Page 6 of Obsession
SAVANNAH
Athick and heavy silence descends on the room. Robbie’s words hang in the air. The security guard’s sharp cough shatters it briefly, before it creeps back in to wrap around my heart like thick tendrils of ivy. I try to picture the man in front of me as a four-year-old boy, locked in the bathroom, naked and cold, with bleeding knees and tears streaming down his face.
A quick glance at the recorder on the table confirms it’s still recording. I keep my eyes on it as I whisper, “When did your mom first start hurting you?”
Though he agreed to interviews, asking about his childhood still feels strangely intrusive.
Robbie doesn’t reply until I lift my gaze. And with his dark eyes pinned on me, he rubs his wrists as if he can still feel the phantom touch of his shackles. “My earliest memories involve my mom humiliating me in some form by installing padlocks on the cupboards to stop me from rummaging for food, or refusing to change my diapers for days. She was inventive with her punishments.”
“No one knew?”
“No one cared.”
I frown, but Robbie speaks before I can open my mouth to respond. “I grew up in a trailer park. My mom was addicted to prescription pills, and my father was an alcoholic who struggled to hold down a job. Their situation was by no means out of the norm. Everyone in that trailer park lived equally miserable lives.”
Sweeping my eyes over his face, noting the crow’s feet around his eyes and his graying temples, I chew my lip in thought. “And your father? He was rarely home, right?”
“He tried at first, but he was gone by the time I became a teenager.”
“Did he not question the padlocks or your dirty diapers?”
He scratches his short beard and looks out through the window. It’s the first time he’s taken his eyes off me since he entered the room, and it feels like a boulder has been lifted from my shoulders. But then his attention is back on me, and I struggle to stay upright. “What about you, ma’am? Did you grow up with an idyllic childhood? Picket fence and neatly trimmed rose bushes beneath the windows?”
“We’re not here to talk about me,” I reply, fighting the urge to fidget.
Undeterred, Robbie sits forward and rests his elbows on the table. The muscles in his biceps bulge, straining against the white fabric. “Out of curiosity, why did you really accept my request?”
“It’s a big case. Every reporter out there wants a chance to interview you. I’d be foolish to turn down this opportunity.”
“You’re not asking the right questions.”
Unable to look away from the darkness in his blue eyes, I swallow thickly. “What questions should I ask, Robbie?”
“Simple. Why did I request you specifically and not one of the countless reporters at your paper?”
My heart does a little jump. “It doesn’t matter.”
“On the contrary, it matters a lot.”
Jaw clenching, I sit straighter. “Okay then, Robbie. Why did you ask for me to conduct the interviews?”
A small smile plays at the corners of his lips. He keeps studying me in that unnerving way that sends a thousand niggling spiders crawling down my spine.
It’s not entirely unpleasant. No one has ever looked at me this closely before, as if they want to unearth all my secrets—every hidden layer beneath the brown eyes and fake smile that’s nowhere near in sight now.
“I think you asked for me because I fit the profile of the girls you killed,” I reply bravely.
His lips twitch. “Is that so?”
“Yeah…” My voice is breathy. Too breathy. “Brown eyes, long and wavy dark hair. Early twenties. Women who resemble your mother.”
“My mother,” he replies, watching me like a hawk.
It unnerves me how not a single emotion flashes across his face, how it remains a blank mask.
“You think the women I sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered resembled my mother?”
“Do you dispute my observation?”
