Chapter 4
INSIGHT
LONDON
Adark screen stares back at me, daring me to hit Play.
My reflection snags my attention, and I turn slightly to inspect my legs at a different angle. For the briefest moment, I’m curious if Grayson notices how my knee-length pencil skirts hug my thighs—then I snuff the thought out and press the button to start the disc.
A rusty metal room appears on the screen as a low hum buzzes through the speakers. I click the volume higher, freezing when someone enters the frame. A heavyset man with dirty-blond hair and a disheveled gray suit comes into view.
The knot of his tie is loose, pulled away from his neck as though he’s been tugging at it.
His sweaty hair an unkempt mess, like it’s suffered the same harsh treatment as his necktie.
He’s searching the room in a rush, his hands feeling over the tarnished walls, hushed curses falling from his mouth.
Breath bated, I watch as he scours nearly every inch of the room, becoming more frantic with each passing second. Finally, when he falls to his knees and claws at his hair, that’s when I see it. “Oh, my god,” I mutter.
From above, thick black cables descend into view. I squint at the scene, thinking about grabbing my glasses as I try to figure out what’s dangling from the cables, and a prickling sensation crawls over my skin as I notice the heavy shackles—and the harness.
Pulse firing, I reach into my pocket and grab the string I keep at the ready. I wind the thread around my index finger, drawing it tighter with each pass, until I no longer feel the ache at my temples.
I halt all movement as a deep, garbled voice sounds out.
“Brandon Harvey, you have a chance to free yourself from the prison you’ve created. You’re guilty of molesting children. Although you’ve beaten the system and you’re a free man in the eyes of the law, it’s now time to pay for your sins. The eyes of justice are not blind.”
“Fuck you—” the man shouts.
“Secure yourself in the harness,” the voice orders. “Then cuff your wrists and ankles with the shackles.”
The man flips off the room, screaming obscenities, until a loud buzz blares over the speaker system. One by one, panels along the walls flip over, revealing the faces of children—young children—in a domino effect that covers the room.
Oh, god. I stumble backward, awkwardly finding my seat, my legs unable to hold my weight.
“The faces of your victims will be your reminder,” the voice says. “This is your only chance to redeem yourself. Choose. Redemption or death.”
I try to reconcile the man in my office from just hours ago with the figure hidden behind the camera, straining to hear his smooth, accented voice in the distorted words echoing around the chamber.
It shouldn’t be difficult to draw the connection, considering Grayson’s sadistic tendencies—yet all I can conjure is the intensity of his pale blue eyes as they hold mine, the smile that almost breaks at the corner of his mouth.
Grayson is an expert manipulator.
I unspool the thread from my finger and reach for my journal, jotting down my observations and thoughts. A loud clang captures my attention, and I’m forced to watch the screen—I can’t look away.
The man in the suit does as instructed, cursing the whole time he shackles himself into the harness and cuffs.
When he’s effectively restrained, the cables snap taut, lifting him off the ground.
The hollow noise sounds again, and a hatch in the floor slides away to reveal a stool slowly rising into the room.
No…it’s not a stool. I lean closer to the screen, muttering a breathy curse about forgetting my glasses as I try to discern the pyramid-shaped seat, and suddenly, I’m mortified as the realization dawns. Some distant memory from a history class resurfaces to give me the name of the torture device.
“Jesus,” I breathe. “It’s a Judas Cradle.”
A mediaeval torture device that seriously has no business being in this century erects from below the struggling man, its pointed tip aimed directly between his racked legs.
Shit, I know what’s about to happen—but I still can’t look away.
At some point, I must have grabbed my string, because the thread is now wound around my finger so tightly it’s cutting off circulation. The throb in my fingertip pulses in sync with my increasing heart rate as the cables start to expand. He’s stretched and lowered, his limbs pulled at every angle.
He struggles uselessly as he’s dropped onto the pointed metal tip. His shouts turn into cries of anguish as the torture device makes contact with his rectum.
Grayson is absolutely a sadist.
“Pass this trial,” the distorted voice says, “and you can go free. You’ll have suffered as your victims suffered. All you have to do is last twelve hours—one hour for each of your victims—to be redeemed.”
My eyes close briefly. Twelve hours. I grab the case from the table and read over the evidence label, noting the duration of the film. There’s six hours of recorded footage.
“I can’t take it,” the man shrieks. “Let me go—I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
A rope drops from the ceiling, dangling close to the man’s face. “You can stop the torture at any time,” the voice announces. “But to end your suffering, you have to be willing to end your life.”
The humming grows louder, competing with his screams. The cables rack his body as gravity takes hold, forcing him down onto the stool. I’m morbidly transfixed by the scene, wondering if Grayson watched the entirety of the torture.
Grayson is extremely intelligent. His file states genius. With an IQ of 152, he sees the world differently than the average person. He sees people differently—he sees me differently.
