Off the Deep End (33)
“Maybe it’s too obvious. Too perfect.” He raises his eyebrows at me, widening his eyes along with them.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugs nonchalantly and tries to act casual, but he doesn’t do anything without a purpose. “Maybe someone set it up to look like the Dog Snatcher.”
“Like a copycat?”
“It’s possible.”
“Why would anyone do that?” I have my own ideas about it, but I’m curious about his.
“There are lots of different reasons. Probably as many as there are killers, but the most obvious one is to keep the focus off themselves. There’s pretty much no better way to keep the finger off yourself than pointing it at somebody else, is there?” He cocks his head to the side and raises his eyebrows at me again. I make my face a blank slate. I have years of practice. He waits a few more beats before going on. “Then, there are the copycats where all the media coverage and hype focused on the crime gives them the inspiration and the idea. Not only that—half the time, it gives them a detailed plan. Did you know there were seventy-four copycat school shootings stopped in the year following Columbine?”
“Just because it was a school shooting doesn’t mean that they copied Columbine,” I say with no idea why I’m defending either side.
“It does when they reference Columbine as their inspiration and their guide,” he says. “But it doesn’t even have to be a real-life crime for someone to mimic it. There was a guy in Georgia who learned how to dissolve a body in acid through watching Breaking Bad. Remember that nineties movie Natural Born Killers? There were at least three different couples that went on a murdering spree afterward, just like the couple in the movie. They used the same methods and everything.”
This is what he’s spent all his time researching? No wonder he’s not any further along in figuring out what happened to Isaac.
I shake my head. “I just don’t buy that sensationalizing crimes leads to people committing them. I mean, come on, no amount of media coverage about a violent crime is going to make a sane person decide to commit one. It’s just not. Pretty sure people that were going to kill people were going to do it whether or not they saw it on TV or read about it online.”
“There’s been lots of coverage surrounding the death of the boys, and now that Isaac is missing, it’s reignited all of it all over again. There’s a lot of notoriety in it.” The sound of people shuffling through the landing on their way to occupational therapy breaks into our conversation, and I wait until they’re gone to speak.
“They must be pretty sick if they’ll go to those kinds of lengths just to be famous,” I say without bothering to hide my judgmental tone. I’ve never understood people’s obsession with the limelight. People who shine from within don’t need a spotlight. That’s the saying stamped on the mug in my kitchen. It’s always resonated with me. Still does.
“You’d be surprised. It happens all the time. Some people will do anything to get their picture in the news. To have people talk about them. Say their name.” He shakes his head like he doesn’t understand their motivations any more than I do.
“I guess it could be a copycat”—I shrug—“but does it really matter?” I give him a knowing look.
“Only if you’re hypothesizing about the pathology of the killer.”
“Is that what we’re doing here? I thought we were talking about Isaac.” He thinks I’m not following his steps, but I am. Every single one.
“Right. Right,” he says like he’s grateful for the reminder. He reaches down and grabs the report tucked inside his briefcase and pulls it out. He quickly scans the document. It’s his go-to move whenever he feels the power in the room shifting away from him. “I see staff reports that you’ve shown tremendous progress in the last thirty days. You haven’t received any disciplinary infractions or had any incidents of self-harm.” He pauses, his eyes scanning the rest of the pages, and I beam. My insides and my outsides. I’ve worked so hard to get better. I really do deserve the recognition. “This is actually pretty impressive,” he says, flipping through those case notes, and I’m wondering if it’s the first time he’s read them. My positive reports aren’t nearly as spicy as all my other hospital records.
“I’ve been a good girl since I got here. I’m not going back to the hospital.” Or anywhere else where my life isn’t in my hands. I just want to be left alone to live my life as I please. Nobody intruding on my plans. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any, and I don’t want someone messing with them.
He scratches his chin. “What do you think helped you start getting better?”
“When you’re at rock bottom, there’s really no other place to go but up,” I say with a laugh, but I’m only half joking. “Honestly, it was Isaac. He helped me out of my depression without even trying,” I explain, hoping Dr. Stephens will understand what the others couldn’t. I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to see that Isaac is the only one who knew what I’d been through, so we were able to connect in an unbelievably intimate way. “You don’t know what being involved in a fatal accident is like unless you’ve been through it, and Isaac knew what it was like. During it and afterward. He got all of it.”