The Secrets You Hide: A Mind-Blowing Thriller (The Psychosis Series) (11 page)

15: Paul’s Debriefing Interview – Spanning Events Of Day 10

“Jack had moved to a different address a few months back,” Paul said. “The new occupants of his house…the people who had purchased the place from him…gave me his new address. The woman who gave it to me also said that Jack had, in fact, given her that address only a few days earlier, asking her to direct anybody who came looking for him to that place.”

“So then you just followed the trail and drove to this place that he had apparently moved to? Where was this?”

“Yes. His new address was a one room apartment in the center of the city.”

“And you broke into his house, didn’t you officer? Did you have a search warrant?”

Paul shook his head unapologetically. “Yes, I did break into his house. And no, I did not have a search warrant. But it was something which had to be done. As you have said yourself, the kidnapping was under progress at the time. It was about protecting my sister and my niece. I would do the same thing again if needed.”

A few seconds passed in silence.

“What did you find inside his flat?”

“There was not much to be found. It was mostly empty…no furniture…hardly any clothes even. There was only a mattress and a table. On the table, I found a stack of pages, a typewriter, and a set of light blue colored envelopes. But the envelopes and pages were empty. There was nothing else in the flat that could have helped me locate Jack. I also spoke to a couple of his neighbors but they both claimed that they had not seen him for more than a week. His new address was pretty much a dead end. So I returned to the police station arriving there at around 10:45 am. Once I got there, I focused my efforts on trying to track Annie’s and Jack’s cars.”

“And you received another series of messages from Dr. Walker around thirty to forty minutes after you got to the station, is that correct?”

Paul nodded.

“Should I take that as a yes, officer?”

“Yes.” Paul said.

“Can you read the first of these messages for me?”

Paul was handed another page. “He wants to meet me in person. He has just given me a series of instructions. I will send them to you. Do not msg back. Call me when you have them.”

“What were the other messages?”

“They were a bunch of directions. Landmarks, turns…left and right…and so on.”

“And how did you respond to these messages, Officer Lockhart?”

Paul shook his head. “I had no leads on Annie and Sarah at the time. So I thought I should just follow Robert to wherever he was going. Maybe, if that led me to Jack, I could stop him. With help from Officer Goldman, I had already put out alerts on Annie’s and Jack’s vehicles so there was nothing else I could have done at that time.

“I left the station to…to drive to the spot where Jack had asked Robert to park his car. Robert had to follow a set of instructions after that to get to a spot where Jack would meet him.”

“And I believe you were on your way there when you got another lead?”

“Yes”, Paul responded promptly, “I was a few minutes out when I received a call from Oscar…one of my neighbors. He said that the door of my house was open. He asked me if I had forgotten to close it on my way out. I told him that I was sure that…uhh…I had locked it. Then he told me that there was a…a red sedan parked opposite my house and that it had been there for a couple hours or so. That was suspicious because…Annie also drove a red sedan. I asked Oscar to read out the car’s number plate for me before deciding what to do next.”

16: Robert’s Recollection – Of Day 10

I stood before the building on 4
th
Street which Jack had described in detail in the latest part of his script. I listened passively to the sound of traffic and watched people scurrying in different directions with an equal indifference. I was holding the latest set of pages from Jack in my right hand. Besides that, I was carrying nothing else except my mobile phone and car keys which were in different pockets of my coat. I had parked my car a couple blocks away.

Standing on the sidewalk, I pulled out my cellphone and looked at the screen, hoping to receive a confirmation from Paul that he had found Annie and Sarah. But there was none. That left me with no option but to follow the remaining set of directions which Jack had described in those pages. I hoped that Paul’s call would come through before I came face to face with Jack.

I walked along the road opposite the building till I came across a wall to my left which had been painted with a mixture of some kind of modern art and street graffiti. I noticed a white colored dumpster a few meters down the road. I then crossed the road and took the narrow street which lay between two dilapidated buildings. About a hundred meters in I reached a node where the street was cut by a wider alleyway which ran perpendicular to it. I turned left and walked further in till I stood somewhere halfway between the node and the point where the alleyway exited into another road.

I was surprised by how silent the alleyway was despite the fact that it was located right in the center of the city. The surrounding buildings seemed to have perfectly blocked out the rest of the world from participating in the eerie quiet of the space. In the distance ahead of me I saw a few pieces of scrap paper swirl by in the wind. I waited, alone.

I turned my head right and then left to look at the ends of the alley, wondering if Jack was going to join me there. I pulled out my phone and held it in my hand so I could take any incoming calls immediately. It was exactly 12:00 pm. As if on cue, the phone rang.

