A Familiar Sight (Dr. Gretchen White, #1)

by Brianna Labuskes

The glassy eye of one of Milo’s stuffed animals watched him from where it was tangled up in Sebastian’s bedding. Both the boys had insisted on bunk beds, and Reed hadn’t been able to resist. They asked for so little, put up with so much.

“Why am I not surprised to see you standing over a dead body?” came a Boston-drenched rumble from behind Gretchen. “Because you think I’m a killer you just can’t seem to catch,” Gretchen answered, dry and honest, as she turned to find Detective Patrick Shaughnessy lurking just over her shoulder. Next to him stood a petite but curvy woman with inky-black hair and the big hazel eyes of a baby deer.

Gretchen guessed the woman thought the comment was part of some schtick between them—the label of “sociopath” tossed around so cavalierly these days that it no longer carried any real weight. Marconi would learn soon enough that Shaughnessy wasn’t joking.

If Shaughnessy wanted to be petty this morning, she wouldn’t hesitate to sink to his level. “I’m called in when the boys in blue here can’t navigate out of whatever dead end they’ve driven themselves down.”

It quickly became clear to everyone, including the Boston PD, that Viola Kent was a budding psychopath, even if she was technically too young to earn the diagnosis.

He’d become neurotic about where the boys were, what they were doing. He’d said good night to his sons not twenty minutes ago, but he couldn’t quiet the niggling fear that something had happened to them in that short amount of time, didn’t think he would ever be able to now.

“Can’t believe they’re still covering this,” Ainsley muttered beside him. “It’s been three months since Claire died. You’d think there are more important things going on in the world.” Since Claire was murdered, Reed silently corrected. Ainsley had a way of doing that, framing Claire’s death like it had been a car accident or a chronic disease instead of a brutal killing.

Imagine if one of the reporters uncovered the rest of the story. “They won’t,” Lena had said when he’d voiced the concern weeks ago, when he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about all the ways this could unravel. “No one even suspects that we knew each other back then.”

Dr. Gretchen White, who held advanced degrees in psychology, statistics, and criminology, had been tapped by Shaughnessy more than a decade ago to consult on a case where the suspect had reminded him of Gretchen. After that first successful investigation together, Shaughnessy had kept calling, slowly at first but then more often. And then other detectives had followed suit, until Gretchen was well known—though not always well liked—at Boston PD headquarters.

The victim had been Rowan White, Gretchen’s aunt. And the killer, in Shaughnessy’s mind, had always been Gretchen. He’d just never been able to actually pin it on her. To be fair to Shaughnessy—not that she frequently had that urge—Gretchen had been found over the body, clutching the bloody knife that had turned out to be the murder weapon, her hand pressed to the gaping wound, not scared like any other child would have been but rather intrigued by the way the torn flesh had felt beneath her fingers.

Not that her age or looks had ever mattered. She’d learned when she was young that the normal people—the “empaths,” as she’d learned to call them after they’d gleefully labeled her a “sociopath”—had an innate ability to recognize an outsider, a pretender, an empty void wearing the mask civilized society demanded of her.

Gretchen had a loose relationship with the truth, an even more relaxed one with lies of omission. There was no need for Shaughnessy to know all the details of her night, nor did she need to play him Lena’s message. But she had to get him interested enough to let her investigate further.

There had been no handbook given out at birth on what to do when your daughter was a monster. No guidance offered other than psychiatrist after psychiatrist rubbing the space between their eyes as they doled out empty words and platitudes. There was no fixing Viola.

“He wasn’t joking, huh?” Marconi said quietly from where she’d stopped behind her. “You are a sociopath.” Wrenching her attention from the sprawl of Lena’s arms, Gretchen continued toward the door. “You know nothing about that word or about me.” “Then tell me,” Marconi urged, falling into step beside her. “That’s not my job.” She’d already done more than enough to help educate Marconi. Any more and Gretchen would surely grow bored enough to do something foolish and irrational. The feeling was always easy to predict, and thus avoid. It was a shame that no one could truly appreciate the restraint she employed. Nonviolent didn’t mean she didn’t have urges, ones that could so easily be let loose on an unsuspecting audience.

