Detective Cross

Chapter 4

Thirty-four-year-old Kate Williams was curled up in the fetal position in the overstuffed chair opposite me, in the basement office where I’d been seeing patients since being suspended from DC Metro five months before.

“I’ll end up killing myself, Dr. Cross,” Kate said. “Probably not today or tomorrow. But it’s going to happen. I’ve known that since I was nine years old.”

Her voice was flat, her expression showing the anger, fear, and despair that her tone didn’t betray. Tears welled and slipped from eyes that would not meet mine.

I took her threat seriously. From her records, I knew some of the damage she’d done to herself already. Kate’s teeth were stained from drug abuse. Her dirty blond hair was as thin and brittle as straw, and she wore a long-sleeve Electric Daisy Carnival T-shirt to hide evidence of cutting.

“Is that when it started?” I asked. “When you were nine?”

Kate wiped at her eyes furiously. “You know, I’m not talking about it anymore. Digging around back there never helps. Just pushes me to pull the plug on sobriety, on everything, sooner.”

I set my notepad aside, sat forward with my palms up and said, “I’m just trying to understand your history clearly, Kate.”

She crossed her arms. “And I’m just trying to hang on, Doc. The court ordered me here as a term of my probation, otherwise I gotta tell you, I’d be a no-show.”

This was our second session together. The first hadn’t gone much better.

For a few moments I studied her slouched posture and the way she used her thumbnail to dig at the raw cuticles around her fingers, and I knew I was going to have to change the dynamic in the room if I was to get through to her.

There was another seat beside Kate I usually reserved for couples therapy, but I got up and sat in it so that I was roughly her mirror image, side by side. I let that physical change settle in her. At first she seemed threatened, shifting away from me. I said nothing and waited until she lifted her head to look at me.

“What do you want?”

“To help, if I can. To do that I have to see the world the way you see it.”

“So, what, you sit next to me and expect to see the world the way I do?”

I ignored the caustic tone, and said, “I sit next to you rather than confront you, and maybe you give me a glimpse of your world.”

Kate sat back, looked away from me, and said nothing for ten, then fifteen deep, ragged breaths.

“Yes, nine,” she said at last. “Just before my tenth birthday.”

“You knew him?”

“My Uncle Bert, my mom’s sister’s husband,” she said. “I had to go live with them after my mom died.”

“That’s brutal. I’m sorry to hear that. You must have been terrified, betrayed by someone you trusted.”

Kate looked at me and spoke bitterly. “It wasn’t a betrayal. It was a robbery, armed robbery. None of that slow ‘grooming’ you hear about. Six months after I got there, my Aunt Meg went to visit friends for the weekend. Uncle Bert got drunk and came into my bedroom carrying a hunting knife and a bottle. He threatened me with the knife, told me he’d cut my throat if I ever said a thing. Then he pinned me facedown and...”

I could see it in my head and felt sickened. “You tell anyone?”

“Who would believe me? Uncle Bert just so happened to be the sheriff. Aunt Meg idolized him, the piece of shit.”

“How long did the abuse go on?”

“Until I ran away. Sixteen.”

“Your aunt never suspected?”

Kate shrugged and finally looked over at me. “When I was a little, little girl, I loved to sing with my mom in the church choir. My aunt was in a choir, too, and until Uncle Bert came into my room, singing with her was the only thing that made me happy. I could forget things, become part of something.”

She was blinking, staring off now, and I saw the muscles in her neck constrict.

“And after Uncle Bert?”

Kate cleared her throat, said in a soft rasp, “I never sang in tune again. Just couldn’t hold a note for the life of me. Aunt Meg could never figure that one out.”

“She never knew?”

“She was a good soul in her way. She didn’t deserve to know.”

“You weren’t at fault, you know,” I said. “You didn’t cause the abuse.”

Kate looked over at me angrily. “But I could have stopped it, Dr. Cross. I could have done what I wanted to do: snatch that Buck knife off the nightstand when he was done with me and lying there all drowsy drunk. I could have sunk the knife in his chest, but I didn’t. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it.”

Kate broke down then, and sobbed. “What kind of coward was I?”