The Good Listener

by B. M. Hardin

  Very outspoken I see.

  “Sure. I can do that. So, what brings you in today Blake?”

  “I need your help.”

  “With?”

  He grew quiet.

  I needed to loosen him up a bit.

  “Let’s ask some casual, general questions. I’ll ask you and you can ask me. What’s your favorite time of the year?”

  “Summer. What’s your favorite color?”

  “Blue.”

  “Why?” He asked.

  “It’s just my favorite. Doesn’t really matter what shade. I like them all. What’s yours?”

  “Red.”

  “Why?”

  “Because blood is red.”

  Huh?

  I blinked rapidly and cleared my throat.

  “What’s your favorite thing to do?”

  “Read.”

  “Books? Magazines?”

  “Everything. Textbooks, online material. I’ve always had a thing for reading and absorbing information. There were times where I didn’t talk to anyone for days. During that time, I would be reading. I can read something once and remember it forever.”

  “Where did you grow up Blake?”

  “A long way from here.”

  “Where?”

  “A little bit of everywhere.”

  “With who? Your parents?”

  “Foster child. I moved around a lot.”

  “Where are your real parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “How?”

  He didn’t respond so I kept talking.

  “Married? Kids?”

  “No. Not anymore. And yes.”

  “So, why are you here today Blake?”

  “I need you to help to stop me from doing something. Something that I know I shouldn’t do but I want to do it. I need you to figure out what’s wrong with me.”

  “Something like what?”

  “Our conversations don’t leave this room right?”

  “Right. They don’t. Why?”

  “Where is your paper and pen?”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “What if you forget something I say?”

  “I won’t. I’m a very good listener. I personally think that it’s rude to write while someone is talking. I’ll write down what I need to remember once you leave.”

  He looked impressed.

  “How can I help you, Blake?”

  He unbuttoned his blazer, loosened his tie, and sat back in the chair.

  Surprisingly, he somewhat smirked.

  It was as if just that fast he’d changed into someone else. It was as though he had gone from good guy to bad guy in only a matter of seconds.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I need your help. I’m going to kill someone.”

  My mouth fell open without my permission, but I quickly fixed my expression.

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “So, you’re going to kill someone?” I repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you want me to do?”

  “Stop me,” he said with a smile.

  What have I gotten myself into?

  ~***~

  “You were tossing and turning all night. Is something wrong?”

  I shook my head.

  Of course, I couldn’t tell Joel or anyone else for that matter about Blake’s problem, or confession I should say.

  What he’d revealed to me in confidence was something that I’d never been faced with before, and it definitely had my mind in overdrive.

  I’d been looking up exceptions to the rules when someone of my employment was supposed to stick to the rules of the practice, or seek law enforcement.

  He hadn't committed the murder, yet, so maybe the exceptions wouldn’t even apply.

  I had been trying to talk myself out of helping Blake for days, but I my mind was made up.

  I was going to help him, and I was going to do a darn good job at it too.

  “No. I’m fine. Just work.”

  “Really? After all of these years, I’ve never known you to complain about work. It must be something serious,” Joel said.

  He had no idea.

  After Blake admitted to me how and why he needed my help, he wouldn’t say much of anything else.

  We’d spent the remainder of the session, and the following session, going in circles.

  He never said too much.

  He was always short with his words and most times he didn’t bother to give me any straight forward answers.

  The only thing that he continuously assured me of was that there was someone out there that was about to become a murder victim unless I could stop him.

  He wouldn’t tell me who.

  He wouldn’t tell me where.

  He wouldn’t tell me how or why he wanted to do it.

  All I knew was that he was.

  I could tell by the way that he talked about it that he wasn’t jerking my chain or playing some kind of sick mind game with me.

  For the first time, ever, I was counseling a murderer, and it was going to be my pleasure to fix him.

  If there was such a thing.

  I didn’t have much to go on, yet, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t already working on a solution.

  I’d been pulling up every study, symptom, possible treatments, and every case study that I could find in preparation for what seemed to be a long road up ahead.

  I was overworked. I was tired and exhausted, and I hadn't had a decent night’s rest since the day that Blake said those dreadful words to me.

  But I didn’t mind.

  Not if it meant saving some innocent person’s life.

  I’d had never counseled a murderer before; a few that were suicidal and had threatened to kill themselves, but never had I been in a position such as this one.

  I was the key to stopping a murder.

