“From anyone else?”
“No.”
“Was she facing financial struggles?”
“Yes, they were concerned about finances and had considered relocating. To Arizona, I believe, but I don’t think it was a serious consideration.”
“Did she suspect her husband of cheating on her?” Carillo asked.
“It didn’t come up.”
“Was she having an affair or contemplating a divorce or separation?” Kozak asked.
“She never raised that with me.”
“Was she being stalked, threatened, harassed in any way by anyone?” Kozak asked.
“No.”
“What about drugs, illicit or prescribed?” Carillo asked.
“No.”
“Any addictions, like gambling or did she have any debts?” Kozak asked.
“No.”
“Did she give you any indication that she might want to run away?” Kozak asked.
“No.”
“Was she at risk of self-harm?” Kozak asked.
“I don’t think so, out of love for her son and husband, but there are never guarantees.”
“Could she have any kind of disorder where she may have become disoriented and wandered off?” Kozak asked.
“No, not from my observations.”
“In your opinion,” Carillo said, “could she have staged her disappearance? Would she have the inclination and a reason?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Did she have any fear of anyone or anything?” Carillo asked.
Maynart began shaking his head. “No. As I said, her situation was a very complex one.”
“Tell us about her treatment,” Kozak said.
“You’re aware of her tragic childhood,” Maynart said, “how she was orphaned at age eight after her mother and father died when their house burned? Jennifer was the sole survivor. She had no brothers, no sisters, no other family but her grandmother who raised her.”
“Yes,” Kozak said. “We know about her parents’ deaths in the fire.”
“The cause was a dropped cigarette,” Carillo said. “But that was nearly thirty years ago.”
“Correct,” Maynart said, “but when Jennifer came to me a couple of months ago, she was experiencing inner turmoil related to the tragedy.”
“In what way?” Kozak asked.
Maynart folded his arms.
“It was perplexing to me. Our sessions dealt largely with her groping to remember her parents and their happiest times. On occasion, Jennifer drifted into the nightmare of the fire, questioning why she alone survived. At first I thought she was struggling with a form of prolonged grief disorder. You see, speaking clinically, normally, the deepest forms of grief last about a year, even two, but usually lessen after key anniversaries have passed. This generalization might not be true in all cases. The duration and intensity of grief may vary. The closeness to the deceased person, age, and circumstances of death, say an older person’s long illness, versus the unexpected, sudden death of a young person, are factors.”
“So what happens with this prolonged disorder?” Carillo said.
“In a prolonged grief situation, a person, or survivor, can ruminate over how the tragedy could’ve been prevented, or struggle with bouts of self-blame. It could encompass thoughts of not deserving to live and have a life. They may be tormented by a sense of failure over things they’d done, or hadn’t done, with regard to the deceased. A sense of, if only I had done this, or said that, the deceased would be alive. This can go on for years.”
“Is this what happened in Jennifer’s case?”
Maynart let out a breath.
“She was experiencing these feelings, I’ll get to that, but in her sessions, my advice to her, concerning the tragic loss of her mother and father, was that the burden of her carrying any guilt for having survived, while understandable, was not warranted because she was a child at the time of the tragedy.”
“So she was seeing you to deal with these old feelings, but what brought them on after thirty years?” Kozak asked.
Maynart nodded and pointed to Kozak.
“Precisely,” he said. “What brought them on? From our sessions, it emerged that Jennifer, while having memories of her parents and the tragedy throughout the years, had succeeded in placing them appropriately within the context of her life. I encouraged her to draw comfort in the fact that she had survived in a way her parents would have wanted, raised by a loving grandmother, going to college, getting married, becoming a mother, engaging in her community, living a full and meaningful life.”
“So why did she come to you?” Kozak said.
“That’s the question I was working to resolve with her because she wanted to resolve it, and was receptive to therapy, although it was challenging for her. While we were making progress, she was still having enormous difficulty getting to the core of her problem. As if it was a dark, concealed room in her life she kept locked and feared to open.”
“Why?” Kozak asked.
“I’m not sure. You see, grief can come suddenly, with an unexpected pang of pain brought on by a song, a smell, an object, a memory, a location, anything that evokes a connection to the deceased person and, or, the circumstances of their death.”
“And in Jennifer’s case, it was...?” Kozak asked.
“She never reached the point where she could tell me, other than saying it came upon her with the sudden and powerful force of a tsunami, which led me to conclude that in the time before she started seeing me, she experienced a triggering incident.”
“A triggering incident?” Carillo said. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Maynart said, “but before she was reported missing, at our last session, she indicated she was prepared to bring me something to discuss.”
“Like what?” Kozak said.
“I don’t know if she meant it figuratively, or if it was an actual object she planned to show me and talk about, something that might have brought us closer to whatever she kept locked away.”
The investigators looked at Maynart as if expecting more.
“I’m afraid that’s it,” the psychologist said. “Her treatment ended there, without us getting to the truth.”
Forty-Seven
Location Unknown
Jennifer Griffin worked at the hinges, rasping with her makeshift tool.