“Tell me about that day at the gym.” Katherine asked, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Jogging.” He frowned. “I felt my phone buzz with the reminder for my visualization exercise. I was going to put it off, but I recognized some triggers—body temperature is one for me. Heart rate. So jogging is kind of risky, but I really love it and it wasn’t the first time I’d run or anything, but I didn’t want to push it, so I got off the treadmill and walked to the locker room to just do the exercises.”
Toni asked, “He left the gym?”
“You left the machine room?” Katherine asked. “Do you remember why you went back?”
“No.” He shook his head. “The last thing I remember is being in the locker room. There’s a part that’s around a corner and more private, and I went there to meditate—had my headphones in anyway, you know—and get my body calmed down. I started the exercises and…” His expression looked like he was in pain. “Something weird happened. It didn’t go right.”
Katherine felt Toni tense behind her. Megan had her hand in a death grip.
“I was there… in my head.” Justin looked like he was on the verge of tears. “I was trying to walk backward, and I couldn’t.”
Let him speak. Don’t jump to conclusions. Let him tell you what happened.
His voice fell to barely a whisper. “It seems crazy, but it felt like someone was pushing me forward. Pushing me into my fear.”
There it was.
He leaned back in his seat. “That was the last thing I remember until you guys tackled me.”
Katherine had one more question. “Why did you have the gun, Justin?”
“I didn’t.” He shook his head and his eyes cleared. His expression was firm. More firm and clear than he’d been their entire meeting. All hints of uncertainty were gone. “I have never owned a gun. Never shot one. Never owned one. Never wanted to. You can ask any of my fraternity brothers. It was not my gun. I have no idea where it came from, no idea how it ended up stuck in my waistband, but it was not mine.”
Chapter 15
They went out for coffee after their visit with Justin McCabe, but all three of them were quiet.
Megan was solemn and fidgeting with a smooth stone she’d found on the beach the week before. It was one of the famous moonstones, worn smooth from the waves and rocks on the beach, its powdery white exterior rippling with striations as Megan flipped it between her fingers.
“I really wish you hadn’t promised that we were going to find out what happened,” Toni said. “Did you forget he tried to shoot us?”
Megan’s mouth dropped open. “Did you hear the same words I did? He apologized. He doesn’t remember what happened. Something is going on with that boy.”
“I don’t care how out of it you are, you don’t do things without having that in your heart.” Toni leaned forward. “Without having imagined it in some way. And I don’t buy the thing about the gun at all.”
“I’m really curious about the gun,” Katherine said. “And I agree with you on one point.”
“Katherine!” Megan looked betrayed. “That young man—”
“He did have it in his mind,” she said. “Couldn’t you see it? His greatest fear was being in the same situation that killed his brother. However it happened, that fear was re-created in the most horrible way.”
“The thing he feared most became reality,” Toni said. “Like… a living nightmare or something.”
“Very much like that.”
Toni pursed her lips. “Like losing her horse might have been to that Sarah girl.”
Two students participating in the same clinical study that shouldn’t have had such an extraordinary effect. Katherine had been reading up on similar studies done at other universities and research institutions. While Professor Shaver and his colleagues’ research pushed a new direction in treating anxiety, none of it was experimental or risky. This was a very focused study that could potentially advance treatments, but it wasn’t a new drug. It was an established therapy.
Was the study simply a coincidence like Baxter had mentioned?
Megan said, “Sarah killed a horse. It may have been heartbreaking and awful, but she’s not in prison. Where does all this leave Justin? He’s still in jail.”
“And I don’t think he’s going to fight being there,” Katherine said. “His guilt was palpable.” She glanced at Toni, whose face still read skeptical. “I agree with Megan. Whatever happened that day, I don’t believe Justin McCabe would have intentionally shot up a gym.”
“So what do you think happened?” Toni asked.
“The most obvious is a dissociative episode, but I don’t think the meditation he’d done routinely would trigger that.”
“Maybe he was possessed,” Megan said. “It happened in the Bible.”
“I don’t think it happened here.” Toni lowered her voice and looked around. “If he was possessed, don’t you think fate or whatever gave us these powers would have made one of us capable of, like, driving out spirits or something?”
“I don’t know how any of this works,” Megan said. “Why do you think I’m doing so much research? Which you make fun of, I want to add. You think I’m an idiot. Don’t think I don’t see the eyes you give me.”
“I’m not going to deny that I think your packing tarot cards and sage and moonstones in your purse is ridiculous.” Toni nodded at Katherine. “The professor thinks it’s ridiculous too; she’s just more polite than me.”
“I don’t know that tarot is any more ridiculous than any other divination,” Katherine said. “And since I’m currently divining the future, I’m probably not in a place to judge.” She took a long drink of her iced coffee and looked at Toni. “Of the three of us, you’re likely the most equipped to do traditional psychic readings.”
Megan’s smile was smug. “Want to start a little shop on the beach, Toni?”
“Screw you,” she said. “I’m not a party trick.” She narrowed her eyes at Megan and stared.
A few seconds later, Megan’s mouth dropped open.
