“They’ll test the semen against the boys, won’t they?” she said.
“They will.”
“And if they find a match to Charlie, they’ll think he was in on it.”
“Not necessarily.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what I understand, Charlie’s father is an outstanding criminal lawyer. I’m sure if Charlie is innocent, his father will be able to make a compelling argument to prove it.”
“You believe me, don’t you Dad? About Charlie?”
“I do, honey.”
“Good. I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t.”
“I understand there’s going to be a vigil tonight,” I said. “At the high school.”
“It starts at nine. We’re all going.”
“Well, you be safe, okay?”
“I will. And thanks for trusting me with all this. I won’t tell anyone.”
“No problem. I love you, Kimberly.”
“I love you too, Dad. And…”
“Yes?”
“I loved Charlie.”
I winced. “I know you did, honey.”
Chapter 17
“Donovan, let’s cut to the chase,” said Dr. Nadine Crouch. “This is our third visit, and so far you’ve refused to talk about your parents or your childhood, you’ve refused to talk about your job, or even what you were doing in the moments before the chest pain occurred. So I have to assume you were doing something illegal or immoral.”
She paused to see if her words stirred a reaction in me.
“Do you deny it?” she said.
“Would it bother you?”
She said, “Suppose you found a bird with a broken wing that needs your help. Is it really important how its wing got broken?”
I paused a moment, trying to follow her train of thought. Giving up, I said, “Maybe you should just tell me what you’re trying to say.”
“It’s not my job to judge you.”
“In that case, I don’t deny it.”
“Very well,” she said. “So you were doing something immoral or illegal when the pain began. Is this an activity you’ve engaged in previously?”
“Hypothetically?”
“Of course.”
“Yes.”
“Would I be right in assuming you haven’t suffered chest pains while performing this activity in the past?”
“You would.”
She pursed her lips. “Normally I wouldn’t make a rush to judgment, but you’re not a typical patient. By helping you, I might be protecting others.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “So what’s the verdict?”
“We haven’t spent enough time together for me to pronounce this with a high degree of certainty. But at first blush, this seems to be a classic example.”
“Of?”
“Psychologically Induced Pain Syndrome. PIPS, for short.”
“PIPS? I’ve got PIPS? Boy, won’t Gladys Knight be jealous!”
“Psychological pain syndromes are defense mechanisms created by your subconscious mind to cover up unresolved emotional issues. In short, whatever your body was doing the day of the chest pains, your mind wanted no part of it. Your mind fought back the only way it could: by creating pain.”
“Are you being serious?” I said.
“Completely. Your mind creates an intense pain to try to force you to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. It forces you to focus on the pain. If you don’t, the pain gets worse. Your mind is determined to make you stop doing whatever it is that is so distasteful. If you don’t come to grips with it, it can shut you down altogether.”
I thought about that for a minute. “Is this a common thing?”
“It is, but it typically manifests in back pain.”
“Then why the heart this time?”
“Look at you,” she said. “You’re strong as an ox. I’m guessing you’ve never had the slightest back pain, am I right?”
“You are.”
“So your mind knows you wouldn’t believe a back pain. The subconscious mind is very clever. It won’t create a pain that can be ignored or put off . It takes advantage of you by creating something so convincing, you have to focus on it. In your case I’m going to go out on a limb and guess your father, or someone close to you, died of a heart attack.”
I could feel her looking at me, hoping for a reaction.
“So you’re saying the pain is only a smokescreen, something my subconscious mind created to distract me from what I was doing at the time.”
“That’s correct. Be glad it wasn’t colitis.”
“Colitis?”
“That’s the worst of the psychosomatic pains.”
“Worse than the heart?”
“Far worse.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But as we discussed, what I was doing at the time is something I’ve done many times before.”
“Think it through, Donovan. I’ll bet there was something different about that particular time.”
So she was saying that my mind didn’t want me to kill the Peterson sisters. No, it was more than that. My mind tried to prevent me from killing them. But why? I’d killed dozens—okay, more than a hundred—people before. What made the Petersons different? It couldn’t be that they were women. I’ve killed women before, with no pains or afterthoughts. It couldn’t be that I’m going soft, because I’d recently killed Ned Denhollen without the first sign of chest pains.
So what made the Peterson sisters different from all the rest?
The answer was somewhere in the back of my mind, hiding in a place I couldn’t quite access. I was probably trying too hard to make sense of something my mind was trying to repress. Best thing to do was put it on hold and come back to it later. I stood.
She stood.
We shook hands.
