Thy Killer's Keeper

By Edita A. Petrick

An unsolved murder of a small-town teacher is only the beginning....

 

Some crimes are inexplicable and defy reason. John Salton doesn't believe that. As a veteran FBI agent and profiler, he maintains that there is a motive and a reason for every crime…until the unthinkable hits home. Three years after his artist-wife picked up and lit an acetylene torch and approached her two-year old, the father still can't deal with the horrible memory. It might be the reason why he fashions an outlandish theory for what really happened to his family.

 

There is no category in the FBI database for 'murder-by-proxy,' much less a murder by invisible intruder. However, when a series of senseless and bizarre murders ripples the coast of California with more fury than an earthquake, Agent Salton's far-out theory is about to be put to the test.

 

This futuristic crime suspense story will take you on a thrilling and exciting journey of the rapidly encroaching and not-so-far-fetched future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edita A. Petrick
• Release date: May 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540113191

Edita A. Petrick

I'm a writer. That's all that can be said here. I love writing and I absolutely hate marketing. It just goes to show you where your natural talents lie. Writing comes easy. Marketing...that's something I will be learning until the day I die. All I can say about my books is that they're meant to entertain.

Book preview

Prologue

The old Egyptians held that to be named, one must first breathe at least once. A single suck of the elemental air and its noisy expulsion was the price of registration for a royal prince to have his likeness chiseled on a dynastic cartouche that would be placed in his tomb. The name completed his being. I was ready to be named, to claim my princely assignation and shake up the dynasty. But words appeared and I was denied the breath that would have established me in the ranks of the warm-blooded as the Lord. Ugly words that sat like black flies on the news-page. Praise and eloquence were not enough to hide the fact that I became a bastard without crown.

April 17, 2007, The Royal Gazette"

The World Mourns the Last of the Great Philanthropists

Sandra Pine, Associated Press

Hamilton, Bermuda—Edwin Brimorton Rydall, the last of the self-made oil and shipping billionaires from the postwar boom era, whose $9-billion fortune was used to support many charities in his native U.S. and world-wide, died Sunday of injuries sustained the day before in a fire that consumed his private yacht, Samarkand II. The fire also claimed the life of his companion, Cynthia Emerson, age 32. Rydall was 89.

Mr. Rydall and Ms. Emerson had just retired to their master stateroom on the main deck, when the explosion, thought to have been caused by a retrofit fuel transfer pump, rocked the 167 foot motor yacht anchored at Spanish Point, near Agar’s Island. Mr. Rydall leaves no heirs to his vast oil and shipping empire. However, a spokesman for Rydall Oil indicated that a significant portion of the assets would be disbursed between various global charities. The Nascent-Rydall Foundation, a co-operative medical research facility between the University of California in San Diego, the Nascent Lumen Center for Fetal Diagnosis of Chicago, and Rydall Medical Institute for Child Development, is thought to be the major beneficiary.

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Rydall was born on January 19, 1918 in San Francisco as Esoch Borochov Rydarski. He started his empire during the Great Depression after losing his job at a Houston oil refinery. Rydall started buying residual oil from refineries, loading it on to his father’s truck and selling it to hotels and other businesses as heating oil. When the war broke out, his father kept him from enlisting on religious grounds but in 1941, after the Pearl Harbor attack, Esoch Rydarski officially changed his name to Edwin Brimorton Rydall and joined the Navy. A survivor of the U.S.S. Princeton, sunk by the Japanese during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Rydall returned to San Francisco in 1944 and resumed building his oil empire. In 1953, he diversified into shipping and, in 1962, bought out the British company Amoraxon Petroleum to form what would later become Rydall Moraxco Petroleum.

In 1954, after his son was stillborn and his wife succumbed to the trauma of birth, Rydall established the TripleCare Institute as part of USD’s research into birth defects and post-natal mother-child care. In 1965, after the death of his second wife and four-year-old daughter in a fire tragedy, TripleCare expanded to New York, Chicago and Houston, adding fertility research to its list of studies. In 1967, when his son was diagnosed with autism and institutionalized, TripleCare research consolidated under the present-day umbrella of Nascent-Rydall Research Foundation.

