“He keeps telling me to shut up and mind my own business. So I do. But the other night I come home and she’s in the kitchen scrubbing mud off the floor that my father tracked in from the site he’s working at. All he had to do was take off his boots on the porch, but no. That would be too much. He walks in, makes a mess, and now my mom’s on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor, coughing and spitting up. You know where he is? On the couch with a beer, watching the game on TV.”
“How did that make you feel? Specifically.”
“Angry.”
“Angry how?”
The camera captured Jason, his hands clenched into shaking fists, his chest rising and falling.
“I wanted to hurt him.”
“What did you want to do?”
“I wanted to punch him as hard as I could. Right in the nose. I wanted to hear the cartilage break, and I wanted to knock him onto the muddy floor. It would’ve been nice to wipe up the mud with his face. I would’ve really enjoyed that.”
“What else?”
“I wanted to take my mother and run away. Leave that son of a bitch on the floor and just take her away. She stays with him because she has to, and I throw up my hands because she ain’t never gonna change. But really, I’d love to take her away. Show her a better life.”
“Thank you, Jason. Thank you for sharing.”
Randall stopped the video and finished transcribing the interview on his computer so he could add it as part of the case study file. Thus far, Jason was looking to be their second success. If they could get him all the way to having no more violent fantasies about his father, that would be a true win and could stem a negative reaction to Jerry Osbourne’s regression. When Jason was first introduced, his kill fantasy had involved cutting out his father’s tongue so he couldn’t order his mother around anymore. He then wanted to remove his father’s eyes so he wouldn’t be able to look so disapprovingly at him whenever they were in the same room together. Once the eyes and tongue were gone, Jason had fantasized about cutting off his father’s hands so he couldn’t hit his mother anymore. Then he would sit next to his father and tell him all the ways he hated him until the old man bled to death.
He and Peter had worked hard, regurgitating the fantasy repeatedly, until, over time, little details began to change. The tongue was cut out, but the eyes remained. Hands were not cut off, but fingers were. Eventually, a knife wasn’t involved at all, and there was a gun instead. At one point, Jason talked about shooting both of his parents, which, as with Jerry, had been an unexpected turn. He’d never fantasized about killing his mother before, but as the murders became more distant and less personal, her weakness gave him the motivation to end her life as well. But that quickly passed, and the focus was back on only the father. One day the gun disappeared, and although the punishment became close and personal again—Jason physically beating his father up—the endgame was not death but pain. This was a significant turn. Now they worked to get Jason to the next phase—a disregard of anything violent and a desire to simply move on, accepting what was and leaving his father’s house altogether.
Randall got up from the desk and sat on the edge of the windowsill so he could look out over the quad that linked three other buildings with the Science Department. The morning sun was just breaking over the trees near the freshman dorms. He was alone, which was, most definitely, the plan. The evening before had been exhausting, starting with the phone call from Gina, who’d been hysterical, then calmed down and offered to call Amanda’s other friends to let them know.
Amanda had been an only child, and the lone living parent was her estranged mother on the West Coast. He had no way of getting in touch with her, so he’d called her aunt in Florida and her two cousins in Colorado and Mississippi. More tears, as well as promises that they would come and make things as easy for him as possible. They’d offered to help spread the news to the rest of their small family, and he’d agreed. Email addresses had been exchanged, and Randall had promised he’d send details about the funeral as soon as he could get his head around everything. It was all so overwhelming, a tidal wave of grief and responsibility crushing him into the surf. Amanda was dead, and now he had to bury her.
The grassy promenade that was usually filled with students was empty. He loved the energy on campus when school was in session. The youth, the expectation of success, the optimism. It was addictive. It would be another few weeks before the students returned from their holiday break. He wondered if, even with their energy, he could ever feel optimism or promise again. He couldn’t imagine ever making himself completely whole.
“Dr. Brock.”
Randall almost fell off the sill as he spun around. A man stood in the doorway—about his height, a bit younger, but too old to be a student. Messy hair hung just above his eyebrows, and dark stubble covered most of his face. His eyes seemed darker in the shadows from the hall. He was wearing a long black coat.
“You were at my house yesterday,” Randall said. “I recognize the coat.”
“Yes, I was.”
“And Amanda’s party. You were there. I saw you. But your hair was a little different.”
“We need to talk.”
The man walked into the office and crossed the room, easing himself into one of the two chairs that Randall and Peter used to conduct their sessions. A camcorder was set up on a tripod, but the power had been turned off. The man fell back against the chair and let his coat fall open as he crossed his legs, revealing an outfit that was simple enough: a pair of jeans and a white button-down dress shirt.
“I called out to you from my porch,” Randall said. He remained leaning against the window behind the desk.
“I heard you, but it wasn’t a good time. I shouldn’t have come then. Not with everything going on with Amanda. You’d just gotten home after you found out. That was my mistake.”
“How do you know that?” Randall asked. “How do you know about Amanda?”
The man stared at him for a moment. “Do I look familiar to you?”
“No, not really. I know you from the party. That’s it.”
