Phobia

by C. A. Shives

  Herne doubted that paternal influence was the sole cause of Amanda’s selfish instinct. But he said nothing.

  Pamela downed the rest of her drink and stood, raising an eyebrow at the two men. Herne hesitated before shaking his head. She shrugged and poured more brandy into her glass from the decanter on the marble bar.

  “Is her father still alive?” Tucker asked.

  Pamela grimaced. “I hope not. That bastard deserves to die a slow, horrible death. But I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him since the night he went out for cigarettes and never returned. So cliché, isn’t it? But that was Frank. A walking, talking cliché.” She settled back into the chaise lounge, cupping her snifter in her hands. Only the tremble of her lips betrayed her emotions.

  Herne saw Pamela’s past in his mind. A little rich girl with too many privileges, too much time on her hands. She fell in love with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. A boy who liked NASCAR and drinking beer and maybe even hunting deer. Her family wouldn’t have approved, but she married him anyway. And then, as if to prove her family right, the boy ran away, leaving a wife and daughter behind.

  A wife that buried her sorrows in booze.

  “How did Amanda die?” Pamela asked.

  Tucker hesitated. “There were snakes in her bedroom,” he said. “We think she died from the snakebites, but we aren’t completely certain yet.”

  “Snakes?” Pamela’s eyes opened wide. “Real snakes?”

  Tucker nodded.

  “Christ,” Pamela said, exhaling a plume of gray smoke. “Amanda’s had a fear of snakes since she was a little girl. We couldn’t even take her on a hike in the woods. Not that I did a lot of hiking. That was more her father’s hobby.”

  “Most people are afraid of snakes,” Tucker said.

  “Amanda’s fear was irrational,” Pamela said. “She couldn’t be in the same room with a snake, even if it was caged. We took her to a circus show when she was a child. A man holding a boa constrictor came on stage and Amanda started screaming. She just screamed and screamed and screamed until we left the building. Her fear was extreme.”

  Herne leaned forward. “Who knew about Amanda’s fear?”

  Pamela shrugged. “Everyone, I guess. Our family knows it, of course, and our close friends. It’s one of those things you talk about.”

  “Did she have a reason for her fear?” Herne asked.

  “Her father’s fault, of course. He took her on a camping trip when she was only six. In the middle of the night, a snake crawled into her sleeping bag. She woke up to find it wrapped around her neck.” Pamela snubbed her cigarette in the ashtray. “She’s been scared of them ever since. Not that you could blame her.”

  “Did she ever seek help for this fear?”

  “She probably talked to her therapist about it.”

  “She saw a therapist about snakes?” Tucker asked.

  Pamela shook her head. “No, she was already seeing the therapist about other things. She claims she had issues with her childhood. I guess she thought I wasn’t much of a mother.” Pamela tossed her short blond hair carelessly, but her laugh was bitter, and the acrid scent of her brandy wafted across to the men on the sofa. “She had a lousy father, and I suppose I was a lousy mother, too. So she talked to the therapist about her parents’ failures, but I’m pretty sure he was helping with her fear of snakes, too.”

  “Who was the therapist?” Tucker asked.

  “Peter Lochhead,” Pamela replied. “He’s the only psychologist in town. I never did understand why a therapist would want to work in Hurricane. It certainly seems like he’d get more business in Carlisle or even Philadelphia. But then again, I guess we all like to go where we can feel important.”

  Herne glanced at the antique furniture that decorated the ornate house—a house almost three times the size of the average home in Hurricane. Yes, he thought, we all like to feel important.

  Herne prodded the spaghetti with his fork, twisting the long strands of pasta around the tines before lifting it to his mouth. He swallowed and reached for his glass, which contained a 2001 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. The velvety wine mingled with the taste of the sweet tomato sauce.

  Saturday night dinner at Tucker’s house was his ritual. After Herne sold his home in Philadelphia and moved to Hurricane, his friend had extended an invitation for a meal. The following week, he joined them again. Now, every Saturday, he sat at the familiar oak table and inhaled the rich scent of Elizabeth’s simmering sauce and buttery garlic bread.