In over half a century, Edwin Rydall donated more than $100 million to medical research and various charities in the U.S. and around the world. In 1976 he dispatched three 20,000-ton cruise ships to African famine relief organizations. In 1985 he donated a lump sum of $10 million to AIDS research. Though not reclusive, he strove to stay out of the public eye. In his last interview with the media, in January 2007 in San Francisco during a dinner event to celebrate his 89th birthday, he spoke about his last hope: to leave behind a child and heir to carry on his work with charities and enterprise. He stated that he planned to marry Ms. Emerson in the summer to establish legal rights for their child, already conceived through in-vitro fertilization at one of the Rydall fertility clinics. He declined comment on the due date for the baby.

The company spokesman said that Rydall’s wishes to be interred in his native San Francisco would be respected.

Chapter 1

What does the nature of our bodies reveal about our values? I was ready to learn and was denied this simple birthright. I have no name. I have no values. But since the Second Law of Thermodynamics indicates that the physical universe out there is meant to be used . . . there’s nothing to stop me from using it—to develop my own set of values.

The Humboldt County Sheriff, Mason Hinckle, caught the trucker’s panic-warbled call just as he reached for the radio to switch back to home frequency. The voice cut in with a string of curses and sputtered out in a coughing fit. Then it cleared long enough to give location on Highway 101—past the Whitby’s Docks sign.

Hinckle glanced at the dashboard clock. It was 8:50—not quite dark yet, but the sun had already set over the Pacific. It was early August. The sunsets came sooner than back in June. If the trucker had jackknifed his rig, it was a good bet that the Eureka Police Department and the Humboldt Sheriff’s Office would be busy all night long, rerouting traffic while the logging company brought its crews down from Oregon to clear the spilled lumber.

Hinckle had just passed Jacobs. It was less than three miles to Whitby’s Docks. He’d be most likely the first to arrive since he didn’t hear any noise from Sharpe’s police cruisers yet. Not on the radio and not on the road behind him.

He hadn’t seen any headlights coming down 101. No one tailed him either. It was a quiet night, and getting dark. Especially around the Arcata Bay loop where the darkness of the water tended to swallow light. The cruiser’s headlights swept over a green sign off the shoulder. The parks people wanted to make sure the tourists didn’t miss the Fay Slough Wildlife marshes. Then again, the conservation people probably wanted to alert the drivers to danger and consequences of critters becoming roadkill.

The radio was silent. The trucker had probably gone to assess his rig’s condition. Well, if he’d spilled the timber all over the highway, Hinckle wasn’t going to make it to McKinleyville tonight. He’d phone Linda, once he assessed the situation, and apologize for missing the family barbecue. His sister would probably just sigh and shake her head.

He checked the rear view mirror again. A real dead night for traffic.

He spotted the truck just after he passed through Brainard, a quarter mile before the cutoff to Old Arcata Road and Whitby’s sign. The big yellow rig sat askew, its nose pointing at the waterside ditch, while the single-skid flatbed trailer behind obstructed both lanes. But its timber load was intact. He slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder. Hell, there was six feet of lane and the gravel shoulder left to squeeze through any traffic, north and southbound, but it would have to be controlled. Sharpe’s police officers would do that. The Sheriff’s staff was more used to setting up roadblocks. Besides, the trucker had used the police frequency, not the Sheriff’s Office band. Once Sharpe’s men got there, he’d leave them to deal with the mess and head up to McKinleyville. Mind you, if Jim asked, he’d radio back to Eureka and tell whoever was on duty to send a few deputies to help with the traffic—if Jim asked.

He got out of the cruiser. The trucker had already set up four road-flares, about two hundred feet up across both highway lanes, but Hinckle didn’t see him anywhere. Was he hurt?

If he was, it couldn’t be that bad if he could place the flares. Well, Sharpe’s men would bring paramedics and an ambulance. After all, the trucker broke into the police frequency. If he wasn’t hurt, he’d get more than just a slap on the wrist for that.

He walked around the back end of the skid, leaning over to see if any of its tires had blown.

Jesus weepin’ Christ, Jesus weepin’ Christ...!

A body hurtled at him, seemingly out of nowhere

Hinckle staggered under the impact, his shoulder slamming against the flatbed’s upper wheel well. The hit stunned him, but even as he braced his back against the iron rim, the pressure vanished.

I didn’t see, man. You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t see a freaking thing! a man’s voice screamed at him.

Hinckle moved a foot to adjust his balance and, keeping his hand low on his hip, ready to draw the gun, he faced his attacker. The man stood about five feet in front of him and shook as if he had a rattling sieve under his feet. He raised both hands and half-turned, pointing at something on the highway.

Over there, man, over there! He struggled to speak as if he had an attack of asthma.