“We’ve been in many of the same circles over the years, but I don’t think we’ve ever officially met. You can call me Sam.”
Randall was quiet.
“Of course, that’s not my real name. It’s important I remain anonymous for the time being, so I chose the one name that I knew would connect us. I chose your brother’s name.”
Randall felt light headed, his feet heavy as he crossed the hardwood floor.
“I know what you’re asking yourself,” Sam said, a thin smile creeping across his face. “Or at least what you should be asking yourself. If I know about your brother, what else could I possibly know?”
“What do you want?”
“I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
Sam stared up at Randall, his eyes fixed on his host. “You and little Sam used to play on your father’s farm. It wasn’t often your father gave you time to horse around. Chores on a farm are a serious thing, and you had responsibilities. Even as a young man, your help was crucial. But that day, you had time to yourself. You cherished that. But then there was always Sam wanting to be part of your world. He looked up to you, and yes, he could be annoying at times, but aren’t all younger brothers? You didn’t look at it that way, though. To you, he was just another chore, and watching him was another task on your list. So when you went into the woods that surrounded the dairy barn, he followed you, but that was your time to be alone. You didn’t have any more chores, so you ignored him. Too bad. It seems tragedy has a way of finding you, doesn’t it?”
Randall was stunned silent. He eased himself into the chair opposite his visitor.
“You were supposed to be Sam’s protector. He was your brother, not an item on a chore list. You were the one who was supposed to be looking out for him.”
“How do you know this?” Randall asked, his voice no more than a whimper.
&n
bsp; “You’re missing the real question,” Sam replied, leaning forward. “It’s, What else could I possibly know?”
Silence hung between the two men. Randall tried to hide his trembling hands by crossing his arms in front of his chest. A headache was coming on, quickly gaining strength. His vision was beginning to blur at the edges. He knew immediately that it was a migraine, stronger than the one that had threatened at Amanda’s ceremony. This one was going to be bad.
“You need to leave,” Randall said carefully, forming each word to ensure his voice wouldn’t crack and give away the fear that was mounting.
“But first I need to tell you something. I need to tell you the secret that brought me here.”
“What?”
Sam lowered his voice to a whisper. “Amanda was murdered, and I know who did it. I saw the whole thing.”
Randall shot out of his chair and stormed across the room, the shroud of guilt and remorse falling to his feet. “That’s nonsense!” he cried, suddenly full of energy. “My wife died in a car accident.”
“No. She was murdered.”
The possibility seemed ridiculous. Randall closed his eyes for a moment as his headache intensified. “Okay, then tell me who did it. You said you were there. You saw it. Tell me, and we’ll go to the police.”
“That’s not how this is going to work.”
“Did you do it? Did you kill my wife?”
“No.”
“Then if she was murdered, tell me who’s responsible.”
“In time. Not yet.”
“I’m calling the police.”
Randall fumbled for the phone on the desk. He picked up the receiver and suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, spinning him around so he was face to face with this strange man.
“No police,” Sam said. “This is between you and me. I can help you, but if you involve the police, you’ll be implicating yourself and be forced to share secrets you’re not yet ready to share. You know I’m right. I’ll help you find the truth about Amanda. And I’ll help you see your own truths too.” He took Randall’s hand and placed an object in it.
“What is this?”
“It’s Amanda’s phone. You’ll find her first truth there. But no police.”
“How can you have her phone?”
“We all wear masks,” Sam said, ignoring Randall’s question. “Some wear them better than others, but we all wear them. Life is nothing but a ruse. You never really know someone. Not in the true sense of the word. You didn’t know Amanda, and she didn’t know you. But I can help you see what you need to see.”
“In exchange for what?”
Sam let go of his shoulder and backed away toward the door.
“In exchange for what?”
Sam pulled the hood up over his head, and Randall watched as he ducked back into the hall. He stopped at the threshold. “I know more than you can imagine. No police. I know everything.”
The man disappeared. Randall hung up the phone and collapsed against the wall, sinking to the floor as his migraine slowly spread across his skull, crushing him from the inside out. He cradled Amanda’s phone in his hand, confused and scared, rubbing its smooth surface with his thumb over and over until the pain swallowed him whole.
10
Peter paced the length of the office. “So do we call the police?”
“What am I supposed to tell them?” Randall asked. “A man came to visit me and told me Amanda’s accident was actually cover for her murder? I don’t know who he is. I don’t know where he came from. I’ve never seen him before. Not until the award ceremony. I’m sure of it. And he told me not to involve the police.”
“Of course he did. He probably wants to extort you or blackmail you or something. He knows about your brother, which means he knows more than he should. And it probably means he knows Amanda’s accident just made you a very wealthy man. It makes sense.”
Randall was seated in the same wingback chair he’d been in earlier with Sam. “Look, I’m obviously going to let the police know. I just don’t know what to tell them yet. What if they start asking too many questions? What if they track this Sam guy down and he starts talking about things we don’t want to talk about?”
“Then we deal with it.”
Randall shook his head. “No. I can’t. I think it makes more sense to take a few days and try and figure out who this guy is and what he wants. That’ll give us a better idea of which direction to take.”
