Peter stood up from his seat and walked around to the front of his desk. “We are making progress overall, sir. With everyone in the study. Jerry, as you know, is patient number three. He’s highly intelligent. He’s a loner. No friends. No family. His father died when he was eighteen, and his mother two years prior to that, which is the same family dynamic as the other two patients in the study. When I was first introduced to him, I saw clear signs of psychopathic tendencies that were on the verge of acting out. His fantasy about killing the records girl involved rape and torture. He talked about dismembering her, beating her, choking her right up to the point of death, then letting her live so he could do it again. There was no remorse or reflection. Just anger and the need to control.”
The old man glanced at Randall, who remained silent. “He’s sick. And what I saw before was a man who I thought was getting better. Now he’s back to burning his fantasy girl alive again. I can’t go to the board with this.”
“What you just saw was my twenty-first session with Jerry,” Peter said. “That means twenty times previously he’s told me he wanted to kill the records girl and then explained how he was going to do it. Without my prompting or leading, Jerry began to alter the details of his fantasy, and what was once a personal and violent act—the act of him raping her and placing his own hands around her neck, feeling her skin on his, squeezing the very breath out of her—has become a distant fantasy, as if he’s watching a movie instead of starring in it. He’s removed the personalization. Now he ties her up and backs away. He hardly touches her. He dumps the gasoline over her body. He lights a match and throws it. He’s no longer directly responsible for her death. It’s the fire and the propellant that kill her, not him.”
“But the last two sessions before this one, he’d decided not to kill her at all.” Lienhart folded his hands across his chest. “You came to me with the theory of curing psychopathic behavior by forcing subjects to talk through their fantasies. You said that if they talked about them in as much detail as possible, they would subdue the need to actually act out. And I admit at first it seemed to work. But if the subject is going to revert back to the violence, then it’s all a waste of time.”
“The fantasy will continue to abate. This is just a hiccup. He’ll continue to distance himself from the intimate act of murder until there is no more fantasy. One day I’ll ask him about the records girl at the dentist’s office, and he’ll simply change the subject. There will no longer even be a kill fantasy.”
“And what if he does act on these stories?” Lienhart asked. “What if this experiment is more hope than fact? For all we know, we could be planting ideas that make it easier for him to go out into the world and kill someone.”
Peter shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s not how this works. I’m not planting any seeds to change the fantasy. I’m simply asking the patient to tell me, in detail, how they want to kill their victim. The patient naturally changes their own story. There’s no leading. It’s completely organic. That’s why we will have setbacks every now and again. Jerry is treating himself. Each patient will take their own path.”
Dr. Lienhart looked back and forth between the two men, unconvinced. “Tell me about the others. Where are we with them?”
“Patient number one, Stephen Sullivan, has no fantasy anymore. He balks at the slightest hint of hurting his ex-girlfriend, and we’re at the point where Stephen might leave us altogether. He won’t even talk about his ex anymore. In his mind, he’s moved on. Patient number two, Jason Harris, has no kill fantasy anymore but still shows anger around the subject of his father. We’re working through that.”
“So of the three patients or subjects or whatever you want to call them, two are still showing violent signs, and one of those two just regressed. That’s hardly a success worthy of a McKeen Cattell Fellow. You’ll have to do better.”
Peter nodded. “I understand.”
Randall raised his hand. “Sir, if I could just interject for a moment. I’ve been with Dr. Reems from the beginning of this study. I’m telling you, he’s onto something. This could change the way we treat this kind of psychosis. This could change everything. The scientific community will stand up and take notice. I guarantee it.”
Dr. Lienhart struggled to get out of the chair. He straightened his jacket, pulling on the bottom hem. “I think you very well may be onto something here,” he said. “But I can’t go to the board with this as it is today. You’ll have to continue with the funding you’ve already been given. That’s the best I can do at this point.”
Peter’s shoulders slumped a bit. “I understand.”
“Get me a full report with session notes on my desk when we get back from holiday break, along with your detailed plans regarding the next few phases of this treatment. We’ll give it until the end of the second semester. If I see real progress . . . I mean real progress, gentlemen . . . we can talk about a five-year grant. But if I see more of what I saw today, we might have to move on. I know you don’t want to hear that, but you’re not the only ones around here working to further their cause.”
Peter shook Lienhart’s bony hand. “The entire case study package will be waiting when you get back.”
The old man opened the office door and nodded toward Randall. “Plans for the holiday, Dr. Brock?”
“Just work,” Randall said.
“No family visits or Christmas celebrations?”
“No, sir. Just my wife and I this year. Nice and quiet. Nothing planned other than that case study package you’ll need.”
Lienhart stopped halfway out the door, turning to look at the two men one last time. “I know you’ve been working hard on this, and I know this could be nothing more than a minor setback in the grand scheme of things. But if we’re going to offer a cure for violent psychosis, we have to be one hundred percent right. These people are too dangerous. I want you to remember that. A life you think you’ve saved could end up taking many more lives if you’re wrong. This has to be perfect.”
