He might have conspired to kill these people, but that would’ve required an accomplice. The district attorney’s office wasn’t charging anyone else with the crimes. Grace was the horse those folks were betting on, and they’d beat his ass until they crossed the finish line.
Grace’s guilt or innocence was certainly important to me… but I suspected I wouldn’t unearth that information until I unlocked the secret to his blindness. What did it represent, in Grace’s mind? Psychic self-flagellation? An escape for the chilling visions he’d insisted he’d had? A way to silence the killer’s voice inside him, the thing he called the Inkstain?
Like basketball—an art form in its own right, a thing I reckoned more full-court dance than press—there are rules in art therapy, as well as tactics for sneaking past a sharp defense. These methods are cornerstones in sessions. Assume a calm and non-judgmental demeanor. Ask the patient to draw a tree, or a family, or a person. Have the patient discuss the picture, reflect about what’s on the page and what it might represent. Armed with those techniques… and enough backstory on the patient… you can slowly guide him toward insight. Insight begets vision. Vision begets revelation. Revelations beget breakthroughs.
With Martin Grace, insight wasn’t the only thing I was hoping for. Sight was my goal.
I’d had enough experience to know that my book-cramming and armchair strategies would only go so far. My job is a lot like the creative process itself: if you treat the playbook as gospel, you’re doomed. Therapists must be adaptive, fleet-footed and improvisational. The way you interact with a patient—and the art the patient creates—must be as unique as the person you’re treating. Unfortunately, my blind man in the basement was so “unique” he was in his own psychological zip code.
I leaned my back against the oak tree’s rugged trunk and closed my eyes. I made an effort to listen, really listen to the world, its heartbeat. I heard the faraway voices of other lunching Brinkvale employees. The faint roar of a motorcycle on Veterans Memorial Highway, a quarter-mile away. I raised the apple to my mouth and took a bite, relishing the snap of its peel against my teeth. I savored the sounds and wondered if this is what being blind feels like.
I snorted. Even with my eyelids closed, the sunlight was creeping onto my rods and cones, warm and red. My eyes still worked. Grace’s didn’t. Or at least, a part of him thought they didn’t. He had willed himself blind to escape his demon, his Dark Man.
The wind gusted again, colder now. I shivered. I sensed another faraway whisper in my mind—I knew this tickling sensation, welcomed its intimacy—and opened my art pad.
The creative inspiration swam and somersaulted inside my mind. I let my hand breeze over the paper in brisk elliptical motions, my pencil a half-inch above the textured surface, letting the tickle find shape. A moment later, the charcoal etched a light, curved horizontal line, and then—bisecting it—a longer, curved vertical line.
Yes. I’d thought that’s where we were going with this. I let it take over.
The rest came in a blur of swift, gray arcs and tighter, darker crosshatchings: his eyes, sunken and sullen; the tiny trenches of crow’s feet, stretching back to his ears; the impassive lines of his thin lips; the slight, asymmetrical nose, likely from a break long ago; the close-cut hair.
I pulled the pencil away for a moment, my hand still itching to say more, and saw Martin Grace staring back at me. The eyes. My pencil insisted that they weren’t quite right. I darkened the pupils, made them bigger. No. Bigger still. Inspiration insisted, and I ran with it, like I always do, unthinking, filling the white space beneath his eyelids now… yes, more, the tickle whispered… and now the stuff was squirting from his tear ducts, spilling out onto his cheekbones, surging and gurgling like crude oil down his face, dark gray, darker now, no, black, blacker, where are my brushes, where is my India ink, it’s gotta be darker—
“Wait!”
I snapped out of my zone—my creative place, my cave—and nearly yelped. The pencil slipped in my hand, slicing a panicked, manic line across the page.
I looked up at the person standing in front of me. A middle-aged woman gazed back, her expression equal parts wary and concerned. I felt hot blood swell under my cheeks, felt my eyebrows kick upward in chagrin. Good God, I thought. So effing embarrassed. Few people see this side of me, the spirit slice that takes over when I create and pour myself into that whole-wide-world of white space.
I blinked, and recognized the woman. Annie Jackson. Night shift.
“Ah… heh. Hi, Annie,” I said. I placed the pencil beside me and picked up the Granny Smith off the grass. Feeling stupid, I kept it simple. “Hi.”
Still blushing. I wanted to scramble up the side of Primoris, build a treehouse and never come down. I smiled, praying I looked more Brinkvale employee than patient.
The look on Annie’s round face softened, and she returned my smile. Annie was an eleven-to-seven gal. I was almost as befuddled by her presence here during sunshine hours as I was by the frenetic sketch in my lap. I glanced down at the pad. Half of Martin Grace’s face was covered in hastily scribbled ooze.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She gave a little laugh. It was a throaty, lovely staccato, a perfect complement to her Southern accent. “It’s just, I thought, it’s a fantastic portrait.” She eyed the page and shrugged. The large purse under her arm bounced with her shoulder, its black strap a marionette string. “Too late now. Mind if I sit down? My dogs are barkin’.”
I nodded, and patted my palm on the grass. My grin was a bit more genuine now.
“Take a load off, Annie.”
The nurse rolled her brown eyes, but gave another chuckle. She tugged a long slice of blonde-gray hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, like I haven’t heard that before,” she said, groaning slightly as she sagged down beside me. “Still. Gets me every time. You know, my husband wooed me with that line.” She dug a hand into her purse.
“No kidding?” I asked. I didn’t know Annie Jackson very well—I’d only chatted with her the few times I’d burned the midnight oil here—but I knew that her wit was Ginsu-sharp, and that she smoked like a fiend. Sure enough, Annie produced a pink disposable lighter from her purse, and a cigarette so long and thin it looked like a joint run through a pasta press.
“Oh yeah,” she said, lighting her smoke. “Met M.J. at a party. This was years ago, back in the ’80s.” She gave me a motherly smile that was so convincing, I barely noticed the sly twinkle in her eyes. “You were just a baby then, God bless your little heart.”
I chuckled, feeling my tension ebb. I now knew Annie also had a gift for putting people at ease.
“Now this was a party, Zach,” she continued. “I don’t know how you New York kids do things, but in Atlanta, we do things big, and we do ’em right. There wasn’t a place to put your buns, this party was so packed. So we’re introduced, he’s sitting on a comfy chair—‘Annie Stormand, meet Michael Jeremy Jackson; M.J., meet Annie’—and that audacious soul slaps his lap with both hands, does a ‘come hither’ with his eyes and says what you just said.”
I giggled, and took a bite of my apple. “What’d you do?”