Chapter 18

Back in the apartment, Claire asked questions. They were not "What did you do?" type questions, but rather were "How do you feel about what you did?" type questions.

Lacey didn't feel good about any of it.

For the psychiatrist, it was like walking a tightrope. Or, perhaps it was like making her patient walk the tightrope. There needed to be remorse for a bad deed, for there to be health in the mind and spirit. But it could be taken too far, and the patient could begin to hate herself, or believe there was no possibility for redemption.

The way to work through that was, oddly enough, to talk of the past.

"I want you to think about the way things were in the eighteen hundreds," said Claire.

"What do you mean?"

"Before there was a widespread presence of law enforcement," said Claire. "What happened to horse thieves?"

"They were lynched," said Lacey.

"They were hanged," said Claire. "There's a difference."

"I don't understand." Lacey blinked.

"Back then, a man's life depended on his horse," said Claire. "If you stole a man's horse, he could lose his job. If you took it under the right circumstances, you were leaving him for dead." She let that sink in. "There were no police to arrest a suspect," she went on. "So citizens ... people who were basically normal everyday law abiding citizens ... had to administer justice themselves."

"This isn't the eighteen hundreds," objected Lacey.

"Of course not, but what I'm telling you is that those citizens weren't bad people. They weren't murderers, by the standards of the day. They were just doing what there was no judge or jury to do. They were protecting themselves from those who would do harm to them, or who had no conscience and were a danger to frontier society." She paused a few seconds. "They did it with rustlers, and they did the same thing with rapists, Lacey."

"But there ARE police now," moaned Lacey. "They were even LOOKING for him!"

"There is no doubt that it would have been better if you'd have told a policeman about him, rather than what you did," said Claire. "At the same time, millions of years of evolution are at work here. You reacted in a way that, just a couple of hundred years ago would have been lauded, rather than punished. You're not a bad person, Lacey. You did something that is wrong, from society's perspective today, but that doesn't make you a bad person."

"I killed him!" shouted Lacey. "I can't live with that!"

"Yes you can," said Claire calmly. "He's dead and nothing you do will bring him back to life. You're NOT dead. What you have to decide is what actions to take to move ON with your life."

"I don't KNOW what to do," wailed Lacey.

"You said something about keeping this quiet," said Claire. "How does that make you feel?"

"Awful," said Lacey. "I'm scared. That's what made me say that, but it's not the right thing to do." She covered her face. "But I don't want Bob to get in trouble either!"

"What do you feel is the right thing to do?" asked Claire.

Lacey let her hands drop. "The right thing to do would be to turn myself in. I don't want to do that, but that would be the right thing."

"I told you you weren't a bad person," said Claire. "Let me talk to Bob when he gets back."

"I don't want him hurt, Claire!" barked her patient.

"He has to make his own decisions, just like you do," said Claire. "He's a big boy, just like you're a big girl. You're both grappling with difficult issues. You choose to do the right thing. You know Bob. Do you really think he'd choose to do the wrong thing?"

"He knew!" whimpered Lacey. "He knew I killed that man, but he never told me."

"What good would it have done to tell you that?" asked Claire. "What would it have fixed? How could telling you his suspicions have made the world a better place? He loves you. I think he just didn't want you to have to go through what you're going through right now."

"Why would I kill him?" asked Lacey, her voice hollow. "I remember wanting to, but I don't understand that!"

"Revenge," said Claire simply. "He ruined your life. He took something from you that could never be given back. He cost you your husband and your peace of mind. Didn't he say he'd be back? Did you worry about that?"

"Of course I did," said Lacey. "But there was Bob now. I knew Bob would never let him hurt me again."

"So you just wanted revenge?"

Lacey slumped and looked down. "I don't know what I wanted. He called me a slut. I FELT like a slut for a long time, after he..." She looked back up. "I wanted him dead. That's what I don't understand, because I thought it would feel good ... and it doesn't."

"That's something we'll talk about later, after you've had a little time to think," said Claire.

Claire could see that Lacey was regaining control of her emotions. That was good. Now she thought about this woman's future. Her job was to do what was within her means to establish and nourish good mental health. Sometimes that meant paying attention to things outside the mind. If Lacey turned herself in, there was likely to be a prison sentence. And, all her talk of the past aside, Claire knew that modern law enforcement would see it as murder of some kind. That put her client at risk, and for Lacey to be able to deal with all that, she needed to be prepared.

That's what Claire concentrated on until Bob returned.

When Bob came back with enough takeout orders of food to feed a small army, Claire said she'd get it ready. She nodded her head at Lacey, who wasn't looking at Bob in a way that made it clear she either wouldn't look at him, or couldn't look at him.

Bob went to the woman and held her. She resisted him at first, and then melted into his arms, sobbing again and trying to apologize for "messing everything up." He just shushed her and held her.

Claire set the table in such a way that she sat next to Lacey, and Bob sat across from them. He didn't think anything of it. They were eating, with almost no conversation, when Lacey suddenly dropped her fork and slumped sideways. Bob jumped to his feet, as Clair reached for an elbow and kept the woman upright.

"I put a sedative in her food," said Claire calmly. "She needs rest right now, more than food."

"You drugged her?!" Bob's surprise was evident.

"I SEDATED her," said Claire. "A little help here?"

Bob carried Lacey to the bedroom and put her on her back. He draped a cover across her lower half and turned to see Claire standing in the doorway, watching.

"I used to wish you'd do that with me," she said softly.

"What?"

She blushed. "Nothing. It's totally inappropriate. I shouldn't have said it." She frowned. "We need to talk."

"She's still ambivalent about what course of action to take," said Claire. She didn't want to go into the details of their talk, though she didn't think Lacey would see it as a breach of confidentiality. Claire did, and that was what counted.

"Whatever she wants to do," said Bob, after Claire described her talk with Lacey.

"You can't just say that, Bob," said Claire. "Whatever she wants to do is going to affect you."

"Sure I can say that," said Bob. "I want her to be happy."

"Well then, let's talk about that. What if she wants to turn herself in?"

"That would be ridiculous," said Bob.

"Explain that to me," said Claire.

"He was a serial rapist. I suspected him of three rapes before her, and there were at least four more after her with the same MO. He would have gone right on victimizing women. We didn't have a clue as to who he was before this happened. She did the world a favor."

"Have you ever killed anybody, Bob?"

"No, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"What I'm saying is you don't really know how it feels to be responsible for someone's death, whether he deserved it or not."

"I've put men on death row before," said Bob. "Two of them were actually executed. I was responsible for that."

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