KILLER ADDICTION: When Murder Becomes A Habit

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

LEONARD PARKED HIS grey Toyota Prius and made his way into the office of his psychiatrist, Doctor Ellen DeMarco. In her early forties, Ellen was attractive, but distant, almost aloof, as if she were hyper-aware of keeping the therapist / patient wall an impenetrable barrier.

‘Hello Leonard, how have you been this week?’ asked Ellen.

‘Hello Ellen,’ replied Leonard. ‘My hallucinations and visions have eased a bit since we last spoke, but they still flash at me just as I’m about to go to sleep. I have these violent spasms and short, shockingly vivid dreams that haunt me just between that awake and asleep phase. I’m constantly tired, and I even had another blackout last week—a short period when I couldn’t remember anything. But I feel like these sessions with you are helping. Even though this is only our third session, I feel like I’m improving and getting more awareness about what’s happening. It really has been trying, these past twelve months with all these problems I’ve been having.’

‘Thank you, Leonard. I’m glad to hear that you feel the sessions are helping. Last week we were just about to talk about your parents. Let’s continue from there,’ said Ellen.

Leonard, who’d never had a conversation with anyone about his parents, took a deep breath and started talking. ‘Well, I guess the logical place to start is my father. I don’t really remember much about him, because I was so young when he died; I was only five years old, so I only have a few dim memories of him, and those that I do I could not describe as significant. From what I gather, he was an unremarkable man—he was a nondescript, middle level sales rep for a soft drink company, working the regional routes of Virginia and Maryland. He died of emphysema caused by smoking two packets of cigarettes a day for thirty years from when he was only twelve years old. Not much to tell, really.’

‘Okay, we’ll come back to your father later once we’ve covered some more territory,’ said Ellen, who was leaning back in her chair with a notepad on her lap. She appeared attentive, but not leaning in and engaging; she was the picture of professionalism without close personal connection.

‘Well, my mother’s story is different to my father; quite a bit more information on that front, I’m afraid,’ said Leonard. ‘After my father died, my mother and I had ten years together. To be honest, she was a miserable wreck. She fell apart his death and sought solace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. She had an impressive capacity for alcohol consumption and embraced the mess and chaos that came along with it. My mother was quite the barfly.’

‘That must have been difficult for you, Leonard; growing up like that with no father and a drunk for a mother. You mentioned you had ten years together—did she leave you?’

‘No, she didn’t leave. She’s long dead. It was only a matter of time, with the a***e that she unleashed on herself. In fact, I’m amazed she even lasted ten years. There were many times growing up that I thought she had died. I was fifteen when she finally went.’

‘How did she die?’ asked Ellen, in a gentle, supportive tone.

Leonard’s head snapped around to attention and he locked his eyes onto Ellen’s. Reacting to her vocal softness, he responded in a voice with a hard edge and menacing undertone. ‘Save your sympathy, Miss Therapist,’ he snapped back at her. ‘She was a pathetic retch. A miserable shell of a human who retreated from life, abdicated her responsibilities and deserted her only child. She left me alone, with nobody to care for me and nowhere to go. Neither my mother nor father had any siblings and all my grandparents were dead or senile, and to top it off we had no genuine friends. It was just me and her, and she was goddamn useless—an empty sack of skin.’

The pain and hurt in Leonard’s voice were clear for Ellen to hear, speaking the truth that his blank face tried to hide.

‘I’m sorry, Leonard, I understand this must upset you, but it’s an important step in our work together,’ said Ellen. She reverted to the detached professionalism that was a more natural communication modality for her precise, ordered patient. ‘How did she die?’ she asked again, this time in a neutral tone.

‘It was simple, really, and not altogether surprising. After yet another marathon drinking session, she staggered out of a bar in the middle of a foggy winter night. She tripped down the gutter and fell face first into the street, right in front of an eighteen-wheeler. The truck drove over her head and her cranium exploded like a watermelon,’ answered Leonard in an even, matter-of-fact tone.

Ellen involuntarily sucked in a breath through her teeth, disturbed at the casualness of Leonard’s response. She felt there was a lot going on here that they would need to work through. The detached, business side of her mind quickly realised how much she could earn from the many sessions that lay ahead of them.