I hold the remote outstretched, ready to skip to the end, but I hesitate. To know my subject—to really get inside his head and understand him, learn his motivations—I have to experience his traps.
In most cases, I’m limited by how close I can get to a patient. Grayson recording his “sessions” with his victims presents a unique opportunity to peel back the layers and study his impulses. This is what I tell myself as I force myself to sit through hours of footage.
Beneath my professional curiosity, I’m still human, and I cringe at the atrocity on screen.
But when I look at those young faces, I admit, I feel little sympathy for this man.
Do I believe a life sentence is a just punishment for his crime?
Honestly, I’m not sure I do. Is Grayson justified in meting out punishment where the law failed?
That’s for someone else to decide. It has no bearing on his diagnosis.
What is relevant is whether Grayson knew of his victim’s guilt. Did he stalk this man, waiting to catch him in the act. Or was it a delusional state, one in which he determines certain individuals as guilty regardless of the facts.
I rub my forehead at the point of pressure and make a note to research the victim.
As the body was never recovered, I wonder how Grayson disposed of him and why.
Was it a counter forensic measure to protect himself, or does he destroy all his victims’ remains to further insult them, preventing their loved ones from giving them a proper burial.
The lengths Grayson went to by studding his victim, justifying his purpose, and devising a fitting punishment and then executing it—that takes conviction.
Regardless of his mental state, Grayson’s belief system will be our biggest challenge.
Diving deeper still, why does Grayson harbor this desire to punish so ruthlessly? What drives his purpose? Where does it originate from, and when did he first act on the impulse?
A visual of the scars crossing his scalp flits through my mind.
Torture.
Self-inflicted, or did he suffer some abuse.
I need more than what these generic manila folders provide. Details about his parents, his upbringing, the environment that shaped him. Each factor is crucial for building a clinically precise profile of the psychopathy behind Grayson Pierce Sullivan.
When exploring from a professional distance, it’s straightforward enough to chart his criminal profile, but what about the man beneath?
The accent I catch on occasion that hints to an Irish heritage.
Those piercing, ice-blue eyes that bore down to my marrow.
His distinct, masculine scent that pervades our sessions.
His voice—the way his low, guttural tone makes my thighs squeeze together to offset the ache.
My involuntary reaction to his sex appeal is disturbing in its own right, and yet I still have to factor it into my observations. It’s part of his nature, a combination of his charisma and determination that lures in his prey. He’s a hunter, just as he confessed during our session.
If I’m being honest, I’ve never been more fascinated by a patient.
Fascinated. I could laugh. My attraction runs deeper than mere fascination or curiosity, touching on some dark part of myself that yearns for his mercilessness.
He’s free in a way that most people only dream—a dark, unforgiving dream where the rules don’t apply.
I look down, realizing I’ve been rubbing at the side of my palm. A subconscious habit, and the reason why I took up my string therapy in the first place. I’ve worn the concealer off, the tattoo key now visible. Beneath the faded black ink, a deep scar mars my flesh.
Layers of my youth—the ways in which I’ve tried to conceal my pain over the years. Each one as telling as the crime.
I push the thought and my string aside and reclaim the remote. Enough for one day, I skip ahead to the six-hour mark of the footage. For four straight hours of brutal torture, Grayson hasn’t said a word. He’s giving me nothing. Where is he—what is he doing while his disturbing punishment plays out?
The man on screen is drenched in sweat. His suit is torn down his legs, stained with blood and other bodily fluids. He has no way to tell time, another cruel torment of its own, and he must either decide that it’s a bluff or death is his only escape—because he reaches for the rope.
I recoil and cover my mouth.
One forceful yank on the rope sets the cables free. The man’s cry crackles through the speakers as he’s impaled on the stool. Another few seconds of excruciating torture stretches out until I hear a sharp snap.
His head is severed from his body.
“Oh, god…” I hit Rewind and pause the image. I move closer, squinting at the screen. A cable makes contact with his neck, and as I click the footage ahead, I can clearly see where it slices through, dismembering his head from his body.
“Christ.”
I eject the disc and place it inside the case to be returned to the case detective. Then I glance at the pile of cases on my desk, all the recorded deaths of Grayson’s victims that Detective Lux sent me—none too willingly—to help further my research.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I stuff the cases in my bag. A while ago, I decided not to bring my work home with me, to try to have a life outside of my career.
Abandoned hobbies now clutter my apartment.
Before I head out, I sprinkle fish food into the tank, then lock up my office. On my walk home, the gruesome scene plays on a loop in my head, my eyes unseeing as I follow the path to my townhouse.
If the New Castle prosecution has similar footage of the killings there, then any testimony I offer won’t matter. After witnessing such a brutal, torturous death—regardless of the victim’s crime—any jury will convict Grayson. His actions are clearly premeditated.
He is a hopeless case.