touching her. You flatten me, Liza. That’s all it takes. She sighed as she pulled her hand back. “Yes. I’m fine. They were able to donate his heart and his eyes. I guess it’s sort of . . . oh, I don’t know. I almost hate to think about it. But then again”—she met Reed’s gaze—“that heart of his never beat with happiness and now maybe it will. Maybe his eyes will see love in someone else’s.” Her expression was so sad suddenly and it killed Reed to see it. But he also saw a note of conflict drift over her face.
“I know he was murdered, and justice has to be served. But other than that, you don’t have to feel sorry for him.”
“I don’t . . . exactly. It’s so hard, Reed. Confusing.” She gave him a wobbly smile and picked up her fork, turning her attention back to her food. He stared at her for a moment. She thought she was damaged, weak. She had no idea how strong she truly was. How unbelievably loving. She’d walked out of hell with love still in her heart. How miraculous was that?
After a few minutes, she asked, “Any new leads or ideas today about how me finding Sadowski might possibly be linked to my brother’s murder? Or if it is at all?”
He shook his head. No new leads, but it’d needled at him all day. Still needled him. “No,” he sighed, taking a drink of his wine. “Nothing yet, but we have made several connections in the case. It’s like I feel it”—he brought his hand up and rubbed his fingers together—“like it’s right there, but just out of reach.” He let out a frustrated puff of breath, dropping his hand.
Liza was quiet for a moment, staring through him. “My brother said he did it to set me free,” she murmured.
“What?”
Her eyes refocused. “He tried to kill me to set me free. It seems demented because his mind was already warped. Those monsters in the dark . . . he let them in. In part, he became them. The person committing these murders, their mind is warped too. It has to be.”
“Agreed. There’s no doubt about that.”
She sat up straight, seeming suddenly buoyed. He smiled. This was her passion. It lit her up. “He’s different, so you have to look at it a different way. Don’t use your rationale or your empathy. He doesn’t think like you. He’s twisted. You have to try to think like him.”
He rubbed at his eye. “I don’t know if I can do that.” How did you twist your brain up into a ball of knotted string, where anything was possible and even the demented made sense?
She eyed him. “I think you can.”
His body stilled as her implication became clear. “My biological father was a psychopath, Liza. I’m not.”
“Of course you’re not. I wasn’t suggesting that. I wouldn’t be here having dinner with you if I thought so.”
His lip quirked. “Fair enough.”
She paused, eyeing him as she took a sip of wine, her gaze hinting at nervousness. “But I’m not convinced your father was a psychopath.”
His forehead bunched. “Why do you say that?” He wasn’t angry, merely dubious, and curious about how she’d come to that conclusion.
“I’ve worked with patients who have psychopathic minds. I don’t have nearly the same experience with the psychopathic as I do with the traumatized. But I fill in for doctors on the fifth floor sometimes. I prefer not to.” She moved her eyes away, considering. “There are physical differences in the structure and function of their brains. They don’t feel empathy, or fear, or anxiety like the rest of us do. As a homicide detective, you probably know all this.” She looked away momentarily as if in thought. “I’ve seen what’s under the mask, like the flash of a serpent revealing itself in their eyes. They’re good at hiding it. Some do it well, others even better. There’s no treating those people. The most you can do is try to understand them, study the things that make them tick.”
“Yes,” he said. “And there’s a hereditary component to psychopathy.”
Her eyes moved over his face. She knew exactly why he’d mentioned it, probably understood that he’d thought about it with regard to himself. But he’d let that go a long time ago. He knew his own mind. He knew what he was, and what he was not.
“Yes,” she agreed. “There . . . might be.” She took a sip of wine.