The Good Lie by A.R. Torre
CHAPTER 10
I stood at the dining room table and studied a puzzle piece and the box, trying to find a match between the two. Clementine wove between my legs, her tail tickling the backs of my bare knees. I twitched away. “Clem, stop.”
She leaped onto the closest chair and mewed for attention. Setting the box on the table, I petted her head and stared down at the board.
Today was not a good day. My two o’clock appointment had gone completely silent on me, which might have been a pleasant change of pace if I wasn’t already paranoid about my skills as a shrink.
I never used to worry about this. I’d always been a little overly cocky, convinced that I could wave my pen, open my mouth, and spew out a brilliant dialogue that would twist my clients’ brains into performing however I wanted them to. But ever since John and Brooke had died, I had sunk further and further into the belief that my emotional radar was temporarily—or maybe even permanently—on the fritz.
Take my last meeting with John. He’d been furious at Brooke. I remember sitting across from him and feeling the spittle hit my cheek as he had ranted about the man he thought she was seeing.
I hadn’t believed it, but my job wasn’t to judge his wife’s innocence—only to filter and analyze his thinking. The majority of trust issues were rooted in real-life experience, originating as far back as childhood. John had continually balked at discussions of his adolescence, which only gave further credence to his trust issues as a natural defense mechanism. If my psychological tuning fork had been in proper pitch, I would have ignored efforts to diagnose the root of his insecurities and instead focused on the more glaring possibility—that his anger would cycle out of control and into physical violence.
From my television in the living room, a game show came on. I glanced over and watched the host bound toward the stage, high-fiving the audience as he went.
I’ve always held an ugly hypothesis about marriage—that at some point, one spouse secretly wishes the other would die.
It’s not a popular theory. When I broach it at psychology events and forums, it always sparks an argument, some doctors jumping into denial with gasps and sputters and an insistence that they’ve been married forty years and NEVER ONCE wished death on their spouse. But deep inside, in the dark place that they squash down and pretend doesn’t exist . . . I know there’s always been a true and weak moment where the thought—the hope—flickers. For most people, it’s fleeting. For some—like John—it was a splinter. A deep splinter that broke off under the skin, the sort that was almost impossible to remove unless you peeled back the entire area, and no one would do that, so it festered. It grew infected. It killed and ate away at surrounding healthy tissue and throbbed and ached and dominated every thought and action until it controlled an entire life.
I had listened to so much deliberation and thoughts about hurting Brooke that it had become background noise. I’d become desensitized to it. I had accepted the fact that John fantasized over killing Brooke and had stopped being aghast at the idea because I didn’t believe it would ever happen. They’d been married fifteen years. If he was really going to kill the woman, he would have done it already. So what if he thought Brooke was having an affair? He’d been almost as irate a year earlier, when she’d parked on a hill and hadn’t fully engaged the emergency brake and the sedan had rolled into a parked car.
This wasn’t my fault. I pushed a five-sided piece into place and mentally chanted the words, trying to find truth in them.
This wasn’t my fault.I’d argued with him in Brooke’s defense. Stood up for the woman. Pointed out all their history and his false insecurities.
This wasn’t my fault.Maybe she really did have a heart attack.
I lifted my wineglass and took a deep sip, holding the smooth merlot on my tongue for a moment, then let it seep down my throat.
The doorbell rang, a sharp ding-dong of intrusion, and I turned at the sound as Clementine sprinted past me and hid under the couch.
Robert Kavin stood on my front stoop, a bouquet of flowers in hand. I paused in the foyer and hesitated.
It was late, almost nine. Too late for a pop-in, though I had a staunch policy against them at any hour. I could just ease back around the corner and into the dark hall. Stay away from the windows in the hope he would lose interest and head home.
“Gwen.” He placed his hand on the door. “I can see you through the glass.”
Of course he could. I had hoped the dim interior light would hide me, but luck hadn’t been kind to me lately. Swallowing a curse, I flipped open the dead bolt.
“Hi, Robert,” I said crisply, as coldly as I could considering the fact that he held out a bouquet of pink tulips, his face contrite and apologetic. It had been years since I’d gotten flowers. I took them from him and struggled not to bury my face in them and inhale their scent.
