CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"Do you hate him?" Alison shouted as the tactical team entered the room from two different directions.
"Hold your fire!" Moore shouted.
"Do you hate your brother?" Alison shouted.
Sarah didn't move. Her eye roved the room as she watched three, four, five people in black outfits all holding rifles enter the room.
"Do you do this because you hate him or because you love him?" Alison asked.
Sarah focused back on Alison. "Do you have a brother?"
"I had a sister," Alison admitted.
"Did you love her?" Sarah paid no more attention to the team that had entered the room and had their guns pointed at her.
"I loved her very much."
"Did you hate her?" Sarah asked.
"Sometimes," Alison admitted. "Only over stupid things that didn't really matter. I wish I didn't hate her in those moments. I won't ever get to tell her that. She was killed twenty-two years ago."
"My brother was killed three years ago."
"I know," Alison said. "Do you hate him for that?"
Sarah nodded. Another trickle of blood fell from where the knife was pressed into Dr. Connor’s neck.
"Why do you hate him for that?" Alison asked.
"Because he knew he would be killed. He told me that.
He wanted a way out of it all. I don't know if it was all real.
I don't know if he didn't remember killing them, but I know he needed help, and he didn't get it, so he chose the easy way out. He wasn’t able to do it himself, and he liked it; he liked killing people. I think I liked it."
"What do you remember about the people you killed?" Alison asked.
"I did kill them, didn't I?" Sarah asked.
The other half of her mind was back, and Alison had to keep it that way.
Her fractured self wanted to show Alison what it was like to kill, and they couldn’t go there.
It would result in two dead bodies in the middle of the room.
Perhaps she wanted to choose the same way out as her brother.
All of them killing was, in a way, a tribute to him.
She copied what he’d done, even if she didn't remember doing it some of the time.
Was that her plan now that she was surrounded?
The other part of her split mind wanted to take control, kill the one she deemed responsible for it all, and then find a bullet to the head that would finally reunite her mind in nothingness.
"You killed four people," Alison said softly. "You don't remember doing it, do you?"
"I feel it," Sarah admitted. "I had to do it to make things better. You understand that, don't you?"
"Yes," Alison said. "I don't agree with it, but I understand why you did it, why you felt the need to do it. They tried to help you, but they couldn’t. Perhaps no one could have helped you back then. Do you think that’s true, Sarah?
No one in the room moved.
"I don't know what’s true anymore. Do I need help?"
"I can't tell you what you need; no one can. Only you can decide that. Do you think you need help?"
"I’m so tired," Sarah said. "I don't know what will help me now. I have to do this. I know I have to kill him." She looked down to where her hand was on Dr. Connor’s shoulder, and her brows furrowed a little as if she was only just seeing that she held a man at knifepoint. "That’s why I brought him here, isn’t it? "
Sarah spoke as if in a daze, but Alison knew that she could flip at any time. At an eminent, the other part of her mind could come to the forefront and take over. There was no escape for Sarah now.
No, that’s not true. There is one escape, and that’s death.
They had come this far, and they were so close, and all they had to do now was walk out of the building with the two people standing in the middle of the room.
It was over, the chase was one, and they had their serial killer, but how many victims would she claim?
She’d brought Dr. Conor to the facility where he’s treated her brother, and there was some poetic justice in that, in her mind.
Did she want poetic justice in the way she left the world? Would she kill and then be killed?
"Yes, you bought him here because you wanted to kill him," Alison said. "I think you believe it will bring you some contentment. You want to punish him, but I know enough about killers to know that it’s not going to be enough for you—for her."
Sarah nodded. "She wants to kill him. I…I don't know, but I know he deserves punishment."
"That may be, but what punishment does he deserve?" Alison asked. "You told me that our brother wanted to die, he wanted to kill people, he did everything in his power to fool people, and he hurt you along the way, didn’t he?"
"He never meant to hurt me, and she doesn’t want to hurt me either."
"But they both do, don't they? They did. You loved your brother, of course, you loved him, and you always will, just like I’ll always love my sister. However, he still hurt you, and you hate him for that, and you can’t ever make that right.
She hurts you, too. I can see it in your eyes and hear it in your voice, and no one should get to hurt another.
You can't hurt yourself any longer, Sarah. "
"I don’t know how to stop it," Sarah said, "but she does. She told me the plan."
"What’s the plan?" Alison asked, not wanting to hear it.
"I have to kill him, and then the kid me, and all the hurt and pain is done. We'll be together again."
"You and your brother?" Alison asked.
"Me and…me. I can't fight her off any longer. I never wanted to because she could slash do what I couldn't. She was always the one in control, and now I have to."