  It was a welcome break from the solitude of his small home. The sale of his house in the city had left him with enough cash for years if he lived frugally. Without a job or family, Herne had few reasons and little desire to leave the solitude of his property. But although the surrounding trees and bordering stream provided him with privacy, he still couldn’t find the peace he sought.

  He created a small shooting range in his backyard, and most days he spent a few hours at target practice with his Ruger .45 ACP, the bitter scent of gunpowder overpowering the fragrance of his elderly neighbor’s lilacs. In the evenings, after dusk had taken away his daylight, he sat in his small kitchen and worked on a book of crossword puzzles. Unlike his life, crossword puzzles were orderly and neat. He sought solace as he printed letters of words in the small, square boxes. Sometimes he thought about Maggie and he thought about death. Mostly he tried not to think at all.

  And every Saturday he returned for dinner in Tucker’s home. Their home was filled with houseplants and fresh flowers, with Elizabeth’s handmade pottery as an accent rather than a centerpiece. The organic décor created an atmosphere of warmth that helped Herne learn to laugh again as they told stories about slow-witted crooks and silly drunks.

  But tonight a grim silence hung over Tucker’s oak table. It reminded Herne of that first Saturday dinner in their kitchen, when thoughts of Maggie’s death were so fresh and raw that laughter had been impossible. He already felt the familiar darkness shrouding his heart.

  “I know you boys have something on your minds tonight. Care to share?” Elizabeth lifted her wineglass, smiling at Herne and her husband. A strand of her dark hair caught on her lips as she finished the drink in her glass, and she pulled it from her mouth with a slender finger. Her tone was light, but the small lines around her eyes did not crease when she smiled, and Herne knew her cheerfulness was forced.

  Herne looked down at the swirl of brown and gray that streaked across his salad bowl. Elizabeth’s art had become darker and more emotional after her miscarriage two years ago. Devastated by the event, the Tuckers had sought answers from a doctor, only to discover they would never be able to have children. So Elizabeth stopped using bright red and green and purple clays, and instead the random patterns of her art became dark murky clouds that seemed not random at all. Herne wondered if he was the only one who could tell at a glance whether a piece of her pottery had been made before or after she lost the baby.

  He stared at the salad bowl until the swirls became blurs of darkness, ignoring the silence that stretched across the table.

  “I guess you heard about Amanda Todd’s murder,” Tucker said.

  “It’s been on all the news today,” Elizabeth replied. “The mayor’s been making statements.”

  Tucker snorted, oblivious to the bit of French dressing that clung to his sharp chin. “That bastard. He acts like he cares about Amanda. He doesn’t. He got her a job with that law firm in Carlisle. He parades her around like his golden child. But he never gave a damn about her. Mayor Robert Harvey cares about nothing except the next fucking election.”

  “The mayor barely earns more than a pittance for the job,” Herne said.

  “It’s not about the money for Harvey,” Tucker said. “It’s the power. That fat son of bitch just likes to make sure he’s in control.”

  “Rex has been receiving heat from the mayor,” Elizabeth explained.

  “I know.” Herne reached again for the wine bottle. During his first meals i
n Tucker’s kitchen, after he moved to Hurricane, a glass of whiskey always found its resting place in Herne’s hand. His friends said nothing when he filled his glass with booze, but he saw the worried glances they exchanged.

  So he fought the demons. And eventually, one evening, Herne sat at the table sober.

  Now, months later, Herne allowed himself to sample the occasional glass of wine. But the hard stuff—the Jack Daniels and the Southern Comfort—was out of his life. Gone.

  Gone, but not forgotten.

  He usually sipped a single glass of wine throughout the entire Saturday meal, but now he poured his third glass. Guilt and panic stabbed his heart, but he pushed it aside. “So what’s the TV news reporting about it?” he asked.

  “They said Amanda was tied up, sexually assaulted, and covered in poisonous cobras,” Elizabeth said.

  Tucker snorted before burying his fork in his spaghetti.

