“Then by that logic, people who get cancer could call that an accident.”
“But I don’t have cancer,” I tell her.
“Okay, Joe,” she says. “If you didn’t intend it, and if you really can’t remember what you did, why were you carrying Detective Calhoun’s gun, and why did you try to turn it on yourself?”
It’s a good question. An annoying question that has been put to me a few times now. Thankfully it’s one that comes with an easy answer. “I don’t remember that either,” I tell her.
“Joe—”
“It’s true,” I tell her, and I touch my free hand back up to my eye. The doctor warned me it would catch occasionally for the rest of my life. I don’t know why or on what, and he didn’t seem in a real information-offering mood. He seemed more interested in who he was treating, and how he was going to tell the boys about it that night at the bar.
Her expression relaxes a little. “Does it hurt?”
“Only when I’m awake.”
“Let’s move on,” she says. “Did you ever try giving your mother another pet?”
I scoff at the thought. “No. She wouldn’t have appreciated it.”
“I meant an alive pet, Joe.”
“Oh. Well, no, the same thing applies.”
“Did you ever kill any more animals?”
“You’re implying I killed John,” I tell her.
“You did kill John.”
“No, the cardboard box and lack of air killed John. Me being eight years old is what killed John. It was an accident.”
“Like your scar is an accident.”
“Exactly,” I say, pleased she’s beginning to understand.
“You still haven’t told me, Joe, whether you killed any other animals?”
“Why would I?” I ask, but yes, I have killed other animals—I’ve done it to get what I want from people.
“Okay. I think we’re pretty much done for today,” she says, and she starts to shuffle her pad back into her briefcase. It’s a similar model to the one I used to carry my lunch and my knives and my gun around in, and for a moment—for a brief second—I wonder if it’s actually mine.
“Why?”
“Because you’re not being forthcoming, that’s why.”
“What?”
“The animals. I asked you twice and twice you avoided the question. That suggests you don’t really want my help.”
“Wait,” I say, and I try to stand up, but the handcuffs keep me down.
“I’ll think about coming back tomorrow,” she says.
“What does that mean? That you might not come back?”
“I have to decide whether or not you’re faking everything you’re saying. Whether you’re telling me what you think I want to hear. Not remembering what you did to these women, I don’t know, it might be a little hard for me to buy. I’ve seen it before. I could be seeing it now. Problem with the insanity plea is you seem very aware of what you’re saying.”
I say nothing. It seems saying nothing works better for me.
She moves to the door and bangs on it.
“Wait,” I tell her.
“What for?”
“Please. Please, this is my life we’re talking about here. I’m scared. There are people in here who want to kill me. I have no idea what the fuck I’ve done over the last few years, I’m lost and I’m scared and please, please, don’t go. Not yet. Even if you don’t believe me, I just need somebody to talk to.”
The guard opens the door. Ali stands there staring at me and the guard stands there staring at her.
“Ma’am?” he says.
She looks at the guard. “False alarm,” she says, and she moves back to the table. The guard manages to multitask a shrug with an eye-roll while closing the door.
“Do you want to see more of me or not, Joe?”
Ideally, I’d like to see as much of her as I can. If it weren’t for the handcuffs and the guard outside I would make the effort to see every inch of her.
“Of course.”
“Then play it straight with me, okay?” She sits back down. She leans forward in her chair and to her credit she doesn’t interlock her fingers—at least not immediately, not until after she asks “Are you going to stop playing games with me, Joe?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go back to your childhood.”
“There isn’t much to tell. My mom and dad were normal.”
“Your father killed himself,” she says. “That’s not normal, Joe.”
“I know that. I meant, you know, the family dynamic was normal. Dad would go to work and mom would stay at home and I would go to school. The only thing that changed was we all got older.”
“How’d you feel about him killing himself?”
I shake my head. This isn’t a subject I really want to talk about. “Are you serious? How do you think I felt?”
“Are you checking for answers, Joe?”
“No. Of course not. I was angry. Upset. Confused. I mean, the guy was my dad. He was always supposed to be there. He was meant to protect me. And he just, you know, just thought fuck it and ended things. It was pretty selfish.”
“Did you get any counseling at the time?”
“Why would I get counseling?”
“Did your father leave a note?”
“No.”
“Do you know why he did it?”
“Not really,” I say, but that’s not entirely true. I have this dream sometimes, which, sometimes, I think might actually be a memory rather than a dream. It was the Uncle Billy factor. I came home to find Dad and Uncle Billy in the shower together nine years ago. I don’t know if my father would have killed himself if I’d given him the time to really think about it. I think he would have. Better that than living with mom’s anger. His suicide was less a suicide and more of his only son nudging him a little closer to heaven. I think that’s where he wanted to go since I heard him saying oh God, oh God over and over before I opened the bathroom door. It was the less painful solution for everybody involved. And not painful for me at all. Of course, that might just be a dream. . . .
“You sure? You look like you’re remembering something.”
“I’m just remembering my dad. I miss him. I always miss him.”
“Some professionals would call what your father did a trigger.”
“What?”
“A trigger. It means an act that forces you to behave differently. A triggering event.”
“Oh. I understand,” I say, not so sure I do. I didn’t shoot him. I tied him up and stuffed him into his car and put a hose running from the exhaust and through a gap in the window. At least that’s what Dream Joe does sometimes.
“I want to talk more about your childhood.”
“Because you think there are more triggers?”
“Possibly. Your story about the kitten—”
“John,” I interrupt.
“John,” she says. “Your story about John makes me think there are going to be other triggers. Tell me, Joe, do you like women?”
“Joe likes everybody,” I say.
She looks at me for a few seconds, saying nothing, and I’m sure she’s about to tell me off for referring to myself in the third person. I used to do that when I was a janitor and it worked well. Here, I’m not so sure.
“What’s your earliest traumatic memory?” she asks.
“I don’t have any.”
“Something to do with women,” she says. “Your mother, possibly. Or an aunt. A neighbor. Tell me something.”
“Why? Because that’s what the psychiatric textbooks say?” I say, a little too quickly, but I say it that way to stop my mind from traveling back to when I was a teenager.
“Yes, Joe. That’s why. I know what I need to hear from you, and I get the strong impression you also know what you need to say. I’m going to give you sixty seconds to tell me something that happened to you when you were young. Trust me, I’ll know if you’re making it up. But something happened and I want to know what.”
“There’s nothing,” I say, leaning back. I start drumming my fingers on the table.