As strange as it may sound, the fact that Gibbs was confident that Sterling Storey had killed a number of women had to remain my secret.
Legally, I not only didn’t have a responsibility to tell anyone-for instance, the police-about the other women whom Gibbs suspected her husband had murdered, but I also didn’t have the right to tell anyone about them. If Gibbs had informed me that her husband was about to kill yet another woman, well, then that would have left me sailing in murkier waters. But even in those circumstances I probably couldn’t breach Gibbs’s confidentiality without her permission.
That’s right. The only circumstance that would have allowed me freedom to spread the word about the other murders was if Sterling himself came into my office and told me that he was about to kill yet another woman, then proceeded to conveniently identify that woman.
Given the events on the Ochlockonee River on Saturday night, that didn’t seem too likely.
But morally?
In the field of mental health, ethics and morals are an odd couple. Despite their differences, though, they get along most of the time. Sure there are occasional quarrels, but most controversies eventually get ironed out because their goals are so similar. Sometimes there occurs, however, a set of circumstances that creates a chasm between ethics and morals that is the size of the Mariana Trench.
This was one of those.
Morally, I knew I had to tell somebody that Sterling Storey had killed other women.
But ethically, it was just as clear that I couldn’t.
Look up “quandary” in the dictionary. In the margin beside the definition there will be a picture of me sitting across from Gibbs Storey wondering what the hell to do next.