Chapter 5

THE GUY CERTAINLY didn’t waste any time.

“How long ago did your wife die, John?” Dr. Kline asked, jumping right in.

I noticed there was no pen or notepad in his lap. Nothing was being written down. He was simply listening. Actually, I kind of liked that approach.

“She was killed about two years ago.”

“How did it happen?”

I looked at him, a bit confused. “You didn’t read any of this in my file?”

“I read all of it. Three times,” he answered. “I want to hear it from you, though.”

Part of me wanted to leap out of my chair and pop the guy with a right hook for trying to make me relive the single worst day of my life. But another part of me—the part that knew better—understood he wasn’t asking me to do something that I hadn’t already been doing on my own. Every day, no less. I couldn’t let it go.

I couldn’t let Susan go.

Susan and I had both been FBI special agents, although when we first met and married, I was an undercover police officer with the NYPD. I became an agent a few years later and was assigned to a completely different section from Susan’s, the Counterterrorism Division. A few exceptions notwithstanding, that’s really the only way the Bureau allows for married couples.

Susan gave birth to two beautiful boys, and for a while everything was great. Then everything wasn’t. After eight years, we divorced. I’ll spare you the reasons, especially because there wasn’t one big enough to keep us apart.

Ironically, it wasn’t until I worked on a case involving a black widow serial killer who nearly poisoned me to death that we both realized it. Susan and I reconciled, and along with John Jr. and Max, we were a family again. Until one afternoon roughly two years ago.

I proceeded to tell Dr. Kline how Susan was driving home from the supermarket when another car ran a stop sign and plowed into her side at over sixty miles an hour. The posted speed limit on the road was thirty. Susan died instantly, while the other driver barely had a scratch on him. What’s more, the son of a bitch was drunk at the time of the accident.

A drunk lawyer, as it turned out.

By refusing the Breathalyzer and opting instead to have his blood drawn at a hospital, he was able to buy himself a couple of hours—enough time to allow his blood alcohol level to dip under the legal limit. He was charged with vehicular manslaughter and received the minimum sentence.

Was that justice? You tell me. He got to see his kids again while I had to sit mine down and explain that they were never going to see their mother again.

Dr. Kline remained quiet for a few seconds after I finished. His face gave nothing away. “What was she buying?” he finally asked.

“Excuse me?”

“What was Susan buying at the supermarket?”

“I heard you,” I said. “I just can’t believe that’s the first question you’re asking after everything I told you. How is that important?”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Butter,” I blurted out. “Susan was going to bake cookies for the boys, but she didn’t have any butter. Pretty ironic, don’t you think?”

“How so?”

“Never mind.”

“No, go ahead,” said Dr. Kline. “Tell me.”

“She was an FBI agent; she could’ve died on the job many times over,” I said.

Then it was as if some switch inside me had been flipped on. Or maybe off. I couldn’t control myself; the words spilled angrily out of my mouth.

“But no, it’s some drunk asshole who plows into her on the way back from the supermarket!”

I was suddenly out of breath, as though I’d just run a marathon. “There. Are you satisfied?”

Dr. Kline shook his head. “No, I’m not, John. What I am is concerned,” he said calmly. “Do you know why?”

Of course I did. It was why the Bureau had suspended me. It was why my boss, Frank Walsh, insisted on my coming here to get my head examined.

Stephen McMillan, the drunk lawyer who killed Susan, was being released from prison in less than a week.

“You think I’m going to kill him, don’t you?”

Kline shrugged, deflecting the question. “Let’s just say people who care very much for you are worried about what you might be planning. So, tell me, John…are they worried for a good reason? Are you planning revenge?”

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