Ilse watched as an obese, bald man in a bright Hawaiian shirt stormed into the interrogation room, his double-chin wagging and a thick finger jutting towards Agent Sawyer.
“You bitch!” he declared.
“Good to see you, too, Rudiger,” Sawyer replied, his tone bored.
Ilse, who'd been sitting primly in one of the metal chairs fidgeted with the clip-on, blue visitor badge.
The large man glanced towards Ilse, pulling up short. He frowned, his face wrinkling like dough in a pan. “She with you?”
Sawyer frowned. “She's helping on the case.”
Rudiger gave Ilse a long look, then grinned. “I like your hair,” he said. “It suits your face. You'll have to tell me the name of your barber.”
Ilse blinked, refusing to glance at the man's entirely bald head and instead just smiling faintly and nodding once. “Hello,” she murmured. “I'm Ilse.”
“My name is Rudy,” he replied. “FBI,” he added with a faint wiggle of nearly non-existent eyebrows. Now, breathing heavily from the energy of his entrance, the man approached a spare chair, dragged it and lowered his bulk down. He pointed a finger towards Sawyer again. “You are the worst Tom.”
“What now, Rudy? Did you get those student lists?”
“That's just it!” he crowed, waving a finger at the flickering lights above. “Damn lists are bleeding out my eyeballs. Like ten lists already. Half of them aren't online. The first guy, what was his name Franz Caprisun?”
“Frank Capriso,” Ilse volunteered.
“Him. He's easy,” Rudiger said, slapping a sweaty palm against the table. “Easy breezy. Worked at two schools over the course of his entire, wonderful, marvelous career. But that second guy? Artichoke?”
“Arthur?” said Ilse.
“He was fired like six times! Six! Also subbed a ton. How am I supposed to compile that many student lists? Hmm? You trying to give me a heart attack? Is that it, Tom? Did I wound you in some way? It wasn't because I asked your ex out, was it?”
Tom frowned. “You asked Jenn out?”
Ilse glanced over, her curiosity piqued as Rudiger paused, winced, and shook his head. “Umm... No? Look, all I'm saying is if I have to be dragged around from state to state just to help you with this shit, I'm asking you give me achievable tasks. This list compiling can't happen online. Three of the schools only keep hard copies of previous school years. You're going to have to go to them in person.”
Sawyer sighed, rubbing a hand down his face, but nodded once, his baseball cap dipping. “Fair,” he said. “You at least got some of those lists?”
The tech in his Hawaiian shirt sniffed, pushing out of his chair now and pointing a finger at Tom. “Don't insult me, Sawyer. Of course I have the others. I can give you a printout of the three schools; you need to check it manually though. Got it?”
Sawyer flashed a thumbs up, watching as Rudiger beat a retreat back through the interrogation door, trying to slam it shut, but the spring pressure caught it, easing the door shut despite the large man's best efforts.
Once he was gone, Ilse glanced in Sawyer's direction, not saying a word, her eyebrows rising.
“It's fine,” Sawyer said. “Rudy is good people. Only guy from my old field office who doesn't have a bone to pick. He agreed to come down with me on this case for a couple of days. Also, if you ask me, I think he likes the company.”
Ilse glanced at the table now, spreading her fingers against the cold metal. “So Mr. Hubbard was fired six times,” she said, softly. “His wife wasn't exaggerating.”
“Underselling if anything,” Sawyer replied. He frowned, crossing his arms. “Well, a lot of the schools in the area, especially around here, won't send their hard copies over without someone with a badge stopping by. Dammit...” He shook his head. “I guess I can grab a couple of locals...”
At that moment, Ilse heard a soft beeping from her pocket. She frowned, reaching down and withdrawing her cellphone. Instantly, her eyebrows shot up. The alarm kept buzzing and she checked the small little note on the tiny flip-phone's screen. Appointment.
“Christ,” she said, sharply, shooting to her feet and glancing around the interrogation room. “I—I'm so sorry, but I can't check files with you. I have an appointment.”
“Right now? Can't you cancel?”
Ilse's tone went firm. “I don't cancel my appointments.”
Sawyer gave her a long look, and Ilse, feeling perhaps she'd spoken a bit too harshly, continued.
“We scheduled for online since I was supposed to be in Germany,” she said, wincing. “My client,” Ilse said, choosing her words carefully, “needs the routine.” Ilse thought of Cindy, of the older woman's kind nature, her peacemaking personality. She also knew how rough things had gotten the last time they'd taken a break. Ilse hated technology, but she hated letting her patients down even more. “Look—Is there any way you could get me a computer to borrow? I was supposed to be back home.”
“Can't use your phone—oh, right. You have a drug dealer phone.”
“It's not a drug dealer—you know what, I'll take that if you can give me a computer with audio.”
Sawyer got slowly to his feet, still rubbing the bridge of his nose. Clearly, the agent didn't relish the idea of hunting down other student lists for the next few hours. But then with a nod and jerk of his thumb towards the door, he said, “I'm sure we can find you something. Besides, it's not like I need help just picking up files. We can meet back here by nightfall.”
Ilse nodded in gratitude and waited for Sawyer to shove out of the interrogation room door, clicking off the bright, fluorescent lights behind them as he moved back onto the main floor of the precinct.
***
Ilse found herself back in the interrogation room with the long, orange extension cord Rudiger had been kind enough to run under the door. Now, she sat in the metal chair, her back to one of the concrete walls just in case the mirror was two-way. Confidentiality couldn't be breached, and Ilse prided herself on her professionalism.
