“Gavin, we need to talk about—”
“But he called you Joanie. Is that your middle name?”
“That was my mother’s name,” Anna White said reluctantly. She did not like revealing personal details to clients. And that was especially true of Gavin Hitchens.
“Oh,” he said. “I see. Is your mother . . .”
“She passed away several years ago. Gavin, there are certain ground rules here.” She grabbed a file sitting on her desk next to the computer. “You are here specifically to talk with me. Not my father, not any of my other clients. Just me. There need to be boundaries.”
Gavin nodded solemnly, like a scolded dog. “Of course.”
Anna glanced at some notes tucked into the file. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off last time.”
“I don’t remember where that was,” Gavin said.
“We were talking about empathy.”
“Oh, right, yes.” He nodded agreeably. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I know you think I don’t feel it, but that’s not true.”
“I’ve never said that,” Anna replied. “But your actions suggest a lack of it.”
“I told you, I’ve never hurt anyone.”
“But you have, Gavin. You can hurt people without physically harming them.”
The young man shrugged and looked away.
“Emotional distress can be scarring,” she said.
Gavin said nothing.
“And the truth is, someone could have been hurt by the things you did. There can be consequences you can’t predict. Like what you did with Mrs. Walker’s cat.”
“Nothing happened. Not even to the cat.”
“She could have fallen. She’s eighty-five, Gavin. You locked her cat in the attic. She heard him up there, dragged a ladder up from the basement, and climbed it to the top to open the attic access panel to rescue him. It’s a wonder she didn’t break her neck.”
Gavin lowered his head and mumbled, “Maybe it wasn’t me.”
“Gavin. Please. They weren’t able to prove you did that, not like with the phone call, but all the evidence suggests you did it. If we’re going to be able to work together, we have to be honest with each other. You get that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he said, looking suitably admonished and continuing to avoid her gaze. His eyes misted.
“You’re right, I did the cat thing. And the phone call. I know I need help. It’s why I agreed to come here and see you. I don’t want to do these things. I want to get better. I want to understand why I do what I do and be a better person.”
“Gavin, you were ordered to see me. It was part of the sentencing. It kept you out of jail.”
His shoulders fell. “Yeah, I know, but I didn’t fight it. I heard you were really good, that you could fix me. I’m happy to come here as often as it takes to make me a better person.”
“I don’t fix people, Gavin. I try to help them so they can fix themselves.”
“Okay, sure, I get that. It has to come from within.” He nodded his understanding. “So how do I do that?”
Anna took a breath. “Ask yourself why.”
“Why?”
“Why would you hide a lonely old woman’s cat? Why phone a still-grieving father claiming to be his son who died in Iraq?” Anna paused, then asked, “What would make a person do something like that?”
Gavin considered the question for several seconds. “I know,” he said slowly, “how those actions might be viewed as cruel or inappropriate.”
Anna leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Gavin, look at me.”
“What?”
“I need you to look at me.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, allowing Anna to fix her eyes on his. “What is it?”
“Are there any other incidents you haven’t shared with me?”
“No,” he said.
“Any that you’ve contemplated but haven’t done?”
Gavin kept his eyes locked on hers. “No,” he said. Then he smiled. “I’m here to get better.”
Three
Driving home, Paul was pleased Dr. White did not actively discourage his idea of delving more into the Kenneth Hoffman business, rather than retreating from it. He’d come to believe that the nightmares rooted in his near-death experience—“near-death” in the most literal sense, since he had almost died—would persist as long as he allowed the event to consume him.
There needed to be a way to turn that horrific night into something that did not own him. Paul could not let his life be defined by finding two dead women in the back of a car, followed by a blow to the head. Yes, it was horrendous. It was traumatic.
But there needed to be a way for him to move forward.
Maybe there was a way to apply what he did for a living to the situation. Paul taught English literature. He’d studied everything from Sophocles to Shakespeare, Chaucer to Chandler, but more recently, his course on some of the giants of twentieth-century popular fiction, Nora Roberts, Lawrence Sanders, Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Mario Puzo, had proved to be the biggest hit with students, sometimes to the chagrin of his colleagues and the department head. His point was, just because something was embraced in large numbers did not necessarily make it lowbrow. These writers could tell a story.
That was how Paul thought he could approach the Hoffman business. He would take a step back from it, attempt to view it with a measure of detachment, then analyze it as a story. With a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Paul knew much of the middle and the end. He had, literally, walked into the middle of it.
What he needed to do now was find out more about the beginning.
Who was Kenneth Hoffman, really? A respected professor? A loving father? A philandering husband? A sadistic killer? Was it possible to be all these things? And if so, was the capacity to kill in all of us, waiting to break out? Was it possible that—
Shit.
Paul was home.
Sitting in his car, in the driveway, the engine running.
He had no memory of actually driving here.
He could recall getting into the car after he left Anna White’s office. He remembered putting the key in the Subaru’s ignition, starting the car. He could even recall seeing her next client arrive, a young guy, late twenties, heading in.
But after that, nothing. Nothing until he pulled into the driveway.
Do not panic. This is not a big deal.
Of course it wasn’t. He’d been deep in thought on his way home. He’d gone on autopilot. Hadn’t this sort of thing happened even before the attack? Hadn’t Charlotte teased him more than once about being the classic absentminded professor, his head somewhere else while she was talking to him? His first wife, Hailey, too. They’d both accused him of being off in his own world at times.
That’s all it was. No reason to think he was losing his marbles. He was unquestionably on the mend. The neurologist he was seeing was sure of that. The MRIs hadn’t turned up anything alarming. Sure, he’d still have the odd headache, suffer the occasional memory loss. But he was improving, no doubt about it.
Paul turned off the car and opened the door. He felt slightly light-headed as he got out, placing one hand on the roof of the car for a moment and closing his eyes, steadying himself.
When he opened them, he felt balanced. Felt—
“I’m sorry about this.”
Suddenly, his temple throbbed where Kenneth had struck him with the shovel. He relived the pain, reheard those last words from his would-be killer.
They’d sounded so real.
As if Kenneth were here with him right now, standing next to him in front of his home. Paul felt a chill run the length of his spine as he struggled to get Kenneth’s voice out of his head.
Not exactly a sign that my idea is a good one, Paul thought.