  “Almost right,” Herne said. “So far there’s no evidence of sexual assault. And the snakes were rattlers, not cobras.”

  “Interesting,” Elizabeth said. “Why snakes?”

  “The victim was severely afraid of snakes.”

  Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Ophidiophobia. Not uncommon, actually. Most people fear snakes. In fact, most animals are frightened of snakes. Take a puppy that has experienced nothing but its mother’s womb and the comfort of a soft pillow, lock it in a room with a snake, and the puppy will instinctively exhibit fear. People have the same reaction, with varying degrees of intensity, of course.”

  “Do you have any patients with phobias?” Herne asked. Elizabeth worked part-time as a child psychologist with the local health department.

  “Mostly I see kids who are scared of the dark. That’s probably the most common childhood fear.”

  “All kinds of monsters hide in the dark,” Herne said.

  “It’s not the boogeyman that scares these kids. It’s the unknown. The thought that anything can be lurking in the shadows, whatever their worst fear might be. Monsters, yes. But also villains. Sexual predators. Abusive parents. Kids these days have a lot to fear.”

  We all have a lot to fear, Herne thought. For a brief moment his mind flashed with images of smoke and fire, and he felt his chest tighten. He gripped his fork tightly, trying to control the tremble of his fingers, and forced his attention back to Elizabeth. “How do you treat these kids?” Herne asked.

  She turned to address Tucker.

  “Do you remember Jeremy?”

  Tucker nodded. “He was so frightened of the dark that you had to keep the lights on in his room.”

  “It was back when I was a student at University of Maryland,” Elizabeth explained to Herne. “I was doing an internship with the hospital in the pediatric psych ward. Jeremy was an extreme case. He even refused to step into shadows.”

  “Did you cure him?”

  “You can’t ever really cure someone of such a serious phobia. The best you can hope is to give them the tools to cope. We tried everything: psychoanalysis, medication, immersion therapy. Nothing worked. When I left, Jeremy was still hiding in the light. Fear is a powerful emotion. If Amanda Todd had a strong phobia of snakes, I imagine her last moments were filled with unimaginable horror.”

  No, Herne thought, not unimaginable horror. He found it simple to imagine the terror in her blood, the taste of her frightened tears, the agonizing pain of her death. The metallic taste of her fear coated his emotions. It was the killer’s mind that eluded him.

  “What kind of person is driven to kill this way?” Herne asked Elizabeth. “What does his crime tell you about his mental state?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not a criminal psychologist, Art. I work with kids. I don’t have any experience with murderers.”

  “You must have studied the criminal mind in school. Didn’t you work at the state prison, too?”

  “Briefly. Less than a year. It wasn’t for me. I found it depressing.”

  “Because the criminals had committed such horrible crimes?”

  She shook her head. “Because they didn’t want help. Most of them, unfortunately, enjoyed the violence. They relished their crimes. They didn’t want to be healed. They wanted to justify their actions.”

  “You must have some opinion about our killer.”

  “I suspect he found pleasure in her torment. The method of her murder obviously required meticulous planning.” Elizabeth shuddered. “What type of person kills someone in a way that brings alive their worst fear?”

  Someone who feeds off the fear of others, Herne thought. Someone who gets excited by death.

  He gripped his fork again and looked down at his plate, shielding his face from Tucker and Elizabeth. Amanda Todd’s death had put a thump of excitement in his heart—her homicide pulled him like the trill of a snake charmer’s flute—and he knew his friends wouldn’t understand the gleam in his eyes. He could never explain to them that hunting a murderer was the only way he knew to overcome his own nightmares.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The dawn sun peeked over the horizon, and his tremors subsided. He splashed cold water on his face and wiped a few stray droplets from the faucet until the metal gleamed.

  He chose his clothing carefully. He wore nothing outlandish. Nothing unusual. Nothing particularly trendy or stylish. Instead, he dressed to hide. To be nondescript. Almost invisible. The weekend was over, and he had research to do this morning. He needed to blend with the crowd.

