in dresser drawers and realize I am trembling again.

"Do you need something to sleep?" She lines up my shoes on the closet floor.

Taking an Ativan or some other sedative is a tempting proposition that I resist. "I've always been afraid to make it a habit," I vaguely respond. "You can see how I am with cigarettes. I can't be trusted."

A

I am not sure what she is saying, but I know what she means. I am depressed. I am probably going to be depressed, and sleep deprivation makes everything so much worse. Throughout my life, insomnia has flared up like arthritis, and when I became a physician I had to resist the easy habit of indulging in one's own candy store. Prescription drugs have always been there. I have always stayed away from them.

A