Autumn's Game

by Mary Stone

  On legs that felt like water, she flung herself across her bed toward the chest-high window and threw it open. She pushed at the screen, fumbling with the edges, but she couldn’t remember how to get it out of the frame. It wasn’t like the old window screens at their other home.

  Thump.

  This time, the thump was followed by a cracking sound, and she knew she was out of time.

  Grabbing her keys, she dug at the window screen, crying out in relief as she managed to slash the mesh in half. She pulled the halves open and stuck her head out. It was cold and wet and drizzling outside, but she didn’t care.

  Crack.

  Gina turned and slung one leg over the ledge. When the door slammed open, she banged her head against the window frame hard enough that stars winked in and out of her vision.

  She had to hurry.

  Tossing her things to the ground, she was almost out when her jeans got stuck on the window ledge. She jerked her leg, listened to the fabric rip on the nail. She screamed as it tore into her skin.

  But she couldn’t let it stop her.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry, her mind screamed.

  Inside the room, a shadow was heading her way. No, it was a ghost. Moonlight shown on the white figure coming in her direction.

  Panic hit her even harder. She didn’t have enough time to lower herself from the window. She had to fall. Jump. Anything was better than what this monster intended for her.

  She tilted over the edge, praying she wouldn’t break anything vital. She just needed to land on her feet and roll the landing, like she’d learned in volleyball.

  Just as she went weightless, cruel fingers dug into her leg. Gina screamed and tried to kick herself free. They had neighbors, but it was late—and it was early New Year’s morning. She didn’t know if anyone would hear her.

  She screamed anyway.

  Kicking and twisting with all her might, she knew she was at a disadvantage. Her body was at an awkward angle, and she was quickly losing strength. The attacker gripped her arm, pulling her back, and her head crashed into the window frame as he pulled her through.

  Pain ripped through her this time, and her vision blurred as darkness crept around the edges.

  “Help! Help!”

  She kept screaming, hoping that someone, anyone, would hear her. As the attacker pulled her away from the window and threw her toward her bed, she got her first glimpse of him. It wasn’t much, but even that small glimpse was frightening.

  A ski mask hid his face, and he was wearing a white suit like hazmat people wore. The white material was wet with her mother’s blood.

  With a fresh surge of adrenaline, Gina bounced on the bed, doing a shoulder roll her high school coach would have been proud of. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she stumbled through the broken door. She needed to get downstairs and out of the house. She cursed herself. That should have been Plan A the second she’d seen her mother.

  Her initial panic would probably get her killed.

  Determined to make up for her mistake, she sprinted toward the stairs. She glanced back—which was her second mistake—and slipped on something wet on the floor. She didn’t roll properly this time, and her wrist wrenched as she tried to stop her head from crashing into the wall.

  Then she screamed.

  Her father was lying on the floor, halfway out of his bedroom. An island in a lake of blood, his pale face practically glowed in the dim light.

  “Daddy?”

  She crawled to him, then hesitated. There was something wrong with his eyes. They had gone dull and flat. They were unmoving. Even without seeing the blood all over the floor, she knew one thing for certain. He was dead. Good or bad, her father’s life was over.

  “Daddy. No, please. No, Da—”

  Strong arms grabbed her from behind, and as if she weighed no more than a child, the attacker swung her up and over his shoulder. Feet pounded down the stairs, her body jarring with his every step. Her head banged into the doorframe when he turned, causing her to see stars again. She was going to either throw up or pass out, maybe both.

  Instead of running from the front of the house, the man ran into the kitchen. One of the chairs had fallen over, she noticed dimly. Mama will be mad.

  Mama.

  Daddy.

  It seemed inevitable. Once her parents had decided to get divorced, it was inevitable that something horrible would happen. This was something out of her nightmares.

  This had to be a nightmare. She just needed to wake up.

  The attacker carried her to a SUV, but it was so dark that she couldn’t recognize the make or model, or even the color. He opened the back gate and shoved her inside. She banged onto the interior carpet and flopped over. Her stomach lurched.

  She rolled toward the back gate and puked. With a curse, her attacker skipped backward out of the way. When she was done, he reached forward to grab something on the floor of the SUV. Rope.

  She struggled, but she was so dizzy and confused that it felt like she was swimming through a whirlpool of molasses. She cried in frustration. She couldn’t move quickly enough. Her attacker was stronger than she was, and he seemed able to guess her every move.

  “Please stop, please stop,” she begged, the words tearing from a throat dry from screaming. “Is my mom okay? Where is my mom?”

  What had just happened seemed muddled and mixed up. Not real. Please, God. Don’t let it be real.

  He stuffed a smelly cloth in her mouth and then kept it in place by wrapping a rope around her head. Using her tongue, she tried to push it out, but it wouldn’t move. He fastened her arms and legs together with rope behind her back, and in what felt like seconds, she was completely immobile. He shoved her back onto the floor and began to close the gate when a pair of headlights swept over them both.

  Gina didn’t hesitate, she began kicking and screaming, though the movements were muffled and hindered by the rope and gag. She couldn’t give up, though. She twisted and turned, pushing her body against the hands holding her back.

