Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(10)

But what were you supposed to do? You tried to make him run, too. He wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t go with you. You had no choice but to leave him there.

You didn’t even go far. Just took the train north to Albany—a safe distance, but close enough to keep tabs on the trial.

Serial killers are big news. The Nightwatcher trial was covered blow-by-blow in the newspapers, on the radio, on the TV news.

When it was over, Jerry went to prison for crimes he’d confessed to committing.

But you knew better.

You knew he wasn’t guilty—because you knew who was.

You knew that Jamie’s soul had taken over your body and killed those four people, including her own mother—hers and Jerry’s.

Yet you let Jerry take the fall.

But what were you supposed to do? Come forward and admit that you thought you might have done it? That someone else—your own dead daughter—was living inside of you, making you do terrible things? That you had let your own son take the fall?

No. No way. You’d have been hauled off to the loony bin for the rest of your life, just like your crazy old man was when you were a kid.

It’s just like that Old Testament quote, the one that’s resonated for so many years.

There’s not much to do when you’re stuck behind bars; sometimes, you read the Bible they give you. Sometimes, you actually learn something from it.

The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.

Those words couldn’t be more true.

You paid for the sins of your father—and now your son is paying for yours.

After Jerry was convicted—well, it wasn’t easy to live with the anger. The guilt. The injustice of it all.

Things got a little crazy . . .

You got a little crazy. A lot crazy—and it wasn’t the first time.

Suddenly, Jerry wasn’t the only one behind bars.

For me, though, it was just for aggravated assault. Nothing so bad.

No one had died . . . this time.

During that last jail sentence, Dr. Patricia Brady came into the picture. And at last, everything changed.

For the first time ever, someone was willing to listen. Dr. Brady was young, new at her job, so eager to help . . .

She didn’t know the whole story, of course.

She knew nothing about the twins, Jamie and Jerry, whose teenage father, Samuel Shields, walked away from their pregnant mother many years ago, denying that they were his.

Denial is so easy until you get your first glimpse of a fourteen-year-old child and see your own face looking back at you.

Dr. Brady knew the rest, though—about the childhood beatings by a mentally ill father, and all the years in and out of juvy and then jail, and one state pen after another. . . .

She said that all those bad things that happened could be partly due to illness. Not physical, but mental illness. She said it runs in families. If your father has it, chances are you might, too.

She said that when people are mentally ill, they can’t help what they do, because they’re only following the commands of the voices that never stop talking, never, never, never, never, never . . .

Dr. Brady said the medicine would make the voices go away.

“All of them? Even Jamie’s?”

“Even Jamie’s,” Dr. Brady said, not realizing that Jamie had ever been real, an actual person who lived—and died. His own daughter.

She was my child, just like Jerry was. And I failed her when I walked away from their pregnant mother, just like I failed Jerry.

“I don’t want Jamie to go away, Dr. Brady. She’s a part of me.”

No. It was more than that.

Jamie is me, and I am Jamie . . .

But Dr. Brady couldn’t possibly understand.

She said, “Look, Sam, I know you don’t want Jamie to leave. But you have to trust me. You have to try it. Please. For me.”

She had such kind eyes. The kindest eyes anyone could ever have.

“All right. I’ll try it.”

Dr. Brady was right: it worked.

Jamie was gone, but somehow, that was okay. Everything was okay—especially when that final sentence had been served and handcuffs and inmate jumpsuits became relics of the past.

“You’ll never go to jail again, Sam,” Dr. Brady promised on that last day. “You’ve got your life back.”

Back? I never had a life, never thought I could.

A normal life, the kind of life other people—normal people—get to live. A life spent working hard and hoarding every spare cent, saving up to hire the best lawyer in the world to get Jerry out of prison . . .

And now . . .

It was all for nothing.

Jerry is gone. He never even realized he had a chance—that he hadn’t been abandoned by his father to waste away the rest of his life behind bars.

I was going to surprise him, one day soon. Go visit him. Remind him I promised to take care of him, and that I didn’t forget. I was going to get him out of there . . .

But it’s too late now.

Jerry took his own life before he could be rescued.

The news was devastating, and in its wake, the whole world came crashing down. Suddenly, it was all so pointless. Work, money, medicine . . .

For years, there had been regular visits to the Albany mental health clinic that wrote prescriptions and set up the obligatory follow-up appointments. But the doctors there weren’t nearly as engaging as Dr. Brady had been; not nearly as invested in their patients’ treatment. There was a lot of turnover at the clinic; you couldn’t really count on seeing the same shrink from one visit to the next.