“How did he know about your brother?”
“No idea.”
“Does he know about William?”
Just hearing the name sent a bolt of lightning down his spine. Randall stood and faced his friend. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I just need a few days.”
“Amanda will be buried in a few days.” Peter stopped pacing and perched himself on his desk. “If she really was murdered, then there could be evidence that needs to be collected from her body. We need to tell the police now.”
Randall was quiet, thinking.
“I’m also wondering,” Peter murmured, “if this isn’t . . . something else.”
“It’s not,” Randall said. He met Peter’s eyes. “It’s not.”
“Your wife just died. You’re overwhelmed with grief . . .”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Then you need to tell the police.”
“I will. I’ll make it as broad as I can so they don’t ask more than they have to. But I’ll tell them.”
Randall sipped his tea and glanced at his reflection in a mirror hanging across the room. His migraine had dissipated after he’d called Peter in a panic, but his mind was still cloudy. When he’d tried to describe what Sam looked like, he couldn’t quite conjure up enough detail. It was all so frustrating.
Peter walked behind his desk and reached into a small refrigerator he kept hidden. He took out a soda, peeled the tab. The carbonated hiss was loud in the quiet office. “You don’t need to be here for a few days. We have time. I don’t want you thinking about Stephen Sullivan or Jason Harris or Jerry, got it?”
“How can I not think about them? Our study depends on them.”
Peter’s eyes began to well, and he wiped them with his hand. “I’m not worried about the case study. I’m worried about you. Amanda’s dead, Randall. I can’t wrap my head around that, and I can’t imagine what you must be going through. I get that you want to hide here and use the study to take your mind off of what happened. I’d probably do the same thing. But the case study shouldn’t be your focus right now. You need to grieve. You need to come to terms with everything.”
“I know.”
“Tell the police about this Sam guy.”
Randall nodded and looked at the mirror again. He stuffed his hand in his pocket and felt the smooth edges of Amanda’s phone, knowing he should tell Peter about it but quickly deciding to keep it to himself for now. Showing him would only lead to more questions and more pressure to talk to the authorities. “I’ll call the woman from the state police tomorrow. Right now I just want to go home. It’s late and I’m tired.” He studied his reflection and saw a man who was drained, his heart shattered. The stranger’s words echoed in his mind.
Amanda was murdered, and I know who did it. I saw the whole thing.
I can help you.
11
Susan and Tommy followed Dr. Nestor down a long corridor that connected the lobby of the medical examiner’s office to the autopsy rooms. Inside, there were two stainless steel tables set up in the center, with a sink and supply closet on one end and a six-body mortuary refrigerator next to a desk on the other. The aroma of pine air freshener wafted through the space, but Susan could still smell the unmistakable scent of salt and sugar combined with the bitterness of rusted metal that always made her nose crinkle. It was the smell of blood.
Amanda Brock’s body was positioned on the table closest to the refrigerator. She’d been placed on her stomach, her face poking through an attachment on the end of the table as
if she were about to get a massage. A blue sheet covered her up to the shoulders. Her hair had been parted and pinned back with metal clips.
Dr. Nestor made her way over to the small desk and pulled a file from on top of it. She motioned for Susan and Tommy to join her at the body, turning on the spotlight over the table.
“So like I said last night on the phone, there’s a chance this neck injury could be from the accident itself, but it’s just too perfect. I find it unlikely to be anything but premeditated.” She put on gloves and pointed to a heavily bruised area at the base of Amanda’s skull. “You can see that the bruising here is an almost-perfect circle. Pretty difficult to do that randomly.”
Susan looked at the bruise. “So it was a foreign object.”
“I’d say so. Something like a bat or a pipe. Something that had weight at its edge and was rounded. A golf club or something thin like that would be unlikely. It would have to be thicker.”
“How about a rock or a boot to the back of the neck?” Tommy asked.
“Doubtful.” Nestor opened the file she’d taken from the desk. She hung a set of x-rays up on a light board next to the instruments table. “We took these after I discovered the bruising. The top eight bones in the spinal column make up the cervical vertebrae. You can see here that her C3 and C4 have actually been broken, and upon autopsy we were able to determine that the blow was so fierce that the part of the spinal cord these vertebrae protect was actually cut. My report calls this the main cause of death. Her spinal cord was torn, which led to a sudden loss of nerve supply to the body. Heart and blood vessels began to shut down, her blood pressure dropped rapidly, and she died. Based on what we’re seeing here, I’d conclude death was fairly instantaneous.”
Nestor snatched the photos from the light board and put them back in the file.
“Normally, to get this kind of damage, you’d need to have a great deal of force behind it. Close-contact trauma, like a blow with a rock or hitting her with the butt of a gun, wouldn’t build up the force needed. It’s possible stomping on her neck could produce an injury similar to this, but in that case, I don’t think the bruising would’ve been so precise. I’d say bat, pipe, fire poker, if it was thick enough. Maybe even a heavy branch from a tree. Something someone needed to swing to get the right energy behind it. Does that make sense?”
I Know Everything Page 6