Calm down, sir, Hinckle raised his hand, in case the man rushed him again.

There! Jesus weepin’ Christ, she’s there, there, there! The trucker’s shaking intensified. Hinckle thought he’d collapse any moment.

All right, sir, just take it easy. Calm down, and show me. . . He approached slowly, talking in colorless monotone, the voice of control.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll show you. Still shaking, the trucker suddenly hung his head as if someone chopped a hand down across the back of his neck. He spoke to the ground. I’ll show you. I’ll show you. Bring a flashlight. It’s dark . . . I didn’t see, man, I didn’t see . . .

It was dark now, especially over the water, but his cruiser’s headlights shone a good distance up the highway. The flares were gushing strong too so any traffic coming down would notice them though probably not until they ran them over. He took both flashlights from the cruiser and motioned for the trucker to lead the way.

The bloodstains and the wheel skid marks on the highway started about one hundred feet up from where the flatbed’s rear set of wheels must have finally tossed the victim, into a ditch overgrown with coastal grasses and filled with sand and muck. He checked to make sure there were no traffic headlights yet behind the flares then returned to where the trucker stood, staring at the ditch.

He stuck one flashlight into the loop on his shoulder, and shined the other up and down the grassy strip. The darkness still had the vestiges of sunset’s transparency and he saw the body. Slowly, he outlined the shape with the beam, to see if he’d catch a movement other than the flickering light reflecting off the wheat-colored dry grass. The inspection helped to raise the body and direct his eyes to features that a cop would not expect to see in a traffic fatality. His heart started to hammer in his chest. The gentle breeze coming across the narrow strip of dunes felt like a salt wash, dripping down his forehead and into his eyes. He ground a knuckle into his eye socket to relieve the sting.

I didn’t see her, man. You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t see her. I was just rolling along and then there’s a log . . . hell, man . . . The trucker’s voice broke under the strain of tears.

He turned and gripped the man’s shoulder, holding until he felt the tremors subside.

What’s your name, sir?

Kalman, Rick Kalman.

What did you see? he asked, forcing himself to sound calm.

Nothing, just a log. I turned my head for a second, to look at the sunset. The road ahead was clear.

Then what?

I turned back and saw it . . . a log.

On the road?

Right across my lane, in the middle. I hit the brakes.

You didn’t see anything else, farther down or on the shoulders?

No. I just stared at the sunset for a second, then turned my head and I didn’t believe . . . Then the front wheels hit. I had to fight to stay straight, not swerve too much. The skid started to pull to the left. The wheels bounced when they ran over . . . again . . . and again. I couldn’t stop in time, man. You’ve got to believe me.

Hinckle glanced down the highway. Even in the darkness and from this distance, the rig looked like a mountain. The wheels probably didn’t bounce when they ran over a body. It was a 7-axle Peterbilt truck with hauling capacity of probably hundred thousand tons. The rig’s front bumper had a sign, OVERSIZE LOAD. Each of its twenty-four wheels was probably as tall as the victim. Still, he knew that’s how it must have felt to the trucker, knowing he’d just killed someone.

I believe you, Mr. Kalman. Did you see any traffic coming at you?

No.

Did you glance in the rearview mirror?

There was no one behind me. The road’s been quiet for hours. I just stopped for a bite to eat outside of McKinleyville and got back on the road again. I’m going all the way down to Petaluma. This timber load’s not for the Eureka docks. Between Rink’s Diner and here I saw a headlight, maybe one car heading up, no more.

And you didn’t see anyone jumping into the ditch when you turned your head back to see the log on the road?

No.

How about the other side? He motioned at the darkening strip of fir trees lining the highway. The night had moved in fast. Everything was beginning to pool into shadows. He glanced up to see all four flares still gushing orange. There were no headlights coming down.

No. I turned my head and saw…it just came at me. I never had a chance to avoid it.

How long did you stare at the sunset?

Not long, man, a second or two.

He pointed the flashlight at the gravel shoulder, and adjusted the other one to sit at an angle that didn’t shine into the trucker’s face. Pacific sunsets this time of the year were spectacular. They definitely merited more than just a quick look. The majestic sinking of the orb beneath the water horizon was hypnotic. He’d been caught staring at it often enough when driving up or down 101. The trucker would be too.

