Psychopath Read Online Free PDF Page B

then — nor has he since — communicated the reason for his abrupt departure or return.
    "One would wonder whether Benjamin is replicating his father’s silence, starving himself physically as a concrete symbol of the starvation he experienced emotionally."  Plotnik looked up from his notes for the first time.  "As I feared he would, Benjamin’s father dismissed my theory out of hand.  He remains unwilling to fill in the gap as to what he was doing — and what his motivations for doing it might have been — during his absence."
    Plotnik nodded at Jonah.  "We have as our case consultant today the newest member of the psychiatry staff at Canaan Memorial, Dr. Jonah Wrens."  Shifting his gaze to a young man standing just inside the door to the auditorium, he said, "Please bring Benjamin in."
    Plotnik left the podium and headed for the seat next to Jonah’s.  Jonah stood.  He started toward the wingback chairs behind the oak table, but stopped as the door to the auditorium opened and Benjamin Herlihey, slumped to the left side of a wheelchair, each of his arms hooked up to an IV, was pushed into the room.
    Even under a white hospital blanket, Herlihey looked like something out of a World War II concentration camp.  His sunken eyes had bluish circles beneath them.  His red hair was fine and thinning, his scalp showing through in places.  The bones of his legs and arms barely tented the woven white fabric covering them.  He seemed ageless to Jonah, nine or ninety, close to birth and close to death.
    Jonah walked the rest of the way to the front of the auditorium.  He moved one of the armchairs away from the oak table, making room for Benjamin’s wheelchair.  He took the other armchair.  Then the two of them — doctor and patient — sat opposite one another in silence, with Benjamin’s head flopped to the side, his vacant eyes peering up at Jonah.
    "My name is Dr. Wrens.  Jonah Wrens."
    Benjamin did not speak or show any emotion.
    "Dr. Plotnik asked me to talk with you, to see if I can help."
    Benjamin’s eyes rolled up and to the left, staring several seconds at the ceiling, then slowly returning to center.
    Jonah looked up at the spot where Benjamin’s eyes seemed to have traveled.  There was nothing there.  He looked back at the boy.  "Dr. Plotnik told me about the trouble you’ve been having.  I want to understand it."
    Benjamin didn’t respond.
    Jonah was about to ask another question, to prod the boy into uttering a word or two.  But he stopped himself, settled back in his chair, and simply sat with him.  A minute passed.  Then two.  Occasionally, Benjamin’s eyes would roll up to the ceiling, and when they did, Jonah rolled his own eyes in precisely the same arc.
    Two minutes of quiet is more than most people can stand.  People in the audience shifted nervously in their seats.  Out of the corner of his eye, Jonah could see some leaning to whisper to their colleagues.  He could imagine what they were saying.  Who is this guy, anyway?  Is he going to do anything?  Why doesn’t he say something, for Christ’s sake?
    Jonah dismissed them all from his mind.  Never breaking eye contact with Benjamin, he slowly began moving his own head, neck, chest, arms, hips, thighs, knees, feet into the same positions as the boy’s, becoming his mirror image, judging the exact center of Benjamin’s equilibrium by the pressure he felt on his skin in some places and not in others, the tenseness in some of his muscles and the lack of it in others.
    Another two minutes passed in this state of suspended animation, with the audience getting more and more jittery, and Jonah slumping further in his chair, looking more and more like a clone of the broken boy across from him.
    Then, of a sudden, Jonah straightened up in his chair.  He stood up.  He stepped over to Benjamin, crouched in front of him and looked into his eyes.  "I’m going to touch you now," he said, his voice barely audible.  "Don’t be