Anguish. She saw tragedy in the fact that he had not been able to talk to anyone about what had happened. Sometimes the difference between murder and a dark mood was a sympathetic ear. Yet he was too complex for simple analysis. His efficiency and brutality indicated deep obsessions. Except for a slip of the tongue, he might have killed a hundred women and never been caught. She marveled at how easily he had manipulated her to this point. Yet he had given her a thousand hints. Sincerity was his disguise. When he spoke next it was in a wounded voice. It made her wonder.

“Julie and I met twelve years ago. She was only twenty and I was of course forty. There were many precious details to our meeting, many magical moments to our courtship that I unfortunately cannot share with you. Suffice to say I loved her in a way I had never imagined loving anyone. It was as if her love transformed me into something no longer mortal. She gave me an eternal sense of being that I carried with me always.”

He lowered his head and fell silent. All she had was the darkness. A lump in her aching heart. He could do to her what he had done to the others. He could operate and burn out that lump, and everything else that made her Kelly Fienman. She wondered if her daughter was sitting at home, waiting for her to call.

“But something happened?” she said.

“Last year I discovered she was having an affair with a graduate student of mine—Michael Grander. By chance I stopped by his apartment one afternoon and knocked on his door. When he didn’t answer, I glanced though the window and saw my wife on her knees sucking his penis.” Banks trembled. “I could not have imagined.”

He wept without tears. She listened without hope. His suffering did not alter his aim. All she could do was keep him talking—a futile plan.

“Are they still involved?” she asked.

“Yes. She was going to see him this afternoon.”

“Why haven’t you confronted her?”

“I don’t have the strength.” He added, “I’m afraid to lose her.”

“You cannot bear the pain?”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. It’s not a question of what can and cannot be borne. My pain transcended human dimension. It took me to a place where good and evil were irrelevant. It changed me. And yet, in time, I began to see it as a gift.”

“The pain?”

He nodded. “I saw many things I had never seen before. Julie could not be saved. I could not be healed. What to do? The world is filled with pain and deception. I decided to take what had been given to me and give it back to the whole world.” He paused. “Do you understand?”