Just then he heard a low-carrying sound of a police siren. In thirty seconds, Jim’s guys would be pulling over on the shoulder to park behind his cruiser. They’d see the skid intact and probably call to cancel reinforcements since it would take just minutes to right the rig. Then 101 would be open to traffic again, both ways. He looked up the road. Those four flares weren’t enough to block all traffic coming down to Eureka.

He grabbed the man’s shoulder again, applying pressure to force him to turn. Let’s go, Mr. Kalman. You can tell your story to the police. It’s all right, let’s get moving. He urged him with a gentle push.

Pete Chesney, one of Sharpe’s sergeants, met them on the highway, about halfway to the rig.

Take Mr. Kalman here to make a statement, Hinckle said to Chesney. Call for reinforcements, coroner’s office too. It’s a traffic fatality. The victim’s lying in the ditch, about two hundred feet up, on the bayside. Full forensic protocol, lights, barricades. We have to tape-off the area. He moved his head slightly to indicate that whatever else had to be said, needed privacy and there was still one civilian on the scene.

Right. Chesney understood, and grabbed the trucker’s arm. This way, sir. Let’s get you in the cruiser.

Pete. Hinckle stopped the sergeant. I need more flares and whatever you can think of as a temporary barrier. I have to stop the traffic coming down. The road’s quiet tonight but I have to make sure they start rerouting them up at McKinleyville. Make the call.

Sam’s setting up the flares down from the rig. Why don’t you drive up your cruiser to where you figure we should block off the road. And call your staff to handle any traffic coming down.

I’ll do that, thanks.

She must have been tossed and dragged underneath the truck from way up there, where the skid marks start, until the rear wheels kicked her out here, Hinckle said, nodding at the ditch where Skip Vaughan knelt beside the body, even as the photographer circled around, taking shots to cover all angles.

The wheels chewed her up pretty bad. Sharpe nudged him in the side. Gotta name yet?

Yep.

Personal effects?

There were none. It’s Emily Waters, a grade school teacher from McKinleyville. I knew her. Hinckle bit the inside of his lip and for a while sucked on the salty taste.

Once he’d made sure that Pete and Sam were doing their job, and the truck driver was in the cruiser, waiting for paramedics to give him a shot to calm down, he walked back to where the victim lay in the ditch. Eureka was the biggest port from here to Portland, but it didn’t even have a rough district where a cop would have to walk with his back against something. And when Jim’s drug units swept the docks, it was more a routine check, rather than a raid. Brainard was a quiet hamlet, a residential string along the Interstate, mostly small business, docks, convenience, tourist stops and gas stations. People locked their front doors regularly but their back doors would be left open often enough; it was that kind of close-knit community. And the same folk spirit carried up to Arcata and McKinleyville, where people knew their clergy and their kids’ teachers on a first-name basis.

Millie Waters was his sister’s girlfriend. She was twenty-nine, same age as Linda, born and bred in McKinleyville, educated down in Berkeley and reclaimed by her upstate roots to come and teach at the Ulysses S. Grant Middle School.

She came back from Berkeley with a solid degree and a big-city fashion sense. Whenever Millie came to her friend’s for dinner and wore her next-season colors, Linda teased her that she looked like an ad for a citrus fruit commercial. When he saw the shredded and blackened lime-green silk patches that still clung to the body, he knew who’d be the owner.

She lay face down in the ditch, with half the scalp bare and the other half crushed like a gourd smashed against a wall. Clumps of blood-matted long, dark hair sat in the sand next to her head. A few spikes, where the blood already dried, looked like crusted needles. The wheels must have dragged her for some distance on her back. The quilted lime-green silk on her shoulders was shredded, and remaining patches scorched. The flesh was scoured to the bone. Her limbs looked as if they came from another body. Nothing fitted the normal perception of what a human body looked like. Since her hands had been wrenched back then taped at the wrists and all the way up to the elbows with duct tape, the shoulders were literally displaced as the body tumbled under the rig’s wheels. Her ankles and knees were duct-taped too and whatever the wheels didn’t crush, became torn, shredded and repositioned between the taped segments.

He bent down and gently nudged her head to see the face. The neck was not just broken but its ligaments and tissues had to be mulched because there was hardly any resistance. Her mouth had built-up layers of duct tape across, some of it shredded and partly fused together into gray lumps.

