Chapter 23 #2
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to out anyone to the media,” she says quickly.
“But I can tell the reporters that Rhys told me they’d get away with it because they’d gotten away with it before.
It might encourage the others to speak up, but even if it doesn’t, it’ll help muddy the waters here and broaden the suspect pool to include any number of unknown people. ”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“I know,” Katie says smugly.
“When will you go?”
“This weekend. That way they’ll have time to find me before you kill anyone else.”
“You know this is fucked up, right?” I ask.
“The world’s a fucked up place, Alyssa. But I already talked to Erica, and she’s cool with me coming to visit for a bit.”
The reception area door clicks shut behind Conrad Clay, and I glance at this afternoon’s schedule. There are four patients back-to-back. Three I’ve been seeing regularly over the past several months, and one new patient.
“What do you know about Nick Fischer—the new patient who’s scheduled for one?” I ask, tapping his name in the appointment book. “Is he a referral? Do we have his medical history? Any notes about prior treatment or providers? I haven’t seen them.”
“No,” Teresa informs me. “I called both Monday and yesterday to ask him to complete the intake forms. When we spoke on Monday, he said he’d do it right away.
When I came in yesterday and saw he still hadn’t filled them out, I called again, but he didn’t answer or call back.
Sorry. Do you want me to reschedule him? ”
I glance at my watch. It’s eleven-fifty-eight. Only an hour until his appointment. I sigh. “No, it’s fine. I guess we’ll be filling them out together as part of his session.”
“Sorry,” Teresa apologizes again.
I shrug. “It’s his money. Don’t worry about it. Did he happen to tell you anything about the reason he’s seeking treatment?”
“He said he’s been struggling with PTSD recently, but he didn’t go into detail beyond that.”
It’s not much to go on, but it’s something at least. Oh well. Like I told Teresa, if he wants to waste the session filling out forms, that’s his business.
“I’m going to order a gyro for lunch. Want one?” I ask.
“Sure. Lamb, please.”
I’m at my desk, scrolling through restaurant options for dinner with Katie and Mark tonight, when there’s a knock on my office door.
“Come in,” I respond, shoving my phone into the top drawer of my desk now that my new mystery patient has arrived. He’s on time at least, even if he didn’t fill out his intake forms. I stand up to introduce myself to Nick as I slide the drawer closed, my eyes landing on his face.
“Oh. You. Hi,” I say, hoping my expression is steadier than my heart, which is currently beating so erratically that it’s obviously forgotten what a normal sinus rhythm looks like.
I take a breath and unclench my fists. Fuck.
“I thought your name was Garret,” I finish. At least my voice sounds normal.
I’d already asked Vaughn to start looking into Rhys Steichen before I killed Brandon.
After that, when I saw Garret watching Mark at The Rose Room, I considered changing my plans and going after Garret next.
I seriously considered it. But then there were the other women from Rhys’s address book.
And… if I’m being honest, a big part of me wants to make Garret watch his friends die.
I want him to be afraid. I want him to feel the weight of his death as an inevitable conclusion.
I want him to know what being powerless feels like.
But this is not good. Very, very not good.
“Hi. Yes, it is. I use my middle name, Nick—Nicholas—for these kinds of things. You know, for privacy reasons,” he says, studying me like I’m a butterfly pinned under glass, his icy blue eyes boring into mine.
“Ah. Yes. I see. Well, I’m Dr. Reed,” I reply, introducing myself in an effort to buy a second to regain my equilibrium.
“Yes, I know. We’ve met.”
We did meet, but I never introduced myself, though I don’t say as much.
Ethically, I should tell him to get the fuck out of my office right now.
He raped my cousin. I can’t treat him. I shouldn’t say another word.
If I do, and he reports me to the state medical board, I’ll have to fight tooth and nail to avoid having my medical license suspended.
Hell, if I talk to him long enough, they’d have grounds to revoke it entirely.
Really, I should be running for the hills.
Instead, I extend my hand and wait to see if he’ll take it.
Because fuck him. If he’s here to rattle my cage, well.
Two can play at that game. I’ve killed three of them already, and I’ll kill him too.
Just not yet. And if I’m willing to risk Mark’s job, why shouldn’t I be willing to risk my own?
I’m already risking my freedom. What’s a medical license in comparison to that?
The fact that Garret Fischer knows who I am and found my practice without me having ever told him my name, the name of my practice, or even that I was a psychiatrist means that however he learned it, he’s almost certainly aware that Katie is my cousin.
I wonder if he recognized me from the days I showed up to the trial.
I didn’t think so at the time, and neither did Mark.
It’s possible he got my name from The Rose Room’s guest list after seeing me there with Mark, or maybe even the security guard who was on duty the day I went to Tofana Arena.
Garret smirks as his hand wraps around mine, and it highlights the cleft in his chin.
I plaster a smile on my face. He’s definitely a psychopath, my brain supplies.
The superficial charm, the constant clashes with Mark that never quite cross the line, the manipulation of others to suit his goals.
But he’s used to being the predator, not the prey.
I can see it in the hard, flat glint in his eyes as he gives me a once-over. And I can use that to my advantage.
“What brings you in today?” I ask, gesturing for him to take a seat on the couch and discarding my plan for us to fill out the forms he neglected to complete prior to his appointment.
