“I’m sorry,” Jessie said sheepishly.“I felt a buzz and it was habit.But I swear, the next 23 minutes are all yours.”
“They’re actually yours,” Dr.Lemmon corrected.“But considering that I don’t normally come in until ten and made an exception for the great criminal profiler Jessie Hunt, I think your undivided attention isn’t too much to ask.”
Now it was Jessie’s turn to raise her brows at the diminutive psychiatrist.The 70-year-old woman’s physical bearing—tiny body, thick glasses and tight, little gray ringlets of hair—didn’t match her persona.Dr.Janice Lemmon might not look intimidating at her age and size, but she wasn’t to be underestimated.As a former criminal profiler herself, who formerly consulted for both the LAPD and FBI, running a private practice seemed almost like slumming it for her.
“The ‘great criminal profiler?’”Jessie asked.“Isn’t that a little passive aggressive for a therapist?”
“Nobody’s perfect,” Lemmon told her unapologetically.“Now let’s get back to the issue at hand.”
“I forgot what it was.”
“How convenient,” Lemmon noted tartly.“I’ll remind you.We were talking about that pesky ‘bloodlust’ problem you’ve been dealing with.”
“Oh yeah, that.”
“Yes, that.”
Dr.Lemmon was referring to an issue Jessie had been dealing with for months now.Of late, she’d felt a nearly unquenchable urge to exact violent retribution against the criminals that she hunted as an LAPD profiler.Of course it wasn’t unusual to have dark feelings in her line of work, but her colleagues typically managed to check that at the door, arresting the perpetrators and handing them off to the justice system to mete out punishment.
But over the course of several months, Jessie had felt an increasing craving to mete it out herself.On multiple occasions, she’d nearly shot or stabbed suspects who were already in custody.Eventually she did kill one, albeit a woman who was a multiple murderer and who was trying to kill Jessie with a hunting knife.
After Jessie turned the tables and plunged the attacker’s knife into her heart, she knew her actions were defensible, but were they necessary?Could she have stabbed the woman elsewhere on her body and then taken her into custody?She still wasn’t sure.What shedidknow was that as she’d pressed the knife into the woman’s chest, she felt a rush that still scared here when she thought about it now.
In the months since then, she’d done everything she could to work through what had happened.There were her intensive sessions with Lemmon.There was medication, which only ended up leaving her groggy.She’d even taken a sabbatical and secretly gone to a private treatment facility on the island of Sicily for two months.That had, at best, mixed results.
But one thing seemed to be working.Several months ago, the husband of a woman whose murder she was investigating had given her the idea.A famous baseball player, he’d explained a technique he used to deal with the stress and pressure of playing big games in front of tens of thousands of people, some of whom were relentlessly heckling him.He called it “focused detachment.”
He used it to shut out everything except the microscopic details of the task in front of him.For example, how much was the pitcher that he was facing sweating?Was the wind making the flags at the back of the stadium blow at all?Was the bat he was holding positioned at the perfect angle?He claimed that honing in on the minutiae allowed him to block out any distractions.And in the aftermath of his wife’s murder, he was employing the technique to get through the emotional pain of the loss.
Jessie tried it once while under duress, and found it useful.In fact, the more she used the technique, the more effective it became.Rather than allowing the killer’s crimes to fill her with vengeance, she would focus on tiny details, like the color of the person’s shoes or the eyes of a baby she’d just saved from a horrible fate at the killer’s hands.
The more she used it, the better she got.Just last week it had helped her navigate the moments after an attack by a murderous librarian who had stabbed her in the shoulder with a letter opener.Instead of shooting the woman, she kept her cool until backup arrived to take her into custody.
“Like I was telling you earlier,” Jessie reminded Dr.Lemmon, “I’ve been getting better and better.I feel like the librarian experience was a real turning point.I’m not saying that I finally have a handle on this.I know it could crop up again if I don’t stay on top of it.But I no longer live in constant fear that my next encounter with a suspect will end in me, you know, executing them.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Lemmon said with a wry smile.“So with your urges causing less strain on you, does that mean things have improved between you and Ryan?”
Ryan was Jessie’s husband, Detective Ryan Hernandez.In addition to being married, they were both part of Homicide Special Section.HSS was a small unit, consisting of five detectives and two researchers, that specialized in cases with high profiles or intense media scrutiny—typically involving multiple victims or serial killers.
But Lemmon wasn’t referencing their working relationship.She was talking about the ongoing source of conflict between them recently: having children.Ryan, who had been married once before without having kids, desperately wanted them.For a variety of reasons, including health and career concerns, Jessie was far more reluctant.It was only last week that she’d finally told him that for now at least, the idea was a non-starter.
“Actually, things have been really good lately,” she said.“Ever since I told him definitively that this wasn’t the right time for me, it’s been different.He seems to have truly let it go and it’s like a weight has been lifted off our marriage.To be honest, things have been more romantic—and spicier—than they were for months prior.”
“I’m really glad to hear that,” Dr.Lemmon said.“You two could use a break from all the heaviness.But you should be prepared for it to come up again at some point.I know he loves you, but this is something he cares about too, and it’s not just going to go away forever.”
“I get that.But for now, I’ll take the win.”
She considered saying something more, something she’d originally intended to broach today.But now she was having second thoughts.Of course, Lemmon picked up on her hesitation.
“What is it?”she asked.There was no point in trying to dodge now.Lemmon would never it go.
“It’s just that—you are well aware of familial past.”
“Are you alluding to the birth father that you and your sister share who was also a notorious serial killer?”
“That’s the one,” Jessie confirmed.
Lemmon was referring to Hannah Dorsey, her 19-year-old half-sister, and to their murderous father, Xander Thurman, aka The Ozarks Executioner.