His eyes filtered through the blood, grit and oil to lift the face into a living time frame. Emily Waters, Millie to her schoolyard friends. A sharp pain scored his throat, tightening it to where he couldn’t breathe. She was over the last time he visited his sister, and brought him a beer and a quick snack of homemade pizza on the deck. She leaned over and looked at his cards, then made a face at his brother-in-law, Mike, before going back to the kitchen to help Linda with the rest of the refreshments. Julian Dawson, her fiancé, joined them later, stopping by after the ball game. He worked as an underwriter at Aetna in McKinleyville and played on their softball team. When he went inside to use the washroom, Linda hugged him and said that for once she didn’t invite any single women over for dinner, just as her brother begged her, and he’d be the odd man out amongst two couples, unless, of course, Julian wouldn’t mind sharing Millie with him. He glared at Linda, mumbled something and headed upstairs to use the washroom, though he saw Millie throw a dishcloth at her friend and say she was a one-man woman.

He rose, acutely aware that nothing should be disturbed until it was recorded and photographed. As he shone the flashlight on the body, forcing himself to do a thorough inspection in spite of his constricted chest, he noticed shreds of the duct tape imbedded in the matted hair and even in the dark gouges below her shoulders where the road chewed up her flesh. He banished the memory when he caught a motion out of the corner of his eye.

Well, we’ll continue with this very nasty business down at the morgue. Vaughan came to stand beside them, leaving his people to bag the remains and prepare the body for transport to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Eureka, where the coroner would do the rest that couldn’t be done on the crime scene; toxicology tests, arranging for DNA tests if semen or foreign tissues were found, X-rays, fingerprints, examining for any signs of violence prior to the victim’s death and any other evidence that might give a clue about the killer.

I’ve called Smithy up in McKinleyville, Hinckle said. He’s taking care of notifying her next of kin. He turned to Sharpe. You’ll handle her folks when they bring them down to Eureka, right?

Right, Sharpe blinked hard. All of them?

All of them, parents, brothers, a sister and a fiancé; nice family, solid church-folk.

They won’t be that solid after this, Sharpe murmured, not that her brothers ever were.

Fiancé’s probably your first suspect, Vaughan said, but I have to tell you, I’ve never heard of a case where a boyfriend or fiancé, no matter how jealous or homicidal, would go to such lengths as to mummify the woman in duct tape.

Hinckle looked at the coroner. I saw her wrists and ankles taped....

You saw her after much of the tape’s been either shredded or sloughed off by the road drag. My guys are still peeling bits and pieces off the road, whatever’s not fused into the asphalt. Her mouth was taped, all the way around, over and over. What’s left there is still enough to reinforce a good sized crate. When we get it off at the morgue, her lips will probably be in pristine condition; a regular miracle considering twenty-four truck wheels ran over the body and that’s when they weren’t dragging and tossing it underneath. Her neck was left clear; it’s full of imbedded rock particles, but she was taped across her breasts, no doubt to make sure she didn’t manage to break the wrist tape. She was also taped around her waist and across her hips. Most of that taping job’s pretty much ripped and shredded. But there’s tons of tape left on the wrists, so they’ll be once again in pristine condition, though I don’t think they’re attached to the forearm anymore. Her ankles, knees and upper thighs were taped too.... he trailed off, shaking his head, then finished, She was alive and breathing through her nose when the bastard put her on the highway, and most likely had her eyes open too, so she could see what was boring down on her. There’s grit and gravel imbedded in whatever part of her face was not taped. There was dried mucous on the tape just below her nose, and as much as I could see through the lacerations and blood, tear encrustations in the eye corners.

Tears...? Hinckle murmured.

She cried for a long time before she was put on that highway. She was alive and breathing and though she probably couldn’t imagine what was coming, just being taped like a mummy would be enough...don’t you think so?

There are five serial killers operating in California at this time, Sharpe said. But none are thought to be working this far upstate. All the predators and rapists are down, near L.A. or inland, toward Nevada and Arizona. We haven’t had any murders on the coast...well, it’s been at least two years. The last one was a case of domestic violence.

Vaughan looked at his watch. It’s past midnight. My guys will stay here and resume work in the morning. If it’s as the truck driver said, and it was mere seconds between an empty highway and when he saw the log, whoever put her there had to be nearby, hiding. He was either in the dunes or amongst the trees, or even watching from a car with binoculars. At quarter to nine there was still some light. Make sure your guys sweep the area thoroughly, he nodded at Sharpe. I’d stay but I want to get the tests done by morning, though I have a feeling it won’t be dope and rape.

She could have been raped before and then taped up, Sharpe said. Rape could still be the primary motive here.

