Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“His purposes being terror and death.”
“Yes.” Terror and death. “The exact opposite of what Dr. Sweeton intended.”
“Who hates the people who need that therapy enough to turn it around on them? Not to cure them, but to make them suffer further, and suffer horribly?”
She shook her head as she placed the empty container on the bedside table, finally satiated. “Someone very sick. He hates them. He blames them for something.”
“Yes. But what?”
“That’s the question,” she murmured. One of many.
She glanced at Ambrose, and she saw that he was looking over the wall, too, his expression deeply troubled. “This is what I’ve concluded so far. From the evidence, from what I experienced in my treatment, it looks like he or she used Dr. Sweeton’s cocktail but tweaked it until they got it ‘right.’ Let’s call him a he for ease. He accesses their trauma center, and then he triggers it. He makes them think they’re back there and that it’s happening again. But this time he makes sure they have the tools to fight back. And they do. All of them at once. It’s why he forgoes the sedatives that Dr. Sweeton uses. He wants their body to be active while their mind is submersed in their past.”
Her shoulders drew up as a cold shiver blew through her. Who would do that to a fellow human being? Who hated that deeply? “If that’s the goal,” she said, “he seems to have achieved it with the last two killings. I don’t have the details on the most recent murder, but Lieutenant Byrd says the murder weapons were all there, which I’m assuming means our killer or . . . whoever’s setting these poor souls up, didn’t have to be part of it.”
Ambrose nodded distractedly. “I think he’s using items that trigger their trauma,” he said, pointing to the list of seemingly innocuous items at each scene. He mentioned the wine coolers and the cigarette brand and why they felt off.
“I see what you mean,” she murmured. “They don’t quite fit, do they?” She scratched her head, remembering that she’d had the same gut feeling about the belt but hadn’t been able to explain why. “So . . . he’s accessing their trauma center with the drugs, then he’s triggering them with a physical item that connects to that trauma. It’s serving to give the experience texture and weight and maybe sometimes a visual, too, the same way Dr. Sweeton uses dirt under your feet and a drumbeat to ground you.”
“Yes. These people are the opposite of grounded, though. They’re left to flail, seemingly indefinitely, in the worst moment of their life.”
“Hell,” she murmured. “It would be like hell. God, no wonder their faces look like that.” She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. It was gruesome.
“It is. We have to stop it.”
“How, though? He knows the recipe now, and access to victims who’ve experienced trauma of that depth is practically limitless.” Not only that, but people like the ones they’d found murdered often went unreported. Those who lived transient lives weren’t always missed. He might have killed hundreds of them already, and they wouldn’t even know. He might have been “experimenting” for years.
Ambrose was quiet for a few moments, and as she watched him, a sweep of affection moved over her. They were a good team after all. He looked over at her as though something had just occurred to him. “He knows their triggers, though. How does he know these particular people’s triggers? If we’re right and the items listed aren’t random, then he knows exactly what to place there to use as triggers—but ones that the police will miss. A belt. A type of drink, a specific cigarette brand.”
“The podcast,” she said. “That could be how it fits.” At least in one case.
“What podcast?”
She turned more fully toward him. “I talked to Cherish Olsen’s roommate. I know you found her after she overdosed, but . . . I had talked to her a few days before that, and she told me Cherish had done this podcast called The Fringe. I watched her interview. It was awful, but . . .” She put her hand on his arm. “Yes. Oh my God, the toys at the crime scene.” She stared off into space for a moment, feeling ill as she worked out what had happened. “The killer used those toys to trap her in the hotel room of her mind.” The one where her six-year-old self had set her toys up on the edge of the bathtub before the monster in the other room came for her. Oh God, she wanted to weep. She wanted to tear this room apart at the thought of that scene, and it was only a scene in her mind.
“The thing that doesn’t fit is that the other victims—Ambrose, why do you look like that?” He looked stupefied.