“I know it’s late, but I needed to apologize.”
With the flowers in hand, I had limited ability to bar the door, so I settled for my stoniest tone. “Go ahead.”
“I shouldn’t have looked at the file. Shouldn’t have gone in your office. Honestly, I shouldn’t have even fixed breakfast without you. I’m sorry.”
I digested the apology and found that it tasted sincere. A stronger woman would have argued some key points, dressed him up and down for his actions, then ripped the heads off his flowers and thrown them back into his face, but it was chilly outside, my sleep shorts weren’t warm enough to combat the open door, and it was hard to be cruel to anyone who had suffered the loss of a child. “Okay,” I said agreeably. “Thanks for the flowers.”
He looked surprised at the easy acceptance, then slowly nodded, stepping back from the door. “Sure. I really am sorry.”
“Yeah.” I studied him in the porch light. He was in a suit, this one without the third piece, his tie undone and hanging around his neck, the top button of his shirt unfastened. He looked like he needed food and sleep, and I could help with one of the two.
I stepped back and held open the door. “Want to come inside? I’ve got lasagna I can heat up if you’re hungry.”
He smiled sheepishly, and it was criminal how good the expression looked on his handsome features. “Sure,” he said slowly. “If you’re up for the company.”
Robert ate three huge squares of lasagna, then attacked the ongoing puzzle. I sat cross-legged on a padded dining room table chair and watched his hands move across the board like a Mensa kid in front of a Rubik’s Cube.
“Plus, there’s travel.” He clipped a dark piece into the border trim. “I don’t want to worry about them in a crate at a kennel.”
He was naming the reasons he didn’t have a pet, which were all valid, if you were considering pets as sterile objects and completely discounted the joy they brought to your life.
“How much do you travel?” I swirled the wineglass and watched the dark liquid sweep around the sides.
“Not much,” he admitted. “I went to Tahoe last summer. But, you know. At some point I will.”
“Sure.” I took a sip. “A workaholic married to his job. From one addict to another, traveling isn’t actually going to happen. You know that, right?”
He grimaced.
I picked up a piece and studied the design. “I’m sorry about your son.”
In the days since Robert had left my house, I had researched him online. His impressive court record and legal accolades were buried on the sixth page of results behind the national news stories, press releases, and hundreds of videos and posts looking for leads and justice for Gabe Kavin. Half the news results were from the disappearance period. The other half were after they found his son’s body behind a recycling plant in Burbank, a crude heart carved into his chest, his genitals tossed into the trash. The BH Killer’s signature marks, and his official sixth victim.
He looked up from the puzzle, and our eyes met. In the dim light of the bar, I hadn’t seen the full extent of his sorrow. The drench of pain was haunting his eyes. Pulling at his face. Heavy in the sag of his posture.
I’d treated a few parents after the loss of a child. The grief wouldn’t go away. It would dilute in his eyes. He would grow better at masking it, disguising it, but it would always be there. Losing a child was like losing a limb. You were reminded of it every time you moved, until the consistent adjustments to life became a permanent part of you.
His mouth pinched together in a flat line. “Nothing to be sorry about. The apologies don’t bring him back.”
No, they wouldn’t. I changed the subject. “I’m assuming you’re being kept abreast of the arrest.”
“Yep.” He picked through the pile of homeless pieces. “Are you familiar with the BH deaths?”
Killers were my obsession, and Los Angeles’s most famous serial killer had been under my microscope from the beginning. I half rose from the chair and lifted the wine, pouring more in my glass. Without asking, I topped his off. “It’s in my wheelhouse, so yes. I’ve kept a professional interest in the killings.”
“You said on the night we met that you do a lot of expert testimony.”
“I do.”
“Psychological profiles?”
“At times.” Where was he going with this?
“Done one on a serial killer before?”
“Just in med school.”
He said nothing, and I waited out his thought process. Spotting a potential connection, I fit the puzzle piece in and locked it into place.
“I’d like to hire you.”
“For what?”
“A psychological profile on the BH Killer, to start.”