Hinckle shook his head. He didn’t dope her because he wanted her to be aware, to see what was going to happen to her, and a rapist is not going to waste time, taping his victim up for what sounds like hours. Besides, it’s duct tape. One or two strips are more than enough to hold. The stuff’s waterproof as well. He taped her up as if...as if he couldn’t stop doing it, winding and winding....

Serial killers have cars and travel, you know, Vaughan tipped his brows at him then at Sharpe. Once I get the tests results back, you should think about calling the FBI down in San Francisco.

We’ll think about it, Skip, Sharpe said but Hinckle heard that he wasn’t pleased with the coroner’s suggestion.

When Vaughan left, Hinckle touched Sharpe’s elbow. Jim, I’ve got six sergeants and twenty-one deputies. You have just as many people, but I don’t think we should ride this case without at least getting some background information on those five serial killers. San Francisco will have the stuff we need, profiles, history, and comparisons that might give us a lead....

Sharpe shook off his hand. Let me question the family first. Waters’ brothers are not exactly model citizens, you know. Then, if we run into a wall, I’ll contact the FBI.

Jim, her brothers have nothing to do with this and it’s not going to be Millie’s fiancé either. I know Dawson too. He’s....

It’s my investigation, Mason, and until I’ve totally exhausted leads within my county, I have no need to run for help to the FBI.

Fine, he nodded. But I think you’re already way out there, in the middle of the Pacific, without a raft or a life preserver.

Chapter 2

Salton stared at the image of a flame-engulfed human figure frozen inside the TV screen’s matte black border and, for a moment, thought he was back in Dunlop’s new morgue, watching the ‘10 forensic animation of the accident. He could even hear the coroner’s voice, as clear and colorless as the day Dunlop stood beside him, holding a remote control, explaining how he reconstructed Brenna’s last seconds.

Once you input the key parameters, the graphic interface models a pretty accurate action clip of the self-immolation process from the point where the victim sets himself on fire. It’s the same platform as they use in building video games. We’re not the first customers either. The Hollywood stuntmen use it to map out the sequence of a burning act....

Shit! He shook his head to banish the memory. Where the hell did I put it...? He leaned forward, pulling the bed sheets and tossing the covers until the remote clattered on the floor. He thought he’d shut off the VCR last night before passing out, but he must have hit the freeze-frame button. The damn thing stayed on all night.

He rose on his knees, pointed the remote at the TV as if wanting to shoot it, then clicked furiously until the screen turned blank. He dropped the box and sat back on his heels, head bowed. What day is it? What week, month, century...? And do I care to live through it—again?

He took a few deep breaths, holding to the count of five and exhaled. Like all techniques, foisted upon him by well-meaning experts these past six years, the breathing relaxation didn’t help. Then again, the half-a-bottle of whiskey he courted last night didn’t help either. And the hand job he resorted to, whenever he wanted to pass out, was just as desperate as whoever gave him the last blowjob in the pick-up truck, down in Heber. She didn’t speak English or maybe she didn’t want to in case the customer asked for extras and wasn’t willing to pay the price. Like all the other quick hands and indifferent mouths before, the trick didn’t help. By the time he checked into the Pacific Motel north of Los Angeles, his only concern was a TV and a VCR, not a good mattress. The fifty bucks he’d paid the off-duty waitress would probably help her to get the next fix. Was there anything that would help him?

The solution lies inside you, John, doctor Parson’s brush-brittle voice came from somewhere under the bed. He liked Judith Parsons. She didn’t bullshit him with padded academic terminology most psychs liked to use on professional clients.

Grief has to run its course. Bad things happen to good people all the time. Courage, strength, determination, purpose in life...blah, blah, blah. Now that I’ve satisfied protocol, let’s hear what you’ve got to say, is how she opened their first session.

All through the five years of their sometimes-reluctant, often-silent and mostly unstructured sessions, he knew the solution had to come from him. The problem was he didn’t know where the solution lived, in his head or in his heart. He learned it didn’t live in his dick and it didn’t live in his gut, though he thought there was something nasty there—ulcers. A six-month medical checkup revealed a lesser scourge, acid reflux.

Look, John, I don’t know what to tell you, the doctor said during their last session. "Your work doesn’t suffer. You’ve had two promotions since our first meeting and, believe me, that’s an honor. Most of my clients get promoted to a restrictive residential facility, like the one in Pescadero, not up the FBI ranks. Keep looking for the solution, but be ready to face the fact you may never find it. Then again, it may find you when you least expect it."

"You know, doctor, that’s what they