  Please see me. Please see me.

  But as the approaching vehicle grew closer…closer…the madman cursed and raised a fist. When it landed on the side of her head in a crushing blow, pain came…then nothing.

  2

  The private visitation room inside the Mosby Detention Center in Richmond, Virginia held a chair much like a school desk and featured a built-in table that attached to the seat. It was built so an inmate could be handcuffed by their wrists and ankles, allowing some freedom of movement, but not enough for him or her to jump up and attack their visitor.

  Dr. Autumn Trent didn’t like the chair. In her line of work, she knew that many of the inmates had violent tendencies, but there had to be another way to handle the situation.

  The chair certainly didn’t look very therapeutic. If she was going to work with accused serial killer Justin Black in this room until after the conclusion of his trial, she would need to ask for a different visitation room. Since it could take anywhere from one to two years, from arrest to the beginning of a trial, they needed something better. If that was even possible.

  Autumn worked for Shadley and Latham, a full-service psychology consultancy that focused on threat assessment, insider threats, counterterrorism, investigative consultations, and operational training. Her company covered everything from stalkings to school shootings to workplace violence.

  They created criminal profiles to assist in a variety of investigations, including building profiles for cold-case homicides. They identified at-risk employees for fraud and corporate espionage. When requested, they even researched radicalization techniques for the FBI.

  She loved it all.

  Autumn had always been interested in criminal justice. In fact, during her first years in college, she had majored in it. At that time, she hadn’t known what she wanted to do for a living. She just knew that she was sick and tired of bad guys hurting the good guys.

  After an incident with a robber at gunpoint while she wa
s in college, she discovered that the good guys and the bad guys weren’t as separate and distinct as she always thought they were. It wasn’t black and white. Some people on the wrong side of the law weren’t all bad. There were shades of gray that weren’t always easy to recognize.

  That incident had led her to change her major, and eight years later, she had both her Juris Doctorate and Ph.D. in forensic psychology with a minor in criminal justice. Her bachelor’s and master’s focus had been on criminal psychology, and she loved that she had training in both methodologies. It gave her an edge that was already making her highly sought after in her field.

  Criminal psychologists spent most of their time focusing on determining a motive and creating a profile of the perpetrator of a crime. Forensic psychologists specialized in the aftermath of a crime. Then, they’d be asked to evaluate a suspect’s mental state or even offer counseling to victims and their families.

  Autumn hadn’t wanted to settle on just one or the other. She wanted to know it all, and she’d worked her ass off getting her degrees.

  Her wealth of knowledge had landed her a fabulous job with a paycheck bigger than she ever imagined. She’d even been called on to work with the FBI on some special cases and had been tempted to join the bureau after helping them close a couple of intense investigations.

  But…money had won out, and after landing a job with the prestigious Shadley and Latham, she was able to pay off her massive student loans on her more than comfortable salary in record time. And the position had enabled her to start thinking of criminal behavior on a bigger scale. Why did criminals do what they did? Was there any way to prevent it?

  And most importantly…how could she help?

  One of Autumn’s specialties was threat assessment. She was the person who went into schools and businesses and determined who, if anyone, might become a threat, and what to do to both prevent that from happening and to handle the emergency if it did. That made up the majority of her work at Shadley and Latham.

  What she was doing now was different. She was in a detention center in order to interview Justin Black, who just happened to be the brother of her best friend, FBI Special Agent Winter Black.

  Winter—and the FBI—had asked Autumn for a special favor: talk to Justin and try to see what made him tick. Interestingly enough, Justin’s defense attorney had signed off on her being the one to do this evaluation. Maybe the attorney thought that she would go soft on him since she was friends of the sister? Autumn felt the pressure from all sides, but she refused to let any of it influence her decision.

  Thankfully, she wouldn’t be the only psychologist responsible for judging his competence for trial or providing an opinion regarding his sanity. She would also be using her finds for research. The number of serial killers who were willing to serve as research material for profiling projects wasn’t very high, and the fact that Justin was willing to talk seemed like a good sign.

  Justin had been abducted as a young boy by a serial killer known as The Preacher, who was eventually revealed as a man named Douglas Kilroy. After killing Winter and Justin’s parents and attempting to murder Winter as well, he had abducted six-year-old Justin and raised him as a sort of heir to his mission as a serial killer: to punish women who were overstepping the bounds of “God’s place” for them in society.

  It had recently come to light that Justin was biologically related to Kilroy as well. The Blacks hadn’t just been randomly targeted by The Preacher. They had been murdered by design.

  In pop-psychology terms, Justin had been destined to be a serial killer, according to both nature and nurture. He certainly had become one. At this point, they still didn’t know the number of people he’d murdered. He caught the FBI’s attention when he was involved in a mass shooting before being captured by his sister and several other special agents.

  Now that he was no longer a risk to society, it was Autumn’s task to assess whether Justin’s “destiny” could be changed. She had her doubts, but she wasn’t one to ever give up hope. And for her best friend, she would do her damnedest to try.

  Autumn knew what it was like to lose those closest to you. She knew what it was like to lose a sibling. Though the stories of how Winter lost Justin and how Autumn lost Sarah were vastly different, a loss was a loss. The not knowing if they were alive or dead was a constant pain that lived deep in a person’s soul.

