Speaking in Tongues

prosecuting? Why did you turn tail and run?”
    “Because I regretted what happened to your son,” Tate answered.
    Matthews lowered his sweaty, stubbly face. “You looked at my boy and said, ‘You’re dead.’ You stood up in court and felt the power flowing through you. And you liked it.”
    Tate looked around the room. “You did all this? And you went after all the others—Konnie and Hanson and Eckhard? Bett, too.”
    “Mom?” Megan whispered.
    “No, she’s okay,” Tate reassured her.
    “I had to stop you,” Matthews said. “You kept coming. You wouldn’t listen to reason. You wouldn’t do what you were supposed to.”
    “This is where you were committed, right?”
    “Him?” Megan asked. “I thought he’d worked here.”
    “I thought so too,” Tate said, “but then I remembered testimony at Peter’s trial. No. He was a therapist but he was the one committed here.” Nodding at Matthews. “Not Peter.” Tate recalled the trial:
    Mr. Bogan: Now, Dr. Rothstein, could you give an opinion of the source and nature of Peter’s difficulties?
    Dr. Rothstein: Yes sir. Peter displays socialization problems. He is more comfortable with inanimate creations—stories and books and cartoons and the like—than with people. He also suffers from what I call affect deficit. The reason, from reviewing his medical records, appears to be that his father would lock him in his room for long periods of time—weeks, even months—and the only contact the boy would have with anyone was with his father, Aaron. He wouldn’t even let the boy’s mother see him. Peter withdrew into his books and television. Apparently the only time the boy spent with his mother and others was when his father was committed in mental hospitals for bipolar depression and delusional behavior.
    Matthews said, “I was here, let’s see, on six intakes. Must have been four years altogether. I was like a jailhouse lawyer, Collier. As soon as the patients heard I was a therapist they started coming to me.”
    “So you were ‘Patient Matthews,’ ” Megan said, eyes widening. “In the reports about the deaths here.”
    “That’s my Megan,” Matthews said.
    She said to Tate, “They closed this place because of a bunch of suicides. I thought it was Peter who’d killed them.”
    “But it was you?” Tate asked Matthews.
    “The DSM-III diagnosis was that I was sociopathic—well, it’s called an antisocial/criminal personality now. How delicate. I knew the hospital examiners in Richmond were looking for an excuse to close down places like this. So I simply helped them out. The place was too understaffed and too incompetent to keep patients from killing themselves. So they shut it down.”
    “But it was really just a game to you, right?” Meganasked in disgust. “Seeing how many patients you could talk into suicide.”
    Matthews shrugged. He continued. “I got transferred to a halfway house and one bright, sunny May morning, I walked out the front door. Moved to Prince William County, right behind your farm. And started planning how to destroy you.” Matthews winced and pressed his side. The wound didn’t seem that severe.
    Tate recalled something else from the trial and asked, “What about your wife?”
    Matthews said nothing but his eyes responded.
    Tate understood. “She was your first victim, wasn’t she? Did you talk her into killing herself? Or maybe just slip some drugs into her wine during dinner?”
    “She was vulnerable,” Matthews responded. “Insecure. Most therapists are.”
    Tate asked, “What was she trying to do? Take Peter away from you?”
    “Yes, she was. She wanted to place him in a hospital full-time. She shouldn’t have meddled. I understood Peter. No one else did.”
    “But you made Peter the way he was,” Megan blurted. “You cut him off from the world.”
    She was right. Tate recalled the defense’s expert witness, Dr. Rothstein, testifying that if you arrest development by isolating a child before the age of eight, social—and communications—skills will never develop. You’ve basically destroyed the child forever.
    Tate remembered too how he’d handled the expert witness’s testimony at Peter Matthews’s murder trial.
    The Court: The Commonwealth may cross-examine.
    Mr. Collier: Dr. Rothstein, thank you for that trip down memory lane about the defendant’s sad history. But let me ask you: psychologically, is the defendant capable of premeditated murder?
    Dr. Rothstein: Peter