With what I already knew about his kills, I could whip up a half-decent profile within a day. But half-decent probably wasn’t what Robert Kavin was looking for. “Why?”
“My son died at his hands.” His glare challenged me to question the request. “Do I need another reason?”
“No,” I said slowly. “But your son was found nine months ago. Why wait until now for a psych profile? They have the killer.”
“I didn’t know you nine months ago.”
I bought a few seconds by taking a slow sip of merlot. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. I was itching to push him out the door and sharpen my pencil. But something was off here, and I needed to put my finger on what it was. “Do you have the case file on your son?” He shouldn’t. It’d be a horrible thing for him to possess. Yet something in his self-assured manner told me he did.
He nodded.
Ah, the psychological trauma that each autopsy photo, every casual case note, had to cause. I tried not to outwardly wince.
“I have his, and I can get you the others soon—in the next few days.”
The others? I inhaled at the possibility of reviewing the full details of all six victims. “How are you getting those?”
“Just know I can get them.”
I frowned, skeptical. “Right.” If it was true, if I could look at all six of the BH victims and their circumstances . . . it’d be a psychologist’s dream. And to make it all better—the killer was already behind bars. I could visit him. Talk to him. Do a proper psych analysis, assuming I could get authorization from his legal team.
I realized I was staring at him. I straightened in the chair. “Okay. I’ll do it.” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice, but it still coated the words.
The corners of his mouth lifted, but it wasn’t a smile. It was disappointment, and I didn’t have time to process it before he spoke. “I’ll bring you a copy of Gabe’s file tomorrow.”
“That would be great.” I watched as he tossed a piece down without finding its place.
“I’m going to head home. Thanks for the food and the hospitality.”
I rose. “Sure. And I appreciate the flowers. They’re beautiful.” Two polite people, circling a dead teenager.
“Thanks for not slamming the door in my face.” He paused in the foyer, then leaned over and kissed me gently on the cheek. The stubble of his cheek brushed against my skin, and he smelled like the night we met, minus the cigarette smoke from the bar. Good. Really good.
“Night.” He stepped away and moved through the door, tripping on the first step and catching himself.
“Careful. Good night.” I held the door open until he was halfway down my stepping-stones, heading toward a glistening black Mercedes parked in my drive. I pushed the door shut and flipped the lock, then reached up and engaged the dead bolt.
Returning to the dining room, I collected our glasses and the empty wine bottle, then flipped off the light, leaving the rest of the puzzle for another night. Standing at the sink, I squirted lavender dish soap onto a fresh sponge and washed his plate.
He was an interesting man. Very high emotional intelligence. He could read me as well as or better than I could read him. Behind the charm, he hid his emotions well. My father would have said he played his cards flush against his chest, and he would have been right. He was a man with grief and history, but also . . . there was something deeper there. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it was driving me crazy.
Maybe it was just raw attraction. My body responded to his presence in unsettling ways, and I had struggled, when we parted, to not lean in for a kiss.
I picked up a fluffy white dish towel and ran it around the surface of the red ceramic plate. I also had to face the possibility that my attraction to Robert Kavin had increased when I’d realized his connection to the BH Killer. And now, with him hiring me for a psychological profile, my skin was practically humming with excitement.
Careers were made from opportunities like this. If Randall Thompson was the killer—and all reports seemed to indicate he was—then these events would be studied by psychology professionals for decades. Motives. History. The transition of thought into action in cyclical fashion. Randall Thompson would be compared with Lonnie Franklin Jr. and Joseph James DeAngelo, and I would have an inside look at every single detail. For Robert to give me that access . . . screw the flowers and the orgasms. This was huge, and as unbelievable as it seemed—all six case files?—I believed his confidence when he said he could get them.
That arrogance, the opportunity, the memories of our night together—sheets twisting, mouths hot and frantic—all of it had Robert Kavin stuck in my mind. A fixation, and not an entirely healthy one.
The man was grieving. Damaged. Gabe Kavin had died, along with five other innocent boys. A monster was responsible, and I shouldn’t be salivating at the thought of studying him. I opened the cabinet and stacked the plate on top of the others.
Six boys had died, and soon, I would be given the keys to figuring out why.