‘I’m so sorry to hear that, Leonard, it must have been a terrible shock for you, being just a teenager,’ said Ellen.

‘I didn’t find out until the next night,’ said Leonard. ‘I was home alone, but that wasn’t unusual. It had been happening regularly since I was about ten years old, when her drinking got more and more out of control. She often wouldn’t come home, she would pass out drunk somewhere, or spend the night with some stranger she picked up in a bar. She entertained many men, but thankfully did me the service of keeping them out of our apartment.’

‘Go on,’ prompted Ellen.

‘I quickly learned that I needed to look after myself. I survived on cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and macaroni for dinner most days between the ages of ten and fifteen. Frankly, I’m amazed I didn’t end up with malnutrition or scurvy.’

‘So, what happened after your mother died?’ asked Ellen.

‘Well, that was a whole other problem,’ said Leonard, with a hurt tone in his voice. ‘I went through six foster homes in three years until I turned eighteen. Each home was just as depressing, boring and pointless as the one before it. I wasn’t abused, but I was sure as hell neglected. My foster parents were only interested in their pay checks—they certainly didn’t spend the money looking after me.’

‘How did you survive those years?’ asked Ellen.

‘I packed bags at a grocery store and got myself through high school. I was just marking time until I could reach adulthood and look after myself. I was a recluse in the years after my mother died, throughout the rest of high school. I had no family and no friends, I kept to myself and didn’t bother anyone. Let’s just say the girls weren’t knocking down the door to get me to the prom.’

Ellen was in full data collection mode, furiously taking notes as Leonard downloaded his childhood story. So many of her patients agonised over sharing their story, and Ellen didn’t want to break the flow of data by asking questions just yet—she wanted to collect the facts now and would go deep on the questioning later. For now, she just wanted to keep him talking. ‘What happened after high school?’ she continued.

‘I have a genius I.Q., so I got a partial academic scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore doing a degree in Applied Mathematics & Statistics,’ responded Leonard, this time with a noticeable touch of pride in his voice, that Ellen immediately recognised and noted in her book. ‘By the end of my first semester, I was already doing advanced second year work and by third year I was already starting on my Ph.D. I received my doctorate in only four years and could call myself “Doctor Price” at the age of just twenty-two,’ he finished with a flourish. This clearly meant a great deal to Leonard, and he wanted people to know just how smart he really was.

‘How was college life for you? Any easier than high school?’ inquired Ellen.

‘Morons surrounded me at college. Idiots of sub-standard mind populated most of the campus. I found some people of an acceptable level of intelligence. But by-and-large they were an uninspiring lot, more interested in getting drunk and having s*x with each other than developing their brains.’

Ellen continued taking notes as she formed a picture of Leonard’s character from the revealing sub-text of his conversation. He had a superior attitude, loved his high intelligence and had a poor opinion of the vast majority of the population. ‘Please go on,’ she said, encouraging him to reveal more through those important formative college years.

‘College was like high school; I kept to myself. I had no friends and didn’t bother anybody. I merged into the shadows of the college halls like a ghost. People would look through me as if I weren’t even there. But that suited me. Numbers were my passion, my escape, my muse. I embraced my studies, tested my intellect whenever and however I could, took on my lecturers and quickly surpassed them. I worked hard in two jobs to put myself through college and even with that and my partial scholarship, I still came out with a student loan debt.’

‘That sounds like a very lonely existence, Leonard. Didn’t you have anyone you could turn to or confide in?’ asked Ellen, recognising that Leonard had finished his download and was ready for a heart question instead of a head question.

Leonard raised an eyebrow and looked pensively out the window as if to bring back the painful memory. ‘I had one person I communicated with through my middle grades: a pen-pal. We wrote to each other on-and-off, but then after my mother died, he suddenly stopped writing to me, just when I needed him the most. I would write to him, but he never responded, like he had dropped off the face of the Earth. I eventually gave up, feeling that I would never hear from him again,’ he said, almost wistfully.

‘What was the name of your pen-pal?’ asked Ellen.

‘Ryan.’