"No!" Alison stated. "She wasn’t always the one in control. She killed them, but she could only do it because you paved the way for her, didn't you? Was it she who planned all of this out? Would she have been able to kill anyone if you hadn’t planned for it?"
Alison couldn’t believe that she was trying to compliment one half of the psyche that had brutally killed four people in cold blood.
"I spent so much time searching for all of them and watching them and understanding who they were. I know them better than they know themselves. I knew them in life, and she knew them in death. Two sides of the same coin, heads or tails, life or death."
"She’s not the one in control," Alison said. "You’re the one in control. She does what you can't do, but she only does it because you let her do it. You command her to do it. Tell me that’s not true."
"I don't know what’s true."
"I know one thing that’s true," Alison said.
"She might want to die, to go out in a blaze of glory in this very room, but you don't. You would have done so if you wanted to. It would have been easy for you, but you’ve been fighting against her, and if you let her come back now, she’ll do it before you have a chance to question her. "
"He has to die," Sarah said.
"He needs to be punished, doesn’t he?" Alison asked. "No one deserves to die."
"My name is Detective Moore," the voice came from behind, the first time anyone other than Alison and Sarah had spoken.
"I can't promise anything about punishment, but I will open an investigation into what happened to you and your brother. We know someone, a woman who’s been working to expose Judge Greene.
He faced his punishment, but people can still know his crimes. "
Sarah looked at Alison eagerly, seeking understanding from the woman she now trusted.
"It’s true," Alison said. "You saw Judge Greene visit his sister there. It was why he sent Michael there. It’s hard to explain, but Diana Shepherd has data showing a skewed ratio of criminals being sent to facilities rather than prison. If you had a different judge, then perhaps none of this would have happened. Some of that will come to light soon. That’s the truth. "
"I don't know what to do now," Sarah admitted.
"You do," Alison said. "You have control, and you have the power to do it. You can live to see real change. Again, there can never be any promises, but you can be a part of that process."
"I don’t want to be committed," Sarah said. "I’m not insane. I was in control of myself the entire time, and I knew what she was doing. I should go to prison for the rest of my life."
"Okay," Alison said.
It felt like the entire room took in a breath, and when they let it out, the knife dropped from her hand to the floor.
Sarah loosened her grip from Dr. Connor’s shoulder, and he fell forward to his knees before scrambling forward to the feet of Detective Moore.
"Well, do something!" he snapped.
"Oh, get up," she moaned.
Alison felt the smile play at her lips, but she held it back. She could show that side of herself in such a serious situation.
It wasn’t Moore who stepped forward, but a few members of the tactical team, closing in on Sarah, who didn't have any fight left in her.
One of them kicked away the knife, and another closed in with his gun pointed at Sarah as the two lowered their rifles and took her arms. They didn't have to tell her to put her hands behind her back; she did that of her own accord, and the handcuffs were quickly put on her.
Another member of the tactical team, under Detective Moore's instruction, took Dr. Connor by the arm and led him from the building. The first order of business for the doctor was a clean change of clothes.
When Sarah was led from the room, Detective Moore didn't immediately follow, opting to remain with Alison.
It had been less than four days, but it felt like weeks since they had been chasing Sarah Hartman. She was one of the most prolific killers Alison had ever brought to justice, if kills over time were to be counted. Four dead in three days. They had saved the fifth from being killed.
"Should there be any punishment?" Moore asked. "Not for Sarah, but for anyone else? No, scratch that, Sarah, too. What should her punishment be? Can she just be sent to jail, or—I’m rambling. This is a win, we take the win."
"We take the win," Alison repeated. "And we’re thankful that we don't have to decide what comes next. Our part in this is done. Sarah needs help, I know that, but what’ll help her? She was in this facility twice when it was operational, and it didn’t help her. She wanted her brother to go to jail, and it would have been better off if he had. Should she go to jail because that’s what she wants?
Because she was right about her brother?
She killed four people and almost a fifth.
We can't trust her about anything. Not when we don't know what version of herself she is. "
"You did well," Moore said. "I don’t know if I could have talked her down like that. It was more than just a fractured mind, wasn’t it?"
"Yeah, I think so," Alison said. "There’ll be tests, and there’ll have to be some treatment, and maybe she goes to jail, I don't know.
I don't know how this place was run back then, but they would have seen a split personality. She didn't have that when she was treated, but her mind fractured at some point, and that grew into what we saw just now. I’m just glad that it’s over. "
"Yeah, it’s over," Moore said.
And now, I have nothing to keep my mind off what really concerns me. Where Howard Mills is and why they still haven’t caught him.