As odd as it was, Zayn didn’tfeellike a threat. He felt like a safeguard.
I shake my head side to side and exhale a long breath.How could a man you hardly know, a man who watched you when you were younger, a man whose reintroduction into your life was a total lie, feel safe?
I will have to unpack that later, I think. Ideally, after my bra and heels are off and I’m curled up comfortably on the couchwith Bundy.One thing is for sure, however. Zayn and I would most definitelynotbe having a second session.
8
DEMONS
KAT
As a former forensic psychologist, I was employed by the State of Washington to contribute to law enforcement’s understanding and interpretation of mental illness. At times, I would also determine a defendant's mental competency to stand trial. After court, it was my job to evaluate a repeat offender’s risk of reoffending. I saw the worst of the worst, the ugliest of the ugly.
Eighteen months ago, my career took a hard left hand turn when one of the most highly sensationalized court proceedings in the last decade took over Washington and the entire greater tristate area. Gary Jones Eastman’s trial was widely publicized both locally and nationally. Eastman was the most prolific serial rapist and murderer in the last several decades, which was saying something for the Pacific Northwest. We were basically known for two things: rain and serial killers. Gary Jones Eastman was a whole different brand of evil. Born with a bad brain. He exhibited the dark triad from a very young age and hadcommitted too many crimes to count. Mostly against young girls and women.
In my time with the State, I had evaluated over 130 men and three women who were all labeled the worst of the worst. And Gary Jones Eastman was the worst of that elite grouping of offenders. He had raped, killed, and dismembered eighteen girls in his fucked-up tenure as the Demon of the PNW. One victim was as young as five.
There were several unsubstantiated reports of Eastman working with an accomplice. Someone who helped him case the homes of his victims to then lure and abduct them. However, that potential co-conspirator had never been properly identified or caught. If they existed at all, Eastman had never given them up.
Despite the utter horror of his crimes, Eastman had been up for parole. He had been a model prisoner during his first incarceration stint in a maximum-security federal prison. He read books to the illiterate inmates, teaching them how to read and write poetry. He led peer support groups, planted trees and flowers in the community garden and wrote letters of repair and restitution to the families of his many victims. But I saw through all of that.
I could tell by about halfway into our interview that Eastman was a true psychopath, perhaps the truest psychopath I would ever encounter. I still remember every detail of our final interview together… his cold, black, dead eyes, and the unfeeling, narcissistic flair that permeated his every answer. He sat across the table from me in our evaluation and gave the perfect, most perfunctory answers possible. And yet, I doubted.
Fourteen months ago, the state listened to my assessment and Gary Jones Eastman was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I flinch as I remember his last words to me as the guards flanked his body to escort him out of the assessment room. His cold eyes were wild, his voice low, but it cut through the room and straight to my heart.
“You dug around in the corners of my head, Dr. Pearson… but now I know yours. Fear. One night. Quiet, ordinary… you'll feel it. The breath before the scream. And you’ll know. You’ll know I’ve come to finish what you started.”
His threat had left me reeling. A little over a year ago, I cracked from the publicity and pressure of the fallout from his retrial. I started to daydream about my own death with increasing frequency. I imagined the deaths of others. I replayed the hundreds of stories I had heard from all my offender assessments in my head. My own psychiatrist had diagnosed me with “acute stress” and prescribed me some psychotropics before sending me on an extended leave of absence.
I left my position at the State and decided to open up my own small private practice. When I moved from Seattle to Greenwood, several of my patients had chosen to come with me. I was touched that they had chosen to make the drive every week, nearly an hour one way for most of them.
Now I get to go to work in my very own stylish, minimalist office as opposed to a state-sanctioned conference room with fluorescent lighting. I work solely with average folks, non-offenders. I see a lot of mild to moderate depression and anxiety, infidelity, porn, gambling addiction, and communication issues: the “vanilla” mental illnesses. I steer clear of any potential patients with violent or homicidal backgrounds.
Josh Connors being a very recent exception. I had space on my caseload, and he had sounded so desperate for help in his intake call. Something in his voice had tugged at my heartstrings. I had made an oath long ago to help whoever I could, and to not cause harm.
However, Josh was proving to be one of my needier patients. Well, needier wasn’t exactly the right word. Creepy? Borderline disturbing? Somewhere in that zone. Josh and I have been in treatment now for a little over two months. His intake coincided with my father’s death and at times, I think that has been a bad omen of sorts.
Our initial session together was my very first one back after my bereavement leave—just four days. And I haven’t felt the same since beginning our work together. Like, I was losing my clinical skills when I sat with him. I was that scared and timid girl again, hiding in her books, and behind her work.
Normally, by this point, I’d like to think we have established the level of therapeutic rapport that allows me to be real, call him out on his bullshit, and essentially cut through his defenses. However, over two months in, Josh remains a mystery to me. In session, there is always a barrier, a wall of some sort that I tend to hit with him. He is protecting something, guarding something. Something dark. And I haven’t yet been able to tell exactly what that might be. As we sit here in session together again, I find myself still mystified with him.
Josh is my final session of the day today. I sit with my back ramrod straight and hold the space, resisting the urge to check the clock. Our session slips into a period of silence, and I notice Josh’s glance trail down from my eyes to my neck, my collarbone, and… lower. I clear my throat and shift in my oversized leather chair. Josh notices immediately, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. The grin doesn’t reach his eyes. The hair on the back of my neck rises and I uncross and recross my ankles to hide my discomfort. My teeth gnaw at the inside of my cheek, and I chance a quick glance over at the clock.
Three minutes left, thank God.I spin the golden charm bracelet on my wrist nervously, as my eyes return to my patient.
Shit. He had noticed that, too.
“Somewhere to be, Doc?” he asks softly.
“Just tracking the time,” I respond crisply. Josh regards me evenly, unblinking.
I was still waiting on obtaining Josh’s psych records from his previous providers. I know that getting thorough information from his previous therapist will be helpful in filling out my conceptualization of him. I know that he has been on a host of psychotropic medications over the past twelve years. I know this because he named them all off to me in alphabetical order during our first session. It was striking. Even after seeing clients for over nine years now, that was a new one for me. Josh also had his diagnoses memorized: obsessive compulsive disorder with delusional beliefs, major depressive disorder recurrent with psychotic features, and an old diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder. All born of significant and pervasive childhood trauma. As these things usually are.
I was beginning to form my own preliminary diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, with narcissistic features, based on the past several weeks of treatment, but I wasn’t sure yet. The long and short of it was that Josh felt different and at times, Josh felt dangerous.
Glancing at the large wall clock behind him, I inform Josh that our time is up. He remains quite still, right where he is, unmoving. Josh holds my gaze and slowly nods.
