It was John to a T, as if I’d written the analysis just for him. I cupped my forehead in my hands and inhaled, feeling my palms tremble against my forehead. “Oh God,” I whispered. “This is bad.”
Where had the signs been? Had I missed them? Had he mentioned the victims in our sessions? Had he wanted treatment for those inclinations and used Brooke as an excuse?
No. While I might have missed some references to the boys, I refused to accept that he hadn’t truly struggled with violent inclinations toward his wife. The emotion he had shown in our sessions, the heated anger that had come into his face, the crack of his voice . . . he had been vulnerable and honest in those moments. I know he had.
I closed my eyes and thought of my last session with him. He’d started screaming, spittle flying out of his mouth as he had ranted about Brooke and their neighbor.
“I can see it in the way she looks at him.” John had sprung to his feet, pacing the area in between our chairs with short, stiff strides. “The way she talks about him. She’s thinking about him during sex, I can feel it. She’s glowing like a damn high school girl,” he’d sneered. “And she’s home alone all day? They’re screwing—I know they are.” He kicked at the small wastebasket next to my desk, and it flew across the room and banged against the wall.
That had been just two weeks before Scott Harden’s release and Brooke’s and John’s deaths. John had told me that the guy was a new neighbor, but looking at the timeline . . . what if it had been Scott Harden?
I inhaled deeply, trying to slow down my thought process. If John’s jealousy had been about Brooke’s interactions with Scott Harden—and, prior to that, Gabe Kavin—then that meant that Brooke was interacting with the victims. That she was aware of what John had been doing.
I had thought John was paranoid, but maybe he hadn’t been. Maybe Brooke had been sleeping with the men. The rapes . . . Had she been involved?
The salve. The kind gestures. I had assumed it was a dissociative identity, but what if it hadn’t been a second personality? What if it had been a second person?
Brooke.
An awful foreboding hit in the center of my soul like a knife as the possible implications sank in.
A woman might explain why Scott Harden had lied. An inexperienced teenager, sleeping with a grown woman—it was a much easier leap to Stockholm syndrome, especially if she was a good cop to John’s bad. Had she developed true feelings for Scott Harden? Was she the one who had let him go? And was that why John had killed her?
The dates lined up. I had never put two and two together, but Brooke and John died the same morning that Scott Harden reappeared. My hand trembled, and I squeezed my pen to stop the motion.
I thought of John’s repeated insistence that she was developing feelings for the neighbor. What had he said the morning of their deaths? That he thought she was going to leave John and run away with him. Maybe he’d been right.
Dread suddenly settled as a half dozen pieces clicked into place.
I told him to get rid of the landscaper.
I practically tore the front of John’s file open and flipped furiously through the pages, skimming my finger down my notes from our first month of sessions. Background info . . . his history with his wife . . . there. The landscaper.
John had been concerned they were getting too close. Had heard them laughing together. Holding eye contact with each other. Had found dirty dishes in the sink and speculated that she had fixed him lunch.
My neat script recorded my solution to his agonizing insecurities.
I suggested he solve the problem by firing the landscaper.
Those initial meetings with John had been dominated by his concerns over her and this landscaper. John had wanted to kill Brooke over the fear of her alleged affair and feelings for the man. So I had pushed him down the path of least resistance. It was easy. Remove the landscaper from the equation and focus on rebuilding and strengthening his relationship with his wife.
But if the neighbor in our most recent sessions had actually been Scott Harden, then the landscaper was . . . I let out a pained sob and fisted my hands in my hair. Gabe Kavin. I told him to get rid of Gabe Kavin.
The dry drowning. The death that was different from the others. Had his furious jealousy been the trigger for the violent manner of death? Ohhhh, and I had handed him the solution, my voice soothing, the opinion delivered with confidence.
I pinched my eyes shut, trying to block out the autopsy photos. His glassy stare. The blood caked around the heart. He was so young. So innocent.
“Hello, Gwen.”
I flinched, my hands jerking away from my head as I looked up to see Robert in the doorway of my office. Loose at his side, the blade catching in the light, was a knife.
CHAPTER 39
Scott Harden stood in the shower and tilted his head up toward the large rain head. Steam rose off his skin as the hot water peppered across his cheeks and shoulders. Pinning his lips together, he closed his eyes and let the tension ease out of him.
For those seven weeks in the attic, he had dreamed about this shower. And now, in the middle of the giant space, his bare feet against the flat pebbles of the floor, he only wanted to be back. Back in the attic. Back in the bed. Back on that metal folding chair where she would run a giant sponge across his naked body. Over his cuts. Along his back. In between his thighs. Thinking about it now, he hardened, but when he reached down and stroked himself, the same thing as before—an instant softening. Like she was the only one with the power to bring him pleasure.
Maybe it was because she was his first. The girls at school had always talked about that—like the guy who took their virginity had some sort of power over them. He’d always laughed at the thought, but maybe they were right. Maybe that was why he had fallen so quickly and so hard. Was that why she wouldn’t leave his mind?
He picked up the shampoo and squirted a glob of the pale-purple liquid into his hand. There hadn’t been an easy way to wash his hair in the attic. And she hadn’t trusted him enough to let him downstairs. He raked his soapy fingers through his hair and remembered her long nails, how they would scratch and massage his scalp. The soft brush of her lips against his forehead.
It was different, being with an older woman. The girls at school all seemed so pointless and immature compared to her. Her confident look as she had straddled his naked body. The seductive purr of her voice in his ear. She had loved him. That’s what she had whispered in his ear as that asshole had watched. She had understood Scott.
And each day, after her husband left for work, she showed him. She kissed and treated the wounds from the previous night. She put on her lace outfit and lay beside him and talked all about the life they would share. Without Jay. Without school. She hadn’t seen him as a kid; she had seen him as a man. She had wanted him.
And he wanted her. Even now, a month later. Especially now.
“Scott?”
He swore at the sound of his mom. She wouldn’t leave him alone. Always hovering. Always watching, a sharp line down the middle of her forehead as if she was trying to figure him out. He wished she would just stop. GO AWAY. Monitoring his phone calls? Didn’t he have privacy anymore?
He put his head under the water, washing away the shampoo, and ignored the second call of his name, this one louder. Closer. Good thing he’d locked the door. She probably had her mouth to the crack, those giant fake boobs pushed against the wood.