  Autumn might not know where Sarah was, but Justin was right here within this building. She would focus on him…for now. Maybe someday, she could focus on her sister.

  The visitor’s chair opposite the prisoner’s seat wasn’t bolted to the floor, but the guard had told her not to move it from its current location, or he would have to end the interview.

  “I’ll stay put,” she told the older man with a buzz cut before turning to face him directly from the chair. “Can you share how Justin Black has been doing in his cell?”

  The guard’s face turned grim. “It depends. At times, he lays curled on his cot, his hands over his ears. Other times, he’s hurling himself at the bars. The next day he’s talking to himself and sucking his thumb.”

  “How is he sleeping?”

  The guard scoffed. “He doesn’t. Not much, at least. Night terrors, sleepwalking, you name it.”

  That was concerning, but before Autumn could question the guard further, the door of the therapy room buzzed, and two guards brought Justin in.

  He had raven-dark hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. Where his sister, Winter, was pretty and feminine, Justin’s dramatic looks exuded evil.

  Autumn reminded herself that looks could be deceiving.

  The guards locked Justin into the secure chair, using a heavy steel staple under the desktop for his hands and a lockbar that swung over the chain between his ankle restraints to hold him in place. They let themselves out of the visitation room. They couldn’t hear what was being said, but they still had a full view of the room through the thick plexiglass.

  “Hello, Miss Trent.” Justin swallowed nervously, his gaze flicking to everywhere but her. “You look nice.” He began to rock back and forth, moving as far as the chains would allow.

  Autumn was wearing an olive green blazer with a demure cream-colored blouse. She’d dressed carefully that morning with the goal of being deliberately demure but not overbearingly professional. “Thank you, and it’s Dr. Trent. How are you today, Mr. Black?”

  She’d used the name intentionally, interested in seeing how he reacted to being called something other than Jaime Peterson, the name given to him by his kidnapper.

  She watched him stiffen for the slightest moment before he gave her a fleeting, nervous smile. “Call me…Jaime…no, Justin.” His voice sounded strained, and he began to rock harder. “You’re here to talk to me on behalf of my sister, right?”

  “I’m here to speak to you at both your attorney’s and the prosecution’s request.”

  “Why the…?” His nostrils flared, and his eyes flashed a glimpse of rage. He caught himself quickly and looked down at his hands, his shoulders softening as he exhaled a long breath, although the rocking didn’t stop. “I mean…why? It’s hopeless. I’m never getting out of here. This place is horrible.” He gazed pointedly around the therapy room. “If I hadn’t been crazy before I got here, this place would make me crazy.”

  Autumn focused on the word. “Why do you say you’re crazy?”

  “Not crazy.” He laughed, and the sound coupled with the look he shot her sent a chill of fear down her spine as he froze in his seat. This man was lethal, and if he hadn’t been bound to his seat, she had no doubt that she would be in serious danger. The laugh ended as abruptly as it began, but the blue eyes continued to pierce through her. The rocking began again. “I’m legally insane, right?”

  She lifted her chin. “That hasn’t been determined yet.”

  “And you’re the one who’s going to determine that?”

  “One of them.”

  He made a snorting sound. “Should I start drooling
and banging my head against the wall? Is that what insanity looks like to you?”

  “Insanity doesn’t have a particular appearance, and I think it’s important for me to point out that the word “insanity,” as used in this context, isn’t a medical term but a legal one. In my practice, for example, I would never diagnose a patient as insane. Legally, the term is used to protect morally blameless people from conviction for a crime that was beyond their control due to mental illness.”

  Justin frowned and seemed to be searching for something in his mind. “My attorney said something about NIRG.”

  Autumn smiled. “It’s NGRI, or Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. But again, insanity is a legal term, not a medical one.”

  “And you’re going to decide if I’m insane or not today?” He looked terrified, but Autumn couldn’t tell if he was feigning his reaction or not.

  That would come at a later date, when she would work to determine if Justin was malingering, which essentially meant if he was intentionally creating false or grossly exaggerated physical or psychological symptoms motivated by external incentives. People did that in the hopes of using mental illness as a way of avoiding things like military duty or work. And yes…prison.

  “First, I’ll determine your competency to stand trial.”

  “And that matters?” The rocking continued, and he tried to put his hands over his ears and seemed frustrated when the chains wouldn’t allow him to do so.

  Autumn nodded. “It does to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I believe in fairness. I don’t believe that the law should punish someone who, for reasons beyond his or her control, committed a crime.”

  The rocking slowed, and he seemed to relax a little. “Okay.”

  Autumn had thought about her questions before coming into this room. She wouldn’t be determining competency today. It would take several assessments with her using evidence-based measurement tools to make that final determination.

  It wasn’t an easy thing to do. She needed to determine how well Justin communicated. How much he understood. Could he assist his attorney in his defense? How much did he remember? What would his behavior be like in court? The answers to such competency assessment questions required a thoughtful case-specific forensic expert consultation who was willing to take her time going through the consultation. She also needed to be open to input from a variety of sources.