“I don’t like him,” Viola said, not in a petulant, childish way, but nonchalantly. Because this was nothing new. Viola didn’t like her psychiatrists. The only thing they offered her was a chance to toy with an adult, someone who knew how minds worked but never enough, seemingly, to keep a preteen girl from getting into their heads. “Mommy says I don’t have to go anymore.”

Nothing was more important to Claire than maintaining the carefully constructed facade she’d worked so hard to build. That need to control what others thought about them had blinded her to the fact that their friends and acquaintances already avoided their house so as not to have to look into Viola’s empty eyes.

Viola’s eyes narrowed. “But Mommy says—” A go-to tactic. Viola played him and Claire off each other with the ease of a master violinist fiddling around on an instrument for fun. It was kid-level stuff; even children who weren’t Viola tried to find a way to exploit having two bosses with differing levels of discipline and empathy.

Reed often wondered what would happen when they could no longer physically contain her. When she realized she could leave for days and stay alive by hocking just an antique or two from their home. He didn’t think she had fully conceptualized that she had the ability to do that yet, but the time wasn’t far off. Kids looked at their homes, at their parents, like this quasi prison was inevitable. Teenagers realized the mirage was just that, and the door could be opened from the inside.

Of course, Kent’s perfectly spaced and symmetrical features lent themselves to that mathematical designation for attractiveness. His blond hair, stubble, and blue eyes, and his well-muscled yet lean body, also fit modern society’s current preferences. In addition to all that, he was magnetic in a way that went beyond the standard framework of beauty. It was a kind of charm that Gretchen recognized most frequently in fellow sociopaths.

Reed started pacing. “Just tell me.” Marconi flung a quick glance toward Gretchen before finally ripping off the Band-Aid. “Lena Booker was found dead in her apartment today.”

“She took it because Reed Kent was in love with her,” Gretchen said, absolutely confident in her own assessment. She’d spent many hours of her life watching videos, shows, interviews—anything recorded and available for public consumption—so that she could identify those complex emotions she’d never intrinsically grasped. Gretchen knew what grief looked like when someone you loved had died. “Now comes the interesting part.” “And that would be?” Gretchen started toward the car. “Figuring out if she loved him back.”

It was common knowledge he was the interloper here, and when at events like this with people like these, he’d never felt like anything but that Southie kid who’d scammed the heiress into marrying him. Reed had long resigned himself to the looks he was getting.

She was—and always had been—so different from Claire, who was dressed in an age-appropriate cocktail dress and the kind of shoes that had red bottoms and a fancy name that drew longing glances from her friends. Claire would never dream of turning up at a Grogan & Company auction in menswear. And yet both were so similar to each other. Funny, smart, cold, calculating, strong, and loyal, both carrying vicious streaks a mile wide that were softened by the fire they felt toward anyone they loved. Reed had often wondered why they hadn’t become fast friends when Claire had first stumbled into their lives that summer before college.

Lena had said “love,” though, not “loved,” as she would have for Tess. Because in Lena’s mind, Tess was dead and Reed had killed her.

At that Gretchen clicked her tongue. “Anyone is the type.” “What do you mean?” “You empaths and your stereotypes,” Gretchen chided. “You think there’s one rigid moral code—usually squarely centered around your own belief system. If someone follows it, she’s ‘good.’ If she doesn’t, she’s ‘bad.’ As if that actually means anything at all, as if humans can be slotted into two permanent, unforgiving categories.”

falsely imprisoned—if that was even what was happening here. The girl should be behind bars, no matter what sappy advocates might say about it. From what Gretchen had observed through media coverage alone, Viola was destined to kill someone, and that she hadn’t yet was nothing more than semantics. Gretchen didn’t care about Claire Kent’s death, either, as much as she could attempt to pretend she did. If it came down to it, Gretchen would put on an act, but Marconi didn’t seem like she needed that.

Lena hadn’t been the only expert Gretchen relied on for cases, and if it had been up to Gretchen, they would never have interacted outside a professional capacity.