“You’ve heard about what’s going on with my team?”
“The deaths. Yes, it’s been all over the news lately,” I agree. “You all work quite closely with one another. I’m sure that’s been difficult to deal with.”
“It is. I’ve been feeling very anxious lately. I’m having a hard time sleeping, and I feel like I’m letting my team down,” he says with no real emotion. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d Googled ‘symptoms of depression’ prior to walking into my office.
“How so?” I ask.
“A lot of players on the team look to me as a leader, and I’m having a hard time staying focused. I keep thinking about the guys who’ve died. One of them died on the ice during a game. At first we were told it was a heart attack, but later the police said he was poisoned.”
“And you witnessed his death?” I ask, playing the dumb, clueless psychiatrist.
“Yes. I turned to pass him the puck, and he was down. I keep having flashbacks to that moment during games, worrying that it could happen to someone else.”
“To you?”
“Yes,” he replies too quickly, and it might be the first honest thing he’s said since he walked into my office. “To any of us,” he amends.
“How does that make you feel?”
He pauses as if he’s considering my question, but I’m certain he’s not.
There’s no introspection to his demeanor.
His focus is solely on me, and he’s trying to decide whether I’m as clueless as I’m pretending to be.
He’s likely of above-average intelligence and used to believing himself to be the smartest person in the room.
And though I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing he generally assumes the average woman is less intelligent than the average man.
Now that I’m sitting before him, his cognitive biases have him second-guessing himself and wondering if I really could’ve pulled off killing Joey Carmichael, Matt Davidson, and Brandon Miller.
“Uneasy,” he says finally, which may be true.
Contrary to popular media depictions, psychopathy exists on a sliding scale in much the same way autism does, and most psychopaths experience the full gamut of emotions, just not quite the same way neurotypical people do.
It takes more to rattle them and more to excite them.
But having three of your closest hockey-douchebag friends die in close succession is enough to rattle practically anyone.
Especially when you have good reason to believe you’re next.
“Would you say anxiety is the primary symptom you’re experiencing?” I probe.
“That and insomnia. I can’t sleep.”
“I see. How long has that been going on?”
“Since Carmichael—Joey Carmichael—died.”
“That was at the start of October?” I ask as if I’m uncertain of the date. I’m not.
“The seventh. It was during our first game of the season. We should’ve won easily, but the game was canceled after his death.”
I nod. “Prior to his death, were there any other recent traumatic events that occurred?”
“No,” he says. “Everything was normal. The team was doing well. It seemed like we’d have a good shot at making it to the playoffs, but then my teammates started dying. Now, it feels like we’ll be lucky to be alive come the end of the season.”
“Is there any reason for you to feel like your life may be at risk other than proximity?” I question, pushing just a little.
His icy blue eyes narrow slightly, and the bland smile he gives me doesn’t reach them at all. “Not really. Is that a normal question? No one should ever be murdered,” he replies, doing the same.
I’d like to take the pen in my hand and bury it in his eye socket.
I’d like to tell him that some people absolutely deserve to be murdered.
I’d like to tell him he’s one of those people.
Instead, I say, “I’m merely trying to get a sense of your state of mind and the stressors you’re experiencing.
” I pause, waiting to see if he’ll respond, but he doesn’t.
He only stares at me with the same flat gaze.
“So, to that end, what are you hoping to gain by meeting with me?” I ask, leaving the question open-ended and up for interpretation.
How he chooses to answer it can tell me a lot about him as a person.
“I figured since you and Coach Eriksson are seeing one another, and you’re a psychiatrist, you’d be a good person to talk to about this.
The sports psychologists the team keeps on staff are a little busy at the moment, and I’m not certain they have the capacity to deal with something like this, but if I try to find a completely independent doctor, I’ll be at risk of something leaking to the tabloids.
And I’d rather not wake up to a headline about how I have the yips. ”
I nod. “It’s important that our goals are aligned when it comes to determining the best treatment plan for you. But I can’t do that if you’re lying to me, Garret.”
“I’m not—” he begins.
I cut him off and continue talking. “I asked if you’d experienced any other recent traumatic events, and you said no. But you were on trial for rape this summer, weren’t you? That’s pretty traumatic.”
He leans toward me slightly, his hands blanching.
I think he wants to hit me. Unfortunately, he’s not that stupid, and he leans back a moment later, the tension vanishing from his body, the mask settling into place again.
He’s angry, though, even if he’s hiding it right this second.
I’m certain he showed up here expecting that I would be intimidated, and things aren’t going quite the way he imagined they would.
“Yes.”
“Do you know who I am?” I ask, deciding not to bother with the charade any longer.
“Alyssa Reed,” he says.
“Do you. Know. Who I am?” I repeat slowly, and this time he dips his chin, giving the barest hint of a nod. “Then you know I can’t treat you. So why did you make an appointment?”
He gives a half shrug, unconcerned with being caught lying. “I wanted to meet you. To actually speak with you. This was the easiest way to do that without Eriksson interfering.”
“And?”
“And?” he replies, echoing my question.
“You’ve met me. You’ve spoken to me. What now?”
“I know what you’ve been doing,” he states boldly.
“Likewise, Garret. Likewise.”
He tilts his head, the question clearly written across his face. I don’t bother answering it though, and eventually he says, “You killed them.”
I snort. “Prove it.”