COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) (2 page)

            Kate nodded.

            “Forget it in this case. This guy may very well lie without batting an eye.”

            “Great.”

            Sally graced her with one of her rare smiles that lit up her chocolate brown face. “Just pay close attention and trust your instincts.” Then she offered an additional reassurance. “By the way, I’ll believe he’s Army Reserves and was in Desert Storm. He’s the right age and that’s too easy for us to check out. But secret assassin for the CIA? Come on!”

            “He didn’t say the CIA, but I guess that’s who it had to be. They’re the ones who do that kind of stuff, aren’t they?”

            “Oh, I believe it of the CIA but, honey child, I don’t believe for a minute that this guy was one of their operatives. For one thing he wouldn’t be talking about it so casually.”

            Kate took another sip of wine.
Hmm, almost gone.
Did she want another glass? She normally only had one in the evenings, as part of her wind-down routine, unless they were celebrating something. Or unless her husband seduced her before she got around to the wine. Giving in to said seductions was another excellent way to wind down in the evening.

            Grinning, she shuffled out to the kitchen in her slippers to refill her glass. She reached up to push a stray dark curl out of her eyes, then grabbed the curl and pulled it back around to get a good look at it.
Three gray hairs!

            Well, what did she expect at forty-four.

            Taking her refreshed wineglass over to the living room sofa, she sat down and fast-forwarded her memory to the next session with Miller.

            In response to the wallet question, the man had looked her right in the eye, then smiled. “Depends on how much cash was in it. No point in being an ass over chump change. But if I looked in there and saw a fifty or more staring back at me, I’d probably take out the money, then mail the wallet to the poor schmuck. I’ve lost my own a couple times. Royal pain to replace everything.”

            “Would you put a return address on the envelope?” Kate asked.

            That question he’d thought about for a moment. “Probably. Too important to risk it getting lost in the mail.”

            “What if he contacted you and asked about the money?”

            “I’d lie and say it was empty when I found it.”

            “Would you feel guilty?”

            “Not very.” Miller sat forward, his expression serious. “Honestly, I’ve got a lot bigger stuff than that to feel guilty about.”

            “Such as killing people for hire?” Her voice was gentle. She was actually starting to warm up to this guy.

            “Them, not particularly. I thought of it as a necessary evil. They... well, I don’t want to say they deserved to die. But I knew the world would be a safer and better place without them.

            “But there’s other things I feel guilty about. Such as the Iraqis I had to kill in Desert Storm. Most of them were kids, even younger than I was at the time. And they were draftees. Had no choice in the matter.”

            Kate waited a beat. “I’m sorry for them but also for you, Miller, that you had to deal with that. I can’t even begin to imagine how soldiers do what they do.”

             He looked away. “Bad memories.”

            Kate couldn’t recall how she’d segued into finishing the personal history, but she remembered Miller saying, “More bad memories. That’s why I’m here. I know my problems with women have to do with my childhood. I just don’t know how to fix it.”

            “Hopefully I can help you figure that out,” she replied softly.

            His story was one of the saddest she had ever heard, before or since. The only child of an Army sergeant and a stay-at-home mom, he had seen more heartache by the time he was ten than most people have to face in a lifetime. His father, when he was home from a tour of duty, was a binge drinker. He’d never hit his pretty wife but he had, in Miller’s words, “torn her to shreds verbally.” Miller’s mother got back at her husband by bringing a string of men into her bed whenever he was away. One of her most frequent lovers was her husband’s best friend, a man Miller thought of as family.

            At that point in the story, Miller had paused and looked up at the ceiling, swallowing hard. “Not ready to go there yet.” Three sessions later, he’d told her that the man hadn’t confined his sexual exploits to his mother’s bed. He’d molested Miller on a regular basis, and his mother knew what was going on.

            But in that second session, Miller had said, “Kate, I know this is gonna be rough, going back and dealing with all that sh... uh, crap. I’m gonna try real hard to be honest with you, ’cause I really want to get married and have a family. I love kids. I want to have the good family, the happy family we should’ve been back then.” It was a common desire of people who had grown up in severely dysfunctional families, but Kate had never heard it expressed quite so earnestly before.

            “And time’s running out on me. I’m thirty-six years old. If I don’t get my act together soon...” He stopped and shook his head.

            Miller’s parting shot, that second session, was to point out he’d known exactly why Kate was asking about hypothetical lost wallets. “Believe it or not, and despite all I’ve done, I try to be a moral man. I don’t want to be like my parents.”

            By the end of that session, Kate had known this man was not a psychopath, but he was a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder. His boastful arrogance was a defense mechanism against low self-esteem, not surprising considering his history. Personality disorders, by definition, were almost impossible to cure; they were too ingrained in the person’s basic make-up. She’d decided to give it her best shot, though. She liked this guy, a sentiment she didn’t always experience when dealing with narcissists.

            Fast-forward another three years. She was now Kate Huntington, having married her first husband, Eddie. And Miller Dawson resembled the man who had first walked into her office in appearance only. He had completely reinvented himself and was now a kind, thoughtful and, indeed, extremely moral man.

            Sally had read her one-page summary of Miller’s final session. Then she’d looked up, dark eyes narrowed. “Is this for real, Kate?”

            “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

            “Is this the same guy you thought was a psychopath when he first started with you?”

             “Yup, same guy. Well, not the same guy really, but still lives in the same body and goes by the same name. He’s changed more dramatically than I ever thought anyone could.”

            Sally’s brilliant smile split her face. “Sweet Jesus, you’ve cured a personality disorder.”

            “Correction. I guided the man down the path. He cured himself.”

            “But still...”

