Autumn's Game

by Mary Stone

  And his competence could change in an instant. After all, how many times did a seemingly mentally healthy individual suddenly have some type of mental snap and do something they wouldn’t normally do?

  This would be a long process, so she wanted to get started. “Justin, do you understand why you were arrested?”

  He tried to put his hands over his ears again, then clasped them together when he couldn’t. The rocking escalated and his eyes grew wide. Terrified. “They said I murdered some people and did some really bad things.”

  She wrote down his answer verbatim. “They said? What do you say about that?”

  The rocking grew more urgent. If the chair hadn’t been bolted to the floor, he would have turned it over. “I was following orders. I was only trying to do the right thing.”

  “Whose orders, Justin?”

  His eyes clouded with terror. “Grandpa.” It was a whisper. A hiss. “He said I had to…had to…he said it was my mission to make the world a better place. He said that I’d be punished, punished, punished real bad if I let him down. If I let God down.”

  “So, you killed people because Douglas Kilroy told you to do so?”

  “Yes. He trained me to hate and fear women, and to have a strong desire to punish them for their sins in the eyes of God.”

  For a moment, Autumn wanted to interrupt him. She’d already read his statement, and this was pretty much verbatim. But she let him go on, studying him closely. Beneath the arrogance, she saw…fear? Was he afraid of not getting his performance right? Of being punished? Or did the memory of Kilroy create such a response?

  “Punish the sinners in what way?”

  Justin leaned forward until he could reach his nose with his finger and gave it a good scratch, then the rocking continued, a little more slowly now. “For the wages of sin is death!” He screamed the words so unexpectedly that Autumn jumped a little. Through the window, she noticed one of the guards stiffen.

  She raised a hand to let the guard know everything was okay before returning her attention to the rocking young man. “All sin?” she asked after taking a deep breath. “What about the sin of murder? ‘Thou shall not kill.’ What do you think about that?”

  He stilled, his blue eyes narrowing almost completely. “There are layers of sin, and then there are layers of punishment. I achieved sainthood for doing what so many others failed to do.”

  This was new.

  “Where did the idea of sainthood come from?”

  “Grandpa.”

  “Douglas Kilroy told you that you’d achieve sainthood for killing those who sinned?”

  Rocking. Rocking. Rocking.

  “Yes.”

  “What did Douglas Kilroy tell you would happen if you got caught killing those who sinned?”

  His nostrils flared, but the back and forth movement continued. “He told me that the world only rewarded the wicked and prosecuted the good.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes, and when they opened again, they burned with hatred. “Do you see all those sluts on TV? They flaunt their bodies and sleep with men and have babies out of wedlock. They do terrible things, and what do they get in return? They get fame and fortune is what!”

  “So, they need to die?”

  “Yes!” The scream vibrated in her ears. “All of them! They must follow the natural order of things. Follow the original laws. They must obey their husband and nurture their children. My mother was a slut. She laid with a man before she was married and whelped another sinner…my sister. My half-sister.”

  Autumn stiffened against the memories of how close Justin came to killing Winter. “You tried to kill her too.”

  “She’s a whore. She’s shacked up with a man who is not her husband.” He sneered. “It runs in the family.”

  “Your blood is the same,” she reminded him.

  “Half,” he corrected quickly. “Only half.”

  They’d gotten off track. “You understand that you broke the law—”

  “Man’s law.”

  “—and that you must be punished for your crimes.”

  “Man’s crimes.”

  She ignored his sneering tone and the interruptions. “You live in The United States of America, and for that privilege, you must obey the constitution in order to—”

  “I obey the commandments.”

  She couldn’t help herself. “Thou shall not kill.”

  His glare penetrated into her very soul.

  Autumn blew out a long breath. “Justin, no matter your belief, you committed a number of crimes and there are consequences for that. As a resident of the USA, you will stand trial before a judge and a jury of your peers to determine whether you are guilty of those crimes. What questions do you have about that?”

  He was mutinously silent for a moment. Rocking. Rocking. Rocking. “I have no peers, and therefore, I cannot be judged by them.”

  Autumn mentally sighed. They were going round and round with this. This young man was clever. If he could convince her that he wasn’t competent to stand trial, she would have no choice but to recommend he be placed into a mental hospital for treatment until he was declared competent.

  “Justin…do you realize that you are going to trial whether you want to or not? Whether you believe you should or not? We will soon be establishing competency, and if I assess that you aren’t competent to stand trial, that doesn’t mean you get a free pass. What that means is that you will enter an inpatient psychiatric hospital where you’ll receive treatment until you are determined to be competent to stand trial. That could take a month, a year, a decade.”

  Justin’s eyes widened fractionally. Was this new news?

  “Even if it takes fifty years,” she went on, “then you’ll stand trial then, at the ripe old age of sixty-nine.”

  He laughed, then tried to lift his hand to cover his mouth.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”

  He laughed again, but this time it sounded closer to a giggle. “You said sixty-nine.”

