“And the second?” Rowan asks.
“The second,” he says, “is the trauma from the shooting. There are stages of recovery that must occur before mental health can be restored. Not everyone can tolerate them. People move at different speeds. Some take years, finding ways to muddle through life without going through them. They aren’t easy.”
Landyn looks at me again. This time I turn away. The water churns in my pot, and I need it to stop. We spoke about trauma in our sessions, I taught trauma in my classes, but now I’ve lived through it myself. I am suddenly agitated. Impatient. I want to get back to my kitchen and the surveillance of the hotels.
Landyn rattles them off, and I can sense Rowan mirroring my feelings. He’s been through all of this as well. Once you get to the other side, you don’t want to think about it ever again. There are no victory laps. No finish line photos.
Shock, denial, pain, guilt, anger, bargaining, depression, then, finally, an upward swing to acceptance andhope.
“Do you see the common factor?” Landyn asks. “Denial,” he answers his own question. “It’s closely related to delusion.” He pauses to let us catch up. “Your guy, Brett Emory, has used denial or delusion to prevent what will come if he faces the truth—pain, guilt, anger, etc. The lingering childhood trauma, the acute trauma from the shooting. The causes are different, but the wounds are the same. And the power he feels from the stalking behavior is a kind of avoidance—aBand-Aid. Not unlike the way others use alcohol and drugs. Anything to avoid the painful process of recovery.”
I tell myself to stay quiet, but I can’t. I try to hide my concern behind a hypothetical. “And if he comes back, continues his contact with me? Where does it end? How does it end?”
I look at Landyn. Rowan looks at me.
Landyn, for the first time since I’ve known him, stares at his folded hands. “Given what he’s been through, the extent of his denial—and the acquisition of these new skills and this new persona...”
He pauses.
So I finish his thought. “He won’t stop unless I make him.”
We take the elevator to our floor. We ride in silence, both of us thinking about this guy and, as Rowan finally says, how fucked up he might really be. If Landyn is right, it’s not just his past behavior leading up to the assault of his coworker and the attempt to reinvent himself. It was as if he was a faulty machine whose parts had been slowly wearing down, fraying and fracturing as he hobbled his way through life. A piece finally cracked up in Hartford. And then the whole damned thing broke apart that day in Nichols.
So what is he now? He doesn’t seem like a broken machine. He’s managed to rebuild somehow. Stronger. Impenetrable.
Landyn would say that is all a facade. The armor of a sociopath is strong because underneath is a fragile, wounded child.
“Fuck that,” Rowan says finally. “I don’t care what he went through as a child or in high school. He needs to be locked up. Maybe some prison shrink can try to fix him.”
But when we get back to our desk and sit down, Rowan leans forward and hangs his head.
“I’m sorry. That was just so hard to hear. But it shouldn’t be. It’s just information about a suspect. A possible psychological profile. We use them all time. I hate that I can’t distance myself from this. I hate that it’s become personal.”
I nod. “Yeah. Very personal.”
The secrets between us grow larger as we make our confessions. Here is my opening. My chance to tell him that I’ve lost my way more than he ever could. That I’ve gone beyond a momentary outburst to so many lies. About all of the messages. The rented car. The plastic bag. The cameras at the hotels. And Nix. Billy Brannicks.
I come so damned close to telling him everything, but something nags at me. What this secret is now doing to me is nothing compared to what it would do to him. And that’s what Wade wants. He wants Rowan to lose his shit, put his job at risk.
I think about the message he sent with a picture of my partner at a bar. Sitting alone. A beer and shot glass in front of him. I won’t put him in that position.
I change the subject to Laurel Hayes, the missing woman who knew Clay Lucas, and we lose ourselves in a case that doesn’t stir our pots.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
It’s past eleven, and the girls are lost in their dreams. I hear the floorboards above me in the master bedroom, Mitch moving about. A shower. Changing his clothes. Trying to sleep, getting up. Maybe starting to come downstairs to the kitchen where I spend another night, scanning the feed from the cameras at the hotels. With every day that passes, I fear Wade has moved on to a new location. That all of this is for nothing. I picture my husband stopping himself because with each night spent apart, the wall between us grows higher, just like the wall that now stands between me and my partner.
I can’t worry about this now. I have to find Wade. So I listen to the floorboards and drink more coffee and stare at people and cars coming and going in a parking lot. And hope that the walls can be dismantled later. That it won’t be too late.
The phone buzzes, and it takes me a moment to process the sound. I’ve grown distracted, consumed by my every move. Offensive moves and defensive moves. I’ve set up more security in the house. Told Mitch it makes me feel better even though Wade had gone quiet. He is still out there, I remind him. Door alarms and motion sensors. I’ve told the detail to be diligent about delivery trucks coming from either direction. To turn the car every hour or so to face the other way. They are confused by my alarm because they don’t know that he got past them. That the messages continue even now that we’ve discovered his past.
Don’t think you know me just because you know myname.
I see his unmistakable image through the steam, standing in my bedroom, and worry about ways he can get back inside, thinking he’ll try again. I have my one lead. A plastic bag. But he’s made a puzzle I can’t solve, so I protect what matters most. My family.
I open the message and stare at the screen. There’s an image with an arrow, a play button. I can’t tell what this is. A video or a live feed.
I close my laptop and steady myself. The girls are asleep. Mitch is upstairs. No one’s come or gone, and the image is somewhere outside.
