Killing, Balint discovered, was the easy part. Not killing required discipline and restraint. Whether his medical career had inured him to death, or his steady constitution enabled him to suppress his emotions, or merely the sheer depth of his need for his wife and his hatred for Warren Sugarman transcended all moral barriers, he grew to see the slayings as a routine matter, even a mundane nuisance, like his four weekends each year as the on-call cardiologist at the hospital. Never, not even with his hands choking the life from innocent strangers, did he experience any guilt. At worst, he suffered a nagging fear of future guilt: the apprehension that he’d one day find himself overcome with remorse and confess for no good reason—like Raskolnikov or Leopold and Loeb. Then even these worries faded, leaving behind only the fact of his crimes. All of this occurred much later, of course: After he’d committed himself irreversibly.
