Side Effects: An FBI Psychological Thriller (19 page)

He frowned. “Huh?”

“Back in West Chester, when we were waiting on possible hits from support groups in the area,
I
was the one who was itchy to move on to victim four and start heading to Maryland while we waited.
You
were the one who told me to let Amy Crane from the Baltimore field office do her thing and to sit tight lest we drive hundreds of unnecessary miles, only to have to turn around and head back to West Chester if we did get a hit.
Maximum efficiency
, remember, Agent Morris, sir?”

He frowned again, my smartassery catching him like a flick on the nose. He stood there for a moment, his pride refusing to let him take a seat again.

“Fine,” he eventually said. “We go in the morning. I don’t agree with it, and I should remind you that
I’m
”—he tapped his index finger on his chest—“the one calling the shots, not ‘the consultant’…”

Déjà vu.

“…But out of respect for your history with Dr. Cole, and because he’s been so accommodating…”

Serious déjà vu.

“…I will grudgingly wait until morning.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Why don’t you sit and finish your sandwich?”

“Stop acting like my mother.”

“Lots of cream, no sugar, just the way you like it,” he said, handing the large paper cup with the black lid to me.

“Who says men don’t pay attention?” I said, taking the coffee from him and stepping away from the door to invite him in.

He stepped inside and I closed the door behind him. I sipped my coffee—toothpaste and java flavor. Yum.

Morris didn’t stray far from the door. “You ready to go?”

I waved a hand up and down my attire—pajama bottoms and an old gray tee shirt. “Any chance I can change first?”

“Hurry up.”

He’d gotten his manners out of the way by bringing me coffee; now he could be curt and impatient guilt-free.

“I was going to take a shower,” I lied.

“Maggie…”

Ugh with the
Maggie
again. “You know, when you call me Maggie, it reeks of a parent getting serious with his kid.”

“Maggie, whatever you need to do, please hurry up, Maggie.”

At least his impatience was not immune to a little humor.

“I don’t need to shower. I just need to change.”

“Then do it, Maggie.”

I sipped my coffee while giving him the evil eye, then went into my bedroom and got changed.

And so Morris and I sat in Dr. Cole’s waiting room, waiting. Morris was flipping through a
Sports Illustrated
, though I know he wasn’t reading anything. Take the magazine away and he’d be biting his thumbnail.

I was eager myself, my substitute for nail-biting too frequent a sip of my coffee. Though I remained steadfast in my decision to wait until this morning to see Dr. Cole, the prospect of there being something useful on the other side of his door made it difficult to entertain anything else.

Dr. Cole’s door opened and he greeted us with that small but warm smile of his. “Hello, Maggie. Agent Morris—” He stepped forward with his hand extended. “Nice to see you again, under different circumstances, so to speak. Maggie’s told me a lot about you since the trial.”

Morris was obviously too eager for creative wit, evident by taking Dr. Cole’s hand and spouting the old chestnut: “All of it good, I hope.”

Dr. Cole, while no laff riot himself, earned slightly better applause with: “Oh no, not good at all.”

We did the unanimous courtesy chuckle thing and stepped into Dr. Cole’s office.

“I want to get this out of the way,” Morris said. “Please don’t give us any of that patient confidentiality nonsense…”

“
Tim
.”

Dr. Cole raised an eyebrow.

“…If you realize today that this killer we’re looking for was a patient of yours, I’m going to insist you tell us about him.
All
about him. Are we clear on that?”

Dr. Cole calmly, politely responded with: “Agent Morris, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that my wife was taken from me by a serial killer. I hope that answers your question.”

Morris looked both satisfied and a little guilty. Perhaps he was expecting cooperation, but not with the subject-over impact Dr. Cole had delivered it.

“It does,” Morris said. “I’m sorry if I came across a little—”

Dr. Cole held up a hand, cutting Morris off. “Forget it. Shall we proceed?”

