The Ex(79)

The notes were roughly in reverse chronological order. It was going to be a long night. I flipped to the very back page to start from the beginning.

The initial intake notes were dated six days after Owen’s car accident. They resembled every scribble I’d ever seen my own physicians make—completely illegible.

When I realized what I was reading, I saw the file begin to shake in my hands. I looked away, and then forced myself to check to see whether I’d somehow misunderstood. I needed—I didn’t know what I needed. To get out of here. To have never taken that phone call from Buckley. To be someone else.

I moved to my desk, opened my browser, and searched for “Robin Scheppard doctor.” Jack’s psychiatrist was still at Silver Oaks. According to the hospital website, Dr. Scheppard had attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Boston University School of Medicine before completing her residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

I picked up my phone and dialed the phone number listed on the website. “May I please speak with Dr. Robin Scheppard?”

An hour and a half later, I was pulling a Zipcar rental off I-95 in Stamford, Connecticut. When I passed the brick wall with a discreet sign that said Silver Oaks, I turned into the hospital parking lot and came to a stop.

As I reached for the stack of folders on the passenger seat, I clicked on the car’s dome light. I looked one more time at Jack’s intake form, knowing that the words wouldn’t have magically transformed during the drive from New York.

Ptx presents requesting inptx hosp. “Thinking of possibility” of killing gf after death in fam.

Jack had checked himself into the hospital because he had found himself thinking about killing me.





Chapter 22


DR. ROBIN SCHEPPARD met me at the reception desk with a chilly handshake—both literally and figuratively. “Thank you so much for seeing me after hours, Doctor. And on such short notice.”

She led me to an office that felt more like a cozy study than a medical office. “So, Ms. Randall, I reviewed the release that Jack Harris signed. It does authorize me to speak to you directly, but this is certainly unusual.”

“I’m aware. But Jack’s on trial for murder, and we have an important hearing tomorrow. I only got his medical records today.”

“Does this mean Jack is pleading insanity? Surely testimony from a doctor who has treated him more recently would be more helpful. I haven’t seen him for—it must be twenty years. I was barely out of my residency.”

“So you remember him.”

“Of course. But I assure you, my notes will be far more complete than my memory at this point.”

“I want to know your reaction when you heard that your former patient had been arrested for murder. That won’t be in your notes.”

“No. But I can’t imagine why it’s relevant, either.”

“Because you saw him when he wasn’t well. You’d know better than anyone whether the current charges seem like the kind of thing his illness could lead to. I’m not asking you to testify, Doctor, or even your medical opinion per se. I’m asking you simply as a person who knew a side of Jack that no one else ever saw: how did you respond to the news when he was arrested?”

“Well, as long as we’re clear that that’s what you’re asking, I was shocked. When Jack was a patient here, he was initially unresponsive, with severe depression. Even when he started to communicate, he was stoic. If there were any concerns about violence, it was more about self-harm. He presented as someone who may never have had any onset of mental illness had it not been for this tremendous reaction to grief.”

“His brother’s death.”

“Yes, that. But grief can be cumulative, even over years, especially to a personality that might be described as fragile. His mother’s death when he was a teenager, followed by his father’s death a few years later. Then his brother. And a breakup, which I believe you know about?”

“Yes, I’m that Olivia Randall. The one he thought about killing if I read your notes correctly.”

Her face went blank momentarily. “It’s funny. I had actually forgotten about that.”

“Seems pretty significant to me, and not especially funny, but I’m the one he wanted to kill.”

She shook her head. “If I had ever taken his comment about hurting you seriously, I would have been obligated to do something to protect you. But the very fact that he chose to come here—simply because the thought even crossed his mind—made me think that the last thing he wanted was to harm others.”

“But on the other hand, you also can’t tell me with any certainty that Jack’s innocent, can you?”

“Of course not, and you know that. Maybe this will help: I had a reporter call me a few months ago. She was covering a murder case where a seemingly nice, normal college student came up with an extensive plan to kill a fellow student over some slight grudge. Because I’ve testified in numerous homicide trials, she wanted my insight about how a quote-unquote normal person can come to commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder.”

“And?”

“I’ve spent a good number of hours of my career talking to people who admit to being murderers. These seemingly normal people tell me how it starts small. They get fired from their job, or dumped by their husband, and they begin to wish some kind of bad upon the person responsible—typically, that the world will come to see the person for what they really are. And when karma or fate or whatever doesn’t come through, the seemingly normal person starts to think, ‘What if they died?’ And that turns into, ‘What if I killed them?’ And eventually, ‘How would I do it?’ and ‘Would I get away with it?’”