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yourself.”
    I’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t make her smile. Instead, she reached out and handed me something across her desk.
    â€œWhen I got here today,” she said, “I found this waiting for me.”
    It was a white envelope with the top slit open. I took it, glanced at the front, which simply said “DR. SAROFF” in typed capitals, and pulled out a single sheet of paper folded in three. There was a one sentence message inside:
    WHAT MAKES YOU SO SURE YOU COULDN’T BE THE NEXT ONE
    and it was signed:
    A FRIEND
    The Counselor’s Wife had put her hand over her mouth while I read it, an involuntary gesture I hadn’t seen before. I studied the page again. It looked like it had been typed on one of those cheap memory-writer machines because you could see the little dots that made up the letters. The letters were all in capitals. There was no punctuation.
    â€œHow did you get this?” I asked her.
    â€œAlice gave it to me. Our receptionist. It had been slipped under the front door sometime during the morning, before I got here. Actually, one of Bill’s patients spotted it on the way out and handed it to her.”
    â€œWho’s Bill?”
    â€œBill Biegler.”
    Biegler was the name of the other shrink who shared the suite.
    â€œCould anybody have seen whoever delivered it? One of the doormen?”
    â€œI asked, but you know how they are. Sometimes they’re in the lobby, sometimes not. Besides, the whole ground floor is doctors’ offices, people come and go all the time.”
    â€œWho else have you told about it?”
    â€œJust Bill. Some of it.”
    â€œCould one of your other patients have written it?”
    â€œI thought of that. I don’t see who.”
    â€œOr anybody else?”
    She shrugged, a jerky movement.
    â€œSo you think McCloy.”
    â€œI don’t know. One minute I can’t believe it. The next minute I believe it.”
    â€œThen why don’t you take it to the police?”
    â€œBut how could I do that?”
    â€œEasy,” I said. “They’ve got hundreds of people on the case, a whole task force. They could trace the paper this was written on, the typewriter. They’re tracking down leads a lot flimsier than this one.”
    â€œBut I’d have to tell them about Carter, wouldn’t I?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd what would they do to him?”
    â€œI don’t know. Probably they’d haul him in for questioning. They’d …”
    She was shaking her head, slowly, side to side.
    â€œI couldn’t do that,” she said. “Even if he did send the note, suppose that was just his idea of a joke? It would fit his sense of humor. And suppose the rest of it … the correlations … were just coincidence?”
    â€œSuppose you’re wrong, in other words?”
    â€œYes, suppose I’m wrong. I couldn’t do that to him. It would be just one more betrayal, a woman betraying him, which I think is his deepest fear. I don’t want to go into it, but believe me, subconsciously he sees all women as betrayers of men, starting with his mother. Suppose the note is just a test? He’s always tested me, that’s obvious on the tapes.”
    Maybe testing was what a shrink would call it.
    â€œAnyway,” she said, and then she shook her head slowly again and smiled at me, one of her dazzlers, “and here comes the confession. Oh, I tell you, it’s been a great day for self-criticism. Yes, I couldn’t do that to Carter, and that’s true enough as far as it goes. But I also couldn’t do it to myself. If I went to the police and it turned out I was wrong, it would ruin me professionally. I mean,” with a wave at the room, “I couldn’t do this anymore, not for a day. I’d have to go eat bonbons, whatever. It’d be just one more case of a woman too hysterical to do a man’s work, do you know