Peter followed the old man and gently shut the door behind him. He leaned his head against it and closed his eyes. “That went about as expected.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have shown him the video,” Randall said. “We could’ve said Jerry never showed up for the appointment and we had to reschedule.”
“We can’t do that. We can’t start hiding things or manipulating outcomes in order to get funding. That’s not how this works.”
“I know how it works, but I also knew this would happen. We’ve come so far. I knew a setback like that would make Lienhart nervous. He hasn’t liked this study from the start.”
Peter pushed himself off the door and looked at Randall. “What happened?” he asked. “How could we go from making such incredible progress to Jerry reverting back to violence again? What made him do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, think.”
The frustration in his friend’s voice was apparent.
“I don’t know,” Randall repeated. “Like you said, this isn’t a linear thing. We got thrown a curveball.”
“We have everything riding on this study,” Peter said. He walked back over to his desk and flopped down in the chair. “You realize we could change the way homicidal tendencies are recognized and treated, right? We could alter how law enforcement acts in the face of these potentially violent people. We could change how the prison system views violence. What happened to your brother would never have to happen again. We could change that.”
“This has nothing to do with Sam,” Randall said.
“I know. I’m just saying.” Peter began snatching papers from the top of his desk and putting them in binders. “You better get a move on if you’re going to make Amanda’s ceremony. Her husband can’t be late for her big night.”
“I’ll see you there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Randall took the stack of papers that was closest to him and walked them over to the groups of binders on Pete
r’s desk. He watched his friend clean, a look of defeat written on his face. They were working so hard.
“We’re close,” he said. “Don’t give up. We’ll get there. We just need to keep pushing forward. We can do this. Setbacks and all.”
Peter leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and folding his hands together. “You better be right,” he said, his eyes locked on Randall’s. “Both of our lives depend on it.”
3
Randall scanned the expansive ballroom of the Bear Mountain Inn and surveyed the clusters of people filling the space. They were talking in their own tight circles, smiling and laughing, every piece of them a lesson in perfection. Tuxedos were tailored with the precision only money could buy. Gowns glistened in the overhead lighting. Dazzling jewelry dangled from every woman’s wrist and ear while diamonds hung from many of their necks. He looked down at himself and placed his hands on a belly that could have been firmer if he’d hit the gym with more dedication. His pale Irish skin almost matched his graying hair. His shoes were polished, and his tuxedo fit as it should have, but he still couldn’t help feeling a sense of irrelevance. The people who had come to the inn to celebrate his wife were heirs to generational money. This was the kind of money that involved trusts for children who had yet to be conceived. This money owned estates that would be passed down for the next millennia and required teams of lawyers, accountants, managers, and financial advisors to be at their beck and call. This money sat on boards of Fortune 500 companies, ran multinational conglomerates, influenced elections, and had just about anyone you could think of in its back pocket. These people who had come were the real players. They were the ones who made the world turn, and Randall, having been raised in a working-class family by a farmer and a housewife, felt insignificant around them.
He and Amanda had been married for two years now. They’d met at a bar, of all places. She’d been with a group of donors after a fundraising gala, and he’d been alone. Their paths had crossed at a jukebox under the soulful voice of a crooning Ray Charles, and within minutes of shaking hands and making small talk, she’d said she knew beyond a reasonable doubt that they were soul mates. He couldn’t agree more. Her sense of humor played so effortlessly against his seriousness. His concern balanced her carefree nature. She dragged him out of the house on days when he wanted to stay in, and he introduced her to introspection on nights she wanted to dine with friends. They were the perfect yin and yang, meant to be together, and only just now lucky enough to get that chance.
Amanda’s father, Clifford Sturges, had been a mergers-and-acquisitions superstar on Wall Street during the 1980s and ’90s, raking in tens of millions of dollars and growing all of it into a family fortune that would last generations. Clifford had been either the lead banker or part of the lead team for some of the biggest mergers in history. There was the Capital Cities–ABC merger of 1986, the Sony-Columbia merger of 1989, the Viacom-Paramount merger of 1994, and the MCI-WorldCom merger of 1999. But Clifford couldn’t have it all. He died of a massive heart attack in the spring of 2001, and Amanda, already active with the philanthropic community on Manhattan, took half of her father’s fortune and started one of the largest nonprofit groups in the country. The other half went back to her since she’d been his only daughter, and her mother, who lived on the West Coast, had been out of the picture for over thirty years. Everything she and Randall owned had been paid for by Amanda’s inheritance. But what they shared in their relationship was priceless.
He buried himself in a corner, grabbing at the collar of his dress shirt, which was both too tight and too starched. A warm glass of red wine occupied his other hand. He checked his watch. A few more hours to go before he could get back to the office, which weighed heavily on his mind. He had so much still to do, and the holiday break was hardly enough time. He’d see Amanda receive her award and make her speech, and then he’d head to the campus.