He was used to taking punches, and instinct had told him to lift his chin the minute he’d seen Declan Murphy standing on his stoop. The blow glanced off Reed’s cheekbone just under his right eye, the shock enough that he didn’t feel the pain at first. When it came, he welcomed it like a familiar friend.

Maybe the courage that it took to survive this instead of fighting off the blows was lost on someone who didn’t live under attack every day. But Reed was all that stood between his boys and death, torture, endless abuse. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them. Including play coward to a man whose honor was worth less than the spit on Reed’s cheek.

At some point in his life, Reed had realized that being a good man, being tough, didn’t always involve fists. Sometimes it involved staying down so you could get up later and protect those even more vulnerable than you. At least that’s what he’d told himself as he’d tried to protect Milo and Sebastian in a household too often defined by violence. But maybe Declan was right about him. Maybe he really was weak.

For all that Gretchen had studied human behavior, human psychology, sociology, and an assortment of other fields, for all that she’d worked with the police department for years, consulting on everything from arson to murder, for all that she’d lived her life with the purpose of passing as normal, Gretchen didn’t get Marconi. And she liked that about the woman.

He told himself that if Lena was trying to pin Tess’s disappearance on him, he had to keep track of all the players so he wasn’t caught off guard should anything develop. But that logic didn’t really ring true. If that were the case, he would be following . . . tracking . . . stalking Lena instead.

If Declan had married into this life, he would never receive the kind of stares Reed did when he went out with Claire. They were from the same background, the same neighborhood, yet Declan looked born to this lifestyle while Reed had not once felt like he fit into it.

He wasn’t even surprised when Claire walked in. The amber light washed over her striking features, turning her soft—whiskey-laced instead of frost-coated. She wore a simple emerald-green dress that still somehow created the illusion of curves and valleys where Reed intimately knew there weren’t any. When she walked into the room, it was with the sultry attitude of a panther on the hunt. Reed ached in his chest, in his belly, in his groin as her hemline rose to reveal the hint of a delicate garter. That’s what had always pulled him in, that mix of class, sophistication, and pure, unaltered lust. When he’d been a teenager, his brain had short-circuited from the combination. Even after all these years, he couldn’t call himself immune to the attraction.

“Just a kid who stabbed her mother thirteen times,” Gretchen reminded him ruthlessly. Why did it matter that he was giving Viola the benefit of the doubt he’d never given Gretchen? It didn’t.

There was nothing special about Viola Kent. She had two pimples on her chin, greasy bangs, and lank dishwater-blonde hair. Her face was round and thin at the same time, her shoulders broad yet her frame delicate. The fluorescent lights did her no favors, but she wouldn’t be remarkable even in the most flattering setting. The most notable thing about her were her eyes, which bent more toward silver than pale blue. But even the impact of the unique color faded quickly. Viola was a thirteen-year-old girl in every way every other thirteen-year-old girl was. And Gretchen could not be more pleased. She knew what she looked like. Her own perfectly smooth blonde bob wasn’t necessarily the flowing locks that celebrities favored these days, but it was more than acceptable in the Boston scene. Her skin was flawless, smooth and unblemished, rose-tinted milk. She was curvy, but not ambitiously so; short, but not remarkably so; well dressed, but not desperate. Women wanted to be her, men wanted to sleep with her, and thirteen-year-old girls dreamed of becoming her.

Without any introduction or preamble, Gretchen jumped in the deep end. “How did the blade feel going in?” Viola blinked, three times, the flutter of lashes quick and startled. Then she seemed to compose herself. “Like butter.” Her voice was high and light. A girl. Just a girl.

She wouldn’t ask why Viola had chosen a knife. Because it likely had been the weapon that had been available to her. Not everything was Freudian. “Why did you hide it?” Gretchen asked. It was the question she’d been dying to know.

“I killed her,” Viola cried out, knowing exactly what Gretchen had meant. If Viola had really been the murderer, no one would have found the evidence as quickly as they had. Gretchen placed her palms on the table, leaning in close so that their jaws nearly brushed. “No, you didn’t,” she whispered in Viola’s ear. “But I won’t say a word.”