Morris nodded. I felt like kicking him.

We started off by telling Dr. Cole all about the incident at the strip club, the possibility that our guy might actually live in Philadelphia, of all places. While this information wasn’t necessarily pertinent to our visit with Dr. Cole, it was a decent icebreaker after Morris’ sledgehammer courtesy at the start.

When the ice felt sufficiently broken, we dove right in with the pending stuff and showed Dr. Cole photos of the first victim from Wilmington.

And he recognized him.

Recognized him well, thank God.

“I never saw him privately,” Dr. Cole said. “Quite often, a patient will come to me for private sessions first before I suggest attending group as adjunct therapy to their treatment. This man—what did you say his name was?”

“Alex Stern,” I said.

“Alex Stern—I don’t remember the alias he used in group; everybody uses one—was very active in group. Almost from the start. That’s very uncommon, likely the reason I remember him as well as I do.”

“Wilmington PD contacted you yesterday,” Morris said. “Were you able to dig up any notes on him?”

“I don’t take notes in group,” Dr. Cole said. “The primary benefit of group is for the patient to share with his or her peers, to receive support from them. I’m there strictly as an overseer, not to offer critical analysis for each patient.”

“But you remember him?” Morris asked.

“Yes. His childhood was horrific. His father was an exceptional bully and domineering man. Alex Stern was apparently frail as a child, shying away from confrontation and contact sports and the like. The father resented this and beat the boy unmercifully. I recall one session where Alex Stern confessed that his father made him wear a dress to school. He referred to his son as the daughter he never wanted.”

“Jesus,” Morris said. He looked at me. “You thought your father was bad.”

I didn’t respond. I was too preoccupied with a possible parallel beginning to form between the first victim and the killer.

“So, his phobia was his father?” Morris asked. “His childhood? Is that considered a phobia?”

“Phobias were just one of the things we treated in group,” Dr. Cole said.

“So it doesn’t fit,” Morris said.

“Sure it does,” I said. “If the profile on our guy is correct, he likely saw Alex Stern as a reflection of himself.”

“So you’re saying our guy attended the same group as Alex Stern?” Morris said.

“I’d have to say yes,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?”

“But it’s still not a phobia,” Morris said. “It still doesn’t make sense how he would graduate from destroying a reflection of himself to exploiting men’s fears. And let’s not forget our guy’s ritual—Alex Stern was cuffed and bludgeoned like all the others. His right palm damaged. Our guy’s first one would be sloppier, less organized.”

“Unless he got it right the first time,” I said. “Bear with me for a second here; let me paint a picture.”

“Go,” Morris said.

Dr. Cole looked on.

“Our guy hears about Dr. Cole’s group—”

“How?” Morris broke in.

I gave him a look.

He held up an apologetic hand. “Continue.”

“Our guy hears about Dr. Cole’s group; I don’t know how, but he does. He goes to the group, maybe with the intention of getting legitimate help. He sits and listens while people take turns spilling their guts.

“One guy gets up—Alex Stern—and according to Dr. Cole, he isn’t shy about opening up. He talks about his horrific childhood and the terrible things his father did, but more importantly, as it potentially relates to our guy, how disgusted his father was with him for being weak, both physically and emotionally.” I turned to Dr. Cole. “Did Alex Stern ever mention his mother?”

Dr. Cole thought for a moment. “If he did I don’t recall. My guess would be, as is common in environments with such a strong patriarchal structure, was that she was there but she wasn’t, if that makes sense. Likely, she would only offer support to the child when it was safe to, when her husband was momentarily gone.”

Dr. Cole’s eyes clicked solely on me after these last words. I frowned back at him as if to say,
I don’t have an appointment this morning, thank you
. His eyes returned to us both equally.

“Okay, I’ll buy all that,” Morris said to Dr. Cole. Then to me: “Why’d you ask about the mother?”

