“This here magician done killed somebody,” Garland concluded, looking up as he said it, his southern drawl pronounced, his sky blue eyes slyly gauging her reaction to his words. With his square jaw, broad cheekbones and forehead, straight nose and well cut mouth, the muscular, six-foot-three-inch, thirty-six-year-old Garland would have had no trouble picking up women in any bar in the country. Which he had done, at least seven times that the Commonwealth of Virginia knew of. He had slashed each of those women to death before being caught four years previously. Having been sentenced to death, he was now in the process of winding his way through the legal system. For the foreseeable future, however, he was an inmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison, the federal maximum security facility in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, with a Special Housing Unit (SHU) dedicated to some of the country’s most notorious criminals, of which he was one. A psychiatrist who was rapidly gaining national renown for her work studying serial killers, Charlie was conducting a forensic assessment of him and seven other serial killers housed in the facility. At the moment she was closeted with Garland in one of the cheerless cinderblock rooms in which such inmates typically met with their lawyers. Equipped with a panic button built into her side of the table as well as a security camera that was continually monitored set high up in a corner, the room was freezing cold even on this sultry August day and small enough to awaken her tendency toward claustrophobia. On a positive note, her office, grudgingly granted to her by the warden at the behest of the Department of Justice, which was funding her research, was right next door.
“What about this one?” Keeping her face carefully expressionless, Charlie replaced card Number One with card Number Two. It was just after four p.m., and she would leave the prison at five-thirty. Dealing with Garland in particular always left her drained, and today was no exception. She was really, really looking forward to the run along the wooded mountain trail that led up to the top of the Ridge and back with which she typically unwound. After that, she would go home, make dinner, do a little yard work, a little housework, maybe watch some TV. After the grim surroundings in which she spent her workday, her house in Big Stone Gap was a cozy refuge.
“Hell, it’s a heart,” Garland said after a cursory glance down. “A bloody one. Fresh harvested. Plucked right out of somebody’s chest. Probably still beating.”
Once again he tried to gauge her reaction, which for the sake of her research Charlie was doing her best to conceal. The typical response was two humans, or an animal such as an elephant or bear. His deviation from the norm was interesting, to say the least. She would have been downright excited, and gotten busy hypothesizing that the administration of inkblot tests to at-risk youth might identify the potential deviants among them, if she hadn’t halfway suspected that Garland was coming up with his bloody interpretations at least partly to mess with her. Without commenting, she wrote down Garland’s interpretation.
Resting his powerful forearms on the table, Garland leaned closer. “You married, Doc? Got any kids?”
She met his eyes at that. From the glint in them, she knew she wasn’t mistaken about the enjoyment he was deriving from their interview. As one of maybe half-a-dozen women in the facility, she was accustomed to being the object of the all male inmates’ intense interest, with wolf whistles, catcalls, and lewd suggestions routinely following her progress whenever she was within view of the cells. Ordinarily she was able to tune it out, but this was a little different because Garland was not behind bars, was close enough despite his restraints to reach out and touch her if he’d wanted to, and exuded a raw kind of masculine magnetism that, if she hadn’t known precisely who and what he was, she might even have succumbed to, thus proving that despite everything she knew she was potentially as vulnerable as anyone else to a predator of this type. The answer to both his questions was no, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. This was her third meeting with Garland, and each time he had tried to charm her, to flirt with her, to make her aware of him as a man. Like many serial killers, he was outwardly charismatic, with a friendly, engaging personality that he could turn on and off when he chose. Add his looks to the mix, and it was a deadly combination. Stone cold killer was the last thing any unsuspecting woman would think if he started coming on to her. Dream lover was more like it. One of the things that made most serial killers so dangerous was their ability to appear normal, to blend in to the fabric of society, to seem just as well intentioned and harmless as the vast, clueless majority. It was almost like protective coloring, akin to the aptitude of a chameleon for taking on the hue of its surroundings to keep from being spotted. She had realized already that Garland was a master of it.
“You know the rules, Mr. Garland.” Her tone was deliberately untroubled. Inside, where he couldn’t see, her heartbeat quickened and her pulse started to pick up the pace. It was the same kind of reaction, she imagined, that a snake handler might experience when confronting a spitting cobra. Instinctive respect for the creature’s deadly potential was felt on a bodily level. “We stick strictly to the test. Otherwise I end the session and have you escorted back to your cell.”
Which was a six-by-eight windowless cube in which he was kept in solitary lockup for twenty-three hours a day. The days when he had an appointment with her were exceptions, allowing him out for the time they spent together, which was about two hours, plus the half hour or so it took him to be processed in and out of his cell, as well as his allotted exercise hour. Add to that the fact that she was a woman, and their meetings were a rare treat in what was for him a bleak existence, she knew.
His broad shoulders shrugged. “Didn’t you ever just once want to break the rules, Doc? Say to hell with it and go for what you want?”
He was studying her, testing her, trying to provoke her into a more rewarding response than the cool professionalism she had maintained so far.
Not gonna happen. I know what you are. She had seen the autopsy photos of his victims, knew what he was capable of. She gave him a level look.
“Last chance, Mr. Garland. We’re on inkblot Number Three.” Charlie replaced the card in front of him with another. “What do you see?”
He glanced down, then up again to meet her gaze. “Whatever you want me to see, darlin’.”
Charlie couldn’t help it. Her lips thinned and her eyes flashed with annoyance. Although Garland was sitting perfectly still, she could feel the pickup in his interest as her expression changed. Not a surprise. From the beginning she had sensed the intensity of his need for her to become flustered, or angry, or responsive in any way that went beyond the parameters of the doctor/subject relationship. Having spent much of her residency and the three years since immersed in the thought processes and emotions and worldview of serial killers, she knew what he wanted: a connection. She also knew how to react to deny it to him and did so calmly.
“I can see we’re finished here.” Plucking the card from in front of him, she restored it to the stack on her side of the table and stood up, something that his restraints prevented him from doing, although he sat up a little straighter, watching her. His sheer physical size made him seem to take up way more than his fair share of the space in the room. As she closed her notebook, he slid a swift, comprehensive glance down the length of her body in a classic male once-over. When his eyes came back up, they gleamed at her. Charlie could feel the sexual energy he gave off, and was reminded once again that he was a dangerous man. “I’ll have Johnson”—the guard waiting outside the door, who as a security precaution every now and then glanced in at them through the tiny, mesh-lined glass window in the steel panel—“take you back to your cell.”