“Doctor, you’ve done very well. You might be the only person who hasn’t disappointed me yet. I hope you will continue to do that.”

I loosened my grip on the pages I was holding and they flew away to a corner of the alley. “I will try.” I said, “I am standing in the middle of the alleyway, Jack. What do you want me to do next?”

“We will do just as you had suggested. It’s time for us to talk.”

“This is not what I had in mind, Jack. We can’t talk like this. Not on the phone.”

“Tell me doctor…” he continued, completely ignoring me, “...what words would you use to describe me?”

I squinted my eyes. He was trying to distract me again. But this time I was determined to deal with him with a heavy hand. I was not going to let him get into my head.

“What do you mean?” I said. My jaws were clenched tight. It helped me feel in better control of the situation than I probably was.

“What words would you use to describe me, doctor? In your psychiatric opinion? If you had to describe me in your journal in a single phrase…how would you describe me?”

I thought hard about what he was trying to do. It felt like his way of announcing the start of our final battle. And he was giving me the opportunity to be the first one to attack.

I heard a clicking sound and the call disconnected abruptly. I looked down at the phone and almost simultaneously heard the sound of footsteps approaching me from behind. I spun on my feet reacting instinctively. I found myself looking straight at Jack, who was walking towards me at a leisurely pace. He was dressed in a white shirt and black trousers over which he was wearing a long dark brown overcoat.

He took one step after another unhurriedly like he had all the time in the world. Finally, he came to a stop a few feet away from me. He said nothing. I said nothing.

The question he had asked on the phone lingered in my head.
What words would you use to describe me?

I thought about the repercussions of a confrontational answer. Then I realized that if Jack was standing before me, there was no way he could hurt Annie or Sarah. The last time we had met, I had let him walk away…but I would not make that mistake again. I was not going to let him get away this time. I was willing to engage in a physical battle if necessary. I do not know if that aggression was the result of insomnia or just the anger boiling inside me.

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and answered his question in a loud and firm voice.

“A man of many obsessions.” I said.

He reacted promptly with a smile but said nothing. He just stood there like it was a normal thing to do like we were friends enjoying a few moments of silence. He looked behind me to the far end of the alleyway, then he turned around to look at the opposite end. It felt as if he was confirming that everything was just as he wanted it to be, perfectly in order and perfectly in isolation. He looked around at the pages which were flying haphazardly in the air and then he turned to look at me, probably trying to read my face.

A few more moments passed. At some level, his behaviour felt strange and unhinging.

“What are you doing, Jack?” I asked.

He responded with a blank expression, blocking any signs that could let me read his mind.

I thought about it and for a second, I decided that it was probably just an attempt to subdue me. But that was when the real answer hit me all at once. I saw what I had been missing all along. I realized that I finally had everything that I needed to attack him. It was now just a matter of starting the conversation that I had demanded to have with him. I waited, letting him take the lead just like he had in all of our previous exchanges.

“I like that” he reacted finally to my answer. “I like that a lot. A man of many obsessions. It’s specific and vague at the same time. A phrase that plays on contrast. Those are some wisely chosen words, doctor.”

I kept quiet. This was a game of nerves and I was determined to win.

“Do I need to frisk you for weapons, doctor?” he asked, looking up and down along my coat.

“I don’t know Jack,” I shot back, “do you?”

He smiled. I could see that he knew of my fear of guns. And he also knew the reasons why I was afraid of them.

“I feel like this will be a riveting close to our story, doctor. Follow me.”

He turned around and started to walk towards one end of the alleyway. I didn’t budge from my spot even as he took a few steps forward. “Where are we going?”

He stopped in his stride and looked back at me. “Somewhere we can talk.”

I nodded and walked up to him. Then we walked forward together.

“Doctor, what do you think of the relationship between a writer and his audience?” he asked without looking at me as we reached a grey metal door fixed to a building on our right.

“It’s okay if you don’t have an answer…” he continued, as he turned a key in the door.

“I have never thought about it. But why does it matter?” I said.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor on the other side. I followed him in showing no hesitation. Jack smiled and closed the door behind us. He had left the key in the keyhole outside. We stood motionless for a second, staring at each other, letting our eyes adjust to the dim light. He looked away towards the farther end of the corridor.

The corridor was lined with walls made of bare red bricks which were clearly visible in plenty of places where the paint had peeled off. A series of doors stood on either side, probably opening into rooms of identical size. A queue of healthy fluorescent bulbs fixed on the ceiling lit the space. We started walking inwards.

