Chapter Thirteen
Dr. Pete Thomson is the last person Sam expects to see when she arrives at work on Thursday morning, yet he’s standing in the doorway to Harry’s office, smiling at her and holding a box of Lindt chocolate balls.
Behind him, Harry is busy trying to organize a press conference so that he can plaster Andrei Albescu’s face all over the news.
“Who’s he?” Taylor asks when Sam freezes as they step off the elevator to the fourth floor.
Sam doesn’t respond. She doesn’t want Taylor to know that her therapist has tracked her down because she’s skipped every appointment he’s offered her over the past couple of weeks and shouldn’t be at work today.
A dark shadow falls over Taylor’s face, and she wonders fleetingly if he could be thinking that the doctor is her boyfriend.
His eyes darken and he steps closer to her as Pete comes toward them, leaving Harry to his phone call.
Her neck prickles at Taylor’s proximity.
Most of her wants to lean into the heat of him, but she does the opposite, for both their sakes.
“Samantha,” Dr. Thomson says, from a few paces away. “Ouch, that’s a shiner,” he adds as he gets closer. “What happened to your eye?”
“Samantha?” Taylor mutters. “No one calls you that.”
“Taylor,” Sam replies, more sharply than she means to. “Claire, the linguist I sent How to Get Away with Murder to, has sent me her report. Can you take a look and summarize it?… Now, please?”
He looks at her, something like anger bubbling in his expression.
She wants to ask him to say it aloud, whatever is bothering him, but now isn’t the time.
She’s suddenly very aware of his scent—sweat and expensive musk—and of the hot moisture on her skin.
She turns away from him and ushers the doctor toward the small meeting room.
“You missed last week’s session,” Dr. Thomson says, “then you canceled the rescheduled appointment and now you’re ignoring—”
“Do you normally do house calls, Doc?” Sam asks. “Or work calls? Look, I’m sorry I missed my sessions but there is a killer in this city and it’s only a matter of time before he strikes—”
“I saw the press conference,” he says. For her, it feels like months ago that Nigel Mathers had thrown How to Get Away with Murder to the press, but it was only last week.
“Harry’s just told me he’s made you SIO in a combined child-homicide and serial-killer investigation.
I’ve told him what I’ll tell you now, Samantha: it’s too soon. ”
“Joint SIO,” Sam says, sounding pedantic even to her own ears.
“Harry isn’t doing right by you here, Samantha,” the doctor says. Then he lowers his voice to a whisper and adds, “He’s doing what’s best for the Met … for himself. I have to say it as I see it, Samantha. Harry is putting you at serious risk of—”
“Stop,” Sam whispers. “Please.” She stares out through the room’s glass walls.
The room beyond is as frenetic as a beehive but less well organized.
On the whiteboard in the middle of the room, a child with green eyes stares back.
“Look out there, Doc. See her face? That’s Charlotte Mathers.
Fourteen and dead. Tomorrow, we could have another one just like her. I can’t think about Harry now.”
“I brought you these.” Dr. Thomson sighs sadly, placing the chocolates on the table between them.
Sam wipes her eyes and reaches for a chocolate, pulling both ends of the wrapper and watching the red ball spin, the foil peeling back to reveal the confection beneath.
She pops it in her mouth. It’s warm, but all the better for it.
Sam doesn’t thank the doctor, though. She resents him for knowing how much she enjoys these chocolates.
Resents him for knowing everything about her.
Even resents him for suggesting that Harry isn’t doing the right thing by her now.
Because the leap she doesn’t want to make is simple: Harry hasn’t done what’s best for her for a long time—not now, and not in the past, when it really mattered.
It’s easy to treat people well when it costs you nothing, but Harry will always put his best interests first. The weight of it is too much to bear, even though she knows in her own bones that it’s the truth.
Harry’s been part of her family for as long as she can remember, and since the death of her father he’s been the only family she has left.
The dawning understanding that he’s failing her feels like too much to shoulder.
She sags in the chair, as if the pressure of it is bearing down on her body.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, until Dr. Thomson asks, “How are you coping really, Samantha?”
She shrugs and reaches for the jug of water that no one ever seems to change.
It tastes of plastic, but she downs it and pours herself another cup.
