“The facial injuries happened during the kidnapping itself?”
“Yes, sir. The broken arm and torn ligaments as well.”
“And the grade 3 concussion?”
“I received that at the church where I was being held. Mr. Page hit me with the barrel of his AR-15 assault rifle.”
Colin lifted his head and his eyes met Joshua’s, his face so twisted with anguished guilt that Joshua dropped his head, steeling himself against a storm of regret that his husband had to suffer this kind of pain. He drew in a trembling breath and raised his eyes to Norman Clayton.
“Do you need a moment, Doctor Abrams?”
He turned his head to gaze at Colin and gave him a small smile, letting his eyes go soft and loving in the way that always made Colin blush and tell him to ‘stop it’. Then he turned back to Norman Clayton. “No thank you. I’m fine to go on.”
Colin’s lips curved, and his grief-stricken expression changed to one of immense pride.
“I was struggling against despair, blood loss, and exhaustion, but I refused to give up. I tried to think of every resource I could possibly use to fight back. The only thing that came to mind was my training as a hostage negotiator. But those techniques were useless as long as I was gagged. I could hear him pacing and ranting about someone, his sister as it turns out, and after a while he came back to where I was lying. He was screaming with rage. He yanked the covering off my head and jerked the gag out of my mouth. And that’s when I knew.”
“Knew what, Doctor Abrams?”
“I knew he was going to kill me. He’d made up his mind. He was going to kill his sister, then me, then himself. He’d made his decision. That’s why he no longer cared that I could see him. It didn’t matter anymore.”
“Pardon me, Doctor Abrams,” one of the jury members said. “But how could you possibly know such a thing? Isn’t this pure supposition on your part?”
Joshua turned to face the jury. “Possibly. Later in my conversation with Page he did, in fact,tell,me that he planned to kill his sister, then me, then himself.” Joshua drew in a deep breath and leaned toward the jury member. “Sir, I’ve been a licensed psychoanalyst for eight years. I spenthourslocked up in that dark, filthy church with a deeply disturbed individual, listening to his frenzied gibbering, studying his behavior. I realize that I’m not testifying as an expert witness. I also realize that my personal involvement in the incident makes a completely dispassionate evaluation impossible. But in my professional opinion the moment I just described to you is when he made up his mind to follow through on his plan and kill me.”
Joshua heard Colin gasp and turned to face him. “But he didn’t,” he said, then leaned closer to his husband and spoke again, his voice filled with love and gratitude. “Hedidn’t.” He turned back to Norman Clayton.
“I began to talk to him. I used every strategy I knew. Every trick in the book. At that point I had onlyonegoal: to stay alive until my husband got there. Time was all I had to work with, so time is what I used. I encouraged him to talk to me; I made him think I empathized with him. I asked him about his gun, his family, his motivation. Asked him anything I could think of that would keep him talking for just one more minute.”
“Doctor Abrams,” the same juror said. “How did youknowyour husband would come?”
“Because I have absolute faith in him.”
Norman Clayton smiled and took a step closer to Joshua. “And during this time, Doctor Abrams, did Page mention the other three victims? Dana Fraizer, Marie Laveton and Shawn Arberton?”
“He didn’t mention them by name. I don’t think heknewtheir names. I asked him if he knew them and said he didn’t but told me that it didn’t matter because they were all alike, all smug, self-righteous punks. However, he did confess to the three abductions. He mentioned that the two girls worked out of the theater and that the guy hung out there too. He hated the university students and said they were rich, privileged brats who had wealth handed to them while he had to steal to survive. He said: ‘They all have money so I make them share it.’ Then he said: ‘I take their money but that’s not all I take. I fuck them. I fuck them hard! I take away their humanity!’”
He turned and looked apologetically at the jury. “Pardon me. I’m using his words, not mine.” He turned back to Clayton. “He promised to do the same thing to me, but not just to ‘fuck’ me, and again I’m using his words, but he also said: ‘I’m going to blow a hole in you big enough to drive your car through!’ while shaking the assault rifle in my face.”
He hesitated, then went on. “He used his anger and hatred toward the students as a way to distract himself from his own pain, his own feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness, and shame over his failed life. He believed that the only way to regain some sense of power over his pain was to strike out at others, and he had focused his anger on a particular group, as is often the case. That group was the University of Virginia students. He told me: ‘They’re punks who need to understand fear. I did them a favor. I helped them understand it.’ He laughed about the fact that they begged him for mercy.”
Joshua began to speak again, then hesitated.
“Something more, Doctor Abrams?”
Joshua grimaced in disgust. “I hate saying this, but he laughed about the boy, Shawn. Said he begged more than the two girls. Called him a ‘pussy’.”
“And he believed you were also a student at the university when he kidnapped you.”
“He did. He was quite surprised to learn that I wasn’t.”
“Doctor Abrams, tell us again how you sustained a grade 3 concussion?”
“I managed to buy quite a bit of time talking to him, but eventually Page saw through me,” Joshua said, then paused and bowed his head, his face etched with regret. “I let him get to me and I slipped. He asked me about my husband, about my home. And in thinking about those things, I let my true feelings show: Feelings of love. Feelings of happiness. Feelings of heartbreak because I feared I’d never see my husband and my home again. And for those few, brief seconds Page no longer had power over me. I was no longer cringing in terror. He didn’t control me any longer.”
Joshua stopped and drew in a long breath, clenching his hands into fists to try to control their trembling. “He - he asked what I did for a living. He was already livid with rage, and when I told him I was a psychologist he realized I had been using cognitive strategies to try to manipulate him. He was maniacal with anger. He screamed at me that I had been using my ‘head doctor’ tricks on him just like they did in rehab and to think about the fact that I was going to be raped, then killed.” Joshua inhaled another deep breath. “And he smashed the barrel of his rifle against my skull.”
“What is the next thing you remember, Doctor Abrams?”
