“What do you think is a lie?” Paige asked.
“Empathy. I am supposed to look at you and know how you might feel, feel what you feel, but honestly, what does any of us get except a reflection of our own thoughts and feelings?”
This was what it could be like, sometimes, with Adam. Him challenging her the way Prof. Thornton might have, treating her more like a student to bring on than the psychiatrist there to work with him. As if he could help to mold her and shape her into something more.
Paige decided to follow the thread at least a little way. Sometimes, it was better to go along with Adam, to let him talk about what he wanted.
“And do you not think that the things I think and feel might be similar to the ones you do? That another person might not feel the same way?”
This look was as cold as the icy depths of a lake, all warmth and humanity draining out of Adam’s face, in a reminder that both were little more than an act to him. A reminder of exactly what he was, underneath. Paige felt her heart beating faster at the sight of it, the urge to get up from her chair and run for the door almost overwhelming, in spite of the knowledge that she should be perfectly safe with Adam restrained.
It was a look that reminded Paige of all the violence Adam Riker was capable of, the men and women who had been found bound and tortured, left to die. Of the two inmates he had killed in his time here, when they’d tried to attack him. It was a look that made her want to shrink back.
“There is no one else like me,” Adam said.
Paige decided to placate him. “That’s true. You’re very special, Adam. It’s why I’m focusing so much of my research on you.”
Just like that, the coldness drifted away, replaced once again by a warm, almost friendly, smile. The speed of the change was almost as disconcerting as the empty hostility that had preceded it.
“Although I must say, I feel a particular connection towards you, Paige.”
“That’s… very flattering,” Paige managed, even though it was just about the most disconcerting thing she could hear from a serial killer. “Does that connection extend to helping me with my research today?”
“Yes, your research,” he said. “What do you have for me this time, Paige? A few more Likert scales to test my responses? Perhaps you’d like to talk about my family again? My abusive father and uncle. My absent mother? Maybe you’d like to know where I see myself on the whole ‘primary, secondary, egocentric, charismatic, distempered’ psychopath spectrum? Where have you placed my particular neurocognitive peculiarities, incidentally, Paige?”
Neurocognitive peculiarities. That was an almost banal way of describing his lack of empathy, high charisma, and urge to kill. It made it all sound like a minor eccentricity, rather than something that had cost men and women their lives.
“It’s… complicated,” Paige replied, determined not to be fazed by his sudden descent into the academic terminology. Nobody, least of all her, had ever suggested that Adam Riker was unintelligent.
If anything, he was quite the opposite. He was intelligent, charming, capable of considerable forethought. He seemed to have seduced at least half of his victims into letting him start to tie them, while with the others, he had planned every step of his killings with painstaking effort.
He also had no regard for anything beyond his self-interest and had aberrant impulses that led him to kill again and again.
“Complicated?” Adam said. Again, Paige saw a subtle tilt of his head that might have indicated disapproval. “Is that what you’ll say in your thesis? I think the panel for your defense of it will want more than that. At least take a position on primary versus secondary. Was I born this way, or was I made? I take it you’re still wedded to Grey’s neurocognitive model of Behavioral Inhibition Systems?”
Paige knew better than to play this game with him by trying to defend her thesis when he had no interest in being convinced. This was just Adam trying to pick at her in the easiest way he could, by trying to undermine her confidence in her work.
“We’re here to talk about you, Adam,” Paige pointed out, in her most professional tone. She paused for a moment or two. “And this might be your last chance to talk to me. This is going to be our final session.”
Paige watched for a flicker of response. Did that make him angry, sad, disappointed, happy? It was impossible to tell for sure, with Adam.
“Our final session?” Adam said. He sounded almost surprised by the announcement. “You’re almost done, then.”
Paige nodded. “So is there anything else that you want to talk to me about? Is there anything that has come up in our sessions that you want to clarify or go over?”
“Are there any last juicy morsels that I can drop for you to incorporate?” Adam suggested. “I think you have enough for a thesis. I think you’ve had enough for a month or more, and yet you’ve kept coming back, Paige? Why is that? Is it because you feel some kind of connection between us?”
He clearly wasn’t feeling in a cooperative mood today. Some days, he liked to talk and talk. Others, he played games like this.
Paige tried for flattery again. It seemed to be something Adam responded to. He was so certain of his own brilliance, after all, and he seemed to like having that reinforced by others.
“Perhaps I just find your story interesting.”
“Oh, it’s very interesting. A veritable study in psychopathy: a view on a psychopathic patient with case notes.”
Paige froze in place as he said those words. They were, word for word, the title of a paper she’d published following a conference three months ago. She felt her mouth fall open in shock.
“How-”