“I think I might have figured out who Denver Brady is,” she says.
“It’s more of a theory, really. We just need some physical evidence.
I’m fairly confident Denver didn’t kill Charlotte, and that the person who did is a copycat. ”
“OK,” the doctor says. Then he waits, letting the silence stretch so she feels the urge to fill it.
“I got a dog,” she volunteers.
“That’s great,” he smiles. “What’s it called?”
“Toni, I’ve called him.”
“Strange name for a dog?” He raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t know why I’ve called him that. I think my head is so full of Denver … I was calling the dog Little Scruff and then ‘Toni’ just slipped out. When I registered him at the vet, I made it Toni with an ‘i,’ not Tony with a ‘y,’ so…”
The doctor says nothing.
“He’s got a wonky leg,” she adds. “Bad breath. A snaggle tooth. He’s honestly a bit of a wreck.
But I love him all the more for it. Sometimes, what is healed mends stronger than something never broken.
” No response. She sees him notice the little netball she’s clasping in her hand.
“It’s Charlotte’s,” she says, without waiting for him to ask.
“A netball. Her friend gave it to me. Asked me to carry it with me until I find the killer.”
“How does carrying a dead child’s token around with you make you feel, Sam?”
She doesn’t respond. She’s not even sure she knows the answer, but the word pressured rumbles around her brain.
She curls forward in the chair, resting her head in her hands.
Closes her eyes. The silence in the room is so loud.
She hears Dr. Thomson swallow, the creak of faux leather as he shifts in the cheap chair.
She opens her eyes. The doctor is sitting, still and calm, waiting. She sighs.
She’s going to have to tell the doctor something meaningful, or he won’t leave.
She can’t tell him about the full-blown panic attack she had in Newcastle.
A panic attack triggered by seeing an abused woman who reminded her of her mother.
Or that the panic attack had left her unconscious in Taylor’s arms, then vomiting on to Newcastle’s cobbles.
She’s also keenly aware that her drinking on the job, even if she’s only done it once in her life, needs to stay between her and Taylor.
If that gets out, she can kiss goodbye to her career.
The very thought of Dr. Thomson knowing this about her, on top of every detail he’s already privy to, makes her temples throb. So, she’d better say something else.
“I cope with it,” she says. “But I can’t cope with … I can’t look at the crime scene photos from Charlotte Mathers’ murder. Now I’m joint SIO, I’m meant to look at them. I need to look at them. But I can’t.”
“Thanks for telling me, Samantha,” Dr. Thomson says.
“You know that avoidance behavior is a classic response to the trauma cascade. Remember the story I told you about the woman who was mugged outside a reggae club and now can’t hear that music without having a panic attack?
She avoids the radio, TV, even restaurants for fear of encountering that trigger. ”
“There’s no reason why I should avoid the crime-scene photographs of Charlotte’s murder, though. It’s not linked in any way to my own problems.”
“Not directly, no,” Dr. Thomson concedes, “but your original trauma is from childhood, Sam. Finding both your parents dead—your mother when you were nine, your father when you were nineteen. It’s all linked.
The reason the encounter with DS Lowry caused your breakdown months ago was because his actions triggered your trauma response.
It doesn’t matter how different those events are; it’s still—”
A knock on the glass cuts the doctor short.
Taylor gestures for Sam to come out, but she shakes her head, surprised to find that she wants to hear the rest of what Dr. Thomson has to say.
Taylor reddens slightly, then tries the door.
Locked. Taylor tries mouthing something to her but Sam turns away.
“On a completely different note, Samantha,” Dr. Thomson says, watching Taylor walk away. “You do know that that young man … how do I say it? Looks at you in a certain way that—”
“There’s nothing going on,” she snaps. She gulps down more of the stale water, wincing at the unpleasant tang.
“Are you still tasting flavors that aren’t really there?
” the doctor asks. She nods, sneaking a glance at Taylor, who’s gone back to his desk.
What could it mean, how he looks at her and how he behaved just now when he saw Dr. Thomson?
There’s more than ten years between them and Taylor could choose any woman he wanted.
“Sam, I asked how you’re managing your symptoms? The phantom tastes; the concentration, energy levels and headaches were all troubling—”