“Something the stripper said. She stated that when our guy was assaulting her he kept repeating ‘Don’t need you anymore, bitch.’ He could have been referring to his mother. Perhaps his mother consoled him after his own father’s abuse.”

“If she consoled him, why would he resent her so?” Morris asked.

“Could be any number of things,” Dr. Cole said. “Perhaps he blames his mother for sticking with his father despite his abusive behavior. But, judging on what you claim the dancer who was assaulted said, it sounds as though he blames his mother for enabling him to feel sorry for himself—that it was okay to be weak. Obviously this logic is absurd, but then we’re not dealing with a man who shuns the absurd, are we?”

Morris grunted and then looked at me again. “Keep going, Mags.”

“Okay—so, let’s say Alex Stern spills his guts to the group and it hits way too close to home for our guy. Maybe at first he sees an ally in Stern, someone to talk to. Maybe they start communicating outside of group, establishing trust between one another. Maybe they get together one night, let’s say at our guy’s place. They start commiserating with one another and our guy is filled with a sudden revulsion at the reflection of himself. He lashes out at Stern and attacks him. Stern is vulnerable and shows confusion and fear, and this fills our guy with a sense of power, like he suddenly has control over his own trauma. Maybe he then renders Stern unconscious and binds him—
cuffs
him—and continues the torment, taking delight in watching him squirm.”

“You think he filmed it like the others?” Morris asked.

“Could have. He surely wouldn’t have had anything prepared, but maybe he pulled out his phone, used that to record it, I don’t know. Either way, he torments Stern incessantly, the feeling of power and control accelerating by the second. Stern’s anguish becomes like a drug to our guy, the more Stern pleads and weeps, the higher our guy gets.

“Except it can’t go on for very long. Despite the high, our guy soon can’t help but see himself in Stern. All that fear and suffering—it’s like a time machine with a mirror. So he snaps and has to destroy it. He goes caveman on him and beats him to death—beats
himself
to death.”

“And the right palm?” Morris said.

“As I said before, it’s probably something personal to him. Something that happened to him in his childhood maybe. He probably does something similar to his victims to replicate the torment he suffered, first to revel in seeing someone else endure it, and then ultimately to destroy it.”

“So how did he graduate to phobias then?” Morris asked. “If he revels in this guy’s childhood torment and then destroys a reflection of himself, how does he graduate to phobias from that?”

I sensed Morris knew the answers—many of the answers—to his own questions, but this was our routine, voicing it all aloud, volleying things back and forth. As much as you may think you know, hearing it aloud always helped.

“Phobias are a shortcut for him. It’s the fear that gets him off. Seeing grown men crumble defuses his own fears and insecurities. What better way to reach the core of a man’s dread than with a crippling phobia? He certainly wasn’t going to sit in on endless group sessions, hoping to find and exploit another mirror reflection of himself—it would take forever. So he took the shortcut in phobias. And unfortunately, judging by his increasing body count, it worked just fine.”

Morris looked at Dr. Cole. “What do you think, Dr. Cole? She making any sense to you?”

“From a psychiatric standpoint, I’d say much of her analysis is very plausible,” he said. “From a profiling standpoint dealing with serial predators, I’d say you’re far better to make that assessment than I.”

“Do you remember Alex Stern being particularly chummy with anyone during those group sessions?” Morris asked. “Maybe a lot of talking during coffee breaks? Leaving or arriving together? Things like that?”

Dr. Cole looked disappointed with himself when he said: “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Do you recall any other participants acting particularly odd during group sessions with Alex Stern?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t suppose you film the group sessions, do you?”

“No.”

Morris sighed.

“How was Alex Stern’s progress in the group?” I asked. “Did you feel like he was making any?”

“It’s difficult to say. When people stop showing up it could be because they feel they’ve gotten better or because they feel therapy isn’t helping.”

“Anyone else stop showing up around the same time Stern did?” Morris asked.

“I really wouldn’t know. People come in and out of group fairly regularly.”