Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 36, No. 6, June 1991

“Sure. Same old business. Maybe it’s a plot. Maybe they’ve made Lara go along with a plot to brainwash me, to make me think I’m out of my tree and seeing little men who aren’t there.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Some of my daddy’s bank. Nearly a million dollars in community property. Hell, don’t you know? But I don’t care. I know what I see and next time I’m going to get what I see.”

Yesterday upon the stair, Dr. Kessler thought, I saw a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

This really mustn’t go on. Continuing treatment depended on knowing the exact nature of the disease. Persisting doubts about the original diagnosis must be settled. Either real or delusional lovers could serve Richie’s defensive needs, but his possible cure could not be served at all by insecure, unsubstantiated diagnosis.

His original, tentative diagnosis of delusional pathological jealousy still seemed right; what evidence he had been able to gather pointed to it. Richie could never identify a lover. He heard their whispers on the phone, in the dark, through walls, in his nightmares and daydreams — but he never turned up a single supportive fact or clue, never any addresses, phone numbers, names, or descriptions. He said they used secret codes, even used telepathic extrasensory perception to frustrate him. On several occasions during sessions, Richie insisted that while Lara waited for him in the car, she was talking with some ubiquitous playmate. When Dr. Kessler looked down there, however, he saw the car, but no one in it — no Lara — no lover.

“There they go,” Richie shouted. “Around the corner!”

Dr. Kessler saw no one disappearing around a corner, or into a crowd, or even into thin air. Delusional jealousy was not uncommon. Many had such a low opinion of themselves they couldn’t imagine anyone not preferring someone else; but Richie’s case added up to a rather extreme, dangerously paranoid form of the disorder. Dr. Kessler still believed that was his problem.

Yet what if that tentative diagnosis had been wrong — or just partly wrong? What if Richie’s “delusions” were based on justified suspicion? What if Lara really cheated? Very discreet social inquiries had turned up nothing about Lara that supported Richie’s claims, but those inquiries had been very limited by necessary prudence.

Dr. Kessler didn’t believe he was wrong, but it was always possible. If he were, it called for a radically different approach to Richie’s therapy.

On the other hand, if he were right, he couldn’t allow a dangerous state of delusion and fantasy to continue; not without direct clinical action.

Irritation flared up suddenly, out of control. Dr. Kessler stood, leaned over Richie, and heard himself using a surprisingly hard and critical tone. “You’re not kidding me, Richie. And you’d better stop kidding yourself. It isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?”

Richie looked up and blinked incredulously. After a while he whispered, “What?”

“You don’t want to find out who these guys are, Richie. And you never will, because you’re a coward. You’re afraid to find out. If you do, you know you’ll find out something else, the final, unbearable truth — that you’re too weak and helpless and afraid to face up to them.”

Richie sat up slowly and slid down the couch away from Dr. Kessler’s shadow. His face was a pale mixture of betrayed trust — and fear. He began shaking his head from side to side in painful denial.

“Yes, that’s how it is, Richie, and in your heart you know it. In your imagination, your fantasies, you enjoy endless plans of bloody vengeance, but all the time you know that in reality you can only face the terror of your own helplessness and cowardly cringing—”

“No,” Richie said. He jumped up and backed away. “You’re all wrong. So wrong it’s ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, yes, and when I catch him you’ll find out how wrong you are, damn you!”

Dr. Kessler shrugged. “It’s so easy to find out who they are, Richie. Do what anyone else would do — hire a private investigator.”

Richie stared for half a minute. “Why... how can you — a doctor — suggest such a filthy thing? How can you even think of it?”

“The question is, Richie, why haven’t you thought of it?”

“No! Do you think I’d really have some stranger, some outsider, sneak and spy on my — on Lara — to find out... to see what she...”

“Sorry, Richie. Your time’s up.”

Richie straightened, snarling, “My time’s up here, period. I’ve had it with you, doctor. You can’t do me any good. You don’t even know why I came here, do you? I came here hoping to be able to help Lara. She’s the one who is sick. She blames me for everything and won’t admit she needs help. But you don’t understand and you can’t help, and I don’t need your help. I know what to do.”

“You may feel differently tomorrow, Richie. I hope so. Call me whenever you feel like it. And—”