In Doc Robin's office he would finish the job.

"Hey, Dr. R." As he stepped into the waiting room, Gray showed the doc a big shit-eating grin, which he noticed she didn't return.

"Hello, Justin," she said coolly.

The two deputy dickwads hustled him through the waiting room, into the office. The doc followed. Gray gave her the eye over his shoulder.

"Gonna poke around inside my noggin some more? I keep telling you, there's nothing to find."

"I think we've found a great deal already."

"You're an optimist. You say my brain is half-full. Me, I say it's half-empty."

He was keeping up the patter, staying loose. Usually he liked to be a little blitzed when he pulled off dangerous shit like this, but right now he had some kind of major buzz going. Adrenaline or some goddamn thing.

The deputies removed his handcuffs and leg irons, standard procedure in the doc's office. She didn't want her patient all trussed up like a prize turkey. Still, he had to be kept under some restraint. The two hacks sat him down in the metal chair and belted his wrists to the armrests, cinching the metal buckles.

"It ain't enough I'm caged all the livelong day," he groused. "Even when I'm out and about, I gotta be friggin' immobilized."

"It's for your own protection," the doc said.

"Yeah, right. Everything you fuckers do to me is for my own good. When you put that helmet on me and nose around in my brain, that's for my own good too."

"It will be, in the long run."

He was strapped in good and tight now. Deputies Dumb and Dumber seemed satisfied. "I'll be in the other room if you need me," one of them said.

Gray knew that the driver would sit in the van while his partner hung out in the waiting room. And he was pleased to see that Forrest Gump and his partner had kept their sidearms on their Sam Brownes, even while off-loading him. That was contrary to regulationsguns weren't supposed to be worn within reach of a prisonerbut he guessed the hacks were just too lazy or too butt-stupid to stow the guns like they were supposed to. That was good. He wanted the Dawg in the waiting room to be armed. There was no sport in icing an unarmed man.

When they were gone, and the office door was closed, the doc pulled up the swivel chair from her desk, setting it between his chair and the computer gear, and sat beside him. She was looking good today, he noticed, even if she was dressed in her standard ensemble, a beige suit jacket, a blouse in pastel blue, a pair of neatly laundered slacks, and sensible shoes. He wished she would wear a skirt. He was sure she had great legs. And he wouldn't have minded seeing her blouse unbuttoned a notch or two to reveal more of the smooth, tight skin below her collarbone.

"How are you feeling, Justin?"

"Footloose 'n' fancy-free." This was true.

"I'm serious. I need to monitor your progress."

"My progress? I live in a cage, Doc. Only progress I make is when I walk from my rack to the toilet and back again."

"I'm talking about progress inside."

"Yeah, I feel ya. Hamlet's kind of progress." He smiled at her incomprehension. " 'I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space amp;' Didn't think I knew that one, did you?"

"Honestly, no."

"First time I was in stir, my roommate got hold of a Shakespeare play. We took turns reading it. Wasn't Hamlet, though."

"Which one was it?"

"The one about the fairies."

"A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

"That's the one. Gotta say, I made one hell of a Titania."

"I'm sure you did." She rearranged some papers on her lap. "Well, let's get started."

"Don't you want to know the rest of the story?"

"Is there more?"

"Darn tootin'. I didn't say where I found Hamlet."

"Where?"

"It was in Susan Miller's backpack."

Her voice went cold. "I see."

Susan Miller was one of the five teenage girls Gray had killed.

"I went through her stuff," he went on blithely, "after I was done with her. Guess she was carrying it around for her English class. I figured I ought to read it, since I liked the one about the fairies. And I always try to further my education. We're a lot alike in that way, Dr. R."

"Are we?"

"Sure. You're furthering your education right now." He met and held her gaze. "By studying me."

She broke their eye contact. "We need to begin."

"You're the boss."

"We'll start with the inkblots."

He didn't like that. He wanted her to turn out the lights, start fiddling with the controls of her mind machine, quit looking at him. There was a chance she'd see what was hidden in his right hand.

"Fucking inkblots again?" He sighed noisily. "Damn, I was hoping you'd bring some more interesting pictures. Naked ladies, for instance."

"I don't have any pictures of naked ladies."

"Some cheesecake shots of you and your daughter would do."

Her saw her mouth tighten. "Justin"

"I'm just talking, Doc. Little Meg Cameron amp; How old she be? Fifteen? Sixteen? That's a damn good age."

"We're not going to talk about this."

"Hope I didn't creep you out with my phone call. I just wanted you to know how much your daughter means to me. Some nights she's the only thing that keeps me going amp;"

She got up, tossing the inkblot cards on her desk. Her hands were shaking. "All right, forget the preliminaries. We'll move on to the MBI."

Gray suppressed a smile. The doc wasn't the only one who could get inside a person's head and push their buttons. And he didn't need no fancy machine.

She attached the electrodes, pulled down the window shades, killed the overhead light, set the helmet on his head. First time he'd worn it, he thought it was heavy as a brick, but he was used to it now.

She put the headphones on him, like always. He wished he could hear some raucous metal tunes on these things and not just the doc's calm, comforting PA-system voice.

"Justin?" she said, the query coming over the phones. "Do you hear me?"

"Ten-four and roger that, big mama," he said in the general direction of the stalk mike protruding from the headset.

When she swiveled away from him to adjust the computer gear against the wall, he knew it was time to make his move.

Timing was critical. Once the helmet was switched on, he'd be unable to act. Those magnetic fields did something funny to his head, got him all messed up. It was like he wasn't even in the room anymore, like he was time-traveling or tripping on some really hard drugs. In the minute or two it would take her to make the final adjustments to the gear, he had to work himself free.

He twisted his right hand sideways, crooking it at the wrist, and guided the screwdriver toward the strap's metal buckle. The idea was to jam the screwie's blade under the tongue of the buckle and lever it up.

He glanced at the doc, still programming the machine. In their first session she'd explained to him that the helmet contained a whole bunch of magnetic coils. She could turn some of them off, turn others on, basically customize the helmet for each user. She liked to tweak the settings each time.

Gray eased the tip of the screwdriver under the buckle, and pushed up on the metal tongue.

"Okay. Ready to begin?"

He froze, waiting for the doc to notice the screwdriver in his hand. Luckily, the room was dark, illuminated only by the glow of the computer screens. Besides, she still hadn't looked at him. She was studying the readouts on the monitors.

"Justin? Ready?"

He needed to buy time, release the buckle.

"Hey, Doc, I'm sorry if I offended you a couple minutes ago." He tried again to pry open the buckle. "I was just, you know, playing."