He finished chewing and swallowed, taking a sip of wine before he spoke. “What does it say that I took a year off when she died but kept working when he did?”
“It says that you haven’t given yourself permission to mourn. And . . . that year off was focused on his healing and not your own.”
“You know, I don’t need a shrink, Gwen. All the questions, the prodding, the exploration of feelings—I’ve done all that before. I hired the best doctors in the country to help Gabe, and I was right there beside him as they made everything better.”
The reaction rolled off me. I was used to anger and resentment from clients. My first four years in the business had been dominated by court-ordered sessions with disgruntled rage machines who didn’t want any help.
“You seem like you have your life together,” I said mildly. “But keep in mind that any grief techniques you learned with Natasha’s death were designed for a spouse or a son. With Gabe, your grief is that of a father. It’s a different scenario and carries its own and unique mountain of pain.”
“One I’m handling,” he said, his voice rasping.
“Well, you’re defending his alleged murderer,” I pointed out. “So you’ve veered down a rather unorthodox path of healing, if that’s what you want to call it.”
“It’s working for me.”
“Okay.” I poured the final amount from the bottle of wine.
“So, the boys were all only children.” He changed the subject. “What other commonalities did they have?”
I rolled with the new topic, eager to talk it through. “There’s the obvious—they all fit a certain mold. Rich, good-looking, popular, seventeen years old, male. Are you familiar with the psychodynamic theory of criminology?”
“Vaguely. It has to do with unconscious personalities, right?”
I nodded. “Specifically, the development of those unconscious personalities by negative experiences. The unconscious personality, which we call the id, is the primitive drive that most of us are unaware of. The drive to eat. Sleep. Protect our loved ones. Have sex.” I colored slightly and continued on. “That id is normally kept in line by your ego and superego, which are the other pieces of your personality that govern your morals and societal expectations. It tells a man that though he wants to screw his wife, he shouldn’t do it in the middle of the grocery store. Or, in a less crude analogy, though you may hate your boss, killing him isn’t the solution that makes the most sense, given the consequences and moral turpitude of the act.”
I had his full attention, his gaze on mine. His breathing slowed, senses fully engaged, food forgotten. It was intoxicating, and I struggled to maintain my momentum.
“Serial killers are often overtaken by their id, due to a weak ego and superego. The psychodynamic theory blames those weak egos on a lack of proper development—typically during adolescence, and often from trauma. In this case . . .” I searched for the right way to explain it. “If the killer was bullied during his formative middle or high school years, it could have stunted his personal development of his ego and superego, which makes him at much higher risk for his id to manifest latent feelings of oppression toward an individual who reminds him of that bully.”
“Wait.” He held up his hand. “So the killer was bullied by someone who fits this mold—rich, good-looking, popular.”
“Maybe bullied. Maybe molested. Maybe manipulated. This is just a theory,” I stressed. “A possibility. But it would explain the resemblances between the boys, and the abuse. He’s not just killing them. He’s toying with them. He’s building a relationship with them. He’s fighting for their attention in every way he can get it. And then, either he loses control and they die, or he grows bored with the boy and he ends it. My profile points to the latter.” I paused and took a sip of wine.
“He grows bored and kills them,” he confirmed flatly.
“Yes.” It was my turn to change the subject. “Can I ask you something about Randall?” At his nod, I continued. “Have any other students come forward and said anything? Male or female?”
He paused. “Not particularly. I mean, in the last twenty years? A few complaints from disgruntled students, but nothing major.”
“Male or female students?” I thought of Luke, his eyes red, face trembling in rage. He couldn’t have been the only one. Surely there had been more.
“All female.” He picked up his fork. “Now, can the inquisition stop long enough for me to enjoy these last few bites of home cooking?”
I smiled. “Sure. Go ahead.”
At the sink, Robert ran hot water as I packaged up the leftovers for him to take home. I glanced at him as I snapped a lid into place. He had abandoned the jacket and lost the tie, his stiff shirtsleeves now rolled up to the elbows, his posture relaxed. The change was nice.
He reached past me for a dish towel, and our sides brushed.
“So, the detective who came by earlier . . .” He picked up a sponge and began to scrub it against a pot. “What was that about?”
I put the rest of the bread in a ziplock bag and sealed it closed. “I think he’s just keeping an eye on me.”
“Why did you ask about John Abbott’s death? They’re investigating it?”
“I think they investigate all deaths, especially when it’s a situation like that where two people are involved.”
“Is it suspicious?”
I hesitated. He’s a defense attorney, I reminded myself. Someone used to picking apart cases and looking at them from all sides. Still, my unease grew. What exactly had he seen in John’s file? I stacked the containers and put them into a bag with the bread. “I don’t think so,” I said carefully. “People have heart attacks all the time. Even though Brooke was fairly young, I think she had a family history of that.” John had said that to me once, hadn’t he? He’d said something about her medicine, something about her mother . . . I would have made a notation if he had, especially because poisoning had always been a common method in the laundry list of ways that John wanted to kill her. As a pharmacist, it had been one of the most logical paths for him to take, but also one of the most risky in terms of drawing suspicion.
It was another reminder that I needed to do a full overview of John’s file. I should have looked already, but I’d been putting it off due to guilt and the newer, more exciting distraction on my time—the BH case.
“Oh, so Brooke’s death is the one they find suspicious?”
Too late, I realized the error in my response. I had replied to him while knowing the most likely true sequence of events: John kills Brooke, kills himself. Outside observers—both he and Detective Saxe—would put the bulk of attention and suspicion on the stabbing death, not the heart attack. It was why Detective Saxe had asked whether Brooke might have killed him, and what Robert had been referring to when he had asked about the case.
So, maybe he hadn’t read John’s file. Maybe he hadn’t seen more than a line or two. Maybe all my paranoia was completely off base.
“No,” I quickly amended. “They don’t find her death suspicious. I was just saying that heart problems ran in her family. And John was very close to her. People handle grief in strange ways.”