  The meaty scent of sizzling Canadian bacon filled the kitchen as he prepared breakfast and fantasized about his day. It would be full of secrets. Other people’s secrets. He’d be privy to their innermost thoughts, their deepest desires, their worst fears. Funny how folks build walls around themselves, hiding their true essence from family and friends, he thought. Yet they have no qualms about sharing their darkest selves with a stranger.

  Now that night had ended and the comforting morning sun splashed through his windows, excitement surged through his veins. His journey had begun. His healing journey.

  Her plain face was almost hidden by the curly brown hair that fell across her cheek, nearly concealing the twitch of her eye. She pressed a thin finger against her brow, as if trying to stop the tremor, and continued to speak.

  “According to statistics, I have a one in four chance of being the victim of a violent crime. That’s a likelihood of twenty-five percent. If someone told you that you had a twenty-five percent chance of being hit by a bus today, would you go outside?”

  He’d heard these statistics from her in the past, and he wondered if Bethany Barker spent all of her spare time researching crime reports. But Peter Lochhead was a trained psychologist with a doctorate degree from the University of Maryland, so he simply nodded. He noticed a napkin, wrinkled and stained with the remains of his lunch, on the floor. Damn, he thought. It must have fallen off the desk.

  He tried to listen to Bethany, but found his eyes inexplicably drawn to the napkin. Boredom had led him to find another amusement, even if it was a crumpled piece of trash. He forced himself to hear her words.

  “I don’t know anyone who’s been the victim of a crime. None of my friends and family members have ever been raped, mugged, or attacked. That makes it all the more likely that I am the one who will be the victim. I mean, the odds are against me. It’s very possible I’ll be raped someday.”

  Lochhead knew that pointing out her faulty logic was an exercise in futility. Instead, he turned a page on his yellow legal pad and started a grocery list.

  Bethany Barker reminded him of a girl he knew in college, a mousy little bookworm with few friends and no boyfriends. He’d watched the girl around campus for a while, noticing that she didn’t talk or socialize or giggle with the other students. Although he’d always been lucky in love, something had drawn him to that thin, shy girl. So he asked her on a date. He took her to a sushi restaurant for lunch, where they both drank too much beer. Later, back in his dorm room, they polished off a bottle of wine. Both of them
had been drunk. Very drunk. Maybe she’d said “no” and maybe she hadn’t. He couldn’t really remember. But he knew she never spoke to him again, not even when they had a Sociology class together the next semester.

  Bethany reminded him of that girl. And listening to her talk about rape made him feel a little bit guilty and a little bit excited. Rather than deal with his own emotions, Lochhead chose to ignore Bethany as much as possible. As a therapist, he was aware that his behavior was classic avoidance. But he tried not to face that fact, either. Physician, he thought wryly, heal thyself.

  Bethany continued to speak, unaware that her psychologist was wrapped up in his own mental therapy. “I know that, statistically, the odds are greatest I’ll be attacked by someone I know. A boyfriend or a friend. But that doesn’t worry me. I don’t socialize with that type of person. No, it’s the stranger that worries me. The guy hiding in my bushes or the one waiting in my house when I get home from work. He’s the one who’s likely to be horrible. He’ll tie me up and do unimaginable things to me.”

  Lochhead realized that Bethany was waiting for a response. “What would make you feel safe?” he asked. It was the same question he always asked during her sessions. Standard and boring.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I need to do everything possible to protect myself. Maybe I need to prepare for every possible scenario.”

  “That’s impossible,” he said.

  “I can try, can’t I?”

  Lochhead sighed inwardly and glanced at the clock. Only twenty minutes left in her session.

  Everything about Sarah Coyle was thin except the thick plastic lenses of her glasses. Her voluminous polyester blouse and plain black pants did not camouflage her skinny wrists and ankles, nor did they hide her sharp collar bones. Even her pale hair—so blond it was almost translucent—seemed anemic. Herne felt an almost overwhelming urge to offer her a steak dinner.

  He guessed Sarah was in her twenties. She pressed her lips into a tight line and he noticed she wore no lipstick. She shook her head and crossed her arms over her flat chest.