            “Yeah, I’m feeling an extreme natural high at the moment. As a matter of fact, I’m resisting the urge to grab you and dance around the office.”

            “Don’t you
dare,
girl!” Sally was the quintessential professional, always fastidiously dressed and dignified. She would no more dance around her office than she would moon someone.

            Kate had just grinned and floated back to her office two inches off the ground.

            What she hadn’t shared with her boss was that she’d taken a risk with Miller. When female clients cried in her office, she usually leaned forward in her chair to hold their hand or pat a knee or an arm. It was considered unethical to make such gestures across genders, however. Even if the therapist didn’t mean anything but comfort by the gesture, the client could take it the wrong way.

            But the second time this tough guy had broken down in her office, talking about how his mother had failed to protect him, Kate couldn’t help herself. She reached out and gently touched the back of Miller’s hand, resting on the arm of his chair. The next thing she knew he was kneeling in front of her, head in her lap, sobbing like a baby. She patted him on the back, like one would a crying child.

            At the end of that session, he asked for a hug.

            Kate hesitated. “Okay, but I have to open the door first, so it can’t be construed as anything other than a friendly hug.”

            He gave her a puzzled look. “Construed by who?” She knew then that there was no sexual agenda here. He just wanted a damn hug!

            After that, they’d ended every session with a hug, with Kate praying that Sally wouldn’t find out and make her stop. She knew Miller needed those hugs, the first non-sexual affection he’d had in his entire life.

            Kate had learned two very valuable lessons from her work with Miller Dawson. One was that her clients needed more than just her support and guidance to heal the wounds of the past. They needed a good mommy. Transference, as Freud had dubbed the phenomenon, was not always a bad thing. Two years after Miller’s last session, Kate attended a workshop called “Reparenting the Inner Child” and discovered that other therapists in the trauma recovery field had come to the same conclusion.

            The other thing she’d learned from Miller’s case was that one
could
cure a personality disorder. But only if the client was willing to dig deep enough into the pain to undo the traumatic experiences that had distorted their personality development in the first place.

            Miller was one of the few clients who felt the need to stay in touch once they left therapy. Every year, he sent her a Christmas card, with a long note catching her up on his life. A little over a year after finishing therapy, he’d married Jill Thompson.

            After his kids were born, he ended each yearly missive with the words, “Without you, Kate, my children wouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t have the wonderful wife and family I’ve always wanted.”

            She always sent a short note back, closing with the comment that he deserved the credit for his success in therapy and in his life. He had changed himself. She had just walked the path beside him.

            Kate hadn’t thought to notify him when she’d left Sally’s agency to go into private practice. She hadn’t thought about him at all, until she received an e-mail from him the following January. She’d never given him her e-mail address.

            He’d asked if it was okay to contact her that way, then he gave his yearly update and attached recent pictures of his children. She responded that e-mail contact was fine and apologized for disappearing on him.

            “You weren’t that hard to track down,” he’d replied. “Remember who I used to work for.” This was followed by a winking smiley face. Maybe he’d been with the CIA after all. She’d always assumed that was just narcissistic bragging, especially when he’d never mentioned it again after the second session.

            She’d received one or two e-mails a year after that. Then, this past Friday, he’d called out of the blue, asking if he could meet with her, but not at her office. He tried to make it sound like he just wanted to have a friendly catch-up chat but the whole conversation had been a little strange.

            She’d gently pointed out that it wasn’t appropriate for her to go to lunch with him and suggested he come to the office instead, quickly reassuring him she wouldn’t charge for the time.

            But he kept insisting that he really wanted to take her to lunch. When she finally agreed, he asked her to meet him at the food court in Columbia Mall, a rather strange place to take someone to lunch. Then the conversation had gone from weird to weirder. “If you get there before me, go ahead and get what you want to eat and I’ll pay you back.” Before she could respond, he’d disconnected.

            Kate reached for her wineglass on the coffee table and realized it was empty. She glanced at her watch. Ten o’clock. She needed to get to bed. Long day tomorrow. Was she wound down enough to go to sleep? Not really, since she was now ruminating again about why Miller wanted to meet for lunch, and in such a strange place.

            She thought about another glass of wine but decided against it. Two glasses was her limit on a weeknight.

            Then she heard a key in the front door lock. A grin spread across her face. Skip was home. She was fairly sure she’d be able to get to sleep just fine, in a little while.

CHAPTER TWO

            Kate stood beside the fountain that dominated the center of Columbia Mall, scanning the lunchtime crowd. She spotted a man who might be Miller–right height, slim, blond hair. It no doubt had a good bit of gray in it now. He’d be in his early fifties.

            She raised her hand to wave but the man turned away. He fell into step with a group of people walking past him. Nope, not Miller. He was probably fat and bald by now. She’d mistaken the stranger for him because he looked like Miller had in his thirties.

            She walked into the food court itself. An array of fragrances assailed her, dominated by that of hot grease. Her stomach rumbled.

            She didn’t see anyone who resembled an aging Miller. Would they even recognize each other after thirteen years?

            He’d said to go ahead and get her food so she ordered a turkey wrap and fruit smoothie. She was standing at the counter waiting for her food when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Turning, she found the stranger she had thought was Miller standing behind her.

            He wasn’t a particularly tall man, just a few inches over her five-seven, but he was trim and fit. There was indeed considerable gray mixed in with the blond hair. His tanned face had several wrinkles. They just made him look more rugged rather than old.

            She still wasn’t sure it was Miller until he grinned at her. She cocked her head.
Why’d he pretend not to see me when I waved?

            With a mental shrug, she moved to give him a hug. But he grabbed her hand instead and shook it vigorously. “It’s so good to see you, Kate. You haven’t changed a bit.”