Peter was making his way across the room, drink in hand, tuxedo looking just right on his toned frame. They’d met at NYU as freshman roommates and had been like family ever since. Even though Peter was the same forty-five years of age as Randall was, he looked decades younger. His hair was still full and brown. His blue eyes always turned ladies’ heads, and his smile made them smile. He’d married out of college and was still with the same woman after twenty years, and although he’d strayed a few times over the course of two decades, their marriage was a happy one. Randall and Peter had spent too many summers together, too many internships competing for a coveted spot on a psych staff, and they knew too many of each other’s secrets. It was a friendship that was deeper than any he’d ever experienced, even with Amanda. Peter Reems was his rock.
“Dr. Reems,” Randall said, raising his glass.
Peter acknowledged his friend by raising his glass in return. “Dr. Brock.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it.”
“I know, but the way I left you today. I wasn’t sure if you’d be buried at the office after what happened.”
“Nope. Not tonight. This is more important.”
“Thanks.” Randall took a sip of his wine. “I’m sorry for what happened with Lienhart.”
“Don’t apologize,” Peter replied. “In fact, I’m the one who should be apologizing for getting all depressed and panicky after the old man left. It wasn’t your fault we had a setback. That’s what case studies are all about. This is a work in progress, and we have no idea how each subject is going to respond. I know that, and I should’ve known that earlier. That’s on me. Jerry threw us a curveball today, but this entire thing is experimental, so what were we expecting? Things like today are going to happen. I was wrong with my reaction. It was unprofessional.”
“We’ll get it to work,” Randall said. “The treatment. The case study. The cure. All of it. I know we will. We have to.”
“Hey, Randall!”
Randall looked up to find Charles Label and two other men he didn’t know working their way toward him and Peter. Charles was one of the regional managers of Amanda’s organization, Glass Hearts, and ran four homeless shelters in Yonkers. He was short and thin and had a beard that took over most of his long face.
“Hi, Charles. It’s good to see you again. How’re things?”
“Everything’s fantastic. The kids are getting used to the school, so that’s a plus. Everybody is settling down in the new house. We’re great.”
“Is Mary here?”
“No, she’s overseas at the moment. She sends her best, though.”
Randall turned toward Peter. “You know Dr. Reems, right?”
“Of course,” Charles replied as the two men shook hands. He pointed to the men on either side of him. “I’d like you both to meet Alexander Dellium and Felix Hutchinson. Their foundations are two of our most generous donors. Alex runs a hedge fund in the city, and Felix is in from San Francisco. He’s the CEO of a cloud tech service firm out there called Skiez.”
Randall took his time smiling and shaking each man’s hand firmly, trying to properly represent the husband of the woman who was being honored. Firm handshakes. Big smiles. All for Amanda.
With his thick blond hair pushed back from his face, Alex looked like he’d just stepped off a crew team. He towered over Randall at what must have been six feet three.
Felix was just the opposite. He was shorter, almost on par with Charles, with a gut he tried, unsuccessfully, to hide under his cummerbund.
“San Francisco,” Randall said as he shook Felix’s hand. “That’s quite a trip.”
“Your wife is quite a lady,” Felix replied. “The work she does for those in need is something I’m constantly in awe of. I wish I had her drive to see some righteousness in this world. Alas, all I can offer is money, so that’s what I do. I know she’ll put it to the best use possible. She always does.”
Charles snagged a glass of champagne as a waiter walked by. “Randall and Dr. Reems here are working on a big project up
at Quarim University. Psychiatry Department.”
“Is that right?” Alex said. “I’ve always been fascinated by those who can shape minds. Good for you.”
“Do you teach?” Felix asked.
Randall shook his head. “Peter does. Right now I’m assisting him on a research project, and since he has classes, I’m running most of the documentation and data entry for our study, so there’s not much time for anything else.”
“Tell us about your research,” Charles said. “What are you working on?”
“It’s clinical work, mostly,” Randall replied. “We’re studying the behavioral aspects of the mind and how it can play out in the physical world.”
Peter nodded and stepped in, always the consummate salesman when it came to their study. “Randall and I are on the cusp of developing a new method of treating people who have homicidal tendencies. We’re working to remove that tendency and thus make them regular members of society again. Just like you and me.”
“You’re removing their homicidal tendencies?”
“That’s right.”
“Like you would remove a cancerous tumor?”
“That’s a great analogy,” Peter said, smiling. “That’s exactly what we’re doing, minus the surgery. This is all done with the mind. Through therapy.”
Randall looked around while Peter talked up the project. Peter was a natural salesman. He knew how to give a potential donor or subject or professor or researcher just enough to pique their interest, but not enough to disclose anything of importance. He danced that line as if he were on a high wire. Something Randall could never do.
On the opposite side of the room, a man was leaning against one of the oak pillars that separated the dining area from the bar. The man wasn’t moving or smiling or interacting with any of the other guests, and when Randall noticed him and their eyes locked, the man didn’t look away. A slight rumble of pain rolled in the back of Randall’s head. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that a migraine wasn’t coming on. Not tonight.
I Know Everything Page 2