  Once I succeeded, and once the media got a whiff of something like things, with his identity hidden, of course, the amount of press and respect that I would receive from something like this was going to be unreal.

  Sure my heart was in the right place, but I also understood the attention that would come with it for me.

  Maybe I could get some kind of talk show helping others or something like that.

  No, this wasn’t about me.

  But helping Blake would also help me and put me in the position to help even more people than I already did.

  And with someone’s life, in my hands, I wouldn’t fail.

  Failure just wasn’t an option.

  But one day a week just wasn’t enough time for me to get inside of the mind of a killer.

  I needed more time with Blake.

  I couldn’t exactly neglect my other patients; or could I just for a little while?

  My phone rung and I answered it, but just like always, lately, immediately the caller hung up.

  Something weird was definitely going on here.

  Between the mysterious phone calls and the random roses, things just seemed to be a little on the strange side.

  “You were screaming out Blake’s name, in your sleep. I tried to shake you, but you never woke up. You screamed his name, loud, as though you were trying to get his attention or something. And then finally, you stopped,” Joel said to me, reminding me that we were having a conversation.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He came to see you didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “About what?”

  “You know I can’t talk to you about that.”

  Joel didn’t respond.

  Instead, he got himself together and headed out for an early morning run which was a new routine that he’d started before heading out to work.

  I headed to shower with Blake still on my mind.

  Today was session number three, and I had some new strategies that I planned to try with him.

  There were certain answers that I needed from him in order to h
elp him, and he surely had me working hard to get them.

  It seemed as though he wanted my help, yet in a way he didn’t.

  He was torn in between good and evil; a saint or a sinner.

  And it showed.

  One minute he would seem normal and the next minute he would say something to show just how far from normal he actually was.

  But I could tell that he was clever.

  He used his vocabulary, and his was very particular about the things that he said. It almost made me feel as though he knew just what might put him on the straight and narrow, but he refused to say it.

  So I had to figure it out.

  Lost in my thoughts and staying in the shower a lot longer than usual, I heard Joel enter the bathroom. He got into the shower behind me, and I shrieked as he placed his sweaty body up against me.

  “You would tell me if it was going on right?”

  I turned to face him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “With my boss. With Blake.”

  “Joel he is my patient. Nothing more. Trust me, you never have to worry about that,” I answered him honestly.

  He looked deep into my eyes before answering.

  “Okay. So can we have a date night tonight?”

  I knew that I was going to need to stay late at work after seeing Blake.

  There was no telling what he was going to reveal to me this time, and I had a feeling that I was going to have plenty of notes to take and that I would be spending a lot of time searching things in correspondence to something that he might say.

  “I’m sorry honey. Not tonight. I have to work late again.”

  “You said that yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that too. We need some quality time Hannah don’t you think?”

  “Yes. But not right now. Right now, I’m just a little busy with work,” I said, rinsing off and attempted to kiss him before getting out of the shower but he turned his face in the opposite direction.

  “If you expect our marriage to get back on track, you’re going to have to do your part too Hannah.”

  “I know Joel. I know.”

  I didn’t hover around for him to say anything else.

  I had a long day ahead, so I got dressed, yelled goodbye and out the door I went. He just didn’t understand.

  I was about to tackle something much bigger than me. Much bigger than a date night with my husband and he was just going to have to wait. As bad as that may sound, he had to take the backseat, for real this time, though he always thought that I put my job first.

  I tried to remember how my parents got through it all.

  My mother, of course, was a therapist, and my father was the fire chief for thirty years at the fire department. He was always busy, and so was she, but they always made time for each other.

  And both of them always made time for me.

  As far as I could remember I never heard them arguing or one complaining about one working too much or things of that nature, and that’s not to say that they didn’t argue about it.

  I just never heard them.

  So, working hard and busting your butt to be the best at your job was all that I saw; and it was exactly what I had become.

  “Are you listening?”

  “Of course, I am,” I responded to one of my patients later on that day.

  And I really was.

  But I was also thinking about Blake.

  I was nervous; yet at the same time, I was eager to get to the meat of his issues. He didn’t look like a killer, but then again they never do.

  He actually looked as though he could have been some kind of male model or something, but apparently, he was far from that. But at least he was trying to get some help.

  Shaking away my thoughts of Blake, I focused on my patient, and once he was done, I sat in the same spot, for my entire break and awaited Blake’s arrival.

  I was hoping that we got further this time than we had the previous two sessions. Maybe he could tell me who the victim was or at least something about them.