  It took all her willpower not to roll her eyes. She had to remind herself that Justin was only nineteen years old. A boy. And she still didn’t know what mental or physical torture he was put through these past thirteen years.

  Autumn wondered if a male psychologist would be more successful in this type of interview since Justin clearly thought women only belonged in the kitchen. But…no. Being a woman would also trigger him. It might even be the key to have him show his true colors.

  After competence was determined and they were on course for a trial, Justin and his attorneys would try for an insanity defense. At that point, it would be Autumn’s job to see if the plea held any merit. No serial killer was truly sane, of course, but there was a difference between knowing what was right and wrong and having the ability to stop yourself from doing it.

  In an insanity defense, the defendant admitted to committing the action but asserted that he or she had a lack of culpability based on mental illness. Justin Black had been laying the groundwork since the beginning, and she had no doubt that he would continue to do so.

  Autumn needed to be careful.

  Was the young man in front of her just incredibly clever…or was it true? Had the trauma of witnessing his parents’ and sister’s murder—they still hadn’t established at what point Justin knew that Winter was alive—and being kidnapped and trained by a madman broken his psyche in a very fundamental way?

  How could it not?

  That seemed to be the logical question, but Autumn knew to not take it at face value.

  She smiled and crossed her legs, glad that she’d worn trousers when Justin’s gaze automatically zeroed in on the movement. “Justin, how much to do remem—”

  A sudden cramp hit Autumn in the back of her neck, and she lifted a hand to rub at the painful knot.

  Justin’s eyes seemed to sparkle at the sign of her discomfort. Autumn studied him as she continued to press her thumb into the muscle.
For a second, it almost seemed like he had caused her muscles to spasm.

  No. She was imagining things.

  Then she remembered Justin’s sister’s abilities. After Douglas Kilroy had bashed Winter on the head, she’d been in a coma. When she awoke, she possessed an ability to see and know things she shouldn’t be able to see or know. Had the brain injury caused the abilities? Or had Winter had those insights before, and the brain injury brought them to the surface?

  A chill ran up Autumn’s spine.

  And did Justin have those same abilities? Or different ones? Stronger ones?

  Justin closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, as if getting himself back under control. The rocking hadn’t stopped, but it was growing slower as he watched her.

  She cleared her throat. “How much do you remember from the night you were abducted?”

  “You mean saved?” There wasn’t a hint of guile in his expression. Did he really believe that?

  “Can you tell me more about that? How you were…saved?”

  She was falling into psychology but couldn’t stop herself. At some point, this information would be relevant. Plus, if he truly believed being abducted by a serial killer was salvation, it would help her later ascertain his mental stability.

  Justin lowered his head and tried to put his thumb in his mouth. When it wouldn’t reach, he grew frustrated, pulling then yanking on his chains.

  “Let me go!” She’d been expecting the response that time and didn’t jump, even when spittle flew out of his mouth. “Let me go!”

  The guards were moving behind the glass, and she held up her hand again. “Justin, we don’t have to talk about that right now. I can tell you a little about me instead.”

  He calmed down a little, and she took that as a sign to go on. It was a long story, one that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into just yet, but she needed to give him something.

  “My sense of reality was originally defined by an abusive father. He hit me in the head, and I fell into a coffee table. I suffered a severe brain injury and ended up having to have surgery to relieve pressure on my brain.”

  Justin just stared at her, and she could tell he was disappointed in her story. “And that’s what defined your sense of reality? Being hit in the head?”

  “In some respects.” Autumn lifted her hands. “Some people don’t believe that violence really exists, or that people close to you can be violent. But I’ve never believed that. What’s more important, though, is that after I recovered from the surgery, I was put into the foster care system. I know what it’s like to be moved from family to family and be expected to change to fit their expectations. And I know what it’s like to finally be accepted by people who love you. The last couple who fostered me adopted me and treated me like their own daughter. I know what it feels like to have reality changed every time I was moved from one family to another. And I know what it feels like to finally find a safe home. Not everyone is so lucky.”

  Justin stared at her, those blue eyes not even blinking. “And…?”

  She sighed. She might as well tell him the rest. It might do them some good, having a commonality they could share.

  “And…yes. I have had my reality influenced by a serial killer too. The neurosurgeon who repaired my brain was one. She actually implanted a tracking device in my stomach so that she could keep an eye on me. You see, she could see the results of her work. She wanted to study me, and I think she planned to eventually kill me like she had killed many others. She wanted to dissect my brain to see what kind of interesting changes my injury and recovery had produced.”

  Justin leaned forward as much as the chains would allow. “What kind of changes? Personality changes?”

  “I suppose you could say I have some heightened senses. I have very good hearing, for example.”

  Autumn’s surgery had done more than that, though. It had given her an ability that she had never been able to explain, one that made her avoid getting close to people, either emotionally or physically.

