Page 7 of Black Hearts

She shook her head. “Please, no….”

I scoffed and waved the gun. “I don’t want to rape you. I just want to see something. Take it off.”

With shaking hands, she slowly removed her thick black coat. Underneath, she was wearing a cream-colored blouse with short sleeves. I took a few steps closer to her, then grabbed her left arm and twisted it so that her inner upper arm was exposed. “I thought so,” I said softly as I stared down at the tiny black tattoo that marred her skin. “The old double circle.”

I dropped her arm, and she began to quiver even more, her whole body wracked with terror. “You’re him, aren’t you?” she asked, eyes bulging.

I nodded. “I am.”

My upper lip curled as she pissed herself with terror, leaking all over the front of her gray pants. She didn’t even try to run. She knew she was fucked, and she was paralyzed with fear.

“It’s a shame your buddies from the Circle didn’t warn you. They’re onto me, you know. They know exactly who I am,” I commented breezily. “Lucky for me, though.”

She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe she was actually face-to-face with the serial murderer who’d targeted her and her friends for over a decade now. “How… how did you know who I was?” she whispered.

“I had a little chat with Celeste the other day, and she brought up a good point. It’s been playing on my mind. How could your friends in the Circle be keeping such a close eye on her in recent times? They seemed to know what she’d been saying in therapy almost right away, given how quickly they made their move to get her. I always assumed they hacked the network and read all your notes. But she made me wonder if that could even be possible. Or if they were even aware she was in therapy. So then I figured someone close to her could be feeding them info. At first I thought maybe a friend of hers….” I trailed off and shook my head. “But that didn’t make sense. What’s the motive? And her other doctors… same there. All they knew about her was that she was in pain. They didn’t know exactly why. But you did, didn’t you?”

Dr. Fitzgibbons’ eyes widened. “I.…” She faltered again, unable to complete whatever sentence she hoped to say.

“So after all that, I got to wondering about you, Angela. You, the head of the mental health facility who miraculously had enough time to take on a brand new patient despite your hectic schedule. You, the first person Celeste told when the memories started returning. Also the one person who seemed to be purposefully delving deep into her psyche, trying to determine if, in fact, she remembered anything at all.”

She gulped, her eyes never leaving the gun in my hand.

“I think you recognized her name when Dr. Pompeo asked you for a referral, and you knew it could be John Riley’s daughter. You knew she might finally be remembering things, which in turn might be causing her nerve pain. So you decided to take the opportunity to see for yourself and give firsthand info to your friends in the Circle. Am I getting warm?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, but… you don’t understand. I’m not like them.”

I sneered. “No, I understand perfectly. All those times I listened outside your office after Celeste’s sessions… I assumed you were making recordings of your notes. But then it struck me earlier today—there’s already a device in the therapy offices that records the whole session without you having to do anything. So you weren’t making recorded observations after her sessions. You were on the fucking phone. You were telling someone how it was going with her sessions, and whether or not she seemed to remember anything yet. I can’t believe it took this fucking long for it to occur to me, to be honest.”

“Please. Can I sit down?” she mumbled. Her knees looked like they were about to give out.

“Fine.” I waved her over to the sofa. “We’ll sit and talk. We have a lot to get through, after all.”

My demeanor was still calm and collected, but somewhere inside, I was seething, picturing myself tearing open this woman’s chest. I’d never killed a woman before. The thought made me feel slightly unsettled, but given her involvement in Celeste’s troubles, I’d be happy to make an exception for her.

I couldn’t touch her yet, though. She might be able to give me answers.

“Tell me where she is,” I commanded, laying my gun on my lap, one hand remaining on it.

“I don’t know.”

I smiled. “Okay. I see how it is. But let me tell you something, Angela. You already know why I’m here. You know what I’ve done to those men in the past, and you know it will happen to you too. You know you won’t be getting out of this alive. But the thing is, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about slicing up a woman, and I’ll also admit that I’m a little desperate today. I need answers. So I’m going to do you a huge favor.”

Her eyes widened. “What?” she choked out.

I held up the gun again. “Usually I’d spend hours cutting little pieces off you, drilling holes in you, or burning parts of you. But I’ll give you a choice. It’s either what I just described, or you give me information. If you choose to cooperate, I’ll give you this gun, and I’ll let you kill yourself. Quick and painless if you put the bullet in your head in the right place. So what’s it gonna be?”

Tears filled her eyes. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t kill me. I’m not like them. I don’t deserve to die.”

I cocked my head to the side. “You said that earlier. What do you mean you aren’t like them?”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t hurt children. I would never. And I don’t know anything about their inner workings. I’m not one of them.”

“And yet you have their mark.” I pressed my lips together and nodded toward her left arm.

She held up her hands again. “Please just… just let me explain,” she said, her voice cracking with fear.

I shrugged. “Fine. I’ll give you three minutes.”

---