  But I needed him to give me something. After all, he came to me. He found me. So he had to feel like I could help him. He had to feel like there was a chance.

  Summer buzzed, and I headed to the door to greet him.

  I forced myself to smile, and I sat down, but he didn’t.

  Instead, he paced the floor. I paid close attention to him, and I waited for him to speak.

  But he didn’t so I did.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Her.”

  “Her who?”

  I assumed that this her was the woman that he wanted to kill.

  Finally, I had something. It was a woman.

  “What did she do?”

  “Everything. How has your day been?” Blake asked surprisingly and stopped pacing.

  He headed over and took a seat.

  “My day has been fine. Thanks for asking. What did she do Blake?”

  “What didn’t she do is more like it.”

  “Your wife?”

  “What wife?”

  I looked at him confused, and I could tell that he realized that he’d stuck his foot in his mouth.

  “Oh, that wife. She’s wasn’t my “real” wife, and I really don’t have kids either. That was nothing more than a minor embellishment.”

  What?!

  I was confused.

  “Once I got my current position at the company, I thought that it would look better if I had a picture perfect family. Appearance is everything you know. Sometimes you have to be who people want you to be, instead of being yourself.”

  Society definitely made you think so.

  “People hide behind lies and fabrications all the time. And that’s what she was. My lie; my fabricated family. She isn’t, nor was she ever, my wife. She’s a single mother with three kids, and I paid her to take a few pictures with me and pretend to be the Mrs. for a little while. But I have never been married. And I don’t have any children.”

  Okay, so plenty of things concerning him were popping into my head all at once, and I mentally took note of them. He liked the perfect image. He was a liar. And probably a pretty good one. He didn’t mind lying to achieve a goal, outlook or to sway someone’s perspective of him. He cared about what people thought of him and how they received him.

  And the list goes on.

  “So, to answer your question, no I wasn’t referring to her,” he finished his sentence.

  “Who were you referring to then? The woman that you want to kill?”

  “I never said that it was a woman.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He didn’t respond, and I could tell that he was getting his thoughts together and replaying our previous conversations.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No, I wasn’t talking about the woman that I want to kill. I was talking about someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman that hurt me.”

  “Who hurt you and why?”

  “I don’t know why. How long have you and Joel been married? Do you have kids?”

  “This isn’t about me and my personal life Blake. This is about you and yours. Let’s not mix the two.”

  “Trust is a very important part to therapy. Getting your patient’s to trust you is the key. You stated that in an interview didn’t you?”

  Hmmm…

  So he’d watched me on TV.

  “You saw me on TV? Which interview?”

  “All of them. I was there in the news station at the last one. I called your name.”

  “Wait a minute. That was you that called my name?”

  “Yes.”

  “How or why were you there?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything other than calling my name and getting out of sight?”

  “It wasn’t the right time.”

  He had been watching me.

  “Let me ask you th
is. Did you come by here? Late one night and somewhat hide out behind the building?”

  “No.”

  I wasn’t sure that I believed him.

  “But that’s what you said right? You said that I have to trust you? I have to trust you with my thoughts. My feelings. And my secrets. I have to trust you in order for you to be able to help me. What better way to build trust than to ask questions?”

  “You’re right. Ten years of marriage. No kids.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why don’t you have kids?”

  “We haven’t had the time.”

  “Do you want them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he want them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to give your husband what he wants? I’m sure you wouldn’t want anyone else to.”

  I ignored his comment.

  My uterus or marriage to Joel wasn’t what we needed to be discussing.

  “So tell me, how can I help you change your mind? How can I save your victim? How can I stop you from committing murder?”

  “That’s something that you have to figure out.”

  “Why do you want to kill her?” I questioned.

  “Because I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Are you really going to kill her?”

  “Would I be here if I wasn’t? Would I have come and confessed it to you if I didn’t have any real plans of doing it? I don’t think so.”

  “But what about your career?” I inquired.

  “Who said anything about getting caught?”

  “So you don’t think you would get caught?”

  “No.”

  “But what if you did? Are you willing to risk everything? Your career? Your life? Your freedom?

  “Yes. But I wouldn’t get caught.”

  “And you would commit the murder yourself?”

  “That’s the only way to do it. No one else can do it the way that I could.”

  My stomach turned.

  I dreaded to ask the next question, but I had too.

  “Have you ever killed before?”

  He stared at me.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  Blake stared at me long and hard, making me extremely uncomfortable.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I have killed before. And I liked it.”