Gretchen inhaled. It was the argument she had made in those early days, to Shaughnessy, and then later in her own mind. She didn’t think her little eight-year-old self would have had it in her to kill her aunt Rowan, but as the decades slipped by and Shaughnessy continued watching her so closely, she had to wonder. Had the evidence really been strong enough to convince him so thoroughly but weak enough that she hadn’t been arrested?

The only doubt Gretchen had was about Viola’s motives for staying silent about it. Part of her thought the girl knew she wouldn’t be believed if she argued her innocence. With the animal bones, the repeated torture of her brothers, the psychological reviews that had been done following the killing—there was a much stronger case against Viola than there had ever been against Gretchen. And still people thought Gretchen had gotten away with murder. No way would Viola have been able to walk just on her own say-so.

I messed up, Gretch. What that meant for Gretchen, she didn’t know. Certainly, her curiosity had been piqued. Boredom was one of Gretchen’s biggest fears. It was what caused most sociopaths to jump on the self-destruct button just to watch the explosion. Different people fed the need in different ways—drugs, crime, sex, and stocks were the big ones. Gretchen got her rocks off by investigating murders.

“I love Viola,” Ainsley said, her jaw set, determined. Love. No past tense. And it was interesting that she’d chosen to answer about her niece rather than her sister-in-law when given the flexibility of “her.” From the little sound Reed made but clearly tried to hide, he knew they’d find that choice notable.

She sat across from him, her hair braided in two neat plaits, wearing a pink sparkly T-shirt and striped leggings, looking for all the world like any other girl on the cusp of becoming a teenager. Ainsley pressed her hand to the back of Viola’s neck as she passed, tactile as she was with everyone, but especially his kids. She never moved quickly, never surprised them. But whenever she was visiting, she reminded them that touch could be good, welcome, normal. Sometimes they even stopped flinching by the last day of her visit.

“How’s the foundation, Claire?” Ainsley asked, like they were a real family sitting down to dinner and not just scraps of ripped and shredded souls going through the motions of civility. Claire loved keeping up appearances. That’s why she had the foundation. Her little kingdom. And when he’d suggested years ago that he might play a role there, she had laughed. The idea that he would be capable of fulfilling any position with competency was a joke to her.

He couldn’t remember when the animosity had been born, or if it had always been there. Reed didn’t remember Ainsley from when they were younger. Perhaps that was callous, but she was a placeholder in his memories labeled “sister.” To him, she hadn’t had a personality beyond annoying him, tagging along when he hadn’t wanted her there, getting him in trouble. He was fairly certain she would have bloodied her knuckles for him back then just as she was willing to do so now. He would have killed anyone who hurt her. But that had less to do with them liking each other and more to do with the culture in which they grew up. In their neighborhood, family came above all else, no matter how you felt about them. Knowing her as a person unto herself was something he’d begun to do only in adulthood.

Ainsley continued, not needing an answer from Claire. “Such good friends you snatched up her boyfriend before the sheets were cold.” “Oh, Mommy, you whore,” Viola said, giddy with it. “Viola,” Claire snapped. It was telling that she acknowledged the remark. She had always been the one who insisted they not give Viola’s bad behavior attention. Viola’s expression went sly as she slumped back against her chair.

He was far more relaxed talking about the past rather than the here and now. “I don’t think anything happened between them until Tess was gone.” He leaned in a little. “To be honest, I think he was heartbroken and Claire was a rebound that went on a couple decades too long. Not to speak ill of the dead.”

Oh, Lena. What have you gotten yourself into, darling? The question went unanswered, of course. Lena was on a medical examiner’s slab somewhere cold and stark, where she would never be able to explain herself. But more and more, Gretchen wished she’d dropped some hints in the last year that this was going on. Gretchen refused to consider the fact that Lena might have and she’d missed them.

Now he’d become some jerk more concerned with poll numbers than with his sister, one who could barely make time for a meeting, even with one of his biggest donors. During Reed’s visit, neither of them had mentioned that Declan now used Tess’s disappearance to fundraise for troubled-youth programs. The thing was, Tess had never really been all that troubled.