Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

"I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm not sure I understand. 'It's a job'? Do you mean that literally? I thought you were a photographer."

"I am. But in addition…people hire me…" Lucy's words trailed off.

I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

"It's not something I talk about in polite society. I'm not used to talking about it. But I think you need to know so that you understand me better. So that you can help me figure out why I don't even care about how I fuck up people's lives. Destroy them."

I put my right foot out in front of me instinctively.

To press down on the panic button.

But there was no such button in my office-it was in the small room where I used to conduct therapy sessions at the prison. Lucy was so convincing that she actually was a killer that I'd responded the way I would with a criminal in prison and extended my foot to call for help. This prickling realization-that Lucy might indeed be a killer and not just speaking in metaphor-chilled me.

But I didn't have the luxury of focusing on how I was feeling. I had to say something. To get Lucy to keep talking. To get more information from her. To figure out what I was going to do because the one time a therapist can break a client's confidentiality is if a life is in imminent danger.

The one time.

"I don't believe that you don't have feelings about what you do," I offered. "Usually when we don't feel it's because we are blocking our emotions."

"Why would I do that? It's how I make my living. I'm not ashamed of it. I kill them with their own passions."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know that if you offer a man sex he won't pay a whole lot of attention to who you are? The same man who would run a Dun & Bradstreet before he'd take your business call will take a woman to bed without even knowing her last name. It's that lust that I count on. That hard-cock need that makes what I do so easy. Too easy really. I don't think that a man should be that easy to murder. He should fight. He should be scared. He should know his life is in danger-not just be lying there bare-assed and spread-eagled with a blonde giving him head. They don't even know…" Lucy stopped here to take a sip from the coffee cup she'd brought in with her.

My own hand was shaking slightly. I hoped Lucy didn't notice.

Yes, I'd heard confessions like this before, but always before in the prison, with guards watching. Not here in my office.

"Does it give you pleasure?"

She nodded. "If I know enough about the man. And if he's enough of a scum. Yes. You could say I'm some sort of avenging angel. I only kill men who deserve it. Who have done the unforgivable. Who need to be punished."

I was watching for any sign of psychosis, still trying to tell if this was fantasy or reality. But her pupils were not dilated. Her breathing was regular. There was no sweat on her upper lip or forehead. No sheen to her skin. Her fingers did not twitch in her lap. Her feet did not tap. She spoke in the same even voice I'd heard for a long time. She seemed in full control and co

"The painter," she said. I nodded. "When I was a kid, he made me realize that anything could be made into something else. He'd look at that water that I just saw as some stretch of muddy blue and he'd find a hundred colors in it. Some of them brilliant."

"Did the painter die?"

"I don't know. He moved away. He didn't tell me. One day, he was just gone. I went looking for him. But no one knew what happened. I look in galleries when I can. He'd be about fifty now. Fifty-year-old men are easier to fool than thirty-year-old men. The younger men aren't always sure. They succumb but they can be a little suspicious at first. Like, why is she coming on to me? To me? But the older guys are so damn flattered you can see their eyes getting erections. They are too damn easy."

I nodded. "Maybe the painter died. Maybe he didn't move away."

She didn't say anything. But suddenly her eyes filled with tears. One rolled down her cheek and she reached out to brush it away. Her surprise at her tears was clear.

"I never thought about him dying."

"Why not? Why did you assume he moved without saying goodbye?"

She shook her head as if she were getting rid of the question I'd raised. And then she changed the subject. "I should be upset about what I do. I know I should. But it's like these guys deserve it. I mean most of them are doing something to someone. They are abusing someone somehow. It's not like they are all nice guys. But I give all of them a chance. Before I take them back to the room, I give them a chance to turn me down. I ask them if they are married or if they have a girlfriend. And then ask them if they really want to do this. If they really want to hurt the women they are with."

"Some of them must say no."

"Not very many. Maybe two."

I wanted to ask her out of how many. But I didn't want to stop her.

"One man stroked my skin. His fingertips were as soft as a woman's. He had blue eyes. I remember his eyes. Because of those damn fingers that ran up and down my arm making me shiver. Usually, I don't feel anything. That's what I meant. Before. I don't feel anything when they touch me. Or when I pull the trigger."

"You use a gun?"

I hadn't meant to ask that bluntly-as if I doubted her. It was unprofessional. I'd wanted to ask her how she killed them, not blurt out the worse-case scenario I could imagine.

She looked at me as if I were the one who was crazy and needed help. "A gun?"

"When you kill them?"

"Dr. Snow, I set them up. I pump them up. I am a hired assassin. I expose them and ruin them. My whole apartment is a camera. I destroy them by taking pictures of them and then turning them over to cops or detectives or the tabloids. Character assassin." She smiled.

And for a few seconds there was no question in my mind that a man would go with her and not think twice.

"Do you think I should try to find him? Find Frank Millay, finally?"

It was the end of the session, but I didn't stand as I often did to signify that Lucy's time was up. She had arrived at a crucial point in her therapy and I didn't want to cut her short.

"I think you want to find him. And that's what's important."

Typically, I preferred to ask, not to answer, questions. In fact, I'd told Lucy, the same way I told all my patients at some point, that only by answering one's own questions could one come to terms with personal truths. But she had finally expressed a need, a desire. And that was a breakthrough for her. From everything she'd described, she hadn't given in to any real emotion since that last time she was with him. She called him the portal. After he was gone, her emotional life effectively stopped.

"There's one thing, Lucy. We need to make sure that if you do go find him it's to understand. Not to act out."

She smiled, slyly, seductively, slipping into the pose she used when she needed to hide from me. From anyone, I guessed. I'd witnessed her do this in almost every session. We'd get close to something critical and she would shut down.

Was Lucy ready to go find Millay?

Was it within the realm of my responsibility to hold her back?

"I'm sure that I'm going to understand. Not to act out. Aren't you sure, Dr. Snow?"

"While we've considered that something may have happened with Frank Millay that both closed you up emotionally and caused him to disappear, I wish you would give it some more time here. But I understand your frustration. How long are you going to give yourself to find him?"

"I don't know. Maybe a couple of weeks?"

"Would you think about coming in for another session? Or two? So we can make sure that if you find out what happened, you will be prepared."

Lucy grasped the implication immediately. She sat with her back pressed into her chair, all defensiveness now, her legs tightly crossed and turned sideways. "I've already done regressive-analysis hypnosis with my last therapist," she said. "We didn't uncover anything like that."