  Whenever she touched someone, she would pick up an intuitive impression from them. Sometimes, she had a hunch about someone—a hunch that always proved to be true. But sometimes, it manifested as a short vision about someone’s past. She had never been able to explain to herself whether her visions were “true” or just her intuition working overtime.

  But Justin Black didn’t need to know any of that.

  Justin reached up to rub his chin but was caught short by the chain on his handcuffs. “Maybe Kilroy did something similar to me.”

  Another stabbing pain hit the back of Autumn’s neck, but she refused to give in and rub at it this time. “The main point here is not to let the tragedies of the past define how you act in the future. You have to take what you’ve been given and lift yourself above it, even if you can never quite shake it off. Take your sister, Winter, for example…”

  She stopped. Justin’s eyes had filled with tears, and he seemed to be struggling to speak. “I didn’t want to be bad. I wanted to be good. I wanted to do good. How can someone who just wanted to do some good in the world go so wrong?”

  Autumn wished she could comfort him, but she’d been cautioned not to approach Justin and had been told that if she did so, the guards would cut off the interview without any further warning, and her future visits might be terminated completely. She couldn’t so much as touch the back of his hand.

  Instead, she gave in to the pain and pressed her fingertips into her neck muscles hard. “It happens more often than you’d think.”

  “I hate myself,” Justin announced, tears streaming down his pale cheeks.

  Whether he was playing her or not, Autumn’s heart broke a little. She forced her expression to stay professional, to show nothing of how she really felt, in case the guards responded. “In a way, it’s a good sign. Unhappiness with your current state of mind means you can start working to change it.”

  Justin tried to put his head down onto his hands. It didn’t quite work because of his handcuffed situation. His shoulders shook.

  “I’m so sorry,” he sobbed.

  “Justin, I will work with you. I don’t know how much we can accomplish, but I can try to help you find some kind of peace.”

  His head still down, he mumbled, “But not freedom.”

  She shook her head but realized he couldn’t see her. “That will be determined in time, but please remember that you can still find ways to lead a productive life.”

  “What does a productive life even mean for someone in prison?” Justin raised his head a little, another sneer warping his features. “Making license plates?”

  “It’s hard not to feel cynical now, I know. But you can still go to college in prison. And Dante wrote books in prison. So did Oscar Wilde.”

  Justin made a disgusted face.

  It was so funny that Autumn almost smiled. “You don’t have to write books or go to college, but you get my point. Life goes on. You can spend the rest of your life mentally and emotionally trapped by Douglas Kilroy’s horrific example, or you can feed your mind and expand beyond it.”

  Justin took a deep breath. “If all I ever do is learn how not to spend every night having nightmares, that’s something, at least.”

  Autumn exhaled. She was about to ask him about his nightmares, but one of the guards tapped at the plexiglass and pointed to his watch.

  “Time’s up already.” Autumn regretted that she didn’t have longer with Justin today. “It feels like I was only here a minute.”

  Justin cupped his hands in front of him. “Miss…” He cleared his throat. “Sorry…I can’t remember your name.”

  “Dr. Trent.”

  He nodded. “Dr. Trent, thank you. You’re a kind person. Compared to the people I’ve been spending time with lately, you’re an angel.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder if he would, angel or not, kill her if he had the opportunity. “Thank you for the compliment.”

  The guards came in and unlocked Jus
tin from the chair, taking him out of the room.

  For a moment, Justin was in arm’s reach, and Autumn almost reached out to touch him. Was he really as regretful as he seemed to be? Maybe her intuition would tell her if she made physical contact. But she changed her mind at the last moment. She didn’t want to get banned from seeing him.

  What mattered was the chance to help him.

  After the guards had led him out of the room, Autumn had to wait for someone to come to escort her out of the secure area to where she could pick up her belongings. Justin was deemed dangerous enough that she hadn’t been allowed to bring her purse, or much of anything else, with her.

  While she waited, she thought about her own sister, Sarah. Autumn hadn’t seen her half-sister since she was nine and Sarah was seven. Autumn had been tossed into the foster system while Sarah’s biological father had won full custody of her. He had promised to come back for Autumn too, but he never did.

  With her life more stable now that she had her new job at Shadley and Latham, she was starting to think about trying to track Sarah down.

  Soon.

  In the meantime, she would work with Justin. Maybe she could get through to him. Maybe help him.

  She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck.

  Even if it killed her.

  Justin curled up into a fetal position on his bunk and stuck his thumb firmly into his mouth. From the corner of his eye, he watched the guards walk away from his cell.

  That had been a blast.

  As far as he could tell, he’d made progress with the female psychologist today. She was one of those women who liked to try to use a sense of personal connection to encourage their patients to “open up.” It showed a pack-bonding mentality. Clearly, the woman thought of herself as projecting confidence and a strong individual personality. But she was just a cringing dog begging for love and attention.