“In one of your journals you described us–you and I–as adversaries engaged in a psychological battle. But I think it is wrong to describe the relationship that you and I share as the one that exists between enemies. I think the character of our relationship is starkly different.

“I think we are bound by the relationship that exists between a writer and his audience. It is not an adversarial relationship. If anything, I would describe our relationship as romantic, not physical, no...but psychological...a deep psychological romance...”

I could see through his tricks. He was twisting my own words to describe his thoughts. He was trying to embed his thoughts in my mind using my own language.

His voice echoed off the walls and then trailed off as we walked along the corridor, passing one locked door after another.

“If you think about it, doctor, a writer is incapable of waging a battle with his audience. The only thing he does is provide his audience with a series of words. And what are words at the end of the day?

“Words are just ink sprinkled on a piece of paper meant to have some sort of a meaning. Words are cold and lifeless. How much ever you might want to believe otherwise, words written on a piece of paper contain no emotion. They are just there…feeling nothing, staring back at you as you look down at them.”

He paused for breath, then continued.

“But while a writer cannot start a battle, he can do something else. Something that’s maybe...more dangerous. He can make you fight your own mind.”

Another long period of silence followed. Our shadows danced in the corridor and the sound of our footsteps bounced between the walls as we moved ahead side by side. I stared at Jack from the corner of my eyes. I spotted a questioning look on his face.

“Know the enemy, doctor. Are you fighting me or are you fighting yourself?”

I said nothing. At some level, it was the same question that I was going to ask him. But at that moment, I wanted to let him pour his mind out. I wanted to let him keep that illusion of control. I wanted to get him to a point where he was vulnerable and defenceless. We reached the end of the corridor and turned right. An identical line of doors stood before us. We kept moving.

“At the end of the day,” he continued, “all a writer does is provide his audience with a perspective…a point of view communicated through words. People like to believe that writers tell stories. They don't…not alone at least. A writer provides perspective, but his audience brings the emotions. Do you know what happens when perspective and emotions come together? They make a story…

“The writer has written the story but the audience is telling it with him. They are telling themselves the story–colouring it with their imagination, filling it with their biases, populating it with details derived from their memories. The audience…in this case…is you. The words are mine but the voice is yours. The imagination is mine but the vision is yours. The perspective mine…the emotion yours. It's like dancing with the love of your life. You take the lead, she follows. She takes the lead, you follow.”

In what was a passing instant, I remembered driving my car to the clinic the previous night. Jack was explaining everything he had done. He was laying bare, the tricks he had been playing on me. I remembered the incompleteness of his description of my father’s death–the description that he had forced me to read to Annie. And I remembered the vividness of the images I had seen as an after-effect of reading his words. Jack knew nothing about what I had buried in my mind but despite that he had managed to extricate it in all its haunting detail. He had invoked the demons of my past and he was banking on me to push myself into a corner. But I was not going to let him play me anymore. I was listening to everything he was saying with a stoic resilience. I was going to beat him at this. I was going to stop him.

“In one of your books, you spoke about separating perspective from emotion, doctor. But what do you do when the only thing that belongs to you is a volcano of emotions waiting to burst through your consciousness?”

We finally came to a stop. He extended his hand to grab the latch of a door to his right. I noticed that it was the only door around us which was not secured with a lock.

“You look scared, doctor” he taunted me, “Are you scared of the emotions I might have awakened inside you? Are you scared of knowing that the pure, unadulterated emotions you are feeling right now belong to you…and to you alone?”

I looked right back into his eyes. I was not afraid and I wanted him to see that. It was only then that I noticed how constricted the corridor was. I felt a strange pang of claustrophobia grip me before I shook it off by diverting my attention. It was quiet all around and the only sound I could hear was that of air escaping a ventilation pipe somewhere with a continuous and consistent hiss.

“Are you ready, doctor?” Jack said, trying to get my attention, “Are you ready to explore my mind and find out who I really am? Are you ready for the end of this?”

I nodded ever so slightly though I did not want to give him a response. Jack slid the latch open and then pushed the door in. He stepped into the dark room on the other side of the door and I followed him. In the little light which was coming in from the corridor, I noticed a bulb hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room. A couple of chairs were placed one opposite the other on either side of the bulb. Beside the bulb hung a thread, also suspended from the ceiling–it was probably a pull switch.

Jack closed the door behind me and the room went pitch dark.

“I have to warn you,” he spoke even as he navigated in the darkness. I could tell from the changing pitch and direction of his voice that he was moving towards the centre of the room. “I think it is impossible to really know anyone. It does not matter how much time you spend with them because there is always more of them to explore. We might be limited by our bodies, doctor. But in our minds...”