it got worse. “He has a lot to gain from marrying you, Ms. Dunne. A house-several houses-money, steady income, respectability. It appears you’ve been extremely generous with him, and were prepared to be more so, and he has a fairly accurate idea of your financial situation, so he knows what he’s gunning for.”
“Please call me Hope, and yes, he does,” she said quietly, sitting in the dark in her apartment, thinking about it. Finn knew exactly what she had and what he wanted. Maybe all.
“You said you pay the bills right now. Does he make any financial contribution to the household?”
“None.”
“Has he ever?”
“Not really. Newspapers, the occasional trip to the hardware store. He usually charges it to me.” Nice, very nice. Sweet deal for him, Bartlett thought, but didn’t say it. “He was supposed to pay a token rent, but he hasn’t. I set up the rent originally to save his pride.” Bartlett was convinced by then that Finn had none, just greed. “He’s also been very determined that we should have a baby. He was willing to undertake infertility treatments if necessary, for me of course, to make that happen. He took me to a specialist in London.”
“And has that happened?” This time Bartlett sounded nervous.
“No… well, actually, yes, but I lost it. But he’s very anxious to do it again. I wanted to wait, particularly now.”
“Please don’t do that, Hope. If you have a child, this guy is going to have his hooks into you forever, or the kid. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
“Apparently he tried to do that with his late wife’s family, and their son when his wife died. I’m not sure the boy knows that. I have a feeling he doesn’t.”
“Yeah, let’s hold off on baby-making right now, if that’s okay with you.” The more she talked to him, the more she liked him. He sounded like a decent, down-to-earth person. She was using him as a sounding board, she realized, to try and make sense of it herself.
“Fine with me. And another thing was that I found a photograph of a woman he went out with when he was young, a long time ago. He said she killed herself and was pregnant by him. She committed suicide, and he asked me if I would ever do that. I got the creepy feeling that he felt somehow that that was a tribute to him and how much she loved him.” He didn’t tell Hope that, but listening to her, for the first time, Robert Bartlett was scared. This was beginning to sound dangerous to him, and familiar. Strung all together it was the classic portrait of a sociopath. And she was his ideal victim, she was isolated with him in Ireland, had no family or friends nearby, she was in love with him, she had money, a lot of it, and was entirely at his mercy, and would be much more so if they got married. Robert was very glad Hope had called him. He asked her then if she had children. There was another brief silence at her end. “I had a daughter who died four years ago, of meningitis. She was at Dartmouth.”
“I’m so sorry.” He sounded like he really meant it, which touched her. “I can’t imagine anything worse. My worst nightmare is something like that happening. I have two kids in college. Just their going out at night and driving drives me crazy.”
“I know,” she said softly.
Robert Bartlett also realized now that she didn’t have kids to observe what was happening, be alert, or warn her. Hope was every sociopath’s dream, a woman without family or protection, and a hell of a lot of money. And worse yet, he could sense that she loved him, maybe even now. There was a quality of disbelief to what she was telling him, as though she wanted to piece the puzzle together for him, and have him tell her there was nothing to worry about, and it was not what it appeared to be. So far he couldn’t do that for her. It sounded pretty bad, and frightening. And there was a seeming innocence to her that alarmed him even more. Just knowing this much, he thought she was in real danger. Finn O’Neill sounded like a con artist of the first order. The suicide of the previous girlfriend concerned him, as did O’Neill’s determination to get Hope pregnant. At least it meant he didn’t want her dead. Right now, she was more useful to him alive, married, and pregnant. Unless she gave him trouble, or interfered with his plans, which was what she was currently doing. She had postponed the marriage, refused him money, and didn’t want to get pregnant again at the moment. All bad news for him. It meant he would have to work harder to convince her, and if he couldn’t, she was going to be in serious danger. And the worst thing about sociopaths, Bartlett knew, was that they induced their victims to destroy themselves so they didn’t have to do the dirty work, like Finn’s old girlfriend. But so far, Hope still sounded sane. He was doubly glad she had called him, and that her agent had given her his number. He had dealt with situations like this before, although Finn seemed like a particularly able pro at the game. He was good.
“So those were the lies I discovered on my own,” Hope went on. “But the last one made me nervous, the lawsuit and his publishing contract. He told me that time too that he was ashamed to tell me the truth, in contrast to my own success. He always uses that same excuse about being embarrassed so he didn’t tell me. The truth is, I think he just lies. Everything was fine between us until last June when I lost the baby. He blamed me for it, and said I wasn’t careful enough so I caused the miscarriage. He was pretty nasty, very disappointed, and very angry. And he wanted me to get pregnant again right away. My doctor wanted me to wait, because I almost died.” Bartlett winced as he listened. It sounded grim yet again.
“But before all that, he was wonderful to me, and thrilled about the baby. We didn’t have fertility treatment by the way, it happened on its own. We knew that I was ovulating, he got me drunk, and we had sex without protection. He knew what he was doing.” Bartlett was convinced of that by now, she was preaching to the choir. “And it worked. Anyway, for six months everything was wonderful, and after the miscarriage, it was fine again for the summer. But now, he’s angry at me all the time, or most of the time. Sometimes he’s absolutely wonderful to me again, and then he gets vicious. He’s drinking more than he used to. I think he’s pretty stressed about the lawsuit, and he’s not writing. And he’s really angry that I’ve been postponing the wedding. All of a sudden, we’re fighting all the time, and he’s always pushing me about something. He never did that before. It was perfect, he was wonderful to me, and he still is sometimes, but it’s bad more than it’s good now. And sometimes it changes so often and so suddenly, he goes from bad to good to bad to good again, my head is spinning. By the time I left Dublin a week ago, I was so confused, I didn’t know what to think. And he kept telling me I was going crazy. I started to believe him.”
“That’s what he wants you to believe. I can tell from talking to you, Hope, you’re not crazy. But I’m equally sure he is. I’m no psychiatrist, but this guy is a textbook case in sociopathy. This is very scary stuff, particularly trying to brainwash and confuse you. When did he ask you for the money?”
“A few weeks ago. He just came right out and asked for it. I said no, and we’ve been fighting ever since. It concerned me, so when I came to New York in November to do some work, I had my agent hire someone to do an investigation.” She sighed then, and told him what the report contained. “His brother thinks he’s a sociopath. Even his saying he was an only child wasn’t true, he had three brothers. His mother was a maid, not an aristocrat, his father died in a bar fight and wasn’t a doctor. Absolutely nothing he told me about his history is true, which is how I know the house in Ireland isn’t his ancestral home. And everybody else who’s ever known him says he’s a pathological liar.” That much they both knew was true from what she had told him so far. “The rest of the report came yesterday, and it’s no better. His wife died in an accident. He was driving drunk. He had told me she was alone in the car and died. The report says that he was with her, she was alive at the time of the accident. He had a concussion and didn’t call for help and she died. Although to be fair, the medical report said she would have died anyway.” Even now, she was trying to be kind to Finn. Robert Bartlett considered it a bad sign. She was still in love with him, and hadn’t fully assimilated the new information she’d gotten. It was too shocking, and hard for her to accept. “He got a suspended prison sentence for manslaughter and five years’ probation for killing the other driver,” she went on. “And there are some other minor upsetting stories. His wife’s parents think he was responsible for her death and wanted her money. He tried to get it, and what she left their son. And now he’s after my money. Indirectly, he has been responsible for the death of two women. His wife’s death in the car accident and the earlier suicide. He has lied to me about everything. I just don’t know what to believe about him anymore.” Her voice shook on the last words. Robert Bartlett would have been stunned by what she had just said to him, except that he had heard it before, and it was the nature of a sociopath and his victim. The confusing evidence and contradiction between their calculating viciousness and their extreme attention, kindness, and seduction paralyzed their victims, who wanted to believe that the good parts were true and the bad ones only a mistake. But with more and more evidence, it became harder to believe. He could tell that Hope was at that stage. She was waking up and starting to see Finn for what he was, but, understandably, didn’t want to believe it. It was hard to accept all of that about someone you loved, and who had been so loving at one time.
“I don’t want you to be his next victim,” Robert said in a sobering tone. She already was in many ways, but he