She faced the laptop's webcam, disentangling the charging wire briefly with a couple of jerks and then tucking it around the edge of her chair leg before clearing her throat and glancing at the small digital clock on the laptop. She double-checked her flip phone.
Both read the same: 4:29.
A minute before the appointment. She licked her lips nervously, one hand hovering over the track pad as she kept the cursor in front of the bright blue button that read, “Join Room.” Like a sprinter waiting for the starter pistol, she watched the digital clock.
4:29.
Then.
4:30.
Instantly, with a sigh of relief, she clicked the button and watched as the screen buffered for a moment and then began to stream. The visuals were much higher quality than the dinosaur desktop she kept back at her home office.
Now, her client was smiling in full HD, waving shyly at the camera and leaning in, her nose bulbous for a moment, as she got too near the lens.
“Cindy,” said Ilse, smiling now, “it's good to see you.”
Her client leaned back in an old leather desk chair, folding her hands in front of her pink sweater. “Dr. Beck,” said the client, nodding once. For a moment, the stream froze, and Ilse frowned, but then the picture started moving again and she caught the second half of a sentence. “—not used to but should be fine.”
“Sorry,” Ilse winced. “I didn't catch that. What aren't you used to?”
Cindy waved a hand towards the camera. “Online meetings,” she said, her voice soft and sweet. The woman was ten years older than Ilse, in her early forties. She had neat, bobbed hair and pleasant features that always seemed to arrange closer to the boundary of sincere or solemn rather than amused or humorous.
Now, unsmiling as ever, Cindy was watching the computer, considering her words before saying. “I've been thinking about what you told me last week...”
“Oh?” Ilse said, shooting a glance towards the interrogation room door to make sure it was shut. “I'm glad to hear that.”
“And... I don't know if it's fair to call him a serial killer,” she said, softly. She winced as if certain this might receive a tongue lashing.
Ilse, though, gently replied, “The man who kept you and your best friend?”
“I'm not sure it's fair,” Cindy said, still solemn. “Labels have meaning. You taught me that.”
“Yes, I did. But we were discussing self-talk, then. Right? Words like victim and shame and hopeless. My point was making sure you were careful with your language.”
“No, I know what you meant but I was thinking about it. He... he wasn't like those other people you hear about. He... he was really nice in a way. He gave both of us gifts. He would say nice things.” Cindy sighed, shrugging one shoulder. “I know it's been nearly twenty years. But... But if I'm honest, I still think about him sometimes. He's the nicest man I ever knew.”
Ilse felt herself stiffen a bit, trying her best not to frown. Her own mind cast back, her own memories slipping into the dregs of the past. She heard the creak of an old door on rusted hinges. Heard the slap of footsteps against stairs. She bit her tongue, allowing the pain to rouse her once more, and then said, quietly, “He took you both when you were just teenage girls. He abused you.”
“No,” said Cindy carefully. “I-I know he was a bad guy... Or, at least, that he seemed like one. But I just don't totally blame him for... well, you know.” She shrugged. “My friend and I... We didn't come from much. He was the first person to show us kindness.”
Ilse bit her lip now, counting slowly to ten before mirroring back the comment as a question. “I see. So this man who took you was the first person to show you kindness?”
“Yes,” she replied, brightening.
Another flash of memories. More footsteps on the stairs. The sound of snipping scissors, of crying, a hot flash of pain.
Ilse blinked for a moment, and on the screen in front of her, she saw another face... A face of a woman playing with Barbies on a hospital bed, giggling and rocking back and forth. Before she realized what she was saying, Ilse said, sternly, “That's just Stockholm Syndrome. You've bonded with your captor as a means of coping with trauma. It's not real!”
Cindy blinked, frowning.
Ilse swallowed, her heart hammering as she realized what she'd said. Quickly, she amended, “I don't mean to be blunt. I understand you're processing these emotions. It's just... the man was evil. He hurt you and abused your friend for his own benefit. He wasn't a good guy, Cindy. I promise you.”
For a moment, she wondered who exactly she was speaking to. Her client, or herself?
She refused to visit him in prison. He didn't deserve another second of her life. Then again, if she didn't visit... would she ever get to the bottom of any of this? Or was she destined to linger, lost and afraid.
“I... I have to think about that Dr. Beck,” said Cindy quietly. “I don't know.”
Ilse nodded, slowly, her own expression solemn now. “What else have you been thinking about?” she said, softly, only half listening as her client replied.
Inwardly, Ilse's own mind was whirring. She refused to touch on the parallels between her own life and her client's...
But a more proximate parallel became apparent.
The trauma in her childhood had shaped Cindy's reality in her forties. Decades had passed, but the fruit that had been planted years ago had reared its ugly head now. Not everyone was destined to such fate—sometimes scars could strengthen.
But other times... if left untended, untreated, without discussing these things with others and exposing them to the light...
They festered.
She frowned, considering the two high school teachers who'd been brutally murdered.
Both of them involved in the school system for more than twenty years. Both of them involved with children.
What if trauma, especially in the killer's youth had something to do with it? What if, more specifically, the two teachers had the same student, years apart. From kindergarten to twelfth grade. What if whatever was going on here spanned a greater length of time than simply the three days it had taken to murder both men.
Ilse resisted the urge to reach for her phone. She had an idea, but ideas could wait. She exhaled